Netflix was just enabled on about 40,000 Virgin Media TiVo boxes housed in Peterborough, Crawley, Andover, Londonderry and Swindon (UK) as a pilot – with all 1.7 million deployed units expected to receive the app later this year. Beyond enhancing the experience for Virgin/TiVo customers, this deal is also notable as the first time Netflix has been offered via a pay television provider. And TiVo CEO Tom Rogers referred to the licensing complexity yesterday from a Merrill Lynch conference:
We enabled Netflix, as I said, through our retail device but because of the peculiarity of the over-the-top studio agreements, Netflix couldn’t be offered to a cable owned set-top box and still can’t be. I personally believe that’s going to be solved […] Virgin Media, because you have a different rights situation over there, Netflix could offer itself through a cable operator owned set-top box.
Related, RCN has stated publicly they’d like to bring Netflix to their US cable customers and were “eager to reopen the dialogue” back when Netflix’s STARZ agreement had expired… yet we haven’t heard anything more on the matter.