Together forever

It seems like home entertainment is taking one more step towards awesome. For those too lazy to click the link it's an article discussing how Netflix and Tivo are teaming up to offer streaming movies to Tivo's set-top boxes. Much like the author of the article I too thought to myself a few years ago that this would be an amazing idea. I used to have Tivo but have since switched to the cable company's version (only because my Tivo box was on the verge of giving up the ghost). This is making me consider going back to my beloved Tivo.

[For those with sensitively cool eyes I'll warn you that things are about to get nerdy]

Streaming movies is a pretty cool idea but if you're really stuck on high quality it might not suit your fancy. In order to make a movie small enough to fit into the tubes that bring the internets to your house it is necessary to use a lot of video compression. For some reason the US seems to have much smaller tubes than a lot of other countries, meaning more compression. If the US were ever able to match the broadband speeds of other countries that kind of compression would be all but obsolete. Think about how cool it would be to stream high-definition video straight to your TV? Last I heard the Netflix streaming video service had about 12,000 movies available (or at least that's the case for the Xbox 360 tie-in). That number is increasing every month. It is not beyond reason to assume that Netflix will one day have almost every movie ever available for you to stream to your home. That. Is. So. COOL.