While some appear content to sit on the sidelines, TiVo’s moving forward with announced plans to offer foreign, independent, and Disney video on demand services – in addition the existing Amazon library. Jaman‘s indie and foreign film content launches today, with Disney film rentals via CinemaNow arriving next week. Both services will be provided in standard definition (for now?) and MPEG2-encoded. I was hoping to get a sneak peek at Jaman last night, but their engineers were performing some last minute work. However, I can confirm Series2 and Series3/HD platforms are supported, with rentals starting at a low $1.99.
Interesting, but until TiVo starts delivering this VOD content in HD it won’t be on my tv….
Yeah, I’m with you. Wonder what the hold up is? Several months back I heard whispers Amazon HD was pulled back from testing. If TiVo and their partners get to HD soon, they compete much better against cable VOD, Vudu, AppleTV, etc.
Besides scheduling, the internet features of TiVo are far from the same high standards of the rest of the TiVo platform. For starters, why do the menus switch to 480i resolution once you go into the online content? Has anyone tried to do something as simple as get traffic or weather news? It’s terrible. Look at how elegant the Wii does with weather reports.
And of course, you’re right that TiVo VoD is only 480i, even for content that exists at higher resolutions. Look at podcasts like Tekzilla – an HD feed is available, but you can’t get it on your TiVo.
It’s pretty clear that the internet features of TiVo are an afterthought, and they weren’t developed by the same team that develops the rest of the TiVo platform. It detracts from the experience.
Offering more Standard Definition Content is not moving forward, it’s jogging in place.
I wonder if this has to do with transfer speed?
I still cannot stream in real time from one TiVo HD box to another (connection is 100M).
The lack of VOD HD may be a business decision, based on where Tivo management thinks they will get the most bang for the buck. Anyone care to guess about how the number of SD vs. HD Tivo units are connected to the net?
I wonder if the problem is that TiVo does not support MPEG4. Other devices that do HD downloads use MPEG4 compression so that the files aren’t too large.
Greg, The Series3 and TiVo HD platform does support H.264 (MPEG-4). That’s what the YouTube application is using. Also, the revamped UI they’re working on (linked above) gives me some hope of seeing a more unified (16:9) experience – whether pulling Internet content or stuff from the cable-co.
We enjoyed our two free Jaman movies. Lord of War and The Bank Job. Definitely need better encoding and higher resolutions though.