For years, TiVo seemed caught in a struggle trying to serve three masters that often had conflicting interests — its customers, broadcasters and cable and satellite companies. In the past few years, it has probably de-emphasized working with broadcasters, but it has stepped up efforts with advertisers and its main Internet video partner Amazon.
As Multichannel News reports, the move from Web-based to TV-based movie ordering from the Internet may ruffle the feathers of potential TV service providers as well as its most important cable partner today, Comcast. However, realistically Amazon Unbox and cable VOD are not direct competition yet. There’s still a significant delay before movies are downloaded although the movie selection is much greater, there’s still a fair amount of especially VOD content (particularly from premium channels like HBO).that you can’t get from Unbox. At least for now, you can think of VOD as Amazon Unbox for the masses.
And, hey, you FiOS customers, I heard today from a reliable source that Verizon is working on having 9,000 movies available on demand in the near future. That’s the equivalent of almost four video rental stores.