Aussie TiVo will follow Amazon Unbox lead

By Stephen Withers
Thursday, 12 July 2007 12:52

Home IT

An internet-based movie download service will be part of the TiVo offering when the PVR goes on sale in Australia next year. According to The Age, TiVo's Australian partner Seven Network will offer Internet downloads at launch.

No decision has been made about which, if any, of the existing movie download services will be used.

TiVo just announced a deal with Amazon in the US that will allow movies and TV shows to be purchased or rented from the latter's Unbox service without requiring the use of a PC as an intermediary, but Amazon Unbox is not yet available in Australia.

Movie download services in Australia include ReelTime, Anytime on Volt, and BigPond Movies.

Two factors may affect takeup: the low connection speeds still 'enjoyed' by many broadband users, and the ungenerous data limits applied to low-end Internet plans.

The first may be eased as increasing numbers of households come into the growing ADSL2(+) footprint. The second could be overcome completely if Seven negotiated a peering arrangement with leading ISPs so that the movie downloads did not count towards the monthly allocation. AnyTime on Volt has such an arrangement with iinet, while BigPond Movies is part of the Telstra stable and so downloads by BigPond users are not metered.