[Bob Hetherington]

Best Buy moves into the connected TV business with Tivo's user interface

Internet connected TVs are becoming a lot more mainstream. The latest sign of that is that Best Buy is announcing its own house label model, dubbed the Insignia Connected TV. Best Buy, the nation's largest gadget retailer, hopes to capture more margin in the increasingly competitive electronics business by selling its own equipment under Best Buy's house brand, rather than selling more gadgets under brand name such as Sony or Samsung. It's a strategy that has been working for a while. This TV will be the first to use Tivo's design interface, giving Best Buy's customers a user interface that is well-known as a good way for browsing for shows and watching TV without a TiVo subscription. The TV will be available in 32-inch and 42-inch models for $499 and $699 respectively at BestBuy.com and Best Buy stores nationwide. The TVs offer a variety of ways to access movies over the web, such as Netflix, CinemaNow and YouTube. It also has applications such as Pandora, Napster, Facebook, Twitter and Photobucket.


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[mydock]

Man tvs are cheap these days. Great deal here

 

[Phil Tomaskovic]

yeah cheap, depends how good the tv is... I assume this only works with cable or will it also do OTA like a Tivo? And what if the person requires a set top box or cable card for any digital programming like Comcast requires (basically anything that's not a local channel). I have a feeling this thing isn't going to fly in most places. Unless it works like the Sony Google TV bluray player where you have a hdmi input for content from the STB.

 

[4Runner]

Cable card is all you need. The only thing you cannot do on a TiVo is on demand stuff. Still, this seems a little bit of a reach for BB. I think they are desperate.