Amazon Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and TiVo have joined forces in the war to take the top spot in the realm of video content provision. Unfortunately, the team has opted to take a route which cuts personal computers out of the video-viewing loop. That's a sad miscalculation if you ask me.

It is reported that the Amazon-TiVo team will be directly selling movies, episodes of television shows and other video content for a price range of $2 to $4 for download directly to TiVo units with the "Amazon Unbox on TiVo" upgrade and high speed internet connections. This is a service which broke ground in February of this year and which at that time required users to choose their entertainment selections using a personal computer. It is my interpretation that the current move by this entertainment alliance, in making their venture "TiVo specific," is a misguided attempt to herd would-be video subscribers into the TiVo format and away from the worldwide video content web.

Bad move, limited scope, consumer inflexibility and restricted horizons are some of the verbiage that enter my thinking when considering this attempted move. As of right now, the Amazon-TiVo team indicates the availability of about 10,000 video selections for their service offering. Umm, excuse me for being so crass but it sounds to me like they're "spitting" into the wind.

Just take as a token indicator the fact that for someone to use this questionable service, they need to have a high speed internet connection. So, if you're going to go with a high speed internet connection to grab some video content why in the world would anyone restrict themselves to a selection of 10,000 viewing opportunities and bypass their personal computer in the process?

I myself wouldn't touch this scenario with a 10-foot fiber optic cable. That is, if I had one.