TiVo To Tie Internet To TV
from the onto-the-next-strategy... dept
Just after we wrote about how TV needed to better integrate with broadband services and just as DirecTV sold their entire stake in TiVo in order to build their own competitive offering – TiVo is announcing plans to better tie their service to the internet – letting users download additional content from the internet. There aren’t many details so far, but it sounds like they’re basically going to copy Akimbo’s plan and try to route around broadcasters by letting users download content directly from the internet. While this has some benefits (and it would be cool if they added some broadcatching style features), it also may raise issues. There’s still a question about how much viable content there is that would be offered over such a service. Will traditional providers be willing to provide content if they think it may harm their traditional channel? More importantly, broadband providers still don’t want people downloading such huge files all the time. Even if it’s completely legal, having users constantly downloading video programming may force broadband providers to rethink their offerings and become more aggressive in enforcing usage caps.
Comments on “TiVo To Tie Internet To TV”
WebTV?
If they added WebTV functionality to their box, allowing me to surf the web on my TV while keeping the TV picture in a window, I might be interested.
They don’t even need to provide the bandwidth, most people that own a Tivo are already connected to the ‘net via broadband, or at least dial up.
No Subject Given
Comcast has already done something like this. They call it, “on demand” programming. It’s a great idea, and there’s enough bandwidth out there now to do it well. I do worry about standard protocols though, but you need to remember, I’m an idiot.