Kindlevision? Amazon reportedly developing set-top tellybox Amazon will be the latest tech biz to release a set-top TV box later this year, according to the rumour mill, incorporating its video-on-demand services. The box will plug into users' tellies and bring along the LoveFilm and Instant Video services already available on connected TVs, Xboxes and Playstations, sources whispered …
All these competing systems are crap. They are all incompatible with each other, all require a box (if you have a DVR, Blu-ray, Freeview and games console already the last thing you need is another box) and you can't record any content (yes I know they stream, but people record and then transfer to their tablet).
There needs to be an IP TV consortium much like there was a DVD and Blu-ray group to propose a common format.
This isn't "IP TV", it's "Netflix from Amazon". They're competing with that BluRay box, not with your cable company (at least not directly). The vast majority of the customers for this service will keep paying $50 or more a month to their cable company for the sort of TV that they've grown up with, and still think they want/need. Maybe some will cancel the $15 for HBO/Cinemax, and spend it in Amazon instead.
The cable companies response to services like this is to include Video on Demand, including some free "catch up" services, while charging $15/month per set top box, and $5 for movies (on top of the $50 they charge for the actual cable TV service).
But as long as the cable companies provide the best option for reliable high speed broadband for most customers, Amazon and Netflix aren't going to aggressively compete against the cable companies. There'll be some "cord cutters", but the average user is going to get Netflix or Amazon in addition to their Cable TV package, not instead of it. When of if the cable companies feel the competition is getting too hot, they will just charge more for broadband, and make their TV offerings cheaper to compete.
The interesting aspect of this hardware that gives Amazon an edge over Netflix and your cable company, though, is Music. If this allows SWMBO an easy way to access the "free MP3 library" that Amazon gave her for buying all those CDs over the last 10 years or so, then hooking this box up to the system in the living room might become hard to resist.
This isn't "IP TV", it's "Netflix from Amazon".
You mean Lovefilm? You know, that small company Amazon own that Netflix competes with.
Lovefilm already allows login with your Amazon account, which I expect is the login all Kindle Fire tablet users use. I'm sure at some point my current LoveFilm login will disappear and be merged into my Amazon account.
Unless you must see everything as soon as it's released, NetFlix and LoveFilm makes more sense than Cable/Sky. Instead of buying box sets a few months after release just wait a couple more and watch via LoveFilm/NetFlix.
All they need for me is to add in decent quality surround sound support and it would mean no need to buy/rent discs. Then again I don't think mp3 is high quality so I'm probably not normal :D
They launched Amazon Prime here in the land of the Canucks and you still can't get bloody Instant Video, so don't hold out hope of it arriving in the UK any time soon. When it comes to making their content available, there's a hell of a lot of studios who apparently don't want to sell to anyone outside the US border.
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