SAN FRANCISCO - In a significant step toward vanquishing the local video store and keeping couch potatoes planted firmly in front of their televisions and computers, Amazon.com will roll out a new online store of TV shows and movies today, called Amazon Video on Demand.
Customers of Amazon's new store will be able to start watching any of 40,000 movies and television programs immediately after ordering them because they stream, just like programs like a cable video-on-demand service. That is different from most Internet video stores, such as Apple's iTunes and the original incarnation of Amazon's video store, which require users to endure lengthy waits as video files are downloaded to their hard drives.
Amazon, based in Seattle, also is pursuing the technology and media world's holy grail -- an Internet pipeline to the TV. It has struck a deal with Sony Electronics to place its Internet video store on Sony's Bravia high-definition TVs.
The video store will be accessible through the Sony Bravia Internet Video link, a $300 tower-shaped device to funnel Web video directly to Sony's high-definition televisions. That is an awkward extra expense for now. But future Bravias are expected to have that capability embedded in the television, making it even easier to gain access to the full catalog of past and present TV shows and movies, over the Internet using a television remote control.
Amazon Video on Demand will be accessible to a limited number of invited customers today and open more broadly to others later this summer.
NEW YORK TIMES
