Fanboys Rejoice: Netflix Movie Service Coming Onto Tivo; Starting With Test Service
This story was written by Rafat Ali.
The dream of so many fanboys for such a long time has finally come true: Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) and Tivo are marrying up....well, for now, dating and not yet exclusive. The two public companies are teaming up to provide Netflix online movie service onto their Tivos, and as a result onto their TVs. The two companies are rolling out a test version tomorrow, with several thousand of their joint subscribers, and expect it to be broadly available in early December, in time for the holidays. The streaming movie service is free for Netflix paid subscribers, as is the case for other Netflix-box deals like Roku, *LG*, XBox and others, BUT, in this case, users would have to be subscribers to Tivo's $12.92 a month service as well. The joint site is here. The service is available to TiVo (NSDQ: TIVO) Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL subscribers only.
This deal was supposed to happen way back in 2004-05, but was later killed due to licensing rights issues. People have speculated for a long time the that two companies would be perfect merger candidates, but the long term prospects of both seem to be unclear for now, and it seems likely that they may try and find bigger homes that just each other.
For the similar recent deals done by Netflix, check our dedicated section here.
By Rafat Ali