Tivo and Amazon Team for Digital Downloading
Tivo and Amazon teamed up today to let customers download movies and TV shows directly to their Tivo boxes.
In a test of the service, Amazon’s Unbox movie downloading service will deliver shows to a few hundred Tivo users. Later, Tivo says any of its subscribers will be able to buy and download content using their broadband network.
This is the first service to allow purchases and downloads directly to a DVR.
This is also the first time a movie downloading service is made for watching on a TV rather than a computer screen.
Competitors, like Wal-Mart, CinemaNow, Movielink, Netflix and iTunes requires that customers download files on a computer.
Sorry, Comcast and DirecTV/Tivo users—this won’t work on your machines.
Amazon offers downloads of recent movies for about $14.99 and episodes of TV shows for $1.99.
From a story on USA Today:
How the service will work: TiVo users will go to Amazon.com to sign up and designate where they want movies and TV shows they buy to be sent. Unbox will send purchases to two TiVos, two Windows PCs or one of each. The PC then can load the video on up to two portable devices using Windows copy protection (no iPods). Buyers can burn DVD copies for backup, but they won’t play in a DVD player. The Unbox service also keeps a record of purchases and will send backup copies if needed.
Perhaps now is a good time to get rid of Comcast and DirectTV DVRs and get the Series 2 Tivo.
[Via Tivo Press Release and Gizmodo]
Amazon, Unbox, Tivo, DVR, PVR, Netflix, digital video recorder
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