Amazon & Tivo Take on Netflix 97
RadioTV writes "Amazon is in Beta testing with select Tivo users to allow Unbox videos to be downloaded to Series 2 and 3 set-top boxes. The FAQ for the service is available." The price point for movies is fairly reasonable. No HD and won't work with DirecTV's obsoleted HD tivo, but this is a step in the right direction.
Why isn't DirecTV up with the times? (Score:2)
Well, that's one reason why the DirecTiVo subscribers won't be able to use it... Most DirecTiVo users aren't running hacked receivers that allow for the broadband connection. Why DirecTV keeps its users in the dark on the upgrades I'll never know. It's not like their own DVR is any good (in fact, I used a HD DVR this weekend at a friend's place and was completely una
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
There are some very bright people manning some phones at DirecTV, you simply have to get in touch with them by running through a fence of the usual CSRs. Other than that first-line-of-BOFH-defense folk, I've always been very happy with how flexible they're willing to be on many issues.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Opportunity for Tivo (Score:2)
This excites me (Score:5, Interesting)
And that they aren't going to lock it in to the tivo and let me transfer it to my PC? Golden. I love the idea of hearing about a cool flick at work, logging in and buying it, and then coming home to it sitting there and just waiting for me to watch it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Read those EULAs, ppl:
Amazon Unbox to Customers: Eat shit and die [boingboing.net]
Re:This excites me (Score:5, Informative)
It's not as cool as what Netflix is already doing, which is letting you stream movies basically for "free" if you're already a subscriber. You get an hour's worth of streaming for every dollar you spend with them per month. And you can watch the same movie over and over if you want to. The quality is also better than Unbox (if you've got a good net connection - it automatically selects your quality level.)
You also really only get charged for the time you use... if you select a 2 hour movie and watch 5 minutes before deciding it sucks, you only get charged for 5 minutes, not the whole movie. Big difference from Unbox. And you can start watching immediately, you don't need to wait for a download.
You can argue about TiVo being hooked up to a person's TV vs. streaming over a computer, but TiVo doesn't exactly have a huge market share; I'd wager at least as many people have their PC's hooked up to a TV as have TiVo. And with people watching more video on their computers anyway, I'm not sure the distinction is really going to matter in a few years. A monitor will be a monitor.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
I've been a Netflix customer for years but I've never heard of this. I couldn't find any feature like this mentioned on the website either. How do you access it?
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, I'd argue that it's cooler since it's direct to your TiVo. No computer needed, no potential for ActiveX security holes - unlike Netflix's system. This will be available to a much wider group of people.
Re:This excites me (Score:4, Interesting)
Really??? If you're willing to wager I think a lot of people would take you up on it. I'm a geek and I've only hooked up a computer to my television once. Given this was about four years ago, but it looked crappy even with an S-Video cable and I got sick of having a wireless keyboard and mouse on the coffee table. I won't be doing it again soon if I can avoid it. I'd be surprised if there weren't 20 or more TiVo's plugged into televisions for every computer out there that is.
Oh, and I love my TiVo and my modded XBox with XBox Media Center.
Re: (Score:1)
Are you saying that your modded XBox is tied to your Tivo in some way?
Wow. (Score:1)
Your xbox will break, but you will always have a computer. To NOT hook it up to a tv is personally stupid to me. Emulators. Porn. TV shows on bittorrent. Movies. Music through your home theatre quality receiver. fullscreen youtube never looked so good (well..... youtube quality BLOWS but that's another issue).
We
Re: (Score:2)
hmm (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I know people without TiVo's (and no geek
Re:Seems a little ridiculous... (Score:5, Interesting)
These reasons, along with the convenience of not having to have a tivo and bypassing your country's year+ delay in showing new shows are why most people download torrents of tv shows.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not too
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As a TiVo owner, I'm used to flagging a show to record days in advance. I'm usually in no great hurry to watch that particular show, because I have hours of my favorite shows already stored on my TiVo. Eventually, it shows up on the menu. I would of course record a show when it comes on, and save
Price Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Says who?
A random new release [amazon.com] is $14.99, the same price I would pay to own the movie, not rent a copy
The service seems to be on par with the iTunes prices for TV shows an has the advantage of going right to your TiVo.
Re:Price Point (Score:5, Informative)
Customers can purchase television episodes for $1.99, purchase most movies for between $9.99 and $14.99, or rent movies starting at $1.99.
(Emphasis added)
TiVo/Unbox solves two major digital movie distribution problems: displaying on television and dealing with the lack of backups. If the price-point for rentals stays in the $2 range (the supermarket where I rent from is usually $1 or $1.50), then you've actually got something that might actually work for the average family.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean paying more for something that will take longer to download than going to the rental store?
Handy for less common movies perhaps.
Re: (Score:2)
From the f*cking headline: Amazon & Tivo Take on Netflix
I wasn't aware that Netflix had rental stores
Re:Price Point (Score:4, Insightful)
It is pretty well accepted that people will pay for extra convenience. $0.50 more for a movie that you can download to your Tivo is more convenient than having to go to your local rental store.
And it is probably even cheaper if you add in the transportation costs that it would take to go to the rental store. At 25mpg @ $2.50/gallon and $0.05 per mile for repair costs, that is $0.15 per mile. If the rental store is even 1.7 miles out of your way, it is cheaper to download the movie.
--
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Price Point (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I'll wait to see the relevant terms and conditions before I decide whether to sign up or not.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Price Point (Score:4, Informative)
If you look at the actual 1018 movies available to rent on their site, and sort by price, you'll see only the bottom ~10% (110 movies) are available at $1.99.
Then 208 movies are available at $2.99.
And the remaining 700 movies, the vast majority of their collection, including anything most people would be interested in watching, are $3.99 to rent (more than double the advertised starting price).
I've said before that I would only be interested in online rentals if they can get within spitting distance of the $1.xx per disc I pay at Blockbuster Online or Netflix. $1.99 for everything would just barely meet that qualification, $1.99 for a few token b-movies (or c- or d-movies), and twice that for everything else does not qualify.
(Of course, I have neither a Windows box, nor a Tivo, so the service would be useless to me anyway. I wonder if/when companies are finally going to realize that a disproportionate number of early adopters are mac users...)
This is the future (Score:5, Interesting)
This model is dead. The networks have to add ads that the customers dont want and make sure it is not too onerous. With the advent of PVR, ad skipping is here to stay. If ad-skipping is prevented by technology or law people would stop watching the shows. They wont accept ads anymore. Once the revenue stream is gone or severely reduced, the TV networks can not produce interesting and exciting content.
So the new model is going to be to use the internet to pump the shows people want to watch in their hard disks at home connected to TV. They will pay for content. They have to. They cant sneak ad in again like they did in cable tv because, no advertiser is going to pay for ads that people are going to skip anyway. I like this new model. Due to economy of scale and cutting out the fat in TV networks and ad management etc, I expect a service that will give me "Jeopardy, Tonight Show, Daily Show, This Week with George Stephenopolis, Shoot out, Dog fights, Myth busters, NOVA, BBC news, and a few History channel, Discovery Channel and national geographic shows" for about 10 or 20 $ a month. Great! Even my 740Kbps service has enough bandwidth to download all these with plenty left over for my vpn connection to work. I hope it succeeds. I think it will succeed.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It will probably happen, but it is going to be years and years until broadcast television is even uncommon.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
But this video-via-internet appliance can be a pure stand alone player. Telephone companies would gladly sell a DSL service and tell the customer, plug this gizmo (DSL modem/router) to the phone jack and plug this set top box here and plug your TV to the set top box and use the remote to schedule what you want to watch. All these gizmos wit
Re: (Score:1)
People with DVRs pay $2(or $3) a day to watch pretty much whatever they want, for me, the $2 download market isn't very competitive with that.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, it's not dead, and based on the number of organizations involved in the advertiser-based model, there's still a lot of money to be made.
But you can make a compelling case that the current system offers a chance to discover shows you don't know about. Are you willing to spend $2 on a new TV show that no one has never seen? Probably not. Because good TV shows are pretty rare. They come out with bunches every year and most fail because they're lousy. The pay per download scenario
Re: (Score:2)
I also have a couple of DVDs that play monumentous bullcrap before I can get to the top menu. It wont let me skip it. That annoys the hell out of me but of course I can't take the DV
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I find this a rather ridiculous statement with absolutely zero examples to back it up. For years people have watched network TV with advertisements and those who haven't wanted to watch them have simply used the mute function. PVR's have not been around that long and the vast majority of people owning a TV in the United States do not have one. So, for the majority of people, if PVR's were prevented by
Did You Tivo The Superbowl? (Score:1)
What about sports and news? Did everyone Tivo the Superbowl and then watch it hours later so they could skip the commercials? Are people going to record breaking news on CNN so they can review it at their leisure?
You may be right with regards to a lot of the content that is produced for TV. However, there will always be room for ads in programming that people are compelled to watch live.
Re: (Score:2)
This distribution method is getting fantastically close to an ideal condition for me. With TV shows available for a resonable price, along with cheap movie rentals, all downloadable to a TiVo that will also pu
Re: (Score:2)
Digital Delivery = Dozens of Players (Score:5, Interesting)
YouTube, Amazon, NetFlix, Xbox Live, Sony, Apple, Cable companies, Sattelite companies
There are no shortage of players eyeballing paid digital delivery.
Internet access plus TV-connected hardware is hardly a rare or difficult-to-repeat formula.
These margins are going to get razor thin... And the "capture apps" that permanently save this
stuff haven't even *begun* to beome widespread yet.
All these $3 short term digital "rentals" are going to look a whole lot like purchases before
the studios even know what hit 'em.
Re: (Score:1)
I doubt that. Realize that most people in this country are already paying to watch advertisements. TIVO users are paying even more NOT to watch the ads. This is yet another fee on top of those two. Regular people are already paying through the nose to watch garbage. I just go to my local video store and rent DVD's at $3/pop.
The DirecTiVo is not "obsoleted" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry. It's obsoleted. I had a DirecTiVo (non-HD) which I loved, but I replaced it with a Series 3. The fact is, not only does DirecTV hold back updates (I can understand MRV, but why not let us use Ethernet instead of a phone line?), but DirecTV is moving to MPEG4 with their new satellites. All the boxes they sell now support it (I believe). As they bring new channels on in MPEG4, you won't be able to view them. As they switch old channels over, you will lose them.
They are nice DVRs, and can be hacked to
Re: (Score:2)
I know it's
Re: (Score:2)
Merriam-Webster, obsolete, definition 1b: of a kind or style no longer current : OLD-FASHIONED <an obsolete technology>
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The understanding I had was that new SD channels (at some point within the next two years or so) would be MPEG4 as well to save bandwidth on the satellite. I realize HD was doing that first (which is a big deal if you have a HD DirecTiVo), but I was under the impression it was happening with SD as well.
However, I moved to a Series 3 when I got a HDTV because I knew about the HDTV situation with the HD DirecTiVos, and that they aren't sold any more (only the replacements which I haven't heard kind things ab
Try "deprecated" not "obsolete." (Score:2)
Series 3? Yeah! (Score:3, Interesting)
I've got to say, I've got a Series 3 and I love it. That said, it's great that they are doing this on Series 3 as well as the Series 2 machines. It's no secret (if you follow TiVos) that some of the Series 2 features (like multi-room-viewing) aren't available on the Series 3 (stupid Cable Labs). Series 3 is also a little behind of some features (Series 2 has folders/recently deleted and such, Series 3 doesn't yet but they showed it at CES). It's nice to see a feature available for both.
I'm a little disappointed at the lack of HD content, but I completely understand why.
I wish I got to test this. I'd love to.
I especially like that once you've purchased something you can download it again for free. It would be untenable if you couldn't.
they are competing with iTunes, not Netflix (Score:5, Interesting)
Tivo has to make some kind of partnership to survive -- it simply doesn't make sense otherwise.
I bought a used series 2 TIVO for $50, but they were charging $20 / mo. and I had to sign up for a year's contract to get any service.
Comcast only charges me $11.95 / mo. for their DVR and I can run it month to month so I can ditch it when something more mature and cheaper comes to the market. Tivo just seem like jerks compared to that, but it's because they are so desperate they have to act like a cell-phone company. Even if you give someone a gift certificate, it only counts *towards* them signing up for a 1-year contract.
I laughed when I saw Apple's iTV offering, but then I heard Disney had already sold over $1 Million worth of downloaded movies over iTunes. Then I started thinking about what could happen if I let go of the cable TV (at $60 / month) and just ordered the shows I want over iTunes -- the only show I care about is the Daily Show, and anything else I watch is really just a distraction from my life.
The good thing about this is that it shows that the market is moving to an iTunes distribution model, and that kind of competition will only help everyone. iTunes is the competition space here though, not Netflix
.Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Comcast only charges me $11.95 / mo. for their DVR...
They charge you that on top of a $60/month subscription fee. In return, they can make your DVR just barely useful enough to keep other players out. If Tivo dies watch them jack up the prices or remove functionality by adding more and more shows you're not allowed to record, or skip commercial in. Comcast's interest is in maintaining their monopoly so they can keep gouging you that $60/month and then in making you watch as many commercials as possible.
Re: (Score:2)
It is competing with Netflix instant watch [netflix.com], not with their traditional mail service.
Amazon's EULA == DRM NIghtmare (Score:5, Informative)
Here's an explitive laced though pretty good summary: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/09/15/amazon_unbox
Here's the EULA: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.ht
From the bottom of my heart, I thank all unbox consumers for abaondoning the decades of time and people's effort to create and guard the principal that I own my media.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Pay, pay, and pay again... (Score:2, Insightful)
Mandatory (Score:1)
Sounds lame.
The TV is dead ... long live TV! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Thanks, TiVo, for nothing. (Score:2)
Widescreen? (Score:2)
I'm perfectly happy watching a movie in 480p.
Tivo transfer rate too slow (Score:1)
Forget Amazon's Unbox ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
How complicated does this need to be???? It's _just_ a media file, if consumers were going to make so many illegal copies of these things then I would be flooding the street with copies of my home movie collection even as we speak.
I'm not. Why? Because I have better things to do with my time. This is the same reason I didn't steal music from the rad
Still a 24 hour deadline? (Score:2)
But the FAQ doesn't mention whether or not there is still a 24 hour deadline for finishing the movie/program after you start it. That is my single biggest problem with all the download services. There have been many, many times when I got half way through a movie and was too tired to finish it that night, so I had to wait two or three nights until I had time. I will not use ANY of the download services until this restriction is relaxed. How about thirty d