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Netflix and Tivo

For a while now, one of the oddities of modern life has been that the most popular, most transformative digital movie distribution mechanism has integrally involved sending small physical objects back and forth through the US Postal Service. The “net” is right there in the same of the service, but it’s actually a phenomenally un-webby thing. Recently, though, Netflix has started unveiling some video streaming services and now comes the announcement that dual Tivo-Netflix subscribers (like me) will be able to get videos through our Tivo boxes. Still, it seems that the physical discs aren’t quite obsolete yet:

Separately, CNET has confirmed that Netflix’s nascent HD streaming capability will soon be coming to all Netflix-compatible devices, not just the Xbox 360. However, the Netflix HD library will be starting with a very small selection (just 300 titles), and will require significantly higher bandwidth than the standard-def streaming that’s currently available.

Since I recently shelled out for a Blu-Ray player (trying to do my part to stimulate the economy) I guess I’m sort of glad to see that widespread high-definition movies on demand haven’t rendered the technology useless yet. But it can’t be long.

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