Amazon and TiVo conclude their beta test and roll out video service
The beta test between Amazon.com Inc.’s Unbox service and TiVo Inc. is over and the two companies are rolling out a video download service, accessible by 1.5 million broadband-ready TiVo subscribers. About 600,000 TiVo subscribers have web-enabled their devices.
TiVo and Amazon also announced today the addition of Sony Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. to the list of studios offering content through Amazon Unbox on TiVo. The service already offered content from CBS, Fox Entertainment Group, Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Warner Bros. Entertainment.
Amazon Unbox on TiVo will enable TiVo subscribers with Internet-enabled TiVo digital video recorders to rent and purchase movies and television shows online at Amazon.com and view the videos on TVs as well as computers and Windows Media Video-enabled portable devices. Amazon.com, No. 1 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, delivers video files directly to customers’ TiVo boxes and, if they choose, PCs.
The rollout announcement comes only one month after the service was announced as being in beta testing.
TiVo and Amazon are offering $15 in free movie and TV show downloads to anyone who signs up for the Amazon Unbox on TiVo service by April 30.
In September, Amazon launched Amazon Unbox, a digital video download service that offers thousands of television shows, movies and other video content from more than 30 studios and networks from around the world. Unbox customers can purchase television series episodes for $1.99 per episode, purchase most movies for between $9.99 and $14.99, or rent movies starting at $1.99. The service provides flexibility in how consumers obtain videos and where they watch them, allowing them, for instance, to buy a video on one PC and download it to another or to a TiVo device.
In other news, Shelfari.com, a social media site for bibliophiles, has received Series A funding from Amazon.com and several other unidentified investors. The amount was not disclosed, but the financing is expected to fund site development, sales and marketing initiatives, and general administrative costs for Shelfari.com.
Shelfari.com launched in October 2006 and provides “tens of thousands of bibliophiles with a new place to meet and share their passion for reading, online,” the company says.
Amazon.com believes online communities need technological tools to enable users to express themselves, and cites its own online receptacles for user input, such as customer reviews and image uploads, wish lists, and discussion boards, as reasons behind the investment.
Shelfari.com also announced it had formed an advisory board and that Stefan Pepe, director for Amazon’s Books & Magazines stores, joined the Shelfari board of directors.
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