TiVo Testing Internet-delivered Television

TiVo has rolled out a trial program with the Independent Film Channel to transmit several of the channels shows to TiVo customers via broadband Internet connections.

The Associated Press is reporting—and TiVo has confirmed—that pioneering digital video recorder maker TiVo is rolling out a trial program with the Independent Film Channel to transmit several of the channel’s shows to TiVo customers via broadband Internet.

Labelled "TiVo Download," the trial service offers the IFC shows >Hopeless Pictures,The Festival, and Greg the Bunny as downloads which can be viewed at any time by the viewer, rather than recorded from standard television service. TiVo Download relies on a TiVo Series2 DVR connected to a separate broadband Internet connection using a USB-based Ethernet adapter, and does not interfere with normal television viewing or recording.

TiVo Download is expected to be the first step in a more widely-deployed Internet-based television download service, with additional programming and features rolled out as the service expands. The quality level of material to be made available via TiVo Download has not been quantified: programs and (especially) movies encoded using TiVo’s generally-acceptable MPEG encoding would be quite large and potentially require hours to download via commonly available broadband connections. TiVo may be banking that customers interested in receiving programming via broadband Internet are likely to receive broadband to their homes via cable, which currently has a bandwidth edge over DSL and other broadband options in many areas of the United States.