News : Tivo, Netflix partner on Web streaming

By Sue Zeidler

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Netflix Inc said on Wednesday it reached a deal with TiVo Inc to further deliver on its goal of offering Netflix's Web streaming service directly to televisions through many devices.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it calls for Netflix to provide subscribers of its online DVD rental service and many of the 800,000 broadband-connected Tivo subscribers with the ability to stream movies and TV episodes from Netflix's "Watch Instantly" service to TVs free of charge.

TiVo, maker of the popular digital video recorder, and Netflix said late on Wednesday they were initiating a test of the new capability in several thousand U.S. households and expect it will be broadly available in early December.

Netflix's "Watch Instantly" Web streaming service, with a library of more than 12,000 movies and TV episodes, is offered free to its more than 8 million subscribers.

The company is moving aggressively to extend that streaming service from the PC to TV while facing challenges from the likes of Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc.

Netflix recently struck a deal for Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's Blu-ray DVD devices to play video streamed from Netflix and a similar deal with Blu-ray DVD player maker LG Electronics. It also has deals to stream movies to Microsoft Corp's Xbox 360 videogame consoles and to a $100 set-top box made by Roku Inc.

In recent years, TiVo has developed add-on features to help differentiate its DVRs from that of cable and satellite TV providers that often offer basic DVRs at cheaper prices.

It allows users to rent videos from Amazon and watch them on TVs, and this past summer began enabling some customers to watch online videos from Google Inc's YouTube on their televisions.

"The YouTube service on Tivo is extremely popular," said Tara Maitra, vice president and general manager of content services at TiVO, who said over 65 percent of its broadband-connected subscribers were taking advantage of the broadband features.

"I think everyone's trying to figure out the right business model, and they want to get their content on as many platforms as available," she said.

(Reporting by Sue Zeidler)