Starting today TiVo will offer its subscribers access to YouTube videos on their television sets through their broadband TiVo boxes.
TiVo’s deal with YouTube is the company’s first for streaming online content. TiVo does have partnerships with 60 online sites that offer content. Users will not be able to store YouTube videos, but they will be able to view them and bookmark them to watch later.
The most popular content partner for TiVo has been Amazon Unbox, which allows users to rent movies that are downloaded to TiVo set-top boxes for viewing on TV.
Tara Maitra, Vice President and GM of Content Services at TiVo, said TiVo users have downloaded 27 million videos from its 60 Internet partners. Other than Amazon Unbox, product reviews from CNET and comedy clips from the Onion and Break.com are popular.
YouTube is expected to surpass them all in terms of popularity. Nielsen//NetRatings said YouTube had 68 million unique visitors in May who viewed 3.8 billion videos, making it the dominant leader in online video.
“Will there be a time when people turn on their TV sets and watch YouTube videos instead of TV shows? Time will tell,” Maitra told Reuters.
TiVo has 3.8 million subscribers but only about a fifth have the equipment that is required, a TiVo Series 3 or TiVo HD for watching YouTube content on TV.
