ReplayTVBlog

Edging one step closer today to world domination, TiVo has announced that they will now be selling TiVo units in China. Partnering with a company called PacificNet they would sell the TiVo DVR and accompanying services through their iMobile subsidiary. TiVo devices would be available in major cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

It’s not clear exactly what services will be available for TiVo devices in China. I’m sure they will get some kind of a channel guide with updates, but will they have access to download videos similar to Amazon Unbox? Or will they have access to the TiVo To Go Software?

Plans may not be clear at this point, but this expansion is a step in the right direction. With the competition that TiVo faces from sub par Cable Company DVR devices here in the US, going into other countries where there is not much competition is a huge growth area for TiVo. Plus, they have the opportunity to establish themselves as the defacto standard for DVRs before the competition can really take hold.

Technorati Tags: TiVo, DVR, China, Amazon Unbox

Popularity: 19%

Veoh.com has been around for a while now as a video sharing site similar to YouTube. But now, they are preparing to launch their new application, VeohTV, which they are calling a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) for Internet Video. Basically they are saying that it will be similar to a ReplayTV or TiVo but instead of recording from a cable or satellite TV source VeohTV will record and store Internet Video sources.

As it appears now (it’s still in beta testing), VeohTV will arrange videos from the Internet into something similar to a Channel Guide that you would see on a TV Cable box or DVR. For example, most of the major networks now offer streaming video of the full episodes of their prime time shows on the Internet. So if I wanted to watch the latest episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, I could go to the NBC website and watch it there. With VeohTV, I will have an NBC.com channel, and (somehow) they will have all the available videos listed and I can record them and watch them at anytime through VeohTV.

Of course, this is all speculation. Currently, VeohTV is in closed beta testing and is only available by invitation. But these features (as described on the VeohTV site) are what they are expecting to be in the final version, which is scheduled to be released sometime later this summer.

We’ll have to wait and see what the final product looks like, but VeohTV sounds good. Maybe too good to be true, but I’m hoping …

Technorati Tags: Veoh, VeohTV, DVR, TiVo, ReplayTV

Popularity: 20%