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Slate Predicts The End Of TiVo
wiredog writes "Slate has an article about why TiVo (the company, not the idea) is destined to fail. It suffers from the same first mover disadvantage that did in the Newton and the Amiga."
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It's an article from Slate (a Microsoft publication) saying TiVo's dead. (Microsoft had DVR plans for XBox, last I heard.)
:^)
Whatever... I'll still buy a TiVo once I can afford it. And sit it down next to that Amiga500 I've always wanted to get.
Just like the Ford Motor Company ...oh wait
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
A site owned by a wannabe PVR maker, bashing the most successful PVR in history. Shocker!
Tivo is dead! What's next? Broadband? Linux! Say it ain't so Billy!
Too bad your very post itsn't a suitable example to support your point. :P
"Old man yells at systemd"
It doesn't matter for me, though, I have my VCR programmed to record Mother Angelica every day.
A. Rightmann
Does the author (writing at the behest of the Microsoft entity Slate) expect that while Tivo will fail, UltimateTV (another Microsoft entity and Tivo competitor) will succeed?
People have started saying, "I'll just TiVo the show." The name TiVo is directy connected to it's function. Right now, I don't know any other company that does what they do. When I go to a Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. looking for a device to digitally record TV show, I'm going to go look for "TiVo".
I suspect that those same families still have their clocks flashing 12:00AM and do little more than read email on their P4 2GHz computers.
You're always going to have people who simply aren't going to make use of technology due to phobia.
However, the opposite side to their figures is that 70% of the people given TiVos ARE using it.
And I honestly can say that once you teach someone initially how to navigate through the menus, having the TiVo automatically catch your favorite shows whenever they're on, despite most schedule changes, is far easier than the hassles of putting in new tapes all the time and manually programming a change in a particular week's showtime.
.. I signed up for the yearly subscription thinking that I probably wouldn't use it for more than a year so why pay 200 bucks for a lifetime membership.
Well, over two years later and I'm still loving my Tivo. I use it more than any other AV component I own and I couldn't imagine not having it.
The devotee will even use TiVo as a verb
You can't buy that kinda of brand name recognition. ie q-tip, xerox
And compared with a VCR or DVD player, a TiVo is difficult to set up and maintain
Difficult to setup is accurate, but I'm not sure what is hard to maintain. All you have to do is watch TV shows and click on delete if you don't like them. Hit Thumbs up to stuff you like and thumbs down to stuff you don't. Not generalizing women, but my wife, who isn't that computer saavy has already learned how to bump her Season Passes over mine. I don't think it's difficult at all.
If TiVo does fall by the wayside, it will leave behind a throng of adoring fans
*sniff*
Live web cams
The Amiga failed in the marketplace not because they were the first mover, as the article suggests, but because the management at Commodore was hopelessly inept and corrupt. Instead of spending money marketing the Amiga and creating markets for them, they instead blew hundreds of millions of dollars on executive perks like private jets and company yaghts, not to mention obscene bonuses and stock option deals. It's failing had far more to do with Enron-style executive hubris than it ever did with market forces.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Well we were looking at buying an amiga(years and years ago) for control software development and playing games etc.... But opted for a PC and built a ISA DAC/ACD card out of a kit instead.
I can honestly say that I never looked back, I won't buy an X-Box or PS2 because, I have a PC. I won't be buying a Tivio, I'd rather by equivilent hardware and put it into my PC.
I use my PC to play DVD's, Music, Watch TV, Play games (though not so much now adays) unless someone comes up with a serious contender to the PC that's what I'm sticking with.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I just received a notice that DirecTV will be taking over the TiVo service for my unit. They also mentioned that the graphics will change on the interface, but none of the functionality. Does anyone know more about this?
Also to get a cheap DirecTV/TiVo unit, hit www.americansatellite.com and if you are a new subscriber they have the Phillips unit for $150. I bought mine about 7 months ago at $99. This included the unit, the dish and two installation kits.
"Tivo is doomed for failure! And remember, when it dies, you won't be able to use it anymore."
"Hmmm, then, " says thoughtful consumer, "I had better put off that Tivo purchase then."
"NEW FROM MICROSOFT: The X-Home Media Workstation, with PVR and X-Box compatibility!"
"Wow! Microsoft, eh? Why, sign me up!"
I don't think the Commodore 64/Amiga analogy is quite accurate. Somewhat of a slam (apologies), but the Commodore 64 was a very successful product, even by the article's own numbers. 22,000,000 units sold, versus 500,000 TiVos. While Amiga failed on the heel of a successful product, you can't say "Look! TiVo's going to fail! They're trying to make a followup to a successful product! Look at the Commodore 64!"
Okay, I agree a bit in that the TiVo is difficult to extoll the virtues of (in a small number of words), perhaps in the same way as an Amiga. We (consumers) don't have the vocabulary to describe what TiVo does, and that really really has hurt TiVo. Most people just don't get their mind completely wrapped around the product. "Oh. That's the thing that pauses live TV?" "Yeah. Isn't that some kind of television set?"
Perhaps TiVo is more Jack Tramiel than Commodore/Amiga. Jack though that word-of-mouth would carry him through. So much for the Atari home computer division! TiVo needs to educate people on its product.
About the difficult of install? I'd think the learning curve for America Online would be as difficult as a TiVo. But that's its greatest blessing and its greatest bane. It is a very different device.
Probably the best into line I can say when describing a TiVo is the effect: "It completely changes the way you view television at home, and for the better."
Really, in reading this article, I really don't see how they go about providing their title, that it is destined for the trash heap of history. While that might be true, they don't get into any real fact. Just neat stories.
If TiVo (the company) closed down, the "500,000" users (as this article claims) will have a useless appliance..... UNLESS they hack it. Getting the program guide through the Internet would become the acceptable method of usage for TiVo (whereas right now it's a taboo idea only whispered in the dark corners of TiVo hacking message boards), and old TiVo's would sell on eBay for more than what they sell today in the store.
Read the fucking article and when your little troll eyes get to:
The other 20 percent? Gaming consoles like Xbox 2 and the next generation of Sony PlayStations will likely include DVR technology
You'll understand why this isn't a plug for MS, but an unbiased article on a site that just happens to be owned by MS. Believe me, I'm sure that if MS was censoring articles on Slate, you would never see mention of PS, who right now is MS's biggest competitor in the gaming console wars.
Live web cams
How was the Amiga "not a success?" Sure, it's not around and popular today, like PCs, but then again, neither are Apple IIs, Commodore 64s, Atari 8-bits, Atari STs, etc. It's called progress.
With TiVo, we're talking about a VERY simple concept. To the end user, all it does is record and play back (and all that other good stuff). It's not something you have to go out and buy software for, and hope that the latest and greatest Laser printer will work for it.
Comparing TiVo to (un)successful computer platforms is like apples to oranges.
Also, I didn't really understand this part:
Joe Six-Pack, however, was stumped. VCRs and video-game machines had just recently made a splash in the mass market.
Umm... "Recently" as in "8 years before?" (The Amiga 1000 came out in 1985. The Atari VCS (aka 2600) came out in 1977.)
This, too:
he Amiga, which featured such revolutionary perks as a full-color screen (a big plus in the age of green-and-black Apple IIc monitors) and stereo sound.
Let's see - we what else had full-color screens? Atari 400/800 (1979), Commodore 64 (1982), and hey! Apple II! (You just needed the right monitor, I believe.)
Apple II's came out in 1977 and was still in production through 1993.
I can nitpick further, but I actually have something productive to do... somewhere... (checking pockets) No, not there...
Not bad. Use their online magazine to predict the fall of TiVo the company. Then sit back as the stop price drops, making them ripe for takeover. Once consumed *burp* take the existing technology and incorporate it into the XBox.
If they weren't Microsoft it would be illegal.
The problem is, there IS no solution equivalent to a PC that matches Tivo's functionality. (At least not yet).
I too use my PC as a complete TV/DVD/music/gaming system, but intelligent PVR is still not mature on that platform. If I want Tivo functionality today, I have to go out and buy a Tivo (or a ReplayTV, or...)
The examples they give would be the same for any PVR, not just TiVo, this includes ReplayTV and XBox2. And a TiVo is really not that hard to use. My mom that has a hard time with email can use my TiVo with no problem. They'll be more scared of a DVD-R because they won't want to waste a blank DVD (yes, even if it's rewritable).
Free Mac Mini
Sorry GameBoy, but the Atari Lynx, Sega GameGear, Sega Nomad and TurboGrafix16 are throwing you into the ash heap of history.
Oh wait!
when i see it.. nice try Microsoft.. how come they can predict the end of Tivo.. yet never saw the end of webTV, ultimateTV, and possibly the ?Xbox?.. Let's believe them for a second.. All Tivo has to do is roll out a less expensive unit ($150-$200 price range) and keep up with the times (how about an hdtv-compatible tivo in the coming years).. I think there's a good possibility that Tivo's will be around for a while..
I predict the end of Slate before the end of Tivo.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
you can get the box w/ a lifetime subscription for $250 more.
It's a lot up front, and I think they offer monthly for the sake of people who would rather buy a $400 box than a $650 one.
But as a happy TiVo subscriber, let me tell you this:
I would play twice the current $13/month for the TiVo service. It really is worth it!
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
The reason the Newton was cancelled was so Apple could focus on getting OS X going. Apple needed OS X to build its future on. Once the OS X transition is over (end of this year, according to Jobs), Apple will be free to expand again.
The Newton is still being used by people, and has a loyal following. Its excellent handwriting recognition lives on in Jaguar's Inkwell. I believe a new Amiga computer should be coming out soon, if it hasn't already. Neither product is really dead; they live on in the hearts of those who love them.
"His return is near..." Godzilla 2000 trailer
G Countdown: 20 days (www.godzillaoncube.com)
Slate made a pretty big mistake in their analysis of why TiVo is going to fail. They mostly chalk it up to that "first mover" disadvantage that kills good products.
... which is now dead.
Only, TiVo wasn't the first mover. Panasonic was with the Showstopper
Some of the other tidbits are accurate, such as TiVo's difficulty in explaining what a "PVR" is, but that would be true of ANY device in the market. However, they really aren't trying to compare it to a VCR. The ads have always touted features VCRs just don't have, like the "Trick Play" features that come with having a Live TV "buffer".
There's also one other thing that they neglect to mention (probably because it didn't fit in the author's view), when they mention that other machines will have DVR capabilities too.
TiVo SERVICE is what makes the PVR so popular with TiVo customers. The hardware is all fine and dandy, but it's that software that is easy to use, and the features in it that make it special. TiVo's "Season Passes" can follow programs around when they switch time slots on the same channel. No other competitior can do that, and it's a godsend!
Regardless, TiVo is doing a lot of things right. They MAY go under, but it won't be for any other reason than the mass market just not being ready for it yet.
WTF?
Seriously, mine went from $10 to $13. I was actually pretty pissed about that w/ the better hardware offerings from sonicblue.
Well, the article is about as insightful as a "first-post" troll but I absolutely loved the BestBuy TiVo ad at the end.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Or wait - maybe the funniest part is that this article is on Microsoft real estate - Microsoft who watched UltimateTV die. And isn't there something in the pipes for XBox in this respect?
Schnapple
Honestly, I think their number one reason for failure will be the price of their product, and their insistence on pushing loads of services with it.
I know a lot of people who have been interested in it, but can't justify the price. I myself would really enjoy one because my work schedule makes it very difficult for me to catch shows. However, I don't like being forced to buy into a bunch of other stuff just to buy the product, and for what it does, I can't justify the price in my mind.
It's really just an example of consumer preference dictating the market... clearly the product is not placed in a position where the public needs it.
People who don't have a TiVo belong to at least one of these 3 groups:
* Can't afford it
* Don't know what it is
* Don't watch TV.
I believe the second group is by far the largest. To support TiVo, educate everybody you know about it. Hey, it's Linux based, it's really cool, and they actually perform - GASP, SHOCK! - usability testing.
The article says the Newton died because Apple released it before "ironing out the kinks."
The difference with TiVo is that a TiVo WORKS and does its job well. There are few minor new features I wish my TiVos had (the ability to erase part of a saved show - erase from here, erase to here) but I've rarely had it fail to work a the job it's designed to do.
Why do I have the trepidation that if some other DVR wins the market, like if Echostart kills off the the DirectTiVo in the DirecTV merger, it'll be another case where "the choice of the market" can't do what the original could. "Coming soon! The ability to specify the recording of shows with your favorite actor or director! (like TiVo Wishlists).
Also the article bashing TiVo has a Best Buy ad on the bottom of the page touting the Series 2 TiVo. Nice touch.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
What a load of FUD. What's his solution? Buy nothing? Use a VCR as a poor solution? Wait until 2005 when cable companies will supposedly rule the market with integrated PVR/cable box systems?
//e or a Apple //gs? Last time I checked, there wasn't a very big user base for those, either. Too bad he didn't pine on Betamax, the laserdisc, minidisc, or any of the other technologies many people still consider superior to their peers and still use today.
No matter what happens, I have had plenty of use from my TiVo and I can't imagine watching TV without it. I think I have watched live TV twice since I purchased my unit many moons ago.
Come on, Koerner, it's called technology. I had a C= 64, and an Amiga 1000. I used the heck out of them. Early adopter? What was I supposed to do, buy nothing? Or an Apple
We're tech savvy people. We will pay for good technology. We don't wait around for generations of a product to come out, since we know a better one is always going to come out. Technology goes stale. It's part of the game. I don't care if someone wants to hide in the corner, afraid to buy technology because they think like this guy. I'll be sitting there, with my latest geek toy, enjoying it until it's time for an upgrade.
I don't want a one device does it all solution, I just want the ability to interconnect them all. :(
I want the means to pipe the media to the inteface of my choice at the time of my choice, but I don't want a machine dedicated to controlling my multi-media hub. Hell I don't even want the internet to be required, which is why I just use my tivo and do not have a subscription.
My ati 9700pro does similar functions but not as well as the dedicated device and it takes over the machine
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
While I'm certain that dedicated Tivo Slashdotters will jump all over the story, I wanted to focus on the premise that simply because it is first, it will fail. First movers suffer from the idea not being complete. Newton's handwriting recognition was dismal, making it impossible to rely on. Sure it was first, defined the category and created a model for others to improve upon, but it stunk. Tivo is really well thought out. It doesn't crash, it has a simple intuitive interface, and it is fun to use. They take an incedibly complicated concept and reduce it to a remote control driven interface. Mircosoft crashed and burned with their ultimateTV mis-adventure trying to copy Tivo. Tivo has some real first mover challenges since the concept is truly different. The authors disucssion about Recordable DVDs misses the point of Tivo's real value. Tivo makes it incredibly easy to record a bunch of shows and get to them. Anything with a removable medium means that you need to put the medium in to record. Tivo eliminates that. If I don't get to one of the 5 instances of Cheers that Tivo recorded for me, it prioritizes and overwrites. First movers have the challange of balancing the desire to be first to market with the need to get the product right. Tivo's product is right on.
Comet are doing Tivos for £150 on their web site now. £350 for a tivo and lifetime sub is pretty reasonable I reckon.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
You'll understand why this isn't a plug for MS, but an unbiased article on a site that just happens to be owned by MS.
And when you grow up and stop assuming everyone who is even mildly critical of your employer^H^H^H^H^H^H favorite software vendor isn't necessarilly a troll, perhaps you'll be able to ponder larger pictures and marketing strategies that go beyond a particlar brand item v. another to encompass an attempt at taking over an entire market v. another.
Hint: Microsoft's push toward DRM and Palladium has a lot more to gain by taking over the TiVo market than it does by taking over the playstation market. Why? Tivo is based upon open, non-DRM hardware and an open, GPLed operating system, while playstation is itself a proprietary player and, while it is a competitor, it does not stand in the way of Microsoft's DRM and Palladium strategies, despite having a GNU/Linux kit available for hobbiests. TiVo, on the other hand, as a widely adopted PVR that does use standard PC parts and a free operating system, does represent not only a potential barrier to Microsoft's DRM-and-Palladium-Ueber-Alles strategy, it has two other factors which the PS lacks:
1) Potentially a much larger marketplace than PS (nearly every household has a VCR, while many fewer have game consoles of any kind)
2) A legitimate competitor to whome consumers will flock if given a choice between that and a DRM/Palladium crippled alternative.
Many informed people believe the X-Box may well be a Palladium trial balloon and a test bed for emerging Microsoft DRM technology. If true, its use and penetration of the game console market is incidental compared to those qualities and the value they represent to Microsoft, and in that light it becomes clear that TiVo is a much more potent threat to Microsoft's plans than the playstation is likely to ever become. In which case, throwing a bone to the PS in an attempt to appear "neutral" (which is hardly likely of a Microsoft publication, any more than Linux Weekly is neutral when it posts a link to a pro-Linux article. Even more telling, this article was written by a Microsoft author, not merely linked to by a Microsoft site) costs them nothing in the persuit of their larger strategy.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Doncha just hate to see good sound products have to struggle slowly up the market acceptance curve while various cruddy products get to be a lot more ubiquitous than they deserve? I do.
I own 2 TiVo's that I've upgraded so combined they hold about one third of terabyte of disk space. I love `em. My wife loves `em. I didn't mind shelling out the $500 for 2 lifetime subscriptions. I find the interface simple and intuitive. There are only minor inconveniences, like the plus and minus few minute automatic buffers on the ends of shows colliding in an non-intelligent way when shows on the same channel and type (eg, marathon sessions of back to back episodes).
I think you find astounding satisfaction with TiVo's from their owners.
At the same time, people outside the geek community are generally unaware of the entire concept of digital PVR and have never heard of a TiVo.
Word of mouth advertising is precious, but slow. It will be really interesting to see if TiVo gets enough growth in its customer base to bring it into profitability or (more likely) to where it gets bought out by some M&A hungry firm and the techy founders can retire wealthy and stop worrying about important but boring business issues. They desperately lack a big general advertising push. OTOH, one of the big selling points, speeding through commercials at 20x or 60x seems like it might raise a few eyebrows in the same advertising community!
I'm curious if TiVo's growth rate is increasing, whether there is any acceleration in TiVo's market.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
For the first year I had it, I really loved my Tivo. Lately though, I've realized the service just isn't growing like it could. My AudioStation, for example, originally shipped as a simple network MP3 player. Now it has a web interface, a programmers API and the ability to play many other formats. Tivo has the ability to do the same things, but instead, it's upgrades only add a few features that you really have to look for. Even with the new hardware (series 2) you get a couple of usb ports and a little more drive space.
- What about HDTV support?
- What about multiple TVs (If I buy another Tivo, I have to move to the room that recorded the show to watch it)?
- What about interfacing with my cable box so I don't have to build an 'IR Tent'?
- What about dual tuners on the more expensive models?
They could do so much with this technology... but they don't. I think if you ask around, most people who love Tivo aren't really in love with the brand as much as the PVR technology in general. If someone else comes up with the features, users will move on.Ah, but at that point, I may as well just save some money and buy the TiVo! ;)
At least I can use it on my big TV downstairs.
I want a tivo that act's exaclty like my VCR.. something I can set the time on from the remote, set what channel and time to record and for an added neato but not required... to label it.
that's it.... no requirement for it to dial home or talk to the master server. TiVo is great, but if I dont want to subscribe to the service then I should have the ability to operate it... COMPLETELY! so Tivo... update the software so I can set the clock myself and I'll buy one.
Until the product is able to be permanently seperated from the company I wont touch it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Is it possible to get one of these and have it work with commercial skipping and saving shows (recording starting at a time you choose) and not pay the $12.50/mth fee? It doesn't seem worth it to pay for show listings and to have them follow my tv watching habits. Actually all I want is the tv pausing feature, is there anything that just does that?
Last year TiVo spent almost nothing on advertising, and it's interesting why:
It turns out that MS was pumping millions into Ultimate TV advertising, and enthused customers were flocking to Circuit City and Good Guys, only to be told that they'd have to also get a satellite dish and service, regardless of what they already had.
Seeing their frustration, salespeople show them the TiVo, which works with whatever service they already have. Every dollar spent by Microsoft generated more TiVo revenue than UTV revenue...
Kevin Fox
Slate, a Microsoft magazine, says Tivo (a personal video recorder) will fail. Then they say that the X-box (a Microsoft toy) will rule the pvr world. Then, at the bottom of their site, have a kickback link for a Tivo at BestBuy. Now that's what I call journalism.
The middle mind speaks!
They're not interested in producing their own box. They might be interested in a product badged with their own brand though. No reason that shouldn't actually be a Tivo.
Note that Tivo is really the subscription service. The boxes themselves are made by Sony, Thompson, Phillips etc.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
This phenomenon is well-documented in Clayton Christensen's book The Innovator's Dilemma. It's an interesting read.
The point isn't that PVR will fail -- just that the long term prognistics for this company aren't good.
I bought a PVR card for a pc. It sucks, the software is no good. But the card was $50. There's no reason why the software couldn't be good -- it just isn't. There are 3rd party apps that tie into tv listings just like TiVo does.
TiVo is nice, and they make it work, but you pay an awful lot for the storage space. TiVo is vulnerable to pressure from the big media companies, too, in a way that other solutions won't be. And I have to say that it's very nice to be able to record to Divx files that can be saved or shared.
I particularly liked the ad for a tivo i got at the bottom of a page predicting tivo's demise.
"Give someone a program, frustrate them for a day... Teach someone to program, frustrate them for a lifetime."
Name recognition is not everything ... and if the name is valuable, someone with a better business model can always buy it.
It wasn't long ago people were piling obscene
amounts of moneys on start ups because they might be the next microsoft. Now this joker (and I've heard it elsewhere lately) is saying that start ups are bad because they don't have the wisdom to compete in the big bad marketplace. Did all companies just spring forth from one big meta-company called Adam and Eve LLC while all of the start ups have failed?
OK, maybe I'm a little biased. I was a happy TiVo owner for almost a year -- until the modem broked. TiVo only offered a 60 or 90 day warranty, so I would have had to send them the box, wait a few weeks, and pay them at least $99 to repair it.
So I bought an Ultimate TV. Since MSFT was shutting down the division, you could get them for $99 including the dish and installation.
Plus, with the UltimateTV, I can record 2 shows at once, in original quality(including Dolby Digital).
The reason I say it should die is their service policy. The failing modem is an extremely common problem with the units (just read any TiVo board), and they fail to recognize it.
TiVo has a far superior and faster interface. Their service releases give great new and timesaving features, and they listen to user feedback and do usability. If it weren't for their lousy service, I would be their biggest advocate.
It's it's most basic ability. You're missing 90% of it's functionality if you don't subscribe to the schedule service. Since the sub is only £200 for the lifetime of the box, it's hardly a big deal.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
ReplayTV's latest units (the 4000 and 4500 series) take care of this. You connect them all to your home Ethernet and you can watch shows in the bedroom that you recorded in the living room. They even have enough CPU now to be streaming one show while you record another.
Replay has also added other features that TIVO doesn't have, like web-based scheduling without compromising the security of your home network, photo viewing and sending shows across the net.
Sorry to be such a blatant shill, but I've owned a ReplayTV for about 3 years now, and I think they're great. In many ways I think they are much nicer than TIVO. (I don't own stock in SonicBlue or even know anyone who works for them).
In the UK, that's £200. I don't know what it is in the US.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Where are all of TiVo's competitors? I don't see them. TiVo is the only company that offers what they offer in so far as I've seen.
They have a good name associated in the public's mind with excellence. Anyone who owns a TiVo will tell you its great. They also have excellent customer relations; refusing to cave in to he MPAA's demands and standing up for their customer's right to skip commercials endeared them to their customers.
I don't see TiVo failing anytime soon. Yes, they haven't made a profit...yet. Being realistic, its only a matter of time before such devices begin to become common-place. They'll be sold with TV's standard and in computers. And as that starts to hapen, TiVo will be the one who's products will be used for it. Why TiVo as opposed to MS' products? Because TiVo has a name associated with excellence, and a good reputation.
There is no such thing as first-comers disadvantage. Quite the opposite, there's a finder's reward for the company that comes up with an innovative and original idea or product. Eidos sold 30-million copies of Tomb Raider games (from their introduction till today) off of such a finder's reward, because no one else had a product which even compared.
There is, however, such a thing as a startup disadvantage, because you have nothing to fall back on and have to claw your way up from the bottom. TiVo may be an upstart, but they have a viable business model which will rake in plenty of money soon enough.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
...that Sony or DirecTv would buy TiVo before it goes under. Sony could easily prop it up and any patents and intellectual property would be valuable to an electronics maker like Sony.
Side (but relevant) note, I just got a notice from DirecTv saying they are now "responsible" for my TiVo service, not TiVo. I have a lifetime with TiVo for my "Direct Tivo" reciever and I was wondering if this was the beginnings of a shift in TiVo to outsource managment of services to the vendors who resell their stuff to reduce the cost of doing biz for them (TiVo). Could be...
-s
IANAL, but isn't Microsoft engaging in illegal monopolistic activity when they enter a market (PVR's ) outside of their traditional business (software) with a product that is sold at or below cost? The idea is that a cash-rich company like MS could corner almost any market they choose by absorbing losses, crushing the competition, then holding customers hostage once the competition is gone. The Xbox is another example of this behavior, except that Sony and Nintendo appear just as willing to accept losses on their game systems and recoup the profits in software (game) sales.
IANAL either, but no, they're not. Leveraging a monopoly in another market is illegal. Using cash from a monopoly to shore up your product in another market is not.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Check your facts, man. Replay is alive and kicking at SonicBlue and in fact just released a new crop of players (the 4500 series).
It's easy to take a look at the disadvantages or the odds of something and paint a grim picture. I think the moon landing is a good example. After factoring in all the problems with going to the moon (radiation, fuel, impact with small objects, equipment failure, all the math that had to be correct, etc) the odds of safely landing a man on the moon were worse than 1:1000. Yet, somehow, gee, we did it.
I don't really understand why humans overweigh negatives. Bizarre rationalizations show up. "I dunno... If I take this new job that pays me 20% more, I may have to drive further to work." I'm not immune to this. I don't like my job, yet I won't quit because "Id miss my friends."
With that said, I don't find this article very interesting. They're using the "History always repeats itself" method of persuasion. They're omitting other examples like.. oh... Nintendo. McDonald's. Even Walmart, at least in a sense.
Oh well.
Or am I mis-interpreting things? Let me know - I'd like to know if I should buy one or not. Thanks!
I'm not sure what the secret to success is, but the secret to failure lies in trying to please everyone -Bill Cosby
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
I just saw an ad for one of the 2nd-gen DVD TV recorders, and saw that one (Phillips?) would save 40-hours onto a hard drive, and you could burn the rest off to DVD. $700, IIRC. Anyone have one of these?
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
I just installed a DirecTiVo system, replacing my cable TV system. I'm move the current TiVo box to my vacation home.
TiVo is so elegant: easy to use - in fact trivial. With the satellite system it's a no-brainer natural.
I wnt it for radio also.
TiVo will fail because most people cannot understand what it it.
Most people fail to understand that what they see on the TV screen does not control what their VCR records.
Most people do not understand that when they dial the phone, a bunch of computers are digitizing their voice and routing it around, converting back to sound, and playing to the person they called.
Most people do not understand why the refridgerator gets cold inside.
Most people do not understand that modern "Analog" clocks are also digital.
Most people have no idea how a thermus knows when to stay hot and when to stay cold.
Most people in places where snow is uncommon do not understand that it makes the roads slick.
Most people pay for expensive water when it is free at water fountains everywhere.
Most people do not understand that the Coke in the can costs less then the can itself.
Most people don't understand what is wrong with Microsoft software.
Most people don't understand the difference between a surge protector and an outlet strip.
Most people (in the USA) don't vote.
Most people don't understand that silica is not edible.
Most people don't understand that they should not touch hot surfaces.
Most people don't understand that coffee is served hot, unless the word "iced" appears in front of it.
Most people don't understand the game of chess.
Ask Slashdot: Where bad ideas meet poor googling skills.
As for TiVo, they just didn't and don't have any particularly distinguished technology. DVRs had been around in research labs and as prototypes for a decade before TiVo came out. TiVo was simply the first to market at the point when disks and processors became cheap enough. DVRs are a technologically simple commodity consumer item, and that implies very tiny profit margins that only the large manufacturers can survive on. TiVo's attempts to generate revenue by selling subscriptions didn't help either: consumers know that program schedules already effectively free and that paying $12/month (or whatever it is) is way too expensive.
Microsoft? Someone? They're going to build it. Here's my picture of it.
The most elemental function is that of a DVR. It wraps a user interface around the whole home television experience. And once you control the user interface... (points over to The Book of Microsoft)
Now, people have a computer that, for the first time, is running 24x7 and they don't shut it off. They don't turn their DVRs off when they are done watching television. It is always on. All television commands (record this, channel up, etc) are received by the DVR, and then forwarded to other devices (DSS receiver) as needed.
Now, this DVR has a broadband input. How can we sell software and services? Answer: Game Console.
A game console you know has to have enough computing power (or at least graphics processing) to be pretty advanced. Add a decent hard drive. Know what the next step is?
Games-on-demand. Think Yahoo! Games on Demand. I actually tried this service, and I liked it. For $15 (I cancelled immediately after subscribing so I'd just have 30 days server), I am able to play 15 games up to a month.
How does it work? It downloads a good bulk of the game onto my local hard drive. Then, my hard drive works like a cacheing filesystem in front of an NFS filesystem. That is, the game runs off of the local hard drive cache, and anything not in the local cache is downloaded from the central server and placed in my local cache. For all my game knows, it is running off of the CD or a real filesystem on a real hard drive.
This means more revenue because now you don't have to trouble with the distribution of software over the shelves. Microsoft (or X company) is going to take off where the music industry has failed... online software distribution or rental, and for a nice profit.
You might add in some tangents. Video on demand is somewhat interesting. There could be a good market there... if done correctly. Various lifestyle 'services' (local weather maps available at the touch of a few buttons).
Of course, remember that this is all in a very friendly menu system of a video computing device... not a personal computer. It is wrapped up with a bow on top for the masses who want to play a game or watch tv, but not have to manage or figure out a personal computer.
So, I'll argue that TiVo could be at a disadvantage being a first mover. It has pioneered the DVR space. The DVR space is the very KEY to getting people to put an operating system on their television set. The problem is that TiVo doesn't have the muscle to fully leverage that position. (And why Microsoft competes in that territory.)
Huh?
How would they ban VCRsfor instance? There must be millions of them in the US. That's just a media executives pipe dream. Wouldn't worry about it.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I bought my parents a Directv/Tivo combo unit last christmas, and they fall into the "could never do without it" category now.
I'll be getting a Tivo as soon as the Series 2 unix are out for DirecTV -- and they will be soon. You can already pre-order the Hughes model at many Circuit City stores for around $189 with a $50 rebate for new subscribers.
DirecTV and Tivo have a good thing going apparently. DirecTV will handle all the Tivo billing, and if you purchase DirecTV's best "premium choice"
Yes, the biggest difference between Tivo and Replay seems to have been marketing. Tivo has always done a far better job of it.
I bought the lifetime subscription for $199 on sale and folks, its worth every penny. People, if you don't have a Tivo, you CANNOT understand what all the fuss is about. Trust us. Get one. It Is Worth It. The lame ads about pausing live TV are stupid. TiVo is about sitting down once to program the thing - takes an hour pushing buttons on a simple menu - and then (1) you come home to things you want to watch (2) that you can watch whenever you want to (3) without commercials or (4) without worrying about setting up the programming for next week's stuff. This is FUN. TiVo mentally changes what you think about how to watch TV. You have to be nuts to channel surf or watch commercials after using a Tivo for just one week. Even my WIFE is sold on the TiVo. Just get one, you'll see!!!
Why does Tivo have to be such a big company? Why can they (or someone else) not be a success with a user base of around 500,000? -- Where are all their costs? Why can't companies scale nowdays? Why do companies need HUGE market numbers to show a profit? I guess the same could be said for the death of the "mom and pop" and mid-sized ISP's -- everyone that is not the size of a fortune 500 company can't compete? Where is this economy going that only the big dogs can run in the park. Hell -- inderectlly this even relates to "companies" like Eazel that require 30+ million just to produce a file browser? -- Whats up with that?
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Will your snazzy front end spot all films directed by Terry Gilliam and grab them for me? Will it allow me to watch programs that are currently recording?
Will it spot clashes and then grab repeats so I don't miss my favourite shows?
Will it have a nice interface that I can control from the couch with a remote control?
I'm sure you could... given numerous man-yearsto write the whole thing. but Tivo have happily done all of that for me, and put it in a box.
My Journal
You could also watch a lot of hometime and build your own house, but 99.99% of the population wouldn't. You can convert time into Tivo either buy working to get the money to pay someone do sell you one, or by not working and spending the time to put together a likely inferior product.
On this tradeoff, most people opt for the former.
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
The author of the article is saying, as far as I can tell, that TiVo as a company will fail because their hardware is in the market too soon. The author has failed to understand some basics of the TiVo business model.
First, licensing is not something that may save TiVo, it is one of the main focuses of their business. With partnerships with Sony, AT&T and DirecTV, and the technology in use in America, Asia and Europe, TiVo is well positioned to benefit from the continued rollout of this technology, not suffer from competition.
TiVo doesn't really make and sell the hardware, so they are not like the hardware based companies (Apple, Commodore) they are compared to in the article. Yes, they do subsidize the stand alone units, but standalone units (and competing standalone units like XBOX) are destined for the garbage heap. Integrating the technology into set top boxes (satellite/cable) and letting the service providers subsidize/support the equipment is the model that will succeed. This completely invalidates the authors arguments of complicated setup and being hard to sell in a retail establishment.
TiVo plays nicely with content providers. TiVo has gone out of their way to try to stay on the good side of the studio's IP lawyers. The clearest example is that it takes some intelligence to turn on 30-second skip; it is not enabled by default from the factory.
TiVo actively pursues other revenue sources. TiVo is using its service to deliver targeted advertising (Best Buy, Lexus).
Now, I am not saying that TiVo as a company will succeed in its current form (my crystal ball is at the cleaners), but if it fails it is not going to be because of some mythical disadvantage from being in the market first.
This is the one major misconception that non-TiVo owners always make. The fact that TiVo records the shows digitally isn't what makes it great. It's the fact that you tell it "record new episodes of Junkyard Wars" or "record all episodes of Barney" and it does it.
My family hasn't watched live TV since we got the TiVo. I don't even know what channels some of my shows are on. I just pull up a list of the shows TiVo has recorded and watch what I want. We watch TV when WE want to. If I want to kill some time, I see what TiVo has for me. I can pick-and-choose between shows I like, not whatever happens to be on.
It's really a change in viewing habits that you don't appreciate it until you've tried it. I think the best marketing strategy TiVo could ever try would be to give out TiVos free for a month or two and see how many people buy it instead of giving it back.
P.S. TiVo doesn't skip commercials, that's ReplayTV.
I don't see any future for a TiVo or similar as a separate unit, to be honest. It seems to make sense to integrate the TiVo like device and the set top box for your cable/satellite/digital terrestrial service into one machine. For one thing, I don't see the point of receiving separate program information from TiVo when a digital television service is already sending an electronic program guide. For another, there is a certain amount of redundancy in the hardware (MPEG-2 decoding etc) and money can be saved by building one box only. For a third thing, a common user interface for the STB and the PVR is surely a good thing. (Hopefully this can be DVB-MHP based, and common to all networks, too). Finally, your cable or satellite provider already has a billing system with which to charge you a monthly fee, and money can be saved by getting rid of the duplication. (It may be easier to persuade people to pay a few dollars extra for "deluxe" satellite service that includes a PVR than to get them to pay money to a different company too).
BSkyB in the UK already does this. I suspect other providers do too.
Michael.
I just got digital cable with the PVR capability. Time Warner is using the Explorer 8000 from Scientific Atlanta. I had wanted a Tivo but had never got around to buying one. I had been hoping to see the functionality get integrated into the cable box. When they came out in my area, I ordered one.
From what I hear, the Tivo software is definitely better. The Explorer 8000 has some quirks. You can set it up to record all episodes of something from the interactive guide. At the end of watching the episode, you get asked if you want to delete the show. You do (since you watched it) and it deletes the scheduled recordings of the other episodes! Definitely not intuitive!
It does not have the thumbs up/down or some of the other nice Tivo features.
The advantages are:
1. The digital cable box rental is $5.95 per month. This is the same as regular digital cable boxes.
2. The PVR service is $10 per month (a little cheaper than Tivo).
3. There is no $299+ outlay for the box. If it dies, Time Warner replaces it. Yes, you would lose what you had taped.
4. No need to phone or ethernet hookup. The Guide is pulled in over the already attached cable connection.
While I am sure Tivo is better in many ways, I am happy with my digital cable box with PVR functionality.
From the article: how does a Best Buy salesman explain the difference in 25 words or less, especially with inexpensive DVD recorders about to the hit the market?
1) You'll the capacity for ninetyeight *hours* of programming at medium quality once you drop in an extra seventy dollar hardrive.
2) You'll never have to remeber to swap another tape in your VCR. Ever.
3) Seasons Pass.
I'm sure you kind folks can think up your own.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - BF
Honestly, I don't think that is correct. Bell telephone wasn't the first phone company? After all, the phone was invented by him, was it not?
Anyway, I don't think I have been educated in telephone history enough to *definitely* say that, but to me it makes sense, considering that the phone system became so large. Remember a time when all of the US was under one corporate system? A one united Bell umbrella... one that they had to be chopped into "baby bells" to maintain competetiveness.
I just don't think that the comparison is correct. But then again, at one time there were over 200 motorcycle manufacturers in the USA.
Please shed some light on this one.
I can see things moving in the service, hosted direction. Rather than buy a box that wll be obsolete in 6-12 months, I'd much rather subscribe to a service. I pay $20/mo to the cable company or whoever and they store all the shows I want on their side and send them over to me on demand. This wouldn't even need that much storage since they only need to store each show one.
The real issues are bandwidth and legal. While legally a single person can record most OTA stuff for private, personal use, I doubt a company could do that and serve up shows for anyone. And just looking at replay tv sharing it takes like 4 hours for a 30 minute show to download, but as bandwidth to the home become faster and more ubiquitous... watch out!
It really would be your own personal tv channel. Simply pay the networks for what you do watch, maybe they'll even get rid of the commercials.
Same goes for software. I'd much rather subscribe to get the the latest and greatest versions of any software I want automatically available on my desktop. I'm still a little wary of getting rid of my PC's, but that'll probably happen to some extent too as the home pc becomes "a service"
You have absolutely no idea of how a Tivo works.
The Tivo knows when everything is on. I just tell it I want a season pass to Farscape. *It* schedules the recording of the whole series. I thumbs up some music shows, it starts recording them and other music shows as suggestions.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
This is not a troll.
Why PAT for PVR functionality when you can do it for free, without any restrictions imposed upon your use?
Jeez.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I'm just about to upgrade mine as well. I'm looking about for some quiet 120Gb drives.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The TurboExpress, which was a portable version of NEC's TG16.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I use mine to wade through all the junk on the 20 odd channels I get.
It finds all the good stuff and records it for me...
Automatically...
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I've had TiVo for almost three years, and it's crazy to compare it to a VCR. They are nothing alike, the quantitative difference between what they can do is so great that it becomes qualitative.
With TiVo, TV is no longer a time-oriented medium. You don't watch shows when they're on, you watch them when you want to. The only way time matters is that a new show is only available on or after a certain time. It's more like a webcast, or a magazine-type site like The Onion. You're not required to sit there in front of your computer at 6 AM Monday every week to watch the new update of The Onion. You can watch it any time you want, it's just that you know a new one is available on a regular basis. All of TV is that way once you have TiVo.
Of course TiVo isn't the only way to get this. You can use Replay, or Microsoft's new box, or with a lot more effort you can set up a computer to do it. Any of these will give you those improvements.
But whatever you do, don't make the mistake of thinking it's a VCR. It's not, it's a device that turns TV into something that's more like a subset of the web, in that you have instant access to many, many hours of content, whatever has been updated since you viewed it last.
"Many informed people believe the X-Box may well be a Palladium trial balloon and a test bed for emerging Microsoft DRM technology. "
/bots like to repeat over and over and over again.
And many people who can add one and one to make two realize that the video game industry is a great cash cow that anyone can get into. Whether you're a third or first party developer, you too can ching-ching-ring in the yearly Gift-mas shopping seasons in ways that pro-business-tax-break 3-year buying cycles won't.
If that's not enough to clarify their already fairly-clear motives, here's a simplified business model for you:
1) Create a console that's hard to make unlicenced 3rd party games for.
2) Rake in the dough from 3rd-party developers while making a profit on the consoles after a (short) loss leader period used to drive early adoption and valuable market share.
3) PROFIT!
Nintendo did it, Sony did it, Sega did it, Microsoft wants to do it. Why? They already publish PC games, but the console market is BIGGER than the PC market by a fair bit. If they can rake money in by publishing various titles on their Xbox, as well as rake money in from everyone else who publishes titles for their Xbox (rather than the smaller cut they get if they jush published their MS games for Sony or Nintendo), they'll do it. The reason they can do it is because they're big enough to push through the loss-leader time period (larger for them than most because of the design of the console) to get to the sweet, rich money part. Sega only stopped being a first-party developer because they couldn't bankroll the next-gen console they were working on after the Dreamcast (as well as Dreamcast licence fees drying up).
Palladium and DRM might have some resemblance to the technology used in the Xbox because Microsoft wanted to make extra-double sure that people wouldn't write unlicenced (and thus, no $$ for Microsoft) games for their Xbox platform even though it was built on PC-hardware roots. Get it? Use-limiting technology looks similar. In this case, though, it's not some grand plot by the Beast at Redmond which most
Wether MS is going to do something like jam the Xbox and some PVR software together to make some unholy alliance of crap has yet to be seen. Chances are they'll maybe come out with YetAnotherDongle that you can buy separately (after all, a PVR for console price + dongle price may be cheaper than a TiVo + subscription yet), since they don't seem too keen on forcing people to buy features in their console they might not use (DVD playback) just yet.
And that also assumes that MS is going to come out with another console in some years time. Since the sweet spot for most consoles is about 3-4 years after release (in terms of gross profits), expect to see this resovled in 2006 when they'll annouce real plans about a potential succesor (if they make one).
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Second generation DirecTV TiVos are going to ship in November. Some places are already taking preorders. It looks like they'll cost $200 - $300, depending on where you get them.
They used an Open Source OS, but they have done everything to make this invisible and unimportant. The hackers would love to be able to hack this box to add things like this, or a NIC, Ogg jukebox/server and all sorts of other nifty things. If they make great hardware for these applications, they won't lose to competitors, but it needs to be priced pretty aggressively.
In a lot of ways it is too late to switch to this model because they have already sunk a fortune into a losing business model, but it might also save their company if they do it right. Their name recognition is probably way above RedHat in the general population. That's worth a lot even if you give the software to competitors (with GPL). DirectTV would probably still pay them just to use the name in the right situation. I might even get DirectTV service if they did this. I already use their DSL service (started as a Telocity customer, and still use an antenna for TV).
You say "simply read those listings". The Tivo can't assume that every channel provides schedule info. Some don't at all. The ones which do don't use the same listing format, they use different page numbers, the listings don't provide actor, director, description, category etc etc information.
Tivo works with digital terrestrial TV, cable TV, satellite TV as well as normal analog terrestrial TV. I suggest you go away and look at the complexity of what a Tivo actually does, then try to replicate it using videotext supplied information.
I paid the lifetime sub, I consider it part of the price of the box, £350 instead of £150. It's easily worth the extra £200.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
They market to people who watch a lot of TV - when I think the perfect TiVo customer is the person who has very little time to watch TV - so that when you can sit down you can watch something you want, and not "uhh... it's 9:15, I guess I'll sit though half of 'Everyone Loves Raymond'..."
/. So much for my credibility...
Make the most of your valuable time. That's what it's all about.
Of course I am blabbing about how little time I have while I am here typing my drivel on
You've never used a Tivo... Obviously...
The reason your software sucked was cos you paid $50 for the solution.
Quality costs money and a $50 card and some software don't come close to a Tivo. Can your PC control your cable/satellite/DigitalTV set top box to switch it on and change channel? Does your PC have a remote?
One of the first mods made to Tivos which are modified is to replace the existing drive with a couple of 120Gb IDE drives. Tivo can also archive shows to VCR or DVDR if you want.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The Newton failed becuase it sucked, not because it was first. :)
The handwriting recognition was incredibly bad.
The handwriting recognition was basically unusable. I know, I have one of the original models. From what I hear people say online, the later models were much better. I guess they just couldn't recover their image after nelson made fun of them on The Simpsons
A friend of mine has a Tivo and aboslutely loves it. There's a big difference from being the first one to put out a shitty product and being to first one to put out a product that gets rave reviews from its owners.
Life is too short to proofread.
I think the author made a few mistakes on his article.
1. It is not true that being first on a new market usually leads to failure (the author seems to imply that). Exactly the opposite, history has shown once and again that being first is most of the time to your advantage, and most of the time leads to success. Is this the case with TiVo? Judge by yourself
2. The author of the article gave a bad example with the Amiga. What killed the Amiga was not the industry or the users or the competition, it was Commodore itself. It had the most awful marketing department in the world (and this is an understatement).
3. The newton's failure was not being first, but being over-engineered to an excessive cost (the author does imply something to this respect). The market was not prepared for such an expensive and large unit at that time.
It was mentioned briefly in passing in a couple of other posts, but it bears re-emphasizing as a point in itself. TiVo is a verb! And not just in geek-speak -- it's in wide usage! You see it on talk-shows. Guests on Leno talk about "tivoing" their favorite shows. You can't buy that kind of publicity!
Nobody ever talked about "amigaing" that document (or video clip). Nobody ever said, "let me newton that appointment".
Of course, this doesn't mean that Tivo is guaranteed to succeed, but it does mean that they're going to have to seriously stumble in order to fail. Their success or failure, long term, depends on themselves, which is a pretty nice spot for a startup to be sitting in.
I invested in both the Amiga (A500 in the box right next to me) and the Newton (I use my 120 every day). Less than six months after purchasing each one of those items they went out of production. My talent even extends to automobiles - witness the VW Corrado. I loved that car, yet not 6 months from purchasing it it became a collectors item. So, since I havent yet purchased a TiVo, it wont die.
:)
Now all I have to do is purchase some Microsoft stock and see if my luck holds out.
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
One reason everybody likes TiVo so much that they can't verbalize is that the skip feature prevents the commercials from interrupting the dramatic flow of a program. This makes the program you're watching seemm SO much more emotionally intense it's like watching a movie, not a TV program. And that enhancement ALONE is worth the cost of the TiVo. Without Tivo, the dramatic flow of a program is so washed out....tense buildup and turningpoint followed by shampoo automobile diaper hamburger news-at-11-teaser next-show-promo CLIMAX! Give me a break, watch that cycle a thousand times and you think TV is crap. Tivo gives it all the emotional impact back to you. I love my Tivo.
*yawn*
wha, story? where?
[o]_O
If TiVo actually does go under, I really feel that it will be a reflection of the relative lack of TV programming worth recording in the first place....
Let's face it, VCR's are dirt cheap nowdays, and the tapes have the advantage of being removeable and easy to trade with others.
Most of us only have one or two TV programs we care enough about to bother recording them, if that. For a task that small, a regular old VCR does the trick.
TiVo is very cool, but primarily, it just encourages the user to watch more TV they wouldn't have bothered watching otherwise. That's not something I'd pay hundreds of dollars for, and many others won't either.
Personally, I make a conscious effort to limit my TV watching time. It's all too easy to sit back and get passively entertained by television nonsense, and suddenly realize you've wasted hour after hour, accomplishing nothing.
It's thermos, not thermus
Nothing personal, but your attitude sucks.
A Tivo is basically a small linux computer with a decent sized hard drive.
How could you consider *NOT* plugging it into a surge protector???
Evolution: love it or leave it
Everyone who owns a Tivo essentially has the potential to become "A Neilsen Family." There is no screening process. The geek in the basement of the Science building... The networks will know that Star Trek, X-Files, and Firefly get watched.
I hate it when I find a show that I really like, only to learn that the Neilsen families don't. That show is toast. With Tivo, these shows have a chance.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
"Select" "Play" "Select" "3" "0" "Select"
You'll hear three "Tivo Tones" letting you know that the command has been accepted. You can disable the feature by entering the same sequence.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
See also Telephone, Television, Electricity... Just because a product is first to market (or in this case, defining a market) does not mean it is doomed to failure. If you look at the companies that have invested in Tivo, you see that they'll survive (even if that means they are simply acquired). They have a best-of-breed product, a regonizable brand, and the market that they have defined is set to explode.
You've heard the song... 500 channels and there's nothing on.
Really, the problem isn't that there isn't anything on. The problem is that there's so much on, that it becomes increasingly impossible to filter the noise, and find that which is truly appealing to you, the viewer.
Tivo makes this possible. You don't tell it what time you want to record something. You tell it what show to record, regardless of when it is on. You tell it what genres you like, what actors you prefer, what directors meet your expectations. It does the rest.
You can not appreciate how this device will transform your relationship with television. It makes television useful, and entertaining, and it does this by catering to you, as an individual, rather than by allowing a television network to pour some target demographics into the plot generation device so that the program hits all of the right population segments.
I'm no longer "White males, 25 - 35, with a household income between X and Y."
Since I got Tivo, now I'm just me, and I watch the shows that appeal to me, and I watch them when my schedule allows me to.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
> and the habits of 3 other people I convinced.
I've convinced plenty of my friends to like TiVo, but none to buy. And these are people that spend thousands of dollars a year on other kinds of toys, but I guess the initial cost threshold plus monthly fee is too high for most. My neighbor has a $$$ HT setup with a custom room, 65" TV and very nice sound, and every time he sees my TiVo he loves it. But he still won't get one. Why? Beats me, maybe TiVo should ask him, it might help them become profitable.
Basically, it lets you control your Tivo without needing the remote control. Useful for me since I've got the Tivo outputting to two TVs in separate rooms - I can use my laptop as a remote this way. Also handy for scheduling a recording from work if you forget to set it up before...
Want to watch a football but don't want to spend the nice afternoon? Record it and watch it that evening in one hour (I know it's not the same but if you want to watch pure football, it's the fastest option).
I ran across this article that shows how someone put together their own TIVO for fairly cheaply (if you don't want to drop as much money on a tivo or replayTV). Personally, I think there are more ways to cut corners on his PVR to further drop the price but it's a good attempt--especially with the software that he chose.
And even if Tivo dies, it's pretty well known that you can duplicate the "Tivo Service" from the internet, if you travel in the right circles.
If Tivo went under, this particular hack would become wide spread.
They do have the best product of it's type, and I want them to succeed because they deserve to. I'm an idealist. I'll take meritocracy every time.
If they perish, that'd be a sad thing, but I'd start utilizing one of the competing products. I can't go back to the before-times.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
I sorta kinda agree, but concepts like "deserve to" don't really apply to corporations. Corporations live and die by their bottom line, and I don't see any reason to judge them any other way. If TiVo can't make money, it doesn't "deserve" bupkis.
Note that I'm not arguing that it needs to be THE BIGGEST or THE MOST PROFITABLE company in order to be successful. Making a good product for a fair price, however many of them you sell, is "success" to me. But, here in America, if you don't have the biggest marketshare, you might as well take your trucks and go home, because you're obviously a big stupid loser and you don't "deserve to" win.
Except for cars. Nobody seems to dog on Mercedes-Benz because their marketshare sucks. Sometimes, I think the "Winner Take All" attitude that seems particularly virulent here in America is really really detrimental. I mean, the article holds up AOL as the local deity of internet service because it happens to be the biggest one out there. Me, I don't CARE if my ISP is big. I care if it gives me reliable service at a fair price, which AOL does not.
I think I'm after a different kind of meritocracy. : )
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Assuming your TiVo is connected to a computer (or a network - I have an ethernet card in mine), TiVoWeb allows you to (amongst other things) shedure recordings from anywhere in the world you can find a net terminal ;)
It's pretty neat when you are abroad and realise you forgot to set up a recording - or you need to delete stuff etc etc.
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
will fail because there's no good way of charging for it.
I just don't get it. That's like saying VCRs will die because the companys that make VCRs can't figure out a way to keep bringing in money.
Perhaps if Tivo was interested in making money by actually selling hardware and farming out the technology to television makers they could turn a profit.
The Internet is generally stupid
Client side PVR is doomed, it offers too little too late. The future is server side PVR with offers big advantages over client side services, simpler units allow lower unit cost, much lower maintenance costs, more reliable; Server side content allows near limit-less libraries of content by comparison. Serverside allows transparent intergration with Digital Television Services & TV Email and TV-Web.
This is not pie in the sky futurology; this is it all being done in the UK by ourselves (see www.kitv.co.uk) a small regional telco. We use an IP enabled STB that is half the cost of TIVO, it requires no client side MPEG encoder or HD. This reduces the installation and maintenance costs, and significantly increases reliability. Since we encode off-line with industrial MPEG encoders, the video quality is vastly superior to TIVO, and delivered DRM clear. Since we normalised content, we can also offer a lot more choice of content, currently over 4000 hours of content on the largest Video Server Farm in the world. Consumers do not even need to flag content, they can browse the back catalogue of content, via EPG.
AIH I've repeatedly pointed out this out in the past and I usually get modded into obivion by bleating TIVO advocates, but I am right, they are wrong and time will prove it.
you can get the box w/ a lifetime subscription for $250 more.
Life time subscription!
Where have I heard that before? Oh yeh Internet Access for life, the very short life of the company not mine.
I hope I didn't leave anyone with the impression that I think any business is successful simply because they "deserve" to be. I am not naive.
I agree absolutely that if a business cannot find it's way to profiability, then they should be relegated to the dustbin of history. I'm a big fan of the "selective destruction" inherent to capitalism.
I simply meant that Tivo is an innovative company, with a great product, and because of their well documented attitutes toward their consumers, they are "deserving" of success from a non-business, emotional perspective.
From a business perspective, they are doing the rights things now. Instead of being a "box" company, they are transitioning into a "technology" company.
People are no longer going to buy a "Tivo," but instead they'll be buying a DirecTV tuner, with PVR capabilities, powered by Tivo.
Their winning move is to get their software into as many set-top boxes as possible. Then it will be the other vendors that have to sell the boxes at a loss, rather than Tivo Inc. These other vendors don't care... They (Satellite companies and Cable companies) are much better poised to recoup these up-front losses than Tivo is.
I only hope that it's not too late. I hope they have enough cash to get to that point.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
As another poster observed, part of the motivation for the Series2 was to build a platform that could handle HDTV. TiVo has built a dual-DirectTV HDTV unit, but the main problem they have with it is that HDTV streams are so huge that they had to use something like 18 hard drives in order to give the unit something like 60 hours of record time, so right now they're waiting for the hard drive densities to catch up. The goal is to be able to achive the same capacity level with more like 3 hard drives. I've often said one of my main requirements for adopting HDTV is that my TiVo supports it.
Oh, and I'm one of those people with the completely flexible lifetime subscription. According to my wife, we're like TiVo customer #7 (she bought it the day it came out). And it's not just that the wording wasn't clear -- I have a message from TiVo explicitly stating the flexibility of the subscriptions back when they first started. That didn't stop us from buying a second lifetime subscription when we got our second unit: we were using both in tandem for a while.
-"Zow"
Ok, fair enough.
I tried to watch Buffy a few times, due to all the hype surrounding it. It did nothing for me. I felt like it was simply a show I would have enjoyed if I was still a teenager, but now? Uh-uh... (I have no idea how old you are, but for reference, I recently turned 31.)
Friends.... I'll grant you it's funny, sometimes, but nothing "draws me to it". It's one of those shows I could handle sitting down to watch at a friend's house, if it was already on and everyone else was watching it. Would I ever bother to actually tape it? Nah....
Angel... saw 2 episodes, and didn't like it a bit. Why? Dunno, just seemed too "fake" to me, and maybe I'm a bit "tough" on any show featuring a female heroine character to start with. (After all, 99% of the time, these end up being cheezy excuses to oogle at some actress/model - and the actual plot is weak to non-existant. Think Charlie's Angels, or V.I.P., for 2 examples.)
Of the shows you mentioned, Enterprise is the one I'd be most likely to make a real attempt to watch regularly. Unfortunately, I don't get UPN on my Dish Network subscription right now. I'm stuck watching ST:TNG re-runs on TNN.
Haven't seen Firefly or John Doe yet, so it's not fair to pass judgement on those.