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Use your TiVo Series3, TiVo HD or TiVo HD XL box to scroll through and stream your Netflix “Watch Instantly” selections
I guess December 8 certainly qualifies as “early December.” When we told you about TiVo adding Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” streaming service back at the end of October, the companies had mentioned a wider rollout would be available in early December, and so they made an official announcement today about how you can marry the two services.
The good news is that today’s official word also carries confirmation that the TiVo Series3, TiVo HD and TiVo HD XL boxes will include the HD option from Netflix as well as all the standard-def material.
Of course, Netflix’s streaming doesn’t have quite the selection of its physical disc library—but it does have more than 12,000 movies and TV shows, and counting. A small fraction of that is high-def material, and TiVo notes that both standard and HD titles are “expectec to grow in the weeks and months ahead,” so we figure Netflix has some more goodies up its sleeve.
The guys over at CNet got a chance to play around with the TiVo/Netflix combo this weekend and had some pretty nice things to say for the most part, especially as the TiVo streaming product compares to that of the Roku box that’s also expected to add high-def by the end of the year.
CNet noted that the movies that were available in HD (though it wasn’t always clear as you were picking them out) were more like really good-looking DVDs: Although the term “near-DVD” is often abused with video-streaming services, it accurately describes the video quality offered by Netflix streaming on TiVo. We fired up a bunch of movies and we were never disappointed by how they looked. Pan’s Labrynth was available in “HD” and in most cases it looked as good as a well-mastered DVD.
The other upside was that everything streamed right away, so the experience was more like what you would have when calling up a DVR’d (er, TiVo’d) video rather than actual Internet streaming.
All in all, it sounds like those who have TiVo and Netflix subscriptions can doubly rejoice this holiday season.
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I played around with the Netflix Watch Now streaming on my TiVo HD last night. It is connected directly to a 10/100/b/g router via wired ethernet. I was unable to get better than about 50% signal and nothing would play in HD (verified HD was available for the titles I tried). Also, after 30 min (most of the pilot episode of McGyver) the service would just stop and default back to the TiVo home menu. Trying to restart would yield anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes of video before again stopping completely and backing out to the TiVo home menu. I’m going to continue to play with this and see if stability improves. It would be a decent supplement in place of Comcast OnDemand, but until it is as stable, reliable, and what little HD content is available is actually available, it seems to be a frustrating novelty.