Amazon Unbox movies on TiVo?

Friday, September 22, 2006

The New York post today reported that Amazon is discussing with TiVo about the possibility to transfer on the video recording device the movies bought on Amazon Unbox.

The latter is an internet on-demand video service that lets us to but movies or shows (prices starting from $1.99) to play them on our portable devices.

If the talks between the two companies will conclude favorably this would increase exponentially the market share of the Amazon service.

Since they already offer a full resolution video file that gives good image quality Amazon would not need to change anything in the content creation process.

This would give them the chance to focus, together with TiVo, only on the developing of a feature that streamlines the content transfer as much as possible.

Once Amazon builds that and develops a good integration with TiVo it will be a lot tougher for other players in this market (like Apple’s iTV) to fight back.

Speaking of the iTV when the set-top box developed by Apple will be available next year TiVo owners will have to options: buy another external box or simply continue to use their TiVo.

What do you think they will do? It’s too early to know exactly what exclusive content Amazon and Apple will offer but for the same movies Amazon has a clearly advantage.

If we consider the current deals with the movie studios the online company has a big advantage over Apple. Amazon has in fact reached deals with all the major movie studio except Disney that has closed a deal with Apple.

It will be interesting to see what strategy will pursue Apple if Amazon and TiVo really decide to team up.

Considering that Steve Job’s company will not give up on their set-top box a deal with TiVo must be excluded so they will have to offer a better economical package or invent something else (maybe an even better image quality).

It’s too early to say who will win between the two companies but it’s safe to say that the competition should really favor the customers, right?