Tivo and IPTV house Brightcove said Wednesday that the two companies would partner to bring the Brightcove's broadband video to Tivo set-top boxes.Tivo and IPTV house Brightcove said Wednesday that the two companies would partner to bring the Brightcove's broadband video to Tivo set-top boxes.
Tivo did not disclose when the additional content would be added. Executives from both companies were unavailable for comment, according to company representatives.
However, Tivo did say that the Brightcove content would be made available to those customers who owned Series2 Tivo PVRs and had them connected to the Internet. TiVo subscribers will be able to "discover" this content directly in the Tivo Central content management area on the Tivo box, Tivo said in a statement.
With the agreement, Tivo seems set to deliver on a promise that company executives made in 2004, when they promised that future Tivo boxes would be able to download content from the Internet. In 2003, Tivo acquired Strangeberry, a service designed to publish IPTV streams. In 2005, Tivo and IFC (formerly the Independent Film Channel) trialed a download plan.
To date, Tivo has largely held on to its traditional niche as a PVR provider, although the company has made the shift to HDTV, funneled content to portable devices, and dual-tuner boxes.
According to the two companies, all of the Internet content will be funneled through the Brightcove service, which will initially be made free to Tivo subscribers, although perhaps subsidized by ads, Brightcove said. In the future, Brightcove will "phase in a number of content partners and new downloading capabilities for a number of possible content partners of Tivo's going forward," the company said. Business models may include pay-per-view and subscriptions, in addition to ads.
Existing Brightcove partners include National Lampoon's TogaTV, Latino channel Barrio305, and Farmers' Almanac TV.
"It won't be far off before linear television becomes the butt of such historic humor," Eric Elia, vice president of content and online services for Brightcove, wrote in the corporate blog. "Wow, everyone had to watch a show at the same time? You mean you couldn't just search and play? You had to walk a mile, in the snow, to school, carrying a saxophone and then had to wait until 8 for Airwolf to come on?!?"
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