TiVo's next act: software only?
By Marc Perton 
posted Mar 6th 2006 4:51PM
posted Mar 6th 2006 4:51PM
While TiVo has bundled its
services with set-top boxes provided by other companies -- at one point DirecTV was said to account for nearly 70% of
TiVo's customers -- the company has long promoted itself as being a hardware provider as well as a service. Now there
are signs that the company may be moving away from that model and shifting to an all-service future. In recent comments
to analysts, TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said that he envisions much of the company's future growth as coming from partnerships
with cable operators. "We're a total software upgrade when you think of the cable side of our business. The more
that are out there, the more we have an opportunity to roll out to, the more we have the ability for cable subscribers
to become TiVo subscribers." While risky, the strategy might be TiVo's best bet to stay alive in the industry it
helped create, given that many cable operators are already providing DVR service using boxes and software provided by
companies such as Scientific Atlanta. TiVo's main cable deal so far is with Comcast, but the company has been hurt by
delays in rolling out that partnership's Tivo-capable boxes, which will be made by Motorola.
Ultimately what I'd like to see is a PCI tuner from DirectTV and downloadable Tivo software compatible with Media Center.
I think TiVo are missing a trick by not selling a Windows version of their software, possibly bundled withan MPEG card. Recoding wouldn't be such a big issue - they've already migrated the same code from PPC to MIPS.
I fully expect that the system I replace TiVo with will be PC based rather than being a dedicated STB. Right now there is no PC software to match TiVo, but that won't last.
Don't see the big deal here, you could always buy a Tivo that was made by someone other than TiVo. My parents have a Sony branded TiVo along with a TiVo branded. My brother has a Humax DVD recorder with TiVo.
TiVo has been looking to de-prioritize their hardware business for some time now, while I don't see it disappearing anytime soon I think you'll see the trend continue.
There have been no delays in getting the Comcast box out. From the time of the original announcement tivo said the service would begin late 2006. They gave a demo at CES and according to both companies everything is moving along as planned.
The boxes that will feature the Tivo software are the motorola boxes that Comcast is currently deoploying, once the service is ready to go live they will simply download the software into your living room.
Hardware has never been Tivo's plan, it was also the service side of things.
This is just another tivo bashing post with out having all the facts
Yeah, this sounds vaguely familiar:
http://www.engadget.com/2005/12/18/replaytv-to-go-pc-and-kill-set-top-boxes-in-2006/
I just want to buy a Series3 Tivo with CableCard slot.
I use my Motorola Moxi box for HD and it "works", sort f, but it is way to buggy, quirky and unreliable to ever replace my Series2 Tivo.
Hasn't this happened before?
I can't imagine that anyone would choose to go the p.o.s. software provided on the Scientific Atlanta box.
I gave up Tivo (and Direct TV) to get the local cable company's bundle including fast internet- I'm sorry I switched over every single time I want to do any recording more complicated that "Press Record"-
As for the program listing- can't display more than week into the future, can't record all shows I haven't seen (only choices are every episode, every episode in this time slot or ONLY first runs), can't eliminate channels I never watch (have to wade through endless shopping channels). Seems like if someone could match Tivo's software, it would have already been done.
You get the idea- the moment I can put my Samsung made Tivo box on my cable I'll do it.
"Hardware has never been Tivo's plan, it was also the service side of things." This is the case. TiVo has always been positioning itself to provide VOD and PVR interfaces for content distributors (cable companies and satellite TV companies).
Virtually everything of import in this article/opinion piece is misinformation, misleading, bad analysis, or flat out wrong.
"the company has long promoted itself as being a hardware provider as well as a service"
Untrue. TiVo from the very beginning stated that it wanted to be a software and services company only, not a hardware company. TiVo has been in the hardware business so far because it had no other options. In the Series 1 era TiVo subsidized the hardware, when Philips and Sony were selling TiVo hardware. In the Series 2 era TiVo stopped subsidizing the hardware and was forced to mostly market the TiVo hardware under the TiVo name alone, apart from a short lived partnership with Sony and the DVD/TiVo combo boxes from Pioneer, Toshiba, and Humax.
"Now there are signs that the company may be moving away from that model and shifting to an all-service future"
That was the plan all along.
"In recent comments to analysts, TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said that he envisions much of the company's future growth as coming from partnerships with cable operators"
That's future growth, which does not in any way negate TiVo's existing and future standalone market; he's talking about cable deals replacing the bulk of TiVo users that will eventually be lost if the DirecTV deal goes away permanently. In other words, there will still be many, many standalone TiVo users, but Rogers hopes that a growing percentage of TiVo business will be with cable partnerships, which is hardly a new initiative from TiVo. TiVo has been trying to move in this direction for years; the only difference now is that Rogers sounds more hopeful of actually making this happen.
"While risky, the strategy might be TiVo's best bet to stay alive in the industry it helped create"
The writer provides no real evidence for his notion that this is a "risky" strategy, especially considering the barriers to future standalone growth. TiVo's strategy is only "risky" if you think that TiVo is safer following the 1999 strategy of relying on standalone TiVos alone. No one thinks that old strategy makes any sense in the era of cable DVRs. If this new cable box strategy is "risky" it is far less "risky" than doing nothing.
"given that many cable operators are already providing DVR service using boxes and software provided by companies such as Scientific Atlanta"
The software and user interface for these cable DVRs is atrocious. It's the typical product of the cable monopolies: high priced, bad service. With competion from satellite and now telecom fiber optics (ie, Verizon's FiOS and other similar "fiber optic broadband" providers), and with the opening up of the cable market via CableCARD, cable can no longer operate in the old, monopolistic fashion, but must offer customers better value for money. And that's what TiVo does best.
"TiVo's main cable deal so far is with Comcast, but the company has been hurt by delays in rolling out that partnership's Tivo-capable boxes"
This is flatout untrue. There have been no such "delays". The deal was scheduled to roll out some time later this year - when they announce a launch date and then fail to meet it, then, and only then, will you be able to credibly talk about "delays". TiVo and Comcast are still in the development phase, porting the TiVo software over to Comcast's Motorola hardware. If it ships in late 2006, it will still be "on schedule".
In regards to the people who want TiVo software to run on their PCs: this is very unlikely to happen, due to the support nightmare this would cause TiVo. Consider how much customer support trouble that USB-WiFi adapters caused TiVo. TiVo would be crazy to try to support TiVo running on PCs, with their plethora of hardware combinations, which is a customer support problem of several orders of magnitude greater than supporting USB-WiFi adapters.
TiVo can provide the kind of reliablity it does, without having enormous support costs, because the hardware platform is well known, consistent, tailored to do DVR work and nothing else, and under TiVo's control. Porting TiVo to the PC would throw this advantage away. ReplayTV is doing this, but that's a desperation move from a dead platform.
One idea that has been suggested on the TiVo Community forums is to eventually shrink the TiVo hardware down to the size of a PC card, and then when the card is installed, have that card control the PC when in TiVo mode. That would eliminate most of the support problems, if the TiVo software was running on its own disk drive or its own partition, and the TiVo PC card had full control of the PC, that could work. But it's not an option right now.
Simply having the TiVo software running as a standalone software program running on top of Windows -or even on top of Linux or as its own standalone TiVo OS in its own partition - not only is that a support nightmare for Tivo, it's also a sure way to make the TiVo software as sucky and unreliable as all the other PC based DVR software out there. People expect TiVo to just work, and to work reliably and flawlessly 100% of the time with an absolute minimum of oversight from the user. TiVo can't gaurantee that if TiVo were simply another software program running on a PC; TiVo is not going to ruin its well earned reputation for reliability just to please a handful of PC-fanboys.
I'd gladly pay $200 for a Hi-Def DirecTV PC tuner card with TiVo software.
Galley,
I'd gladly pay that for a PC card as well.. I will not like to pay $13-$15 a month for the service though...
It would be nice to be able to buy a license to the TiVO software, and then use a listing of "supported cards" that TiVO could spec out to the various hardware companies. TiVO could even setup a packaged version of Linux (or have their software for Linux) that will allow people to run their software. They could charge $50-$100 for a license (on top of the $13 a month charge) and I would gladly pay for it. As long as the software did not require me to buy anything TiVO branded (e.g. remote control, forced hardware, or limited capabilities).
Unfortunately, I never see this happening, or at least not in the near future. I'm waiting to see what Myth and Beyond can come up with as soon as the CableCARD 2.0 hardware actually hits the market. I've been putting off building a HTPC for this, but I am most likely going to pick up a pair of the WinTV Dual Tuner MCE cards and start myself off at least to be able to record basic cable channels. My ATI AIW 8500V allows me to hook up my cable box directly to the PC and record already (with great results!) which is enough for me to do direct-recordings right now.
Overall I basically need to scrap the money up to purchase cards and get my PC running, but I would like to see TiVO roll something out because their software is obviously the best out there. I'm holding my breathe, but not for too long.
I've got two TiVo Series 2 boxes in my house. A few months ago I got the Motorola Moxi HD box from Adelphia so I could record HD. The Moxi interface is a horrible TiVo copycat that I put up with only for the HD recording. If TiVo hooked up with my cable company and offered HD support I'd be ecstatic!
If I'm going to pay a subscription for a service I want the hardware for free, NTL/Telewest do that, every mobile network in the UK does that (in the UK, if you pay for a handset, it's pretty much almost always Pay As You Go or a VERY expensive phone indeed)
If I'm going to pay for hardware, I don't want to pay any monthly subscriptions unless it's for premium channels (stuff that I won't get on Freeview) or paid for services such as downloading feature-length films or full-length TV shows through the box to watch at my leisure.