Netflix "Watch Instantly" coming to TivoHD & Series3

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I wish I could say the same about my internet wow! What service do you have?

Currently where I live, the only broadband available is hughes net, and they limit my bandwidth too 200MB per day, 2000MB per month. Which wont even handle a single netflix movie let alone a few.

I'm hoping when I land a job in my field (Just graduated from college this past may), that I can get a place of my own, and have FIOS.

 

they should not be allowed to call that broadband. The ritght name would be "BrowseBand" maybe

 

haha, I hear ya!!!!

and the scary part is, they actually have a term for their broadband, and it is "Broadband Unbound!"

Unbound, yeah, right!!!!!

But yeah, it is only good for checking email and casual browsing. We put the thing over the limit all to often and it will turn us off for 24 hours until we can use it again. It sucks. And they claim that their Fair Access Policy will not be reached by the average user, and only a small percentage of users would ever reach it. We reach it everyday, and windows updates on our 3 computers can reach it in a single day before we even use the internet!!!

It is good for maybe 20 minutes of youtube pleasure, browsing the internet for an hour and a half with no multimedia and email, that's it!

 

I have FIOS

 

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Any bets this is going to be online before TG?

 

Probably not. Some have said this will be part of the fall service update for Series 3/THD. If that is the case we would see the service update appear first few a few random people. Then it would be rolled out two all two weeks later if it did not create a large increase of calls to the calling center. We may not even see Netflix for a few days after the roll out is complete. Very much so like youtube.

But that is my best guess. Who knows, it could run on 9.4 with an updated HME app that get's pushed.

 

People here keep mentioning "streaming" of NetFlix movies to TiVo. Does this mean the movies can't be stored on the TiVo itself? I ask because sometimes I only can watch half a movie one day, then wait a day or so before I finish the movie.

 

For Netflix streaming you can stop at any point you want and it will remember where you left off even if you resume viewing on a different device - at least that's the behavior with PC playback.

 

Ahh that would work, Thanks.

 

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=409783

We're approaching the 2 week mark with the preliminary roll out. There is a good chance the software will be out to most (all?) customers prior to 12/1. That said I'm not sure Netflix/Tivo will flip the switch prior to December 1.

 

That update is for Series 2 Tivos only.

 

I didn't think it was clear if the update was just for the S2.

 

Yeah, it did get buried later on in the thread.

That update is a 9.3.x update. S3/THD has been a 9.4 since July. So that is the confirmation that this update is not coming too HD unites, not to mention it hasn't showed up on any HD unites yet.

But your two week is almost upon us could be close the the truth in a different way. That being is we are almost two weeks away December 1st. Not that that has any significance, but there was a rumor posted that that could be the date we see Netflix go live.

Not to mention, Usually between Thanksgivings and the Supper bowl tivo does not role out any service updates. So we will have to wait and see. If something new is going to come out this fall, we should know for sure within the next two weeks if history holds true.

 

Since both TiVo and Netflix have announced that Netflix "Watch Instantly" will be available on TiVo in December, either they snuck the functionality in with the 9.4 upgrade or there will be an upgrade for Series3, HD and HD XL units sometime between now and whatever date in December the service becomes available on.

 

There's no evidence that TiVo streams YouTube--it might know enough of whatever streaming protocol YouTube is using to start the stream coming, but it doesn't implement any random access. Once you start the stream, you can't skip to the end or back to the beginning. They did have to implement playback of VC-1 encodings for YouTube, which is why they can't support it on the Series2 (the chipsets in the Series3 and HD models support VC-1 and H.264 decoding in hardware).

We'll soon see what they end up doing. Hopefully, they've created a true streaming player. Netflix is switching to Microsoft's Silverlight technology for their web player app--I opted into the beta and tried it and it seems pretty good. It has an interesting navigation mechanism--it displays a string of stills forward and back and let's you choose one to start playback from.

 

My point was that, for whatever reason, they're not implementing random access in the TiVo YouTube player--it seemingly does playback-while-downloading, nearly indistinguishable in function from TiVoCast, MRV and TTCB (the difference from those being that you don't get any replayable file in the Now Playing List). To see the end, you have to wait for the entire thing to download. If they'd implemented full streaming capabilities, why wouldn't they have put it into the YouTube interface? Random access is part of the YouTube web app, just as it's part of the "Watch Instantly" app (and all true streaming video players); TiVo didn't make it part of their app for YouTube and there's no way that we can be certain that they'll make it part of their app for Netflix "Watch Instantly" either.

 

HME, not HMO. But, yeah. However, we haven't been able to stream VC-1, only h.264; so a software update may indeed be (probably is) needed.

The "streaming protocol" is just http, nothing special about it. This is all that the TiVo seems to support currently, so far as we can tell.

 

I think people assume TiVo doesn't stream YouTube because it saves the entire buffer and trickplay doesn't rerequest the stream data so you have to wait until it saves that part to the buffer. However, like Dan said, the technology behind it allows streaming. And it was the first HME app to allow video playback within the app.