Blockbuster OnDemand Comes To TiVo

MojoKid writes "Netflix isn't the only company that sees that streaming is the future of movie rental distribution. Blockbuster, which always seems to be playing catch-up with Netflix, will start making its on-demand rental and purchase content available on TiVo DVRs. Blockbuster OnDemand has only been available as a streaming service on Windows PCs or streaming to TVs via the 2Wire MediaPoint device. Meanwhile, Netflix streaming is available on far more platforms, such as on Windows and Mac computers, TiVo, the Roku Digital Video Player, LG and Samsung Blu-ray players, the Xbox 360, as well as a number of video portal software applications, like Boxee and ZeeVee's Zinc. Blockbuster's partnership with TiVo is yet another indication of the coming revolution of on-demand media available to TVs — that is, if the revolution hasn't already started."

Re:Now all they need to do is

[telchine]

Now all they need to do is bring the Tivo back to the UK. There are still people maintaining or even buying [garysargent.co.uk] old UK-spec tivos because nothing else manages the "program prediction" as well.

Absolutely, TiVo is great, Thompson just made massive mistakes with their launch and marketing of it. My mother is a complete technophobe, yet she can use it without problems.

Now most people already understand the concept (it's similar to Sky+), it should be much easier to launch in the UK if they try again.

bandwidth

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Assume for a moment that in some fantasy land you can convince 5-10% of your customers to give up physical media and switch to downloads. Where is all this bandwidth going to come from? Are people supposed to sit around tapping their foot as these huge (even if you use low bitrate H264) files slowly seep in over the interwebz? I don't know about you, but I'm not NEARLY patient enough for that. But perhaps it's just me.

Re:Percentage of movies on demand

[morgan_greywolf]

Except that 90% of the movies I want to see on demand are available only in DVD.

That's probably because most movies are not available on demand. According to this blog bost about VOD servers [derrich.com], about Blockbuster has about 2,000 titles available for VOD and Netflix has about 3,500. The biggest thing missing from both VOD and DVDs are classic movies: some have never been digitally remastered, while others have.

Re:First Post?

[Sorce]

They have very few free streaming titles. They do have new releases but they are all PPV and I believe around $4. I don't think anyone is really going to use this service. Netflix doesn't have a huge library but at least it's got something that is included in the monthly fee.

Re:Now all they need to do is

[Anonymous Coward]

We have Tivo in Canada, but unfortunately none of these deals like with Amazon or Netflix ever work for us up here. The link is there in the menu, but when you try to go there and enable your account etc., you can't because (a) you don't have a US credit card, and (b) even if you manage to use a US credit card, it blocks your tivo unit because it's coming from a Canadian IP address. Stupid regulations.

Re:Yay for series 2 support!

[dreamt]

Well, I'm pretty sure that the reason that Netflix only worked on Series 3 boxes is the codec that Netflix uses to encode their movies. Blockbuster's must be using MPEG2 because I think that is all that series 2 has the hardware to handle.