Also of note, according to some promotional materials from Roku, YouTube could be the next service to be supported. (You can see the logo in this story's lead image.)

I know, it's tough to top Netflix streaming with pay movies and clips of people's cats. But it's good to see so many different platforms (hardware and digital) intermingling at last. [Roku Forums via Zatz Not Funny]

Amazon Game Downloads, still technically in beta (though open to the public), currently offers 600 titles priced at $10 and less. For any title in the store, you can download the full version and play it for 30 minutes before deciding whether or not it's worth a purchase.

As of now, it's definitely intended to be a service for casual games, but obviously Amazon will expand their reach as the market dictates in the future.

Oh, and for those of you who like freebies, Jewel Quest II, The Scruffs, and Built-A-Lot are all available for free download this week only. Live it up. [Amazon via Kotaku]

One TiVo user spotted this "Available in High Definition" option in their Amazon Video on Demand menu system. Clicking on the option did nothing, but it's probably pretty safe to assume that TiVo didn't add the choice for aesthetic reasons alone—though the company does enjoy their endless word list UI so maybe we're reading to much into it after all. [Twitter via Engadget]

While many of us have our collection of nice electronic toys, most of us can't afford to walk into a store, take a look at a company like Sony's complete line of Bravia media add-ons and walk out with it all. And your conscience might stop you anyway—even if your wallet could take the hit, you know enough to look around at other respectable brands, maybe some Samsung or LG equipment, and make a more informed decision.

Well today we're taking the role of "that guy" for you. Sony shipped us their latest Bravia LCD TV along with all of its modular Link components: a wireless HDMI streamer, their internet video player, an HDMI port expander and an extra slim DVD player—a set of matching electronics designed to hook nicely to the back of your Bravia TV while integrating with the display at a software level.

Setting Up

After fervently unpacking five cardboard boxes and dusting the styrofoam specs off of the jet black components, I remembered just how nice Sony's equipment can be. Everything feels solid in the hands, everything matches with the same amount of gloss and everything has the shining Sony logo that was the beacon for technological enlightenment to anyone who lived through the 80s.

But I am disappointed.

I know that most all of this stuff is supposed to hook right to the back of the television, yet I have no natural inclination as to how that happens. I see screws, flimsy clear plastic tracks and manuals in three different languages. I swallow my pride and open one up (and it's a good thing I did).

Starting with the DVD player, I learned that one must screw a mount into the television, screw the component into the mount and then make sure to plug in the three or more cords to make it work.



What? This isn't what I pictured at all. I wanted to equip this TV like a gun. I wanted to lock and load, hear the fulfilling clank of metal on metal and live a Rambo montage while I prepped for an onslaught of 1080p. Instead, I was fiddling with screws and wires, scratching up my entertainment stand in a precarious position while making my sleek beautiful new TV resemble the trash bin of a wire factory.

The feeling was akin to any time you've bought cereal for the toy, only to realize that the toy was really just a 2-cent piece of rubber. And by the way, that box of cereal just cost you $3,500.

Bravia Internet Video Link - $300

The Bravia Internet Video Link was maybe the most indulgent component I had to test, mostly because I would personally never purchase this component on my own. Why?

1. It's essentially a box that puts streaming video like YouTube onto your TV (which is done by many other components as a second function) and

2. It works exclusively with Bravia TVs. The Internet Video Link uses the television's DMXe (USB) port and fits the content into the TV's XMB menu system.

Yet my alternate persona, my big spender identity who sucked down a $5 iced coffee while writing this review, enjoyed the IVL.

It really is ingenious that the system works within the television's menu system. In fact, it doesn't even have a menu system of its own. Utilizing the TV's XMB (Cross Media Bar), the interface is not so different than the PS3. Flipping through the list of content providers made way for a very intuitive experience in which I click any content provider that looks interesting, from AP to cooking classes. Once I select a clip from within their menu, fast forwarding through content or skipping ahead is extremely responsive with the user interface acknowledging my commands smoothly while allowing the clips time to buffer.

Sure, most of the content looks like crap, the compressed YouTube clips especially. But Sony's understated blue skin framed it well, adding a bit of class to often tacky content.

Especially with Amazon Unbox (tested in beta here), we see Sony's design touch can add a lot to the experience. While managing Unbox content is a pain on my TiVo, the Internet Link puts a pleasant icon skin on your media and has a multitude of simple to navigate categories that makes it all palatable. Plus, you get the same navigation bar in Unbox as you do in YouTube or any other of the services, simplifying the experience of viewing dozens of different content feeds. Simply, it's the best presentation of Unbox I've seen to date.

I'm happy again. The world is rainbows and sunshine.

Then the practical side of me kicks in. I spit out the Brazilian coffee (most of it gone by now, to be honest) and realize I've been hoodwinked. Why didn't the PS3 have all of these neat internet video channels in its XMB? I had no answer.

Bravia Wireless Link - $800

Regardless of how things may have gone with the Internet Link, I was ready to move on to the Wireless Link. It's a piece of equipment that we all hope will be a mainstay in every home within 5 years. The system streams HDMI and component video wirelessly, allowing you to reroute that DVR to a different room while maintaining a pristine HD image.

I knew there would be catches. Even $5 coffee guy could understand that the HD video would be limited to 1080i streaming, nixing the dream of watching Blu-rays in the bedroom. The second catch is even bigger. The Wireless Link transmitter does not double as an HDMI port splitter. This is a vital point, as it means that you can't double dip your home theater to two televisions. Even if it's 1 foot away, the components plug in to the transmitter, and the receiver accepts the data wirelessly.

Combine no hardline output with the 1080i transfer limitations and you realize that all content you watch will all be in 1080i.

OK, but I'm still enthused. After all, I didn't pay for this stuff. So I put it through the most rigorous test I can imagine. I play the final levels of Gears of War 2, streaming my 720p component connection from my Xbox in my living room to my TV in my bedroom (a distance of only 10 or so feet). Still, the Wireless Link really impressed me.

There's no discernible lag. Maybe if I'd been playing online in some pro tournament, I'd have noticed a slight disadvantage. But as far as I could tell, the Xbox is hooked right into the TV I'm was using. And the image quality is just as good as it had looked when I had the system hardwired.

Sony explained later that the delay between the base station and a receiver was less than one millisecond—that's faster than most LCDs can draw the image being transmitted. Not bad, Sony. My 5GHz Wireless-N network didn't even interfere, as you'd warned me could happen.

But again, there's a catch where some engineer didn't think things through all the way. I couldn't stream my PS3 at all. Neither Blu-ray nor games worked, even when I reduced the resolution from 1080p. I could catch the signal for a moment or two, then the system would give me a "not supported" message.

UPDATE: My streaming problem was evidently an HDCP issue with the Link and a Samsung television. On the Bravia set, the PlayStation 3 functioned properly. Like all of the Bravia Link components, the Wireless Link is really not designed/tested to be taken beyond the Bravia infrastructure.

Bravia DVD Player - $200

Even my yuppie alter ego wasn't fooled by this one. The Bravia DVD Link may be called a link, but I know better. I know a DVD player when I see one.

Sony does promise a a few advantages with their Bravia branded item, of course. The first I discussed above, that the player could mount to the back of your set (be it in a not so glamorous way). The second is that, like the Internet Movie Link, the DVD component can hook to the television through the USB-based DMXe port.

Wait, I should rephrase this, the DVD Link needs to hook to the TV through DMXe. It won't work at all otherwise. And that's a problem, as the television only has one DMXe port.



So even though I have the HDMI hooked up correctly and even though I know most DVD players don't need USB connections to work, I am sitting here, pounding on the DVD remote that does nothing (yet, the DVD menu still auto-loads with "play movie" highlighted but unclickable, which just spites me more). The techie me is upset. The yuppie me is livid pissed.

When the DVD Link is plugged in and working happily, it's fine. It's pretty much as good as any other DVD player. If you hit the "display" button on the remote, it tweaks your TV's display, as opposed to messing with DVD player options. I guess there's an advantage to this, a certain technological configuration efficiency. But the benefit is small, and to quote the words of my truly yuppie wife, "It doesn't even play Blu-ray??"

Input Link - $150

The Input Link isn't the most glamorous of Bravia accessories, but like the others, it does hook to the back of your TV after a bit of effort. It's a 5X1 HDMI port expander. It matches the other Links. And it's a hugely missed opportunity by Sony if you think about it. A module like this could sync with DMXe and mount your components straight into the XMB through Sony technical magic. Instead, it just offers some extra HDMI slots. But of all the mounting components, the Input Link seemed the most at home, fitting snugly and solidly near the inputs.

So Is It Worth It?

To be fair to Sony, $3,500 isn't an absurd amount to spend on home theater equipment—especially when we break down the sheer amount of components we reviewed here and realize that it's all name brand equipment.

But I look at the pile of electronics I've got, this mountain of Bravia, and I can't help wishing it would do more or at least be a seamless experience to use.

I had more difficulty setting up the equipment than I have home theater components in years. For each component being design around the television, it certainly didn't fit on the television very easily or even all that well.

And while Sony may or may not be on to something with their DMXe integration (I think they really could be, actually), they need to make sure that users who own more than one component—their most loyal customer base—aren't being punished for it by limiting available DMXe inputs on Bravia TVs.

The thing is, I really like the Bravia television, the use of XMB for its menu system and the idea of Sony's "Links" integrating with this very solid platform. And the Wireless Link, even at $800, is highly technically impressive and genuinely excites me about the future of home theater.

Yet at the end of the day, both my ignorant yuppie and shamelessly techie self can't help but to look at my PS3 and wonder, why oh why can't Sony focus all of their development into this machine—or at the very least, make using my TV as straightforward and gratifying as firing a loaded weapon?

Massachusetts, Wyoming, and Washington are gearing up for their bills, just to name a few. It's actually kinda surprising it took this long for the taxes to start piling on. Most of the initial considerations about squashing a nascent market are nearly moot this point, in any case, with the digital market booming. I mean, when 30 percent of music revenues in the U.S. are digital, and the biggest music retailer in the world deals exclusively in digital content, you know the tax collector is going to be slinking close behind.

The one thing that might save us from being taxed is geography. States can only tax businesses that have a physical presence within their borders. Congress could change the law (and they probably will at some point), but in an election year, it's unlikely (one reason to be glad the circus is in town until November). It'll be interesting to see how this plays out—digital taxes seem like an inevitability, however. CNet points to NY as a bastion of tax-free sanity, but they're trying to squeeze Amazon right now, so it seems like a safe bet the money they could bring from taxing downloads will look pretty damn tangible. [Cnet]

Today, as new boxes and services are announced, there has yet to appear one that can give you every movie, let alone a single format you can use on your various everyday devices. Thankfully, what we're hearing now is that while this infinite format war may not go on forever, the state of video will suck for the next five years until every service has the same baseline catalog. If you believe the studios. In the meantime, you'll be looking for the set-top box with the best catalog, and the one that can deliver you your films in the best way possible.

If you thought the HD DVD/Blu-ray split was bad, at least there was an easy order to it, an alignment by studios. Warner, Universal and Paramount were on HD DVD, everyone else (plus Warner) put their movies on Blu-ray. Sure, no Big Lebowski on Blu-ray, but at least you knew why. There is nothing even approaching logic when it comes to the movie options from VOD set-top box to the next, at least not from the user perspective. Warner Bros. put out Ocean's Thirteen. You can watch it on Vudu and Amazon Unbox, but not iTunes. Warner also put out I Am Legend, which is on all three, and Xbox Live Marketplace. Paramount's Shooter is on all three, but only for purchase, not rental (and totally MIA from Xbox). And you could rent Disney/Pixar's Ratatouille a few months ago, but now it's only for purchase. "WTF?" is a natural response. (On a side note, it's a bitch to really search or go through any of the catalogs, so it's even harder to tell if it's an accidental or intentional roadblock.)

To explain our current clusterfuck, you need a quick trip back to 1999. Remember the state of digital music back then? It was messy and ugly. The music industry had no idea what to do with this whole internet thing, and they were involved in assorted, competing ventures. Then along came iTunes, which basically organized the music universe and, to the chagrin of the RIAA, set up a sane pricing structure, too. It's not a complete catalog of all music ever (Beatles, hello?), but it's the closest thing there is, and it's pretty damn good. It brought order to the chaos, and now claims 85 percent of the legal download market. So it has the music industry by the balls, enough to speed their efforts to fortify a worthy number 2—Amazon, which was the first store to boast a catalog exclusively made up of DRM-free music from all four majors as a result, a perk deliberately withheld from iTunes to curb its power.

We're basically at that same, nebulous 1999 point with video, though Hollywood has learned from the music industry's mistakes—and iTunes is not the guaranteed champion in the case of online movie sales. The industry is eagerly putting stuff out there, and on as many services as it can—we're at the point now that most of the major studios release movies on online services on the same day they release them on disc.

A problem gumming up our dream of the one box is that each service requires a different format—one studio told us that a big issue is digitizing and formatting a film to meet each service's specs. It just takes time, though they're going as fast as they can. And new releases are gonna take priority, obviously. We are at least a little skeptical of this claim—we don't think it takes that long to digitize a flick

From what we were told, there's surprisingly little worry of a single company dominating digital distribution. A studio we talked to said that it's all so new, the fear of a monopoly (by Apple or otherwise) is at worst simply a thought skulking around in the back of their mind, not an actual concern. So no service is getting any favors to promote one over the other, or keep another in check. (At least not yet, though Blu-ray-happy Sony may well have the most incentive to keep the online space anemic.) Again, here, we're a little suspicious—obviously they wouldn't come right out and tell us they're afraid of iTunes, but when you look at the measly catalog and consider the studios' close study of how the music industry complete botched online music, the idea of Apple becoming the single biggest distributor of most digital media and holding serious sway over the entire entertainment industry has to weigh on their minds.

I mean, if you were in their shoes, and could prevent making iTunes into the all-powerful Walmart of the digital video generation, wouldn't you?

The one bit of protectionism going on that was copped to is the push to purchase, rather than rent. It makes sense that a studio gets more money when you buy a movie than rent it, since it's the same set of bits headed to your hard drive, and both are guaranteed you'll watch the movie at least once, but one costs three to four times as much as the other. So you are going to see a lot of them not open a flick up to online rentals until a month after it's available for purchase, and even see rental options disappear, as recently happened across the board with Pixar movies.

Ultimately, and somewhat shockingly, Hollywood does have the same vision we do—a single god box that'll deliver the entire catalogs of all the studios. Only, unlike in the iTunes hegemony, every home could have a different god box, be it Xbox, TiVo, Vudu or Roku.

Forgive the buried service journalism. Enough of this theoretical talk. So, what does it take to get a decent download collection? Until the god box, you will need several, two at least. Right now, Vudu is good for latest and greatest plus some older favorites; Netflix Roku has better TV options and some interesting deep cuts (plus a $99 box price and unlimited streaming for 10,000 so-so titles for any plan over $9 with discs by mail as a backup); Xbox 360 has a surprisingly large amount of HD movies, and a nice catalog geared towards the gaming demographic; Apple TV has its own legion of fans for its ability to move movies to iPods and computers, though it still has a lot to prove in the catalog section. That's not even counting the TiVo with Amazon Unbox or the cable box you likely already have, each with their own assorted VOD options. Even if you owned all of 'em, you still might not find what you want, even if it's something that should be slapping you in the face. Take Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, for instance. We could not legally find it on any service, even though the sequel hit theaters just a few weeks ago—and got a surprisingly good buzz from usually snooty critics. Did Warner miss the perfect opportunity? They wouldn't say.

The other major issue is the state of broadband and the guys controlling the pipes. For the online video revolution to fully take off in HD, we need bigger pipes. For most people, that's years away. This is deeply threatening to the cable companies, and they're pretty clear that they're not happy about content moving online—you can see the fear in the recent moves to limit all kinds of data consumption (most of which is already video), not just the supposed protocol of pirates. What if limits or overage charges were put in place for people who were simply doing their best to buy copyrighted video? Why would someone give up DVD and Blu-ray rentals from Netflix in order to pay twice—for both the bandwidth and the content—and have to wait somewhat impatiently for the download, too?

So friends, while all of this gets ironed out, the infinite format war rages on: Lots of boxes, lots of online services, none of them complete, none of them that'll fully satisfy your wife's desire to rid the shelves of DVDs. Hollywood just can't move fast enough for this revolution, as arguably eager as it is, and the ISPs may not clear the way when the show does get on the road. From what we can tell, the stuff will all get sorted out in time. How much time? Give it five more years. If you believe the studios. [Insert groan of impatience here.]

It doesn't look like Universal is participating, and the other stuff they're giving away—Amazon Unbox TV downloads, electronics, apparel, DVDs and CDs—don't appear to be on the same point system, at least the way the press release reads. Which is too bad, I'd totally drink 10 bottles of Pepsi for a free CD.

Pepsi Stuff and Amazon MP3 Bring DRM-Free MP3 Music Downloads to the Masses: More Music for More People on More Devices

Pepsi Stuff Kicks Off on the Super Bowl

PURCHASE, N.Y., Jan. 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Pepsi and Amazon.com are teaming up on Pepsi Stuff, a massive collect-and-get program where consumers can download the most DRM-free MP3 music available anywhere. Four billion specially marked Pepsi packages will allow people to collect points and redeem them for music from Amazon MP3 that can be played on virtually any digital portable device (including iPod®), organized in any music management application, or burned to a CD.

Beginning February 1, consumers purchasing Pepsi products can "bank" their points on PepsiStuff.com and redeem them for music on Amazon MP3. Amazon MP3 offers Earth's Biggest Selection of a la carte, DRM-free MP3 music downloads, with over 3.25 million songs from more than 270,000 artists. Five points earn consumers one MP3 song download from the libraries of EMI Music, SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT, Warner Music Group and tens of thousands of other music labels. Pepsi's biggest promotion ever makes its debut on the Super Bowl.

"MP3 music is the future of the industry and Pepsi Stuff is an accelerator," said Danny Socolof, President of Las-Vegas based MEGA, Inc., which facilitated the Pepsi/Amazon alliance. "It will help more people discover legal DRM-free music downloading sooner than they might normally have. It's also likely to draw in music fans who are not as familiar with digital downloading, which can help build a healthy future for the music business."

"We are excited to team up with Pepsi and reward millions of Pepsi Stuff participants with high-quality DRM-free music downloads from major and independent labels, playable on virtually any device, and an easy downloading experience that doesn't require special software," said Bill Carr, Amazon.com Vice President for Digital Music and Movies.

"Pepsi Stuff gives consumers choices — many choices: from the prizes they select, to the music they want to hear, to the device they want to play it on," said Cie Nicholson, SVP and chief marketing officer, Pepsi-Cola North America. "We're also broadening the prize pool to include Amazon Unbox TV downloads, electronics, apparel, DVDs and CDs. We're offering up to $1 billion in prizes, making this the largest promotion we've ever done."

Participants can also enter a daily sweepstakes for the chance to win trips to events like the Super Bowl, the MLB All-Star game and the Daytona 500, as well as for cash and many other big prizes. Consumers may sign up now to be reminded when the promotion begins at www.pepsistuff.com.

Pepsi has a long history of marketing through music, beginning with the first advertising jingle ever broadcast nationwide in 1940 and spanning the '60s and '70s with the Pepsi Generation. In the 1980s Pepsi began developing relationships with some of the world's biggest recording artists and featured chart-topping songs in marketing campaigns, concerts and commercials. It's a strategy that continues today, including recent associations with superstars Kanye West, Beyonce, Gwen Stefani and Green Day.

Pepsi Stuff will be executed across the entire Pepsi trademark: Pepsi-Cola, Diet Pepsi, Diet Pepsi MAX, Pepsi ONE, Wild Cherry Pepsi, Diet Pepsi Wild Cherry, Diet Pepsi Jazz, Diet Pepsi Lime and Diet Pepsi Vanilla. It will be supported by an extensive marketing campaign that will include TV, radio and outdoor advertising created by BBDO NY. TracyLocke (Wilton, CT), Pepsi's promotional agency of record, has been instrumental in the development and ongoing execution of the program.

About Amazon MP3

Amazon MP3 is Amazon's DRM-free MP3 digital music store where every song and album is playable on virtually any digital music-capable device, including the PC, Mac®, iPod®, Zune®, Zen®, iPhone(TM), RAZR(TM), and BlackBerry®. Amazon MP3 offers Earth's Biggest Selection of a la carte DRM- free MP3 music downloads with over 3.25 million songs from more than 270,000 artists represented by over 33,000 music labels. Every song on Amazon MP3 is available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) software. This means that Amazon MP3 customers are free to enjoy their music downloads using virtually any music-capable device, organize their music using any music management application such as iTunes® or Windows Media Player(TM), and burn songs to CDs.

The piece alludes to "grumbling about Apple's prices" by Hulu's other daddy, News Corp., lending more weight to the possibility of a larger revolt against Apple sparked by the NBC walkout/booting. If News Corp. followed them to Unbox (its iTunes contract is also supposedly coming due), the video download market would become much more interesting. Unbox would gain some needed content firepower and the networks would be working with a distributor more beholden to them—and one with a direct line to millions of TiVos.

This party's so just getting started. [NYT, HuffPo via Tubewad]

Big Brother, Meet Little Brother
Although the TiVo HD is built on the Series3 platform, it's not exactly an update. Here's the breakdown:

• The original Series3 can record 300 hours of standard-def video and 32 hours of HD on a 250GB internal; the TiVo HD can record 180 hours of SD and just 20 hours of HD on a 160GB drive.

• It's not THX certified, but it's got the coaxial cable and antenna inputs, plus all the requisite outputs: HDMI, component, S-Video and composite. It also has an optical audio out.

• As you can see in the gallery, it has a dual CableCARD slot so you can record two shows at once (and watch a third, too). One of the slots even supports M-Card, for multistreaming, so you wouldn't need two separate cards. I am not entirely sure if you can use it to go hog wild and record three shows at once—it may not surprise you that Cablevision never mentioned it as an option when I ordered the CableCARDs.

• Instead of the original Series3's glowing OLED display, TiVo HD has an array of multicolored status-indicator LEDs. That's the extent of the glowing, too—unlike the pricier Series3, this one has a standard TiVo remote, happily unchanged these 10 long years.

• TiVo HD has an eSATA port on the back, same as its big brother, so expansion will be easy. It also has hardware support for AVC (H.264) and VC-1, though there still isn't any software implementation of this talent. We're waiting!

• As I just sort of alluded, nothing is different on the software side of things. Any rumors suggesting that TiVoToGo is available in the TiVo HD are incorrect at this point, though we'd love to see someone wave a magic wand and make that happen. The few screenshots I included in the gallery are intended to show you the similarities: it's all there, even though you're paying less than half the price.

Hands On
Though I had been suffereing at the hands of the loathed Explorer 8300HD for some time, I dreaded calling Cablevision and asking for CableCARDs. Fortunately, they knew what I was up to, and—after a couple of visits—were able to make it work. The trouble was not technical. The cards worked just fine. The trouble was that Cablevision installers are not allowed to be in your house when you go through the 20-minute setup, which they claim takes between 4 and 24 hours. In truth, the most time-consuming part of the process is waiting for the CableCARDs to take hold once they are installed. That took hours, but required the cable guy. Can I just say that I hate when people who don't know squat make up dumb rules? Well, I just said it.

The rest of the setup was super easy. TiVo provided the $60 Wi-Fi USB dongle, though you can use others, or just connect via Ethernet. I always love setting TiVo remotes to control the TV; it's a simple thing that any remote in the world can do, but I rarely do it with my cable remotes. Having that reassuring wizard is just a better incentive.

Once all of that was working, I was back in TiVo Country. I could search for shows without growing a beard in the process, jumping to Swivel Search to do stream-of-consciousness browsing. I ended up jumping from The Daily Show to a TiVoCast channel of content from The Onion. Everything we've discussed in the recent past is there: Amazon Unbox downloads, One True Media video and photo sharing, Yahoo! and Fandango. But most of all, it's a $300 way to unlock the HD cable subscription I pay a ridiculous amount of money for but can't navigate using standard cable boxes.

OK, it's not all perfect. My guess is that, since I had an early unit, there was some bugginess that will be fixed in the near term, including:

• Messed-up video decoding; I often got that that weird psychedelic MPEG frame lag, and some entire scenes of standard-def video had a bad iridescent quality, though that could have been due to a crappy analog source.

• At least one HD channel remains scrambled, and not a premium one. OK, I admit, it's CBS. I just got caught off guard by how funny The New Adventures of Old Christine is.

• Worst—though perhaps most fixable—of all: when I fast forward through lengthy stretches of content, the cursor jumps and skips, so that I end up way far away from where I want to be. Again, though I'm a bit traumatized, my guess is that it'll be fixed in the next firmware update.

• Also, as you know, decommissioning your cable box means no one-touch VOD. I like VOD, I will admit. But I am trying to figure out if I like it most because it's a way of getting around the frustrating user interface of cable DVRs.

How to get one
As you know, TiVo still has a monthly fee, one that can be as high as $17 per month if you don't commit to anything over a year, or as low as $9 per month, if you pay, up front, $299 for three full years of service. (That's a special offer. It's been around a while, but it might disappear at any time.) I figure if you're already saving $500 in not buying the deluxe Series3, might as well pay $300 of it back for the better service plan.

TiVo is taking pre-orders starting right this second. (According to one tipster, they actually started taking orders earlier, but quickly stopped.) The units themselves will start showing up in early August. If you are one of those sorry sons o' guns who recently bought a full-priced Series3, I really hope you can dig up the receipt.

TiVo Unveils New Attractively Priced TiVo® HD DVR—the Ultimate Companion to HDTVs

The new TiVo® HD DVR seamlessly combines ease of use, new content and affordability.

ALVISO, Calif.– July 24, 2007 – TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), announced today the launch of a new TiVo high definition DVR, delivering a premium HD experience at an affordable price. Starting today, consumers can pre-order TiVo HD at www.tivo.com for just $299.99, with product expected to arrive on retail shelves in early August. The new TiVo HD DVR is the ultimate HDTV companion, maximizing the HD cable experience by combining a new popular price with the clarity of HD programming and our Emmy® award-winning TiVo™ service. The new TiVo HD is also a Digital Cable Ready set-top-box that works seamlessly with any cable provider in the U.S. Moreover, the new product also enables the latest and greatest exclusive TiVo service features such as Movie & TV Downloads from Amazon.com, Home Movie Sharing and universal Swivel™ search, delivering the best of broadband video directly to the television set.

"TiVo HD extends the TiVo experience to an even wider audience than ever, giving sports and entertainment enthusiasts the ultimate companion to their HDTV set," said Tom Rogers, CEO and President of TiVo. "It is the ultimate media centerpiece for the living room with the broadest selection of broadband content, right alongside your favorite broadcast and cable programs, giving HDTV viewers more choice and control than they've ever had before. And it can be used in place of the customer's existing cable box."

The TiVo HD is designed to fit seamlessly with home entertainment centers, replacing cable boxes while complimenting other entertainment devices. It is compatible with digital cable, analog cable and digital antenna (ATSC). TiVo HD offers 20 hours of HD or up to 180 hours of standard definition content. The new TiVo HD DVR allows users to record two HD channels at the same time, while watching a third previously recorded show. With a built-in Ethernet jack, two CableCARD™ slots and USB ports, TiVo HD also provides advanced connectivity and easy networking, making it simple to access an additional suite of exclusive TiVo features.

"TiVo HD is a perfect complement to the HDTV sets that are quickly becoming the standard for home entertainment," said Jim Denney, Vice President of Product Marketing at TiVo. "With an affordable price and uncompromised quality, TiVo HD is an obvious choice for anyone with a passion for home entertainment and HD programming."
TiVo HD includes access to a number of renowned TiVo features, furthering the difference between the TiVo service and generic DVR competitors, such as:

• Movie & TV Downloads - In partnership with Amazon.com, TiVo brings you Amazon Unbox™ on TiVo®, allowing you to download thousands of movies and TV shows straight to your TiVo DVR. Amazon Unbox on TiVo allows you to rent or buy movies from Amazon Unbox using your remote, download them to your TiVo box over your home network, and enjoy them right on your television set whenever you want. The movies you want are always in stock and new releases are available for purchase the same day they arrive on DVD. Best of all, order with your TiVo remote from the comfort of your living room and your rentals and purchases end up in your Now Playing list, right where you'd expect them to be. It's like having an entire video store connected to your TV.

• Universal Swivel™ Search - Exclusive to the TiVo service, universal Swivel search lets you quickly find everything you want in the world of broadcast and broadband television with a single, powerful search. It's the first truly TV centric onscreen search tool that allows subscribers to explore and discover broadcast, cable, and broadband content in an easy-to-use experience. TiVo subscribers can search using the way they intuitively think about television; that is, by starting with a program they currently enjoy and using elements of that program to find more of what they like. Universal Swivel search allows viewers to seamlessly link from descriptions of one program to all others that have common elements, including program name, actors, or suggestions based on other viewers' feedback.

• TiVoCast - TiVoCast delivers original video programming directly to your TiVo box over your broadband Internet connection from a variety of media brands and producers, including the New York Times, CNET, iVillage, The Onion, and many others. The content appears in your Now Playing List, alongside regular broadcast programming as well as your Amazon Unbox rentals and purchases and even Home Movies. It's all seamlessly integrated into the entire TiVo experience.

• Home Movie Sharing - Instead of burning your home movies to DVD and mailing them to friends and family, now you can share them through a private TiVo channel of your own. Simply upload your video footage or photographs to One True Media (www.OneTrueMedia.com), get a channel code, and send the code out to your audience. Your home videos will show up right in the Now Playing list on their TiVo boxes, so they can enjoy them on their own TV. No need to huddle around a computer screen anymore, home movie sharing delivers those precious moments directly to the TV.

• Online Services -With your TiVo box connected to your broadband home network, you can access a variety of online services right on your TV, including Yahoo! Traffic and Weather, Fandango movie tickets, live radio, podcasts, games and more.

• TiVo KidZone - Only TiVo-branded DVRs give you total control over what your kids see on TV. With TiVo KidZone, you get to choose which shows your children can watch and record. It also helps you discover great new shows for them through recommendations from leading national children's organizations. TiVo KidZone provides a customized Now Playing List for your children that displays only the shows you pre-approve, keeping their shows separate from your own shows. TiVo KidZone relies on your own personal settings and password to ensure your kids only see what you want them to see, keeping TV as safe as possible.

Pre-orders begin today with the first boxes being shipped in early August. See www.tivo.com for details on ship dates. A subscription to the TiVo service is required and sold separately. TiVo HD will be available starting early August at Best Buy, Circuit City and other retailers for $299.99.

About TiVo Inc.
Founded in 1997, TiVo (NASDAQ: TIVO) pioneered a brand new category of products with the development of the first commercially available digital video recorder (DVR). Sold through leading consumer electronic retailers, TiVo has developed a brand which resonates boldly with consumers as providing a superior television experience. Through agreements with leading satellite and cable providers, TiVo also integrates its full set of DVR service features into the set-top boxes of mass distributors. TiVo's DVR functionality and ease of use, with such features as Season Pass™ recordings and WishList® searches and KidZone have elevated its popularity among consumers and have created a whole new way for viewers to watch television. With a continued investment in its patented technologies, TiVo is revolutionizing the way consumers watch and access home entertainment. Rapidly becoming the focal point of the digital living room, TiVo's DVR is at the center of experiencing new forms of content on the TV, such as broadband delivered video, music and photos. With innovative features, such as TiVoToGo™ and online scheduling, TiVo is expanding the notion of consumers experiencing "TiVo, TV your way.®" The TiVo® service is also at the forefront of providing innovative marketing solutions for the television industry, including a unique platform for advertisers and audience measurement research. The Company is based in Alviso, California.

TiVo, Season Pass, Swivel, TiVoToGo, WishList, the slogan 'TiVo, TV your way.', Series2, Series3, and the TiVo logo are trademarks of TiVo Inc. or its subsidiaries worldwide. © 2007 All rights reserved.

CableCARD™ is a trademark of the Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

TiVo Subscribers Can Now Browse, Purchase and Rent Amazon Unbox Videos Directly From Their TiVo Box

ALVISO, Calif and SEATTLE, Wash (July 10, 2007)—You can now browse, purchase, and rent movies and television shows from Amazon Unbox on TiVo without leaving your couch and without using a PC. TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced that TiVo subscribers can now browse, purchase and rent Amazon Unbox movies and television shows directly from the TV screen via their TiVo box. The service is available to all broadband-connected TiVo Series2™ and Series3™ subscribers. They can choose from thousands of movies to rent from $1.99 to $3.99, purchase from $9.99 to $14.99, or thousands of television shows to purchase for $1.99 per episode.

"We are excited to make Amazon Unbox on TiVo even easier to use by making it possible to purchase and rent movies and TV shows not only on the Web but also with your remote control," said Roy Price, Director, Amazon Unbox.

"The ability to purchase or rent movies and TV downloads directly on the TV makes it as easy as possible for TiVo subscribers to access premium content from Amazon Unbox," said Tara Maitra, VP of Content Services at TiVo Inc. "People know how much we love TV at TiVo, but this is just another illustration of how much we love great content in general, be it from the big screen or the small screen. It's never been easier to unwind on these hot summer nights with a cool classic movie, all without ever having to leave the couch."

TiVo subscribers can now browse, purchase and rent within the TiVo user interface from pre-selected categories of popular movie & TV titles from Amazon Unbox, including Top Movies, Kids & Family, Foreign Films, and more. In addition, Amazon Unbox fully integrates with TiVo's new innovative search function, Universal Swivel™ Search®, which allows viewers to seamlessly link from descriptions of one program to all others that have common elements, including program name, actors, or suggestions based on other viewers' feedback. With these two browse and purchase methods customers can easily access the thousands of movies, television shows and other video titles that Amazon Unbox on TiVo offers.

To celebrate this new feature, "Buy on TV," new customers will get an additional $15 instant discount when they purchase any TiVo® Series2™ Dual Tuner box with service plan prior to July 23, 2007. Plus, get a free (factory-renewed) wireless adapter. This is over $200 instant savings. For more information visit www.tivo.com/movieoffer.

TiVo is available for as low as $99.99, after mail-in rebate and service commitment at Amazon.com and other leading consumer electronic stores.

For more information on Amazon Unbox and its selection of over 10,000 movies, TV shows and other digital content available for download, visithttp://unbox.amazon.com.

About Amazon Unbox™

Launched in September 2006, Amazon Unbox is Amazon's digital video download service that offers over 10,000 television shows, movies and other video content for rent or purchase. Videos rented or purchased on Amazon Unbox can be viewed via the PC or on the TV through Amazon Unbox on TiVo.

The end of physical formats for movie and TV shows could be called digital convergence, a happy, wonderfully singular, unified digital world. Content moves seamlessly from your multifunction portable device to your TV, between your computers, and to every monitor and audio system and random networked appliance in between. To have that happen in a stream of bits floating effortlessly on radio waves, without physical discs or specially designated boxes, would be truly wonderful.

But an end to physical video formats doesn't mean an end to format wars. In fact, once film and television content are no longer bound by physical media, we're in for the mother of all format wars.

Don't be quick to leap over Blu-ray and HD DVD as the final hurtles before the end of the race; we're far worse off without those discs. After they are gone, there won't be just two, or three formats even. We're talking 10 or 20 disc-free formats at the minimum, all with their own subscriptions, fee rates, movie selections, file resolutions and formats, use restrictions, preferred content providers and sometimes even hardware. Without discs, we may very well be screwed.

Here are some of the players already making their way onto the field:

Amazon Unbox. Xbox 360 Marketplace. Amazon Unbox on TiVo. Wal-Mart. San Disk USB TV. Apple iTunes. Sony Internet Video Link. BitTorrent. Netflix. Slingbox. Vudu. Joost.

All have incomplete catalogs. All are restricted in where, how, and on what you can play their content. None play together well, if at all. iTunes content plays on an iPod, on Apple TV, and on your computer, but not on your Creative Zen. Your Wal-Mart wares won't play on your iPod. Good luck getting it on your plasma TV easily, or to another computer in your house. God forbid each service offers its own set-top box, like Apple TV and Amazon Unbox's TiVo setup. Can you imagine them all stacked up next to your TV?

We've got a name for this all-singing, all-dancing, all-digital melee: the N-format war, N being an unknown number of formats between 2 and infinity—since anyone and everyone can enter the game, and pretty much anyone and everyone is.

Convergence is the consumer's dream: one system that supports all. But companies are mostly thinking about their own "ecosystems"—vertically integrated offerings like Apple's iTunes, iPod, and Apple TV. Within these ecosystems, there is limited convergence: It's fairly easy to move stuff around within the Apple ecosystem, and it's not too difficult to move content around the Vista Media Center/Xbox 360/Zune ecosystem either. As time goes by, these ecosystems will only add new options, such as Windows Home Server, and hopefully build smoother systems for juggling media.

Microsoft and Apple obviously have advantages in the N-format war that the others don't, because they control entire platforms of hardware and software, and for the most part all levels of digital content playback, movement and distribution.

Apple, which develops both hardware and software, always starts with the premise that the customer will only buy Apple-branded products. Microsoft, having its origin as a software maker that supplies billion-dollar hardware partners, has traditionally focused more on developing "standards" that others will adopt.

On the one hand, this might be a good defense: Amazon, Wal-Mart and BitTorrent's stores license WMV and its accompanying DRM scheme. It's likely that Microsoft is offering its tech for rock-bottom prices to encourage adoption. And the upcoming IPTV capabilities of the Xbox 360 are just an extension of its larger IPTV platform licensing. AT&T and a growing number of other IPTV providers around the world already use Microsoft's IPTV platform.

On the front end, every decent version of Windows Vista comes stacked with Windows Media Center, which streams to the Xbox 360, itself already a VOD box—and will become even more so once the IPTV rollout begins.

On the other hand, Microsoft has lately been following Apple's lead, and spending a lot of time working on its own hardware, and not all of it plays well with Microsoft partners. At the same time, some of its DRM arrangements, particularly in audio, have atrophied for lack of support in times of crisis. (Can you say "PlaysForSure"?)

For the time being, neither Microsoft's nor Apple's ecosystems play nice with each other. They can be coerced into sharing the playground with smaller ecosystems like TiVo, but usually only with a third-party workaround, and even then they tend to be messy. They are neither integrated nor seamless. Think of, for instance, Apple TV over Slingbox or Netgear's Digital Entertainer HD.

The one thing every service has in common, the Tootsie roll at the center of the Tootsie pop if you will, is a computer. With a computer, you can run multiple applications. It might be a giant pain to launch one program to see your favorite TV show, then launch another to catch a newly released film, but it's plausible.
The trouble is, we don't like to watch movies at our computers, and computers have failed to colonize the living room.

On the Windows side, we've seen countless iterations of the Media Center PC, many very good-looking component-styled PCs, complete with HDMI and optical audio outputs. But those don't sell. The gigantic sales figures of Windows XP MCE were most often chalked up to the fact that the software came free with most PCs; people didn't even know they had a so-called "media center."

The Mac mini seemed like a primo candidate to lead the computer's charge to the TV. Small, attractive, not a speed demon, but solid enough to serve as a media center for recording shows and serving up media to and fro. Instead of pushing it for that purpose, Apple brings us Apple TV. For some reason the current state of the industry favors set-top boxes to full-fledged thinking machines. We rent them from the cable company. We buy them from game console makers or Internet movie distributors.

So we're stuck with half-assed solutions—be they Apple TV, Sony Internet Video Link, Netgear Digital Entertainer HD or Xbox 360, all under the control of format owners hell-bent on keeping out any format that might make a competitor rich. Add to that the content delivery of cable, satellite and IPTV boxes, already featuring their own set of content-access rules and regulations.

It would seem that the solution would be to choose a single distributor. But licensing on the content side makes this impossible. Frightened by iTunes' hegemony and concerned with a shrinking physical-media market, Hollywood is not licensing full catalogs to Apple, or anyone else, be it Netflix or Wal-Mart, because digital distribution puts an unprecedented amount of control into the hands of the distributors themselves. So every distributor gets a chunk of the content pie, but no distributor gets to offer the whole thing. We have 20 distributors, 20 formats.

So you're forced to subscribe to two, three, maybe even five of those. How will you know, after spending $300 on a set-top box, whether your particular movie of choice on a Friday night will even be on it? The studios one day must all appear in the same box, better still, all together in multiple competing boxes from Microsoft, Apple and Wal-Mart. That way, the differentiating factors become the user experience and the price.

Currently there is no magical box that will deliver everything. You'll definitely need a hardcore PC or Mac Pro to handle new video content, not to mention multiple client applications and some ingenious and possibly unlawful way of getting the stuff to your TV. Your best efforts will produce one jerry-rigged system handling 20 disparate services and formats, and content providers will view you as the crook, and the openness of the PC as a threat. Dedicated boxes, maddeningly piled up by your plasma, will continue to be the preferred distribution for those worried about content "security".

Welcome to the N-format war. The online distribution landscape is messy, uncoordinated and fragmented, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. It almost makes us nostalgic for the days of Blu-Ray and HD DVD yore that are yet to come. – Matt Buchanan

It's a good start, but lets get Netflix VOD over to TVs already. –Adam Frucci

Product Page [via Hacking Netflix]

To use the Unbox On TiVo service you must have both an Amazon account and, of course, a TiVo account. First you make sure your TiVo is enabled for movie downloads at the TiVo site, and then go to the Amazon Unbox area, log into your Amazon account, and if you register for Unbox on TiVo by April 30 of this year you get $15 worth of free movies and TV shows. It's a bit of a pain in the ass making sure you're all registered and signed up on both the TiVo and Amazon sites, but once that unpleasantness is overcome, that's when the fun starts.

There's a wide selection of movies from which to choose, and some of them you can rent for $3.99, while others must be purchased for the ripoff price of $14.99, but that's for a fairly new movie such as Running With Scissors. We decided to first try renting a movie, so we picked out The Illusionist, a $3.99 download.

After your first rental, it's a delightfully easy one-click process, where you simply press the "rent now with 1-click" button and then the movie's on its way to your Now Playing queue on the TiVo. Incidentally, you don't need a TiVo to use the Amazon Unbox service, you can download the special DRM-addled Unbox player to your PC and watch its movies there.

The site instructs you that your movie will begin downloading to the TiVo within 15 minutes, and sure enough, after about 10 minutes, a blue light appeared on the front of our TiVo Series 3 HD box, one which we'd never seen before and which apparently means there is content that's downloading rather than being recorded.

At the same time, in the TiVo interface, instead of a red dot next to The Illusionist on the Now Playing list, there was a blue dot. Alas, TiVo wouldn't let me play back any of that movie until it had been completely downloaded.

This is where the DRM comes in, and it's a bit annoying. When you rent a movie, it stays on your system for 30 days, but if you click Play, then the movie will erase itself within 24 hours. Damnit, if I'm paying four dollars I would like to choose what I'm doing with this movie, short of sending it out to the rest of the world. At least with Netflix I can watch part of the movie now and the other part a week from now with no penalty. Plus, for much less than that $4 price I can rent a high-definition Blu-ray or HD DVD movie from Netflix.

Then there's the quality of the movies. It's pretty average-grade standard definition television, letterboxed but not taking up the full screen on our 1080p test equipment. We saw plenty of compression artifacts, and the focus seemed rather soft, but the colors were reasonably saturated and the result was a watchable movie with decent sound. Trouble is, we've been completely spoiled around here with 1080p HD DVD movies, and anything less pales by comparison.

Summing up, once you get all signed up, this is a seamless process that works well, but we were disappointed in the DRM restrictions and the complete lack of high definition choices. Nevertheless, the Amazon Unbox On TiVo service is off to a fair start. – Charlie White

Unbox on TiVo [Amazon]

Product Page [via TiVo Lovers]

Their verdict...?

CinemaNow

CinemaNow is the most mature movie download site we've reviewed, and the only to let you burn DVDs of Hollywood content that will play in a regular DVD player.

MovieFlix

MovieFlix has no player/manager software that you need to download. It relies on its web site and RealPlayer to get you the movies you want.

Vongo

Lots of movies and shows included for $9.99 a month, but you can't purchase movies permanently and the selection doesn't include current DVD blockbusters.

Movielink

Does a good job of getting you recent, popular titles at decent resolution...but there's no subscription option to access a library of films.

Amazon Unbox

We found Unbox to be one of the best services we tested, in terms of ease of use, content selection, and picture quality.

– Louis Ramirez
Which Movie Download Site is Best [ExtremeTech]

Doing particularly well are the movies offered in HD, not surprising since many Xbox 360 owners are already playing their console games in high definition. Industry wags say consumers are lukewarm about downloading movies on their PCs and Macs, because there's no convenient way to watch those movies in their living rooms or home theaters. Not so with the Xbox 360, which has already made its inroads into the TV room.

Competing download services such as Amazon Unbox have discovered that it's hard to get people interested in downloading movies for playback on PCs, as evidenced by slow sales of the company's downloads. Sources at movie studios say some titles on the Amazon service have barely even garnered 100 downloads each.

I've downloaded movies and video content on Xbox Live, and it's a seamless and cost-effective experience, where even HD movies cost just a dollar more than their standard-definition counterparts and download surprisingly quickly. The compression quality is quite good, too, although the content is offered in resolutions of 720p or 1080i, and not in the desirable highest-resolution 1080p. The only problem with the service thus far is that not enough content is offered in high definition.

Besides the Xbox 360, there's other help on the way. Apple's iTV device is set to be released soon, and that might help consumers bridge that chasm of convergence between their Macs and PCs and the home entertainment center. Making it easy to play movies where the TV set resides is the key to luring people into downloading content. – Charlie White

XBox up on downloads [Variety]