have tivo and amazon unearthed the holy grail of interactive tv?
There's been umpteen retail models developed around interactive tv over the years, none of them have paid off to any great degree as far as I can remember.
And I should know, I've crashed and burned with quite a few.
TiVO may just have cracked it though with the just announced extension of their partnership with Amazon.
For a wee while, TiVo users have been able to download movies and tv shows via Amazon’s digital on demand video store. Now that experiment has been extend to include other products.
'Product purchase' as the new feature is known - available on Tuesdays initially - links to products guests are plugging on the likes of Oprah and David Letterman.
If the viewer chooses to buy something during a show, TiVo records the rest of the programme so the viewer can pick up where they left off (as you would expect) - but here's the nifty bit. TiVo users are also able to save their items in their Amazon account basket and finish up later.
Taking the web and TV and weaving together their strengths?
The real holy grail however will come when the product purchase feature rolls out during ads (assuming they are not being skipped) and where shows feature product placement.
NY Times article here. Thanks to my old chum Brian at TiVO NY who alerted us.
