DirecTV has already announced a new line-up of 100 HD channels at CES this week and now it has jumped in with the announcement of its new Video-on-Demand (VOD) service which is cleverly called DirecTV OnDemand.DirecTV said it will start beta-testing DirecTV OnDemand in the first quarter and hopefully release the service by the middle of this year. Vice president of entertainment at DirecTV, Eric Shanks, said that the new OnDemand service had been enabled by DirecTVs new HD PVRs, so will undoubtedly contain HD programming.
This does not sound like your regular video-on-demand service but is something a little different. The press release was a little fuzzy with the details of the service which talks about bringing DirecTV outside the home through home networking and presumably the internet.
Apparently a new program guide has been created for DirecTV OnDemand and the video can be accessed in a number of ways including via satellite or a broadband connection. All of this strongly hints at a Slingbox type service for DirecTV subscribers.
1. My understanding is it isn't a Slingbox-like service, serving video OUT of the home, but more like IPTV with the video being delivered *to* the box over broadband. The satellite service is pseudo-OnDemand. They've reserved a big chunk of the drive in the box and they'll pre-record a bunch of movies, which are then available 'OnDemand' as long as they're on the drive.
Posted at 4:39PM on Jan 10th 2007 by MegaZone