It sounds like it's only a channel in the sense that "tuning" to channel 450 will launch the app. You'd then have to search for the show you want to watch.

A TiVo box already has lots of options for browsing through a database of shows/series/actors, so it makes a lot more sense to link Netflix into that.

From my reading of the article, there will be a specific channel (450), but tuning to that channel will simply launch the Netflix app. Rather than navigating some seperate interface for launching the app, you just switch to channel to launch it. It's still on-demand content, just the app appears as a "normal" channel.

That's important for the many millions who haven't ventured beyond the "TV model". They don't grasp (and don't want to) anything other than "turn on TV, change to channel X". The "watch what you want when you want" then becomes an extension of the standard model, instead of something fearfully (to them) different.

I'm sure that's part of their thinking.

But note that this is only on TiVos, so many (most?) of the consumers will already be used to the idea of HDD recording and series links. Once I got a TiVo it wasn't long before I got into the habit of hitting "My Shows" rather than channel hopping.

> From my reading of the article, there will be a specific channel (450), but tuning to that channel will simply launch the Netflix app.

Note that these kind of "app channels" are pretty common with cable systems now, so while I guess it might be odd to people who either never had cable or were early cord-cutters, its not at all odd to describe this as getting their own cable channel.

Yeah, that's kind of funny to think about: Netflix would be much worse if it were just a static stream rather than a library of movies and TV shows to watch whenever ... yet the former is exactly what people pay for as premium cable channels!