TiVo Shares Fast-Forward on Amazon Deal

TiVo(TIVO), through its deal with Amazon.com's(AMZN) Unbox service, shows signs of coming back to life.

In itself, the Amazon Unbox-TiVo relationship may not help sell more TiVo boxes or attract new subscribers, but along with the deals TiVo has inked with cable-service providers Comcast(CMCSA) and Cox Communications, this one indicates that TiVo is getting its act together again and taking it on the road.

The Comcast deal has been in the works for more than a year now, and TiVo signed its agreement with Cox in August.

Despite the 9% bump up after Wednesday's announcement to $5.97, TiVo stock is down nearly 40% from its 52-week high of $9.49.

The Amazon Unbox video-download service , which launched in September 2006, offers movies, TV programming and other videos for download to PCs and any Windows Media Video-compatible portable device.

With the new service, in addition to PCs and portable devices, movies and TV shows will now be available to download directly to a customer's TiVo box for playback on TV sets.

"Amazon Unbox offers customers the flexibility to watch their favorite videos where and when they want, whether that is on their PC, portable device or TV set through their TiVo box," said Bill Carr, vice president of digital media at Amazon.

Customers can purchase TV episodes for $1.99 or movies for $9.99 to $14.99, or rent movies starting at $1.99. All purchased videos are stored in each customer's media library at Amazon for future access and download.