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Netflix to test Video-On-Demand service

22 September 2004 19:40 by James "Dela" Delahunty

According to news.com, Warner Bros have agreed to license some of their movies to Netflix for purposes of testing its upcoming video-on-demand service. Neither Netflix nor Warner Bros have yet confirmed the deal between the two. Netflix has been planning to launch a movie download service next year for some time now and according to speculation, the VOD service would also be provided jointly by TiVo. TiVo have already announced features that would support such a download service. Netflix currently provides DVD movie rentals and TiVo is a Digital Video Recorder maker. The plan it seems would allow people to download movies from Netflix that could then be played on a TV using TiVo hardware.

While the plan seems good, it relies on the support of Hollywood movie studios as they hold the key to the licenses for mass movie distribution. TiVo have been drawn into battle before with Hollywood over their recording hardware. TiVo however announced plans to use new content protection technology from Macrovision that would limit the recordings that could be made of pay-per-view movies and also would block recording to analog devices, which is a method known as the "analog hole".

TiVo has invented a security technology known as TiVoGuard which it will build into set top boxes and software in 2005. It would allow users to record movies and then send them to up to 9 other TiVo boxes that the user owns, which could be in remote locations. Hollywood challenged this upcoming security technology, claiming that it doesn't do enough to protect recorded content from piracy. However, the FCC approved the system and TiVo are to go ahead with it.

Source:
News.com

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