The Amazon/TiVo partnership announced last month has officially rolled out. Nearly 1.5mm TiVo subscribers can now buy or rent digital movies (and buy TV shows) from Amazon’s Unbox service and download / watch those movies on their TV via their TiVo. Nearly 600,000 of the 1.5mm compatible TiVo boxes are connected to broadband Internet connections. Amazon/TiVo are offering $15 in free movies and TV shows to get users to try the service.
This is the second time that Amazon has beaten Apple to the punch — you’ll recall that Amazon rolled-out their Unbox service one week prior to Apple rolling out their own service for selling digital movies / TV shows. That didn’t seem to matter, as Apple has rolled over Amazon with digital movie and TV show sales.
This might be another one-week head start that Amazon has to gain some ground with their digital movie / TV show downloads service to the TV, considering the much-anticipated Apple TV is expected to release later this month. However, Apple has all their passionate iPod users (60 million strong) and have also sold millions of digital movies / TV shows that users will easily be able to watch on their new Apple TV device instantly.
Amazon also offers movie rentals, whereas Apple still does not, despite rumors. Amazon appears to offer nearly 1,000 videos for sale and nearly 500 for rental. A movie download to the TiVo appears to take an hour (from one perspective), whereas consumers can still get pay-per-view or video-on-demand movies instantly — however they offer a limited selection of titles.
Competitors loom, with Wal-mart entering the digital movie downloads market last month and others have existed for awhile — Guba, CinemaNow, and Movielink.
Editor’s Note: This post by Steve Poland, whose blog Techquila Shots brainstorms web start-up ideas. Steve will be at SXSW this weekend if you want to chat about web start-ups.
it’ll be interesting to see how much traction tivo/amazon can gain from obtaining first-mover advantage in this arena of tv movie downloads
but apple is a very strong brand - people like it.
america likes it, it’s well marketed, it’s stylish - it’s damn near iconic
between these two players:
my money would have to go to apple, in spite of them being later to market
walmart will be the interesting wildcard player to this game, with their hold already on mass middle america
I used it yesterday, bought a show online from work and it was on the Tivo when I got home. It seemed to be listed just like any other show I’ve recorded and subject to all the same deletion rules.
i think netflix will stay dominate. its just easier, and with tivo, you already can get all the movies you want if you have cable.
In a recent analyst meeting, Apple’s COO Tim Cook announced they had shipped 90 million iPods!
http://arstechnica.com/journal.....7/3/1/7283
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/goldmansachs07/
So why would you choose this if you can get on-demand movies from cable folks. I watched few movies on comcast on-deamnd, I can simply place order with one click on remote. So why would you choose this over on-deamnd? better picture qulaity?Cheaper? Or simply to-get-called geek?
This should be Techcrunch news…. Now, I see innovation.
It’s about time….
This tech news surely beat AOL & Yahoo beta products.
Hey, AOL and Yahoo tech innovators… Why can’t you do something like that?
I wrote about alternatives to iTunes earlier in the week:
Who needs iTunes? The rise of the ‘indie friendly’ video download store
- Steve
Velioncho: I like ordering movies through Comcast’s On Demand but it has some major problems:
1) their UI design is really poor. And it isn’t because of the TV’s poorer pixel quality than a computer as my TiVO’s UI is perfectly fine
2) they offer a tiny fraction of available movies. I’m not sure why, maybe because if they offered thousands it would be hard to navigate when not on a computer
3) some of the movie choices are just bizarre. Stallone’s Driven was on there the other day. WTF? There has to be some sort of payola going on there
4) I have to separately operate my tivo to record an on-demand film
I’ve used this service an hour after it was announced earlier this week. Let me explain why TiVo is on top of my list in terms of innovation: it just works.
No fuss, I just go to Amazon, linked my Amazon account with my TiVo account and it automatically detected my TiVo without asking me any more information. It gave me $15 to try and with 1-click ordering I got 3 rentals at $3.99 each for free. The next morning I caught up with an episode of 24 while after work I was able to watch a movie.
- Quality is great, superb on my standard TV set.
- Controls is great, same old TiVo feel and same old TiVo beeps.
- UE is great, no software to download, to controls to mess, the movies just popped up in a folder alongside my other recordings.
TiVo has been doing great lately. Right now without additional software I can stream Yahoo pictures and get weather reports and play some rudimentary games as well as listen to net radio. With TiVo software I can sync music and photos and push my own videos, DiVX, QuickTime, and AVI to be viewed on my TV set.
Along with DVR settings, a 120gb hard drive, direct broadband access, great UI, it is already the perfect home center for show, sound, and pictures. And the price point is $6.95 a month while I also got the TiVo box for free. This is bar none the best solution for people that want to control how they watch anything on TV.
As an aside, can I just throw out my stance that the number of iPods sold is not equivalent to the number of users. I haven’t paid for an iPod since the original mini came out in mid-2004. But since then I have received 2 nanos and 2 shuffles as presents. I know that there are people who have purchased one (or more) of each released version. Is it unfair to assume that the true number of iPod users is more like 12-15 million worldwide? Still nothing to sneeze at but a significantly smaller base than we assume. Please feel free to poke holes in my argument…
I see those using TiVo here exhibit one major flaw “the next morning”.
TiVo’s sub-standard networking for high-def content is restricted to 802.11g whereas the Apple TV product supports 802.11n - something required if you plan to watch something the same night.
Yes, I’m a TiVo owner (true owner on a lifetime plan) and the interface works - most of the time. The UI lacks simple standards actions like scrolling through the bottom back to the top, etc. etc. and the hardware is cheap - the UI *often* has to catch up to selections made because a low-end processor was used. Just try deleting several episodes of something for a basic example.
This is where Apple TV will shine head and shoulders above TiVo/Amazon - I shouldn’t have to go to Amazon to order movies - it should be done via the player (TiVo or Apple TV).
I’ll be buying the Apple TV product when it comes out for these reasons - and don’t get me started on the limited storage of TiVo.
Apple Users > 100 million
TiVo Users
I think Microsoft beat both of them to the TV with their Xbox Live video feature for the Xbox 360. Watching movies on your TV is definitely the way to go. It’ll be interesting to see who ends up on top.
Anything Apple does is huge. Period.
Not one of the persons above has mentioned what a podcast is, and how this will play a vital role for the future of television.
Look at http://www.rocketboom.com
This website is incredibly popular and incredibly stupid. Anybody can set up a website just like it, and have people subscribe to their television channel through iTunes. The Apple TV basically then becomes a cable box for the internet, beaming the contents of iTunes to your TV. For the moment, there’s nothing notable to watch at the iTunes store. But in the next year we should see the free programming there become the next YouTube. I can almost guarantee it.
Might I add that TiVos (series 2 and below) feature USB1.1 for network connectivity. Although you plug-in that new 802.11g adapter, your actual connection is much slower as it is limited by USB 1.1’s 11mbps theoretical top speed. While that might not be a problem for downloading movies from the Unbox service (as USB 1.1 is still faster than your cable/dsl connection), it is a BIG problem when transferring programming to/from the device. It takes roughly 2 hours to transfer 1 hour of TiVo programming to/from your home computer.
And why do you need to wait for the entire show to download from Unbox before watching it on TiVo??? TiVo already has the capability to watch shows while they are transferring from other networked TiVo boxes. I think this is the most major drawback of the partnership. Who wants to wait two hours for a movie to download before being able to watch it? I’d rather make the twenty minute drive to Blockbuster (although my patience with Blockbuster is just about at wicks end). Unless TiVo fixes this shortcoming, it won’t even stand a chance against Apple TV. In fact, I might purchase an Apple TV despite owning a TiVo just because of this “delay” factor.
Microsoft beat them all to the living room. Try the Vista Media Center and you’ll know why. I don’t have the XBox 360, so I can’t comment on the Live store. It sounds like the XBox media sales are doing the best of the services so far.
I was a little hesitant to rent a movie from Amazon, but it worked well and I was satisfied. Its was a pretty good experience and I’d recommend it for people who don’t watch enough movies to warrant subscribing to Netflix.
To freeloader: You’re an idiot. 90 million ipods sold worldwide and on average they figured a consumer has 1.4 iPods. Why the heck would 15 million user base continue to get multiple iPods? Not everyone has that luxury.
To HAB: You’re an idiot. The next morning is because of download time. It takes 2 hours to download a 2 hour long feature movie. Guess what, genius? In iTunes it takes about that long as well. Yeah, go ahead, go to iTunes and download a movie. See how long that takes. TiVo is 802.11b which is pretty fast enough for broadband and it’s already pre-synced. With Apple TV you buy it on iTunes, store it on your computer and when you want to watch it you wait for it to be synced onto the 40gb hard drive and then watch it. You want to stream? Oh snaps, sorry, not going to work very well.
To Mike: Amazon Unbox streams. I just rented a movie, waited for 30 minutes and was able to watch as it downloads. Why do I want to wait 2 hours? Cause I dont’ want to deal with it stopping. This is a network issue, not a system issue.
To Matt: Hi retard #4, guess who doesn’t have an Xbox? How about everyone who’s not 14? And even then most would want a Wii over everything else. It’s cute to consider Xbox as a contender but for real adults, meaning people with disposable income to buy content, TiVo or Apple TV works great. The rest of the kiddies hacking their way to make Media Center work with pirated movies, yeah sure great. We’ll see you in grown up land when you’re done though.
“1.5mm TiVo subscribers can now buy or rent digital movies (and buy TV shows) from Amazon’s Unbox service and download / watch those movies on their TV via their TiVo. Nearly 600,000 of the 1.5mm compatible TiVo boxes are connected to broadband Internet connections.”
And from those 600,000, subtract all the ones who don’t use Windows…
To Alsaka Miller.
Apple TV does stream from 5 computers. Steve mentioned that in the keynote.
so stop with ur nonsense.
Tried this yesterday and it works very well. Great quality, downloads start immediately. I don’t mind waiting 30 minutes vs. planning a day ahead to see a real movie or waiting overnight to receive one in the mail with NetFlix.
And for those not paying attention, Apple TV doesn’t do a damn thing yet.
No service has the right configuration yet:
Apple doesn’t offer rental/pay-per-view
All except Apple are Windows-only
Only Apple, Amazon & Microsoft offer viewing on your TV.
UP!
This discussion is in nerd/yuppie-ville!
I’m glad I fucking rock.
stop it alaska, you’re killing me!
It would have been interesting if Apple purchased TiVo–or at least if the two worked more closely together in some partnerships.
Mac fans have wondered for years why Apple doesn’t include PVR functionality in the iMac. Heck, some iMac’s have vesa mounts. They make great computers/media playback devices, so why not add the ability to capture and store TV?
The Apple TV looks nice for people who are solidily in the Apple/iTunes camp. It will work well, it’s slick and it has good basic features. But, yes it is a 1.0 product. It will only get better, just like the iPod has over time.
Another interesing rumor is that Apple is going to include bittorrent functionality in Mac OS X Leopard (or in future iTunes?). If they do, that could greatly reduce download times for feature movies.
We over at http://www.hungryflix.com are very excited about Apple TV, as it allows users to move our great indie films into the family room.
To those commenting how much better the cable VOD service is: there are still a few of us with satellite dishes. Like 29 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dish_Network and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirecTV) of us. While we can buy PPV movies, we can only choose from a handful at a time.
However, since the DirecTivo unit hasn’t had an upgrade with enhanced features since… well, I can’t think of any, I don’t think this matters to us, anyhow.
Perhaps it’s time to weigh the benefits of DirecTV versus cable…
Looks like a build up of a war…
- No one winds in a war. Everyone loses, just in lesser amounts.
- Rbowles
The company that will win this fight is the first one to accomplish two things. One, the mass increase of the amount of media available. It has to be equivalent to what is currently available from Blockbuster or Netflix. And secondly, they will probably need to offer the hardware for free.
On my x-box 360 connected to my media center pc, it has something called a media center extender. It’s all connected together. Xbox360 like appletv can stream from another source. I would just tell you that on my wireless g network, standard TV programs that I have recorded to the hard drive stream great, even from the basement of our house. I think as broadband bandwidth increases streaming will be a great option for all of these platforms. Just ask the digital cable box folks, they
are streaming already. Also I’d note on an unrelated thing about the XBOX 360, their media store is WONDERFUL.. I have no reason to even think about iTunes or AppleTV with it. They have all the series I like from TV, it downloads and plays right on the 360 in SDTV and HDTV formats and movies too.
I am glad about the TiVO developments but it’s obvious you need something better than series 2 TiVOs to really take advantage of the service (for more than an hour of episodic tv)
I just tried this. I probably won’t do it very often in the future because it takes too long to download movies.
If I have to wait this long for a movie, I’ll just use Netflix. It’s cheaper, is an easier habit, and I assume it has a better selection (Amazon’s interface is so bad, I wouldn’t really know)
When I finish watching a movie on Netflix, I mail it back. I’ve already signed up to pay the $18/month, so it’s in my best interest. Then a new one comes, eventually I watch it. Repeat.
When I finish a movie with unbox… I do nothing. Then when I want to watch another movie, I go to the movie store. I am not going to wait 5-10 hours to download another one, and didn’t have the foresight to do this yesterday.
If they figure out how to speeed up the download, and allowed you to watch the movie once it is downloading (assuming you won’t run out of movie early), and increased the number of movies available, this service would be great. But, that is a difficult problem, and that’s why I’m buying more Netflix shares.
Otherwise, they should just copy the Netflix queue system. If there is one thing I’ve learned, consumers are extremely lazy/averse to planning (Netflix manages to do an ok job at aligning incentives to get around this). Mailing DVDs strikes me as an extremely inefficient idea, but somehow works pretty well.
Also, one huge problem is that now all of my newly recorded Tivo programs look like crap. Apparently saving the Unbox movie to my Tivo takes up so much space that there isn’t much room left for new shows, and so Tivo lowers the recording quality (just a theory).
Apple and its iTV is very disappointing. Apple TV delivers very poor video quality using compressed mpeg4 files that is not even up to VHS standards. Huge step backward from HiDef TV. Tack on expensive and tedious downloads, and the fact that it’s more expensive than better quality alternatives.
It’s criminal that the payola Apple ponies up to get featured as “news items” on MSNBC, CNN, Good Morning America, etc. works. It just proves that the American media have no integrity and Apple certainly takes advantage of it.
Only a fool would buy Apple TV online without comparing it in the store next to the signal coming back from a (cheaper, faster, better) hi-def video recorder like Tivo.