Amazon.com to offer TiVo downloads
SAN FRANCISCO -- Amazon.com Inc. will let customers buy or rent movies and television shows and download them directly to some TiVo Inc. digital video recorders.
TiVo's shares rose the most in 10 months on the news.
The service is in advanced testing and will be available soon to more than 1.5 million TiVo customers, Seattle-based Amazon said yesterday. The companies didn't provide a specific date.
TiVo, the pioneer of digital video recorders, is trying to sign up more subscribers by teaming with the world's biggest online retailer to provide a larger choice of movies and TV shows.
Amazon, through its Unbox service, lets customers download TV shows for $1.99 and movies starting at $3.99.
The service with Amazon may take about an hour to download a movie with a 5 megabit-per-second Internet connection and as long as five hours with a connection slower than 1 megabit per second, TiVo said.
The picture quality will be higher than for shows recorded on a TiVo Series2 recorder at the "best quality" setting, TiVo said.
Shares of Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo rose 49 cents, or 8.9 percent, to $5.97, the biggest jump since March. Shares of Amazon rose 71 cents to $38.98.
In September, Amazon introduced Unbox to let customers download television shows and movies. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. yesterday introduced its own video-download service, joining companies including Apple Inc. and Netflix Inc. that have similar services. 