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TiVo, YouTube Partner to Stream Videos to TV

Published on July 17, 2008 | Email this article

TiVo subscribers suddenly have a seemingly endless number of videos available to them via their set-top boxes thanks to a deal between TiVo and YouTube.

TiVo’s subscribers can now stream YouTube videos onto their televisions through broadband-enabled TiVo boxes, the companies announced.. TiVo users won’t be able to store YouTube clips, but they will be able to bookmark them for easy retrieval, writes Adweek.

The partnership marks the first deal for TiVo to stream internet content, though the company has deals with 60 other internet sites that allow for downloading of content for TiVo (rather than streaming), including movies from Amazon Unbox and comedy shorts from sources like the Onion and Break.com. In all, users have downloaded 27 million pieces of content from those partners, but YouTube is expected to speedily outstrip them all.

While TiVo has 3.8 million subscribers, only about a fifth of those have the TiVo Series 3 or TiVo HD that makes it possible to stream YouTube content to the television screen.

YouTube sells advertising on just 4 percent of its clips, for ad sales of $200 million this year, according to the Wall Street Journal (via Multichannel News).

Apple TV also allows users to play YouTube videos on TV screens. Neither Apple nor YouTube shared figures on how often the feature is used.

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