Netflix on TiVo Goes Live

Netflix Streaming on TiVo went live today, according to the Netflix blog:

This morning, TiVo released a software update to its newest generation of DVRs, giving them the capability to stream movies & TV episodes from Netflix. This includes instant streaming of more than 300 titles in HD resolution.

Three TiVo DVR models offer this new feature: the TiVo Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL. Subscriptions to both Netflix and the TiVo service are required for access. There is no additional charge to customers who already subscribe to both services.

Dave Zatz posted a review and video:

While the hybrid Netflix+TiVo interface isn’t as snappy as my Xbox or Roku boxes, receiving Netflix digital video on a DVR ~a primary television set-top box~ is extremely significant. Also notable, this represents the first time TiVo has facilitated high definition Internet video. As with all current Netflix implementations, fast forward and rewind are atypical - scrubbing is done via thumbnail images and requires rebuffering of the content. I also encountered more periodic buffering than on my other Netflix devices, though this particular Series3 isn’t ideally positioned for wirelessly accessing my router. So I’m not sure if it’s a TiVo issue or a network issue.

TiVo has posted instructions on how to get Netflix streaming working on your TiVo.

Have you tried Netflix streaming on the TiVo? What did you think of the service?

Thanks to Lamarr, Adam, RowellE, and Tom for sending this in.

Comments

[scotty321]

The Roku Netflix box is much better for a few reasons... it seems like Roku paid more attention to detail than TiVo did. For example, Roku lets you rate movies with your remote control... TiVo does not. Also, loading a film on the Roku shows you a progress bar as it's loading the film so you know how long it's going to take. There's other little things like that too, but you get the idea... overall, the experience is much more refined on the Roku box. It seems like Netflix was just an "afterthought" on the TiVo, but Roku really thought it through.

[Raghu]

Pretty excited to try this. All the movies I tried are stretched. That is too bad. How do I find HD content?

[ljk]

i have the same question as raghu, where is the hd content?

[lulu]

saw a screenshot that rate movies using thumbs up/thumbs down. Was that incorrect?

[nyoung]

Yeah, shows it in the vid. 'Press thumbs up / down to change your rating'. scotty, why are you saying no rating via remote?

[Pusta]

I actually like the interface on the TiVo better than the Roku or Xbox. My main complaint about the first two is your viewing the movies by box art with titles underneath, and if you want to jump a page at a time, it's not often clear what movies your looking at (i.e. you don't recognize the box art). With the TiVo, you get a listing of movie titles, with a picture of the current slected movie off to the right. Makes it much easier to move a page at a time and get a quick glance of the movies on that page.

Either way, I'm just happy Netflix is expanding their device support, I honestly think the internet is the future of content delivery for movies.

[leonardodicrapio]

there is hd stuff (i.e. vince vaughn's wild west comedy show). it looked like about 300 hd titles as advertised, which is not a whole lot (but definitely enough for you to pick something out of that you like).

[Raghu]

For HD, you can check 'HD' genre under "Watch Instantly". But not all are listed. E.g. "Outsourced" is not listed there but is HD. The main page for movie should mention is some where. For me the biggest problem is still the fact that many movies are streched. Non-HD is worse than normal TV quality.

[ljk]

i did find the hd content.
i have one queued up to try and view.
i only have my s3's connected wireless. has anyone tried viewing with an 802.11g connection?
i may try to upgrade to networking over my house wiring to get better bandwidth.

[joe]

Both this and the xbox need a better way to queue movies. Having to go to the PC to do this is a pain.

[JP]

Roku v TiVo....

So far, I think the Roku is slightly better because: (a) getting to the queue is faster via Roku, whereas in TiVo, there's too many sub-menus to click though--they need shortcuts; and (b) on TiVo I cannot press up and wrap from the top of the queue to the bottom like on Roku. In any case, I'll likely sell the Roku to cut down on the TV console clutter.

Anyone know why I get one-below the maximum quality bars on TiVo (based on one show queuing several times throughout one evening) where I always hit 4/4 on Roku? I have a 6MBS DSL line and it's all hard-wired to TiVo.

[TiVoBlog]

I'm a huge fan of this! I finally feel like I'm getting my money's worth out of my Netflix acct.

[dAVe]

I suppose if I had spent big money on TiVo I would be happy as s#*t to get some other use from the box besides HDTV recording (which I'm highly suspicious about since TiVo doesn't publish the system specifications - think upconversion) and a snappy albeit costly OnScreen TV Listings.

It's been published that the number of TiVo subscribers are falling and TiVo continues to struggle to be profitable. With the popularity of DBS (Direct Broadcast Satellite) DVR's and soon the Supreme Court will bless the RS-DVR (Remote Server) for CableCo's - will TiVo live to see the next decade?

[pat]

shame it doesn't work with series 2. progress costs...

[leonardodicrapio]

"HDTV recording (which I'm highly suspicious about since TiVo doesn't publish the system specifications - think upconversion)"

Digital video recorders can record HDTV signals -- it is hardly rocket science. It would actually probably be harder to downconvert a HDTV signal, record it at 480p, then upconvert it when you wanted to watch it later (which is what you are suggesting).

"It's been published that the number of TiVo subscribers are falling and TiVo continues to struggle to be profitable. With the popularity of DBS (Direct Broadcast Satellite) DVR's and soon the Supreme Court will bless the RS-DVR (Remote Server) for CableCo's - will TiVo live to see the next decade?"

I'm not an investor in Tivo's corporate stock, but I believe that Tivo lost a number of DirecTV subscribers recently (because DirecTV essentially stopped supporting several DirecTivo's). Tivo won a $100 million settlement from Echostar (Dish Network). Tivo is going to around for quite a while longer partly due to the large settlement (and partly because Tivo has managed a few profitable quarters -- and the quarters where Tivo has lost money it has been "relatively" manageable amounts -- still in the millions of dollars, though).

[JP]

After trying the streaming over TiVo HD the past few days--it seems unusable until it gets fixed/patched.

While my Roku player plays fine with 4/4 quality, the same shows on TiVo have to rebuffer every 5-10 minutes....and less often, the Netflix application (running on the TiVo HD player) unexpectedly and suddenly quits in the middle of viewing, and returns the user to the main TiVo menu.

I'll stick with my Roku player for now.

[joe]

I've been really eager to get Netflix on my TiVo since it's just a pain in the butt to have to connect my laptop to my TV every time i want to watch something (actually, just plugging in cables, but i'm lazy). I'm a little disappointed, but i'm sure it will get better. Reasons:

- the app "crashed" on me several times, both while trying to play or fast-forward a movie, or even when i was just scrolling through my queue.
- i have 85 items in my watch instantly queue but it's really slow to scroll through. Probably due to loading up the video box cover when you land on a title (page up and down should at least be faster)
- i tried 4 titles before i got one that would work. Transsiberian is scrambled, though the sound works. I've tried it several times with the same problem. An episode of 30Rock crashed the app. Finally i got an episode of Heroes to work. It loaded as HD and looked great.

after all of that though, i still love it. Roku may be nice but you can't beat the TiVo for all of its other features. Certainly would be nice if quality equaled financial success for them.

[dAVe]

I stand corrected about my suspensions. The TiVo HD's main processor, Broadcom BCM7401, is a system-on-a-chip processor which contains decoders for MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, and VC-1/WMV9.
It is the "VC-1/WMV9" decoder that I think would process the NF video streams. Xbox360 & the Silverlight player for Macs' Safari & Firefox are VC-1/WMV9 benefactors as well.

[Randy]

This will never work. Streaming sucks! Why didnt they do this like Amazon did? The Movie downloads from Amazon and you have 30 days to watch it. You dont need to worry about glitches in the stream. I will bet they change this, there is not enough band width to stream a HD movie without problems, I just tried it and I have a fairly fast DSL connection that I would consider average and it could only get a few seconds before it stopped and waited for more stream.

[Roxy]

I have a Sony XBR HD TV and a PS3 and I subscribe to Directv (which I purchased a DVR series 3). I don't know all the technical lingo but I want to know if there isn't a way to watch Netflix instant streaming via these systems? They all have the same capabilities as the XBOX 360, and Tivo series 3. Is it that Directv just scrambles the signal or doesn't present the navigation. Didn't Directv partner up with Tivo? Sorry I'm a little confused and uneducated

[Wen]

I love this feature -- sort of. Most mornings I get an error message that there was a problem communicating with Netflix and I can't watch whatever it is I wanted to watch. Also, I tried to watch An Ideal Husband this morning, and it won't let me fast forward without an error message that then sends me back to my instant queue. I suppose I can't expect it to be bug free so soon, but there sure are a LOT of bugs.

[Troy]

I recently signed up for this service (about 1-2 weeks ago), using a TiVO HD system. Here are the issues I've found.

#1: The app crashes for no apparent reason, during watching a movie, looking at the queue, etc. This has happened about 5 times where all I had to do was go back and open the netflix app again. Another 4 times I've had to unplug the power to my system and reboot it as it was 100% locked up.

#2: Sound is out of sync with the video at times. Sometimes, it's barely noticeable, othertimes it's unwatchable. I've tried reloading the episode (TV series), waiting a day in case it was cached on the TiVO or something, nothing helped. Seems that if a particular episode/movie is screwed up, it's going to stay that way.

#3: Having to go to the NetFlix website to manage my queue sucks. I doubt this will change as it's probably some corporate BS to keep the Netflix website/brand in your face more. But it still sucks.

#4: The number of movies available is pretty sad. It could be that it's going to grow, but right now if your movie is before 1980, you'll probably be able to find it. Afterwards, it's a crap shoot. I did read an article here about how licensing is at least part of the problem. My guess is a lot of the older titles were under a license that gave Netflix the freedom to provide them, whereas other licenses do not. (again, a guess, nothing more)

#5: I mostly have this service currently to watch TV series' I've missed. However, I find it odd that say only disk 1 and disk 6 of a series isn't available instantly, you have to get in via Snail mail. Which completely invalidates the reason I resubscribed to Netflix (instant play through my TiVO).

All in all, even with these complaints I have to say it's not too bad and for the 9 bucks a month, it's still worth it. I mostly say this as I think the majority of the issues will be worked out as they are software issues/bugs. I only had a couple of minor issues with the buffering, which I can attribute to normal network issues and they weren't a big deal. I understand many people have serious issues with buffering, all I can say is with my net connection (Comcast) and my TivO HD, I do not.

The largest concern I still have is with the limited instant catalog available and whether or not this is going to change.

[Brian]

I've had TiVo since 2004 and Netflix since 2006 - thought I'd finally be able to utilize Netflix account to its fullest instead of just the DVDs as it's not too convenient to watch movies on my computer. So, I go to set up the configuration and what do I find out? Doesn't work on my series 2 TiVo. TiVo says it's because of Netflix and the format used. Either way, how ridiculous to presume that I'll buy a new device just to get this feature? And now I'm an unhappy long-term subscriber to both. So much for recommending either one to family and friends anymore...all that hype and leave your longer term customers out in the cold.