Can Amazon and TiVo win TV download supremacy?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 08 February 2007 17:26

Your IT - Entertainment

Given that the TiVo is used to record and playback content available on free-to-air and cable/satellite pay TV services, is a popular way of doing so and is much cheaper than buying a new XP or Vista Media Center PC, the TiVo is likely to stay under people’s TVs for some time to come, with other devices like games consoles, computers or other TV viewing devices connected to it if desired.

The thing is – in the short to medium term at least – if the TiVo and Amazon service offers great content that people want to access, as seems likely given the initial set of content partners and the others yet to come – on an inexpensive box at prices comparable to the competition, including Apple who currently has 76% of the video download market in the US, they stand a very good chance of strong take up of this service and becoming a very popular way to choose from and watch broadcast and downloaded content.

Still, it really is far too early to predict the winner. TiVo and Amazon have a great model, but are faced with some very stiff competition. After all, Sony, Microsoft and everyone else will fight back with better offerings of their own, with an Xbox 360 with a bigger hard drive easily able to do anything a TiVo can do. The same story goes for the PS3 and any computer.

It just sounds like the TiVo could well be the easiest way so far for people to access downloadable TV shows and movies and watch them on their TVs - at a price that's much less than an Xbox 360, a PS3 or a computer.

The other big players concerned about the video download business are those that are offering the Internet connection, be it through cable, satellite, DSL or wireless. Video takes up a lot of bandwidth, as the files are very large, and even larger still when you’re talking about HD content. Some of the companies offering broadband Internet connectivity are also offering either pay TV or IPTV services of their own.

This is where the whole net neutrality debate kicks in with no solution in sight yet.

What we have is a situation where the battle for entertainment dominance in the digital home has finally gone from a world of broadcast to a world of on-demand and limitless video and other entertainment choices, from a wide variety of players through a range of delivery mechanisms, all to play on your shiny big screen TV. 

It’s a battle that has actually barely begun. Now that it has, you’ll need to unholster your remote control and get ready – companies are coming to offer you more entertainment content than ever before. Let’s just hope it’s not 5 trillions channels, and nothing worth watching.