LG & Netflix Team Up to Offer Downloadable Movies on TV

eldavojohn writes "It might seem like they've come full circle, but the movie injection method has gone from TV to mail to online download to TV on demand. And Netflix & LG are betting it's going to be a hit. They're also betting you will want to buy yet another device for your home theater. A Wall Street Journal article notes: 'The partnership between Netflix, Los Gatos, Calif., and South Korea's LG represents another gamble by technology companies that video from the Internet, which is commonly downloaded to personal computers, will go mainstream when users can easily access it from TV sets. So far, Internet television products such as Apple Inc.'s Apple TV have largely been unsuccessful, stymied by a poor selection of videos, complexity of use and other shortcomings.'"

This is Why blueray vs hddvd is irrelevant

Because it is going to come down to the difference of just being able to read different FILE formats, like jpg vs. gif.

colossally stupid

What's Netflix's bussiness advantage over the cable companies? Simple, it's hard to push 7.6GB of dvd info over the wire. It's faster to mail it. And bule ray/HDDVD would play to netflix advantage.

The only way to beat this effect is to reduce the bandwidth--which the cable companies can do just fine without netflix-- and to distribute the serving (bit torrent versus central caches).

Unless the TV set is going to also do bit torrent style distrubuted serving they won't gain anything on the cable companies.

The real magic is going to happen when apple or microsoft or adobe flips a switch one day that lets everyone opt in as a paid bittorrent node for some movie distribution company. You would get paid in credits for movie rentals based on how much bandwidth you served. then all of a sudden you could have high quality movie distribution.

Re:colossally stupid

TVU Networks [tvunetworks.com] has a peer-to-peer streaming application, that works fairly well, too. So technically, it can be done.

Re:colossally stupid

And cable companies have been better placed to do this for a long time. But Netflix is the one doing it and winning. The cable companies aren't. I love it when someone tries to argue that something isn't happening because they don't think it could happen. Especially when that thing is staring them in the face. Movie streaming from Netflix is here, it works and it's pretty good. A lot of content, good controls, good pricing. The cable companies are doing nothing in comparison. Netflix is on to a winner here, especially given that they have the content already, and you don't need cable internet (I have DSL) to do it.

Re:colossally stupid

Not stupid at all.
I'm a Netflix subscriber, and having a nice organized Que is very convenient. If they found a way to stream that to my TV, I'd have no problems renting/buying another device for my "home theatre".
AppleTV doesn't appeal to me that much, because of it's too-tight integration to iTunes and iTMS, so a nice "open" device tied to my Netflix que would fit the bill perfectly.
And Steve may have been too late on the ball regarding the whole rental and movies deal.
Yes, my iPod touch displays videos beautifully, but guess how many of them I've watched? Maybe 2 hours of NBC's office (thanks trackers). Videos on the go, just aren't something that most people (other than the bus/train riders) would have enough time to do.

It will be a battle of content, and I'd rather rent movies from Netflix than from iTunes, considering Netflix's excellent customer service and ease of use.

Re:colossally stupid

The Netflix advantage is that they have a larger catalog of content and they are actually willing to distribute it.

That's always been their advantage.

The download aspect of this might not make as much sense yet but that won't remain the case forever.

This could also give consumers a cheaper path to HD content that would not require buying into one side of the format war.

Local cable providers are far too drunk on the power they think they have by being a natural monopoly to really listen to the customer.

When push comes to pull...

Yes, it'll be nice to have new, alternative uses for my TV. No, I don't particularly care if it's on my TV or over more conventional appliances used for internet connectivity (tower, laptop, etc). The real revolution will be when all my media appliances work together seamlessly, all accessing my in-home centralized media server or some such.

what about our divx collection?

As long as they keep their existing service, I'm still in. I guess I could use the supermarket kiosks if they ever stopped physical mail service.

Wait for Macworld

So far, Internet television products such as Apple Inc.'s Apple TV have largely been unsuccessful, stymied by a poor selection of videos, complexity of use and other shortcomings.

Yeah, but it's clear that Jobs is about to turn the Eye of Sauron on the long-neglected Apple TV segment of the product line. Looks like he'll have some competition right off the bat.

What, what Apple TV?

If you're like me and read the story doing a doubletake on:

Apple Inc.'s Apple TV

It is to distinguish that product from this apple TV [newlaunches.com].

On my TiVo please

Just please let me do this on my TiVo, my Series 3. I don't want to watch movies on my laptop (especially if you make me use Windows to do it, I'm a Mac guy). I don't want to watch them on my iPod (mine can't play movies, but if I want to watch a movie on the go I'll stick a DVD in my MacBook Pro). I don't care about DRM that only lets me have 3 DVD at a time (ala the current subscription model I use on Netflix). It's OK if I can't transfer it between TiVos, or copy it do my computer. I really don't care.

Just let me download and watch movies and TV shows to my TiVo. Like Amazon Unbox, but tied to my Netflix queue and subscription model. Unbox looks nice enough, but I already pay Netflix, so I haven't really used it (my parents like it though).

It doesn't have to be HD. HD would be fantastic, but as long as it's 480p I'll be happy (since that fits with the DVDs I use now). Note that this doesn't mean 480p letter boxed that my TV can zoom, so I lose 150 lines to black bars, the wide screen content should be 480p tall.

Do that, I'll gladly sign up. I'll pay a tiny bit extra, say $1-2 per month on my Netflix account for the privilege. I would find this tremendously useful.

Netflix says they don't want a "Netflix Box", they want 100 of them. Good! Make the TiVo Series 3 one of them. I don't want another box either. I don't want to buy a new TV to get the functionality. I love my TiVo's UI, and I love Netflix's content. Please put them together. Make me a happy consumer.

is another box necessary?

Could the wi-fi/hard-drive capabilities of the PS3 & Xbox360 be utilized to receive/store/play internet video content?

About bloody time

Programming-on-demand is about the only future I can see for television. The advertising-supported broadcast model falls totally flat for me. I subscribed to Netflix so I can watch movies the few good TV shows when I want, without commercials. If I can do this for a reasonable price with instant gratification (instead of the current Netflix three-day latency), then count me in.

I've been doing this for 7 years...

... with an s-video cable. The only difference is that now they want me to pay for it.

This will result in blueray and HD DVD both dieing

As a consequence of a loony civil way between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, Microsoft, apple and now Netflix will kill both formats.

Microsoft has helped keep the civil war alive.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20071205123352_Microsoft_Accused_of_Eventual_Blu_Ray_HD_DVD_Formats_Fiasco.html [xbitlabs.com]

Without a stalemate Christmas 2007 would have seen massive buying of cheap HD players. We would all being watching HD movies and be getting used to them. We would get so spoiled by the superior picture quality that we would not succumb to inferior download quality.

However now that there there is a stalemate going on people are nervous to buy either standard and each standard is still quite expensive. Some people including myself don't want to buy some standard that wont play all movies because some are exclusive to only one format.

Now people will simply say since there is no reliable HD standard why not download a lesser quality version from Netflix or apple or Microsoft. They will do this for both rental purposes and to buy a permanent copy. Then they will get very habituated to it. As time goes watching movies buy obtaining a physical medium will seem less and less attractive. In 2012 there will be enough bandwidth for most high speed internet connections to download HD movies. HD-DVD and blue ray will be both be dead and buried by 2014.

But this requires the stupidity of both Sony and Toshiba to keep their rivalry going and be unwilling to compromise even though it is both of their interests to do so. They seem though to have come through 100% on the doofus front.

mythTV / IE Content and 8 year-old t.v.s

I ditched my MythTV box over a year ago. I'm sad to say it, but plugging a Windows box into the t.v. has been more than awesome... I still wonder why someone hasn't made a simple set-top box that can access all the video content that is only available through IE providers (abc, cbs, nbc, netflix, movielink, cinemanow, etc.)

Also, why the hell haven't the same providers made separate web pages (similar to the old m. sub-domains) for television content... I still have an old crappy big screen t.v. and can't read a flippin' thing on a web browser on my t.v. Come on - cater to the little guy!

XBOX 360

If I could stream the TV on my PC to my TV through my XBOX then it would be a huge success at my house. Of course Microsoft will wait until someone else does this before they invent it.

Thank God

As of right now, I can only do this on my Xbox 360, my PS3, my Tivo, and my computer. Just the other day I was thinking "Man, I just wish I had yet ANOTHER way to do the same damn thing!"

I called this one nearly a month ago

I submitted to Slashdot but apparently you guys weren't interested yet :)

From my article:

After having read the article about a new USPS surcharge that could cut into Netflix's profits I got to thinking about the future of movie rentals. If you're a Netflix customer and haven't tried their streaming video service, I recommend you give it a shot. I've noticed the weak selection of titles available on it and can only imagine that it must be a licensing issue with the MPAA or specific rights-holder. While I enjoy their online video-watching service, I don't enjoy watching movies on my laptop as much as on my TV and I also don't enjoy having to plug my laptop into my TV. There is a feasible solution for all of this covering concerns like licensing agreements (giving consumers better selection) to proper television integration (no more laptops plugged into the TV.) Read on to find out how I see a successful movie rental business operating in the near future.... Full Article (Online Movie Rentals 2.0) [rbgrn.net]

Tragedy of the Commons

So - we have lots of people going out to buy boxen that display movies over the Internet. Wonderful. Now, let's have lots of people in my neighborhood download a movie tonite. Do you really think I will be able to read Slashdot or find Google with 1 Gb/s of movies going through my lan segment?

It is a wonderful idea if somebody can build out the bandwidth in cable Internet but somehow I suspect that increasing bandwidth so that people have an alternative to cable movies on demand is not one of the brighter things my cable company could do. Oh, maybe they will offer an extra charge service that includes 4 extra Mb/s of bandwidth for movie downloaders. Makes the Netflix offering not quite so economical.

My cable Internet already crawls for a day or two around Patch Tuesday every month. Maybe with some effort it can crawl even more during evenings.

I have a wonderful idea - how about mailing DVDs to people's houses! Brilliant!

What will Roadrunner charge me?

To download and buffer an 8.4GB DVD? And how long does that take?

Re:Throttling anyone?

If the ISPs ruin the internet, we'll just have to take our business elsewhere.

I'm a firm believer in shaking shit up, whether it's for an ISP/telecom, government outfit, or that little sandwich joint down the street. If you, as a customer, are not happy with their service or product, it is your duty to stop consuming it. Apathy is a dangerous thing!