Where is TIVO as a company future going?

[Sean Mota]

Where is TIVO as a company future going to be?

I never had TIVO but have read the great experience that a lot of TIVO users had with their DVRS (HD/SD). Their software had a lot of great features from reading the great reviews of users. One article I read a few months ago stated that the big mistake of TIVO was not to have the Cable Companies license their software for their DVRs. There was no push from TIVO to this. It looks like TIVO exclusively stated with DirecTv and at the end got the short end of the stick. What do you think Tivo is going? can they survive as a stand alone company? can they survive without DirecTv, now that DirecTv is going with their own DVR and Ucentric software? Will we say remember TIVO, great software but bad business?

 

[CDH]

TiVo isn't finished yet... I can understand DirecTV wanting their own proprietary system, but TiVo has a *large* loyal customer base (myself included), who like many of the features of the system, have a system installed, and are shelling out the $13/month. TiVo's new partner is none other than Microsoft. Who knows where that will lead?

For now though, my TiVo already streams mp3 audio and pictures from a computer over a home 802.11b network, and with the new software rolling now now it will soon be simple to off-load video from the TiVo to a notebook computer for when I travel. Though apparently time-consuming (large amounts of data), I'll be able to upload programs I've previously recorded over the network (perhaps overnight?) and have them on a computer or be able to burn to DVD. This won't require any new hardware. They're also working with Microsoft to allow TiVos to upload shows to hand-held devices.

They've announced recently that they're going to release new boxes that are cable-card compatible, to try to get a handle on that market.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Gadget-Show-TiVo.html
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-tech-show-tivo.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/technology/circuits/06stat.html

That said, I'd happily pay $15/month (or maybe even $20/month) for a Voom HD DVR that would replace my current STB *and* TiVo.

CDH.

 

[Sean Mota]

I like the idea (cable card) and sure it will attract people like you and me. Will the regular consumers be willing to pay for an extra card and extra fee from TIVO? Does the economics makes sense? I just never understood why they never made their software more available.

 

[Plywodstatebum]

I've had TIVO since it came out, Still have my first 14 hour box, Just got a new 80 hour II box also, When I payed for Lifetime, it was my lifetime, Not the lifetime of the receiver, The only thing I'm not happy with is there not planing on making a Stand Alone HD TIVO... and mine has to call long distance to update the guide.. But its still a great product...

 

[vurbano]

Ive never understood why one has to pay a monthly fee for such a thing. you pay for the signal coming to your house and the program guide from your provider, you pay for the equipment which does the work. Any extra fee is bologna.

 

[Bruce]

I like the idea (cable card) and sure it will attract people like you and me. Will the regular consumers be willing to pay for an extra card and extra fee from TIVO? Does the economics makes sense? I just never understood why they never made their software more available.

I never have gotten the idea of TIVO either, I have a E* 501 DVR ( no fee ), to record all I do is hit the guide, curser to the show you want to record, hit record , done.

 

[vurbano]

I never have gotten the idea of TIVO either, I have a E* 501 DVR ( no fee ), to record all I do is hit the guide, curser to the show you want to record, hit record , done.

You can schedule recorings in advance and watch TV at the same time with your current setup right? If so Why do people pay an additional fee for Tivo????????? Just to say they have it? or does it do more than i understand?

 

[Bruce]

You can schedule recorings in advance and watch TV at the same time with your current setup right?

Yep, I don't use it that much at all anymore because its SD, but my daughter uses it on her 50" SD Toshiba in her playroom

If so Why do people pay an additional fee for Tivo????????? Just to say they have it? or does it do more than i understand?

A lot of people says TIVO picks shows that it thinks you might like based on your recording history, network stuff , other things I care nothing about, if there is a show coming up I know I want to watch I'll set the da*n thing to record, easy.
Even the Comcast HD-DVR ( which I will have next Wednesday-Woo Hoo) only charges the STB rental fee.

 

[CWS_kahuna]

The only thing I'm not happy with is there not planing on making a Stand Alone HD TIVO... and mine has to call long distance to update the guide.. But its still a great product...

I feel this will be the eventual fall of Tivo. They need to get off their butt's and get with the times. Sure there is the HD D* Tivo but it costs to much IMO and sounds like it will soon be a paper weight. How much harder can it be to make the box record HD? They obviously already know how to make it work. It can't cost that much more to throw in a component, DVI/HDMI connection and a big hard drive, heck hard drives are so cheap now days. While they are at it, add a network feature that can take place of the dial-up call outs (long distance to some) to do the updates to the box.

With the amount of HDTVs selling now in the US it just makes no sense for the pioneer of DVR recording to be in the stone age. Cable & Dish already have their own HD DVRs, D* and Voom will soon have their own as well. So where does that leave Tivo and their expensive boxes? I guess they are hoping people will stop buying HDTVs. What Tivo does have is a good customer base at this time and a good product that works well, it's just time to see it expand.

 

[CDH]

If so Why do people pay an additional fee for Tivo????????? Just to say they have it? or does it do more than i understand?

Well... though I can't speak for all TiVo owners, I bought a TiVo because there was no other DVR available for Voom (ReplayTV was a big headache to try to set up). My local cable provider (Charter) didn't provide a DVR in my area either. The box was only $99 after rebate.

IMO it is worth paying money for a device that is so easy to use, and beats the heck out of dealing with video-cassettes. I tried that with Voom for a few weeks and it was a disaster. The Voom Program guide failed to fire several times, not to mention all the typical reasons people get a DVR (integrating a program-guide with recording, watching/recording at the same time, time-shifting, season-pass recording, skipping commercials, etc.).

TiVo does other neat things too, acting as a connection between my computer (not in the same room as the TV) and my audio/video system for streaming mp3s. In the future they apparently intend to provide programming streamed over the Internet.

However... aside from the existing and future features I mentioned in my post above (the ability to upload TiVo-recorded programs to a notebook computer will be great! - can ComCast do that?), the best thing on TiVo right now in my opinion is the "wish list" function. (See below)

A lot of people says TIVO picks shows that it thinks you might like based on your recording history, network stuff , other things I care nothing about, if there is a show coming up I know I want to watch I'll set the da*n thing to record, easy.

The large number of channels coming through Voom and local TV x 24/7 means a vast amount of programming that I can't possibly keep track of. But when I sit down at the TV I want to have something to watch, and I want it to start when I want it to start.

TiVo's wish list feature allows TiVo to automatically search all the listings in the 10-day+ program guide for any actor, director, title, or keyword. This means for example, if I want to find movies with Kevin Spacey (or Audrey Tautou, or anyone else...) I can have TiVo record it automatically. Or, one can do what I do: set up a bunch of "wish list" names and have TiVo itemize the upcoming programs. I can then go through them once a week and select which ones I want to record.

Even the Comcast HD-DVR ( which I will have next Wednesday-Woo Hoo) only charges the STB rental fee.

I don't like the monthly price either, but it saves the hassle of dealing with a VCR and Voom's flakey program-planner. I wouldn't be surprised to see the price drop. It is hard to imagine $13/month staying around in the face of the lower costs of Cable STBs, but in my opinion TiVo provides significant added value in a bug-free package.

What I see a lot of on this board (and others) is people comparing one company's *current* existing product with some other company's vapor-ware product and then declaring the existing product doesn't measure up. TiVo works well now and is developing products for the future.

Important note: obviously, Tivo is still SD for me, but that is better than no DVR.

CDH.

 

[CDH]

Tivo's own press-releases...

I know it is CES propganda (just like Voom or D*), but here is the link to TiVo's own press releases about newly released (TiVoToGo) and future ("Tahiti" and HD-Cable DVR).

http://www.tivo.com/5.3.1.asp

CDH.

 

[warkovision]

I always thought one of the cool things about TIVO was that you could start watching a program from the beginning (say the Superbowl) while it was still recording the rest of the event. If you happened to get home an hour late, there would be no need to join the show "in progress" until it was finished recording and then go back and catch the stuff you missed. Or am I wrong about that?

 

[CDH]

I always thought one of the cool things about TIVO was that you could start watching a program from the beginning (say the Superbowl) while it was still recording the rest of the event. If you happened to get home an hour late, there would be no need to join the show "in progress" until it was finished recording and then go back and catch the stuff you missed. Or am I wrong about that?

This is indeed a feature of Tivo and (I believe) most other DVRs. When I lived in a Time Warner Cable area a couple of years ago I believe the DVR I had worked this way. I think this is what people refer to as "time-shifting" and is available on some of the DVR recorders on the market too.

CDH.

 

[jagouar]

This is indeed a feature of Tivo and (I believe) most other DVRs. When I lived in a Time Warner Cable area a couple of years ago I believe the DVR I had worked this way. I think this is what people refer to as "time-shifting" and is available on some of the DVR recorders on the market too.

CDH.

Most if not all DVR's could do this... what Tivo does for recording TV was do what mac has done for the PC and AOL does for the internet... make things for the idiot. Thier guide and season pass and its basic UI is what most people e-hump tivo over. That said everybody else has caught up with tivo now and some have blown past it (the voOm dvr and most cable hd-dvr's for instance.. if it works like voOm describes)

 

[CDH]

Most if not all DVR's could do this... what Tivo does for recording TV was do what mac has done for the PC and AOL does for the internet... make things for the idiot. Thier guide and season pass and its basic UI is what most people e-hump tivo over. That said everybody else has caught up with tivo now and some have blown past it (the voOm dvr and most cable hd-dvr's for instance.. if it works like voOm describes)

Such negativity! (I'll ignore the mac vs. pc flame war aside, though many of my colleagues using dual G5 macs would want to argue this one.)

Quite apart from the fact that Voom's DVR isn't yet available, TiVo also has some new features (some available, some coming soon) not available on other DVRs that move beyond the basic guide/ season pass/ UI. See my posts above.

The big killer right now is the difficulty of creating a DVR that can handle HD streams. Unless a proprietary box (whether cable or satellite) it is currently almost impossible to create an STB that can do the compression necessary on the fly, at least at a reasonable price. Obviously this means that as a Voom subscriber I'm going to want the Voom DVR when available because it will be able to store the compressed digital streams direct from the satellite or OTA antenna.

This isn't a "Tivo" problem per se, but rather one facing manufacturers of all non-proprietary off-the-shelf DVRs.

Tivo's future market is going to be the cable industry where a cable-card compatible HD-DVR will be able to handle digital cable streams.

CDH.

 

[Sean Mota]

I think this article has very good points TiVo Faces Threat As Options Multiply

Competition in the growing and lucrative industry is intensifying as cable providers, satellite operators and consumer electronics companies push ahead with models of their own, giving consumers more choices while threatening to significantly blunt TiVo Inc.'s edge. Its subscribers, who tend to be an evangelistic bunch, account for one in three of the estimated 6.5 million U.S. households with digital video recorders.

Its subscribers, who tend to be an evangelistic bunch, account for one in three of the estimated 6.5 million U.S. households with digital video recorders.

But the small company based in the south San Francisco Bay community of Alviso is now playing in a land of giants, faced with a mass market of consumers looking for convenience and low prices.

Even with its latest innovations, TiVo will find it difficult to compete against the clones of deep-pocketed cable or satellite operators. Those companies can afford to subsidize hardware costs and already have tens of millions of customers on their rosters.

News Corp.'s DirecTV, a longtime partner whose satellite customers accounted for about two-thirds of TiVo's subscribers by the end of October, said that it will introduce later this year a new media receiver that employs the DVR software of its sister company, NDS Group PLC. DirecTV is also expected to continue offering TiVo-based recorders at least through early 2007, when its contract with TiVo ends.

 

[WaitingForMineToWork]

Not so fast...

Judging by Tivo sales this Holiday season I wouldn't count them out so fast. We're on a voom forum for which it's all about HD and as things may be moving that way, it's still moving slow. Plus, Tivo is moving that way also with the Cablecard.

I currently have a Tivo and the SA 8000HD DVR from Comcast. I would gladly pay 10 dollars per month for the cablecard plus the $299 for the lifetime service from Tivo for a HD Tivo.

The SA records HD and has dual tuners. That's as much credit as I'll give it. It's ugly, clunky, and you can't start a show which is in the middle of recording without rewinding to the beginning and then getting tossed from the show when it finishes recording.

The Tivo has a reliable guide, smart season pass feature which let's you give priority to recordings, wishlist recordings by actor, title, keyword, and more, can stream mp3s and jpeg files from my computer, can transfer shows to my laptop for business travel, and it's all done in an intuitive, fluid and speedy manner so that my grandmother in a nursing home can even use it. If a person has multiple tivos they can even transfer shows between rooms. There is a reason the people that own them are so evangelical, just try using one for a while.

 

[Stargazer]

Its going to the dogs.