TiVo, Domino's team up to make us all fat

(Credit: Domino's)

Thanks to a new agreement with pizza giant Domino's, owners of TiVo set-top boxes can now order food from the chain directly through their televisions, and even track delivery time so they know just when the pizza guy will be showing up to bring them a nice, tasty treat.

Oh, boy.

Here's the deal: when a Domino's ad or product placement shows up, TiVo users can click through with their remote controls to order pizza, or can access an on-demand ordering screen through a TiVo menu. It's similar in theory to the deals that TiVo has with Fandango for movie ticket ordering or with Amazon.com for ordering products related to TV shows, except that you get a pizza.

"This is the first time in history that the 'on-demand' generation will be able to fully experience couch commerce by ordering pizza directly through their television set," Rob Weisberg, Domino's vice president of marketing, said in a statement. "You'll see a television ad for Domino's, and you'll click, 'I want it' through your remote. In about 30 minutes, your pizza will show up at your door." And then you won't just be a couch potato, you'll be a Digital Age couch potato.

One thing you can't do: pay for the pizza through TiVo. That has to be done in cash when the pizza guy shows up.

[dascha1]

Go Italian with Papa Johns if you want to talk about this kind of stuff. I wanted their 2 pizza italian deal I saw on TV and called by phone, only to find out the store manager couldn't take my order by voice but online only. She said "we don't even have to talk about it" - it's interesting, as you may or may not know, Papa Johns has always been a cash transaction business from the beginning. My experience online? Terrible! I kept getting complicated server errors (code?) back after I ordered, so I had to call the store to resolve. She said the order came through to them, though i didn't have a clue how much or any other details. So, in the end we ended up talking about it. Here's the future folks!

[nedcoyle]

If you don't like Domino's you can always eat the pizza box, it tastes better.

[skillingssucks]

People still eat Domino's?

[aka_tripleB]

There's never been a Domino's near where I grew up. I actually thought all of them closed when I stopped seeing commercials for it. This is a huge surpized to me.

[Renegade Knight]

How much bandwidth are you using for this service? Is this another thing that sucks up the increasingly capped bandwidth?

[CWEBNET]

"Is this another thing that sucks up the increasingly capped bandwidth?"

The cap is 250GB. I don't know anyone that has any practical use to go over that. PS you don't have to use this...

[Zarakand]

This seems pretty dumb. I'm all for technological change, but it's still faster to dial them up and order what you want.

How about we focus on technological changes that actually make sense?