New era for digital movies

net1

According to Newsweek, Netflix and TiVo will later this month unveil a partnership that will revolutionise the world of digital television.

Subscribers belonging to both services will be able to download digital movies from Netflix onto their TiVo set-top boxes in the home rather than receiving them though the mail as DVDs.

Netflix has aimed to use the internet to deliver films for some time. In an interview with Newsweek last year, chief executive Reed Hastings predicted that, by the end of the decade, Netflix would deliver most of its rentals over the internet, supplanting its distribution centers and trademark red envelopes.

"We named the company Netflix, we didn't name it DVD by Mail," said Hastings.

Industry observers believe that, despite the fact the movies may take several hours to download, Netflix's rivals such Blockbuster will now be forced to develop similar services, causing major headaches for the cable companies, whose own video-on-demand services offer a much narrower selection of movies.