TiVo launched a trial of a video download service, which will enable movies and other video transmitted over a broadband connection directly onto TiVo owners' hard drives. The company partnered with the Independent Film Channel (IFC) on the project; IFC will offer downloads of episodes of its first scripted TV series -- "Hopeless Pictures," "Greg the Bunny" and "The Festival" -- in advance of their network TV premieres. In addition to the episodes themselves, the TiVo downloads will include outtakes and other unaired footage from the IFC series. "The key element of this trial for us is that it will enable consumers who do not typically have access to IFC to download our three new original series over broadband," said IFC executive vice president Evan Shapiro. TiVo said that Limelight Networks will provide content delivery network services for the trial, which it plans to expand to a series of broadband features beginning in the fall.
Every executive who has approved a connected product roadmap has made a quiet assumption: the network underneath it will still be there. That assumption is about to be tested at a scale the automotive industry has never faced. The global connected vehicle installed base is heading toward a billion units, and the cellular technology most of those vehicles depend on is scheduled to begin its retirement before the end of the decade. For automakers, fleet operators, insurers, and the telecom carriers that serve them, the question is whether the recurring revenue those services promise can survive a connectivity layer with a shorter life than the vehicle carrying it. How Scale Meets an Expiry Date Omdia research forecasts that the global connected vehicle installed base will surpass 1.05 billion units by 2035, up from 473.7 million in 2025. Few installed bases of any kind more than double in a decade, and this one signals that connectivity is moving from premium differentiator to baseline e...