LG Electronics and Netflix Incorporated, the world's largest online movie rental service, plan to develop (by the second half of 2008) a set-top box which will allow the streaming of movies and other programming from the Internet directly to HDTVs. The new online home entertainment service will replace the need of a personal computer with technology embedded in an LG networked player. Once the LG product becomes available, more than 7 million Netflix subscribers will be able to watch movies streamed from the Netflix Web site on their large-screen home theatre HDTVs, in addition to the current capability of watching movies instantly on their PCs. That’s all for one monthly fee, although it remains unclear how much the set-top box will cost.
Netflix pioneered online movie rentals in 1997, and now offers a catalogue of more than 90,000 titles on DVD delivered fast through the mail and a growing selection of more than 6,000 familiar movies and TV episodes available instantly over the Internet to members' personal computers or TVs. "Internet to the TV is a huge opportunity. Netflix explored also offering its own Netflix-branded set-top boxes but we concluded that familiar consumer electronics devices from industry leaders like LG Electronics are a better consumer solution for getting the Internet to the TV," said Netflix Founder, Chairman and CEO Reed Hastings.
I hope the day I could download one movie in a minute.
And the sad part is movies are getting larger and larger Video CD(700MB), DVD (4GB,8GB), HD-DVD (30GB) Blu-Ray(50GB)
In uk the biggest broadband is around...nah won tell ya...too embarrasing
I don't like the idea of a set-top box however. With HP and others constantly marketing "media" PCs that come with TV tuners, more and more consumers are starting to use these and the market for a dedicated set-top box is going to get very small, very quickly.
I'd much rather see them partner with somebody like Tivo or Live to get this out there. Of course, another article I read about this quoted Hastings as saying something to the effect of 100+ devices in the next year to two years, so this may not be far off.
It is ready system
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