Jaman, the San Mateo-based P2P Web movie service, has struck a deal whereby TiVo subscribers will be able to access Jaman’s catalogue of American independent (think Sundance Film Festival) and international film titles directly from their TiVo DVR. Viewers will be able to rent and buy films starting at $1.99, with a number of shorts and full-length films available to download for free. Jaman uses its own proprietary DRM.
Interestingly Jaman developed an unofficial plug-in for the first version of the AppleTV device which syncs content downloaded via the Jaman player. We’ll have to see if it works on AppleTV II.
Babelgum is closest to Jaman’s model, with it’s emphasis on independent professionally produced video content, but Jaman is about downloading high quality HD films to rent or keep, rather than P2P streaming. Jaman has a lot of competition in the movie downloading market, but most competitors focus on Hollywood movies, rather than the ‘fat belly’ of the Long Tail. Since 99% of films made do not get theatrical distribution, there is a lot of content out there. Jaman has been quietly building its catalog of movies and is available on PCs, Macs, SanDisk’s TakeTV and DivX. Founder and CEO Gaurav Dhillon previously co-founded Informatica in 1992, which IPO’d in 1999. Jaman backers include the Hearst Corporation.