Movies to be delivered over TiVo by Primus

Support has been thrown behind the Seven Networks movie download service and TiVo digital video recorder as Primus becomes the latest telecommunications company to join in the set-top box wars.

The central battleground for taking internet TV services onto television screens this year in Australia, changing video rental chains and games console makers into instant media companies and transforming telcos, all of which are competing to provide video content to the TV, is the television set-top box.

Unmetered downloads to the TiVo set-top boxes of its internet customers would be provided by Primus Telecom said Ravi Bhatia, the chief executive of Primus.

The TiVo movie download service, which will be provided by video chain Blockbusters, and a range of other content for internet TV that will be launching this year with TiVo set-top boxes will be marketed and bundled to its customers by Primus.

Mr Bhatia said “In the current environment … TiVo offers the opportunity for our customers to combine the best of TV and broadband, starting today.”

The offering of media content “at this point in time” using TiVo was Primus’s strategy he said.

The chief technology officer of rival ISP iiNet, Greg Bader, said that the company was in talks with TiVo and was making plans to launch its own set-top box by Christmas.

In the week that followed its launch on April 29th TiVo has revealed that out of its library of 150 movies over 10 percent of its customers used the internet to download a movie, which is the reason for this latest move.

The downloading of movies onto their TiVo box, which is a digital video recorder, by half of its customers is the company’s current aim said Robbee Minicola, the TiVo chief.

Ms Minicola said “If we get 50 per cent of our customers to enrol, I’ll be ecstatic. More than 10 per cent is beyond our wildest expectations.”