TiVo: Blockbuster I don’t love you anymore

Posted Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 7:58 pm by Jason Cartwright |

Well only a few days after Valentines Day, we’ve got a breakup on our hands. This morning TiVo announced it will be discontinuing it’s Blockbuster movie rental service.

“Blockbuster Movie Service on TiVo will be permanently closing on Friday 5th March 2010”

There is some important information about the closure of the service.

1. Existing customers will have the balance of their accounts refunded automatically.
2. Blockbuster movie rentals will disappear from the TiVo interface.
3. Movies will continue to be released up until the shutdown date.

The IPTV battle is a tough one that TiVo and CASPA On-Demand will really need to step it up, to have any chance at all. First of all there’s iTunes, with a massive library of content. But more importantly is the newest entrant..

Through the Zune Video Marketplace on Xbox 360 consoles, users can rent and buy movies in both SD and HD quality either by downloading first, but also streaming. The difference here is that Microsoft offers 1080p quality, 5.1 surround sound movies that start streaming instantly using their Smooth Streaming technology.

With the rapid adoption of large HDTVs, high definitely content is becoming a must for consumers. Neither CASPA or Blockbuster offers / offered a HD version. Also in Australia, the number of Xbox 360 owners, is many magnitudes the size of TiVo owners.

If you had to choose, what IPTV service would you use ?