Netflix are doing a trial run of their movie-download service, and Warner Bros. have joined in the fun by agreed to license some of its films to Netflix for that very purpose, reports CNet. This move adds strength to the rumour that Netflix and TiVo are poised to team up for a movie download service.
What this means for the ordinary punter is a video-on-demand service (VOD), which would allow consumers to rent and download films from Netflix. This is where TiVo comes in. The downloaded film would then be accessible on TiVo’s personal video recorders for viewing on a regular television set.
While this may be a new venture for Netflix, it is not a new one for Warner Bros, who along with four other studios is currently a partner in Internet movie-download service Movielink. It has also licensed films to competing Web service CinemaNow.
Apparently the agreement does not yet constitute a deal between Netflix and Warner Bros. and anyway, the video-on-demand service from Netflix is still only in the rurmour/planning phases. Furthermore, TiVo has not actually announced a video-on-demand service.
For the moment though, everything is unconfirmed, but quite often there is no smoke fire. Enough clues have been given out to make the average reader pretty confident that something is going to happen soon.
Netflix, for example has already said that it plans to launch an Internet download service next year, while TiVo has announced features that would support the download service, although it has not specified a time frame. But then on the other hand, representatives from both Netflix and TiVo have said in the past that they didn’t expect an Internet service to form part of their revenue earning strategies.