Comments on: TiVo, Netflix sign movies-on-demand deal

And Mike Ramsay, TiVo's CEO, resigns from his board position at Netflix to avoid conflicts of interest.

[Earl Benser]

Two losers...

...in a dying market.

[msansing]

won't work with legacy tivo boxes

Even assuming the Tivo's can be connected to a broadband network via a home LAN, the existing Tivo boxes can only decode MPEG-2 video. To get decent video with MPEG-2 you can't compress the video to less than a few Mbits/sec, which means massive files sizes for each movie and long long download times. And copy protection is trickier for MPEG-2 files, and I don't think the boxes have any copy protection built in.

Current Tivos don't support the newer video codecs like H.264 or WMV9 that offer comparable video quality at much lower encoding rates, which are the basis for current online movie efforts. They also have better content protection systems built in.

[Michael Demaray]

Sansing

Oh Sansing -- always making wisecracks. Don't make me take a bat to my old TIVO box.

[CurtisFinney]

I have Tivo HD and Netflix and recently tried the vidoe on demand service. The quality is good and as long as I don't have any bandwidth issues, it works fine. HOWEVER, it is NOT HD. All videos I have seen so far come in a 4:3 format. I din't buy a Tivo HD to see 4:3 formatted movies. I contacted Netflix about this and they basically said that it is a setting issue. After disagreeing with them, they admitted that they probably don't have videos in the native aspect ratio. Don't these people get it. Most of the people that have Tivo HD and Netflix probably have a HD TV and demand to watch movies in their native aspect ratio! I thought finally someone got the video on demand right, but I was wrong. I wouldn't rush out and get a Tivo or Netflix for this service until the offer movies in the native aspect ratio.