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AdAge Predicts Tivo will Fail
geddes writes "Under the obnoxious headline
More U.S. Homes have Outhouses then TiVos, Advertising Age has published an article with a few good points: 1) Tivo/ReplayTV/UltimateTV aren't making any money and their growth is declining. 2) Cable and Satellite TV services are slowly rolling out PVR on thier own boxes. So 3) PVR will become a standard feature for most television users but become as unbranded as programmable VCRs."
PVRs will obviously be subsumed into the TV unit itself...TiVo can only hope to save itself through a superior UI and programming service that it maybe can sell to cable providers.
"The stock of TiVo, meanwhile, is down 95% from 2000; its star has faded on Wall Street even as it's risen on Madison Avenue"
Give me one tech stock that's near what it was in 2000. I notice the article doesn't say a thing about whether Tivo has actually made money or is making money right now. As it is, they're getting $12/month from me and I'm looking to add another Tivo soon.
-- "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" -Optimus Prime
The public at large doesn't understand or know about it! The techies 'get it' but most people view it as a hideously expensive VCR without understanding how much better it is!
While I like Tivo, if they fail or not is really not a big thing. Companies fail all the time, even ones we think (or we thought) would be really cool. Think transmeta, or Segway.
The problem is who controls the content? Will cable companies remove features, like the ability to skip ahead 30 which they feels gives users the ability to skip commercials? Probably. Given the choice between pleasing consumers, or pleasing advertisers and shareholders (which they're leagally bound to do!) the companies always stay with the advertisers.
Cire
Everything useful eventually becomes brand-less.
Take PC's , they used to be called IBM compatibles. But now they're just so DAMNED handy and ubiquitous that now nobody REALLY cares what the brand is.
The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist.
Another week, another article proclaiming the death of TiVo. Notice how it's posted by a magazine focused on advertising? Of course they want TiVo to fail, it provides the means for skipping all their boring advertisements.
Will TiVo fail? Possibly. Will it become useless? No. Due to their open architecture, people can and already have hacked the TV guide info, and if/when the day comes they go under, hackers will be able to take up the call and keep the service going.
I hope that day doesn't come, since this well designed hardware and software.
"TK-421, why aren't you at your post?"
But not for the reasons they are pointing out.
Quite frankly since the PC is a commodity and and priced at very low levels so anyone with any technical saavy can build their own TiVo with a copy of Gnu/RedHat, some Radio Shack cabling and some common open source software tools. I've personally built prototypes of these units for a large client who shall remain nameless and I was able to come in under $200. Plus it's all open and non-propretary and thus I can charge my client to go back and make any mods they want as they go forward to the next level in the future.
I'm generally not a big fan of open source and anit-capitalist solutions but this is the perfect one where "The Shoe Fits" as it were.
Warmest regards,
--Jack
Wagner LLC Consulting Co. - Getting it right the first time
Despite the relatively low market penetration, I am a bit suspicious as to the motives behind this story. Doesn't AdAge have a vested interest in seeing devices such as TiVo fail? This article has a decent analysis of the financial aspect behind the subscription model, but nary a word about the impact on advertisers from the loss of revenue due to skipping commercials? Poor jornalism, this should be filed under op-ed for ad-execs and the major networks.
TiVO uses Linux on a custom PowerPC chip fabricated by IBM that includes MPEG-2 encode/decode on the chip and the source is available from TiVO website. When the cable/satellite companies start building PVRs into their boxes, what OS do you think they will use - Windows Embedded? Perhaps QNX but most certainly Linux. More Linux jobs, hooray for Open Source!
Too bad that TiVO may not be able to recover their investment or may have to morph into a PVR system software developer/consultant. But their name will live forever has the few OpenSource ventures that 'changed the world'. And that ain't so bad.
Oh do you really think that if Democrats held some/all of the power that everything in the world would be find and dandy. World hunger would disappear. Terrorism would vanish. Cable companies would magically offer 10,000 different stations all in 10Megabit/sec clarity using 10.8 Digital SuperOctaQuadraphoic surround sound for 2.99 a year?
No matter who is in office you are going to have the same problems. The democrats bow down to big business just as much as any other party. If they were in power, the cable companies would just "pressure" them the exact same way they do now. Power corrupts. Don't make this into a political pissing match when it has noting to do with politics.
The article was written by AdAge. They hate such PVR devices. It's bad for the advertising business.
TiVo allows you to fast forward over ads, although legal pressure prevented TiVo from skipping ads altogether.
I'm assuming Tivo doesn't own a patent on their TV recording technology. This will be good for us in the long run but bad for them because as soon as something becomes a commodity, it's hard to make a buck off it. If they were smarter, I think they would have patented the thing (or bought the patent from whoever owns it) and licensed it out for zero to little cash until a large market for such devices arises. Then charge a reasonable rate for a proven/valuable technology.
Blender And Linux Fan
They may have brand name recognition, and they may be a 'household name' but does that mean that they are going to be around forever?
;) )
Picks up tha magic 8 ball... signs point to no
The article states that already Tivo/Replay TV are licensing their products. It is very likely that eventually you will find companies that are trying to meet bottom line prices and will buy PVR from whomever can give them the lowest price. That's business. Tivo and the like companies will most likely become more of a software company than a 'hardware' company, especially with the advent of digital cable boxes and satellite boxes in so many homes. Many people will prefer one box that does everything. I honestly won't be surprised if we see television sets soon with PVR embedded into them (does anyone know if this has been done yet?), say within 3 years. Most cable companies are going digital, and to access all the 'great digital features' you have to have an addressable digital cable box, cable companies will gladly install software that will get people to use their product, especially if they think they can charge an extra monthly charge, or use charge, or even simply offer it as a feature and insert a few extra advertisements at the beginning of the program.
A quick summary. Tivo may still be around, but they might have a much weaker hardware division, or none at all. They may also have to diversify to stay around... (diversify, I had to use a buzzword
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
TiVo is an example where word-of-mouth should be working. Whenever we have friends over they're curious about the TiVo, but they don't really understand why it's good. We let them test drive it, and invariably they go away impressed; sometimes it's pausing live TV when the phone rings, sometimes it's looking at "Now Showing" and seeing your favorite shows waiting for you to watch, sometimes it's looking through the Season Pass Manager or the search for programs features or the suggestions or the interactive program guide. Regardless, TiVo presents an impressive package and our friends go away impressed.
We have DirecTV with TiVo integrated; the integrated package really is nice and simple. My wife is anti-TV and anti-technology, but she loves TiVo because it makes the small amount of TV she does watch simpler and more flexible. We find the service easily worth $10/month (and the price recently went down).
People at TiVo must be scratching their heads since they have such a great product and people just don't get it; word-of-mouth and trying it out seem to be the only ways people get it.
Advertising Age published this article. Tivo et al allow people to stop watching stupid advertisements. If advertisements become irrelevant, than Advertising Age becomes irrelevant. Therefore it is in AA's best interest to try to convince people that technologies such as Tivo are failing so that fewer people will buy them. It's market manipulation plain and simple.
======
Belief is beyond reason. I believe because it is absurd.
Here's their revenue stream * Licensing to DirecTV and others of a very smooth technology and a very nice layout of their remote (could use a few more buttons for when I use my DVD, etc.) * Quick bux from lifetime subscribers, but that's killing the golden goose * Slow bux from monthly subscribers (can DirecTiVos even get a lifetime sub?) * Paid downloaded commercials -- wouldn't be so bad if I could wipe 'em from the main window once I'd seen 'em * Fees from "Click here to record" on commercials -- rarely seen these days. I think only NBC uses it. Given that some VCRs have 30-sec skip, some TV's have 'mute for 30 sec' mode, the adsellers should have little to complain about TiVo specifically. And since I TiVo many programs without commercials (Rough Science to Sopranos), it doesn't apply at all! Advertisers should learn one thing: grab me quick in the first few seconds, and I might watch the whole commercial, or display really really cool stuff in the last few seconds and I might back up. ABC has had advertising in the margins during the "Next Week On" segments for years. And if you TiVo users out there don't know already: Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select for 30-sec skip mode on the SkipToEnd button. Every software upgrade nukes that setting, so it's good to memorize.
Design for Use, not Construction!
Me: "I got a new Visor."
Them: "A what?"
Me: "A Handspring Visor."
Them: "A Handspring Who?"
Me: "A Vis-err, Palm Pilot"
Them: "OOOhhh..."
Worked for Coke and Kleenex.
Schnapple
Maybe the magazine/author had an axe to grind but the fact is, Tivo and ReplayTV has never had a very large market penetration. In fact, I don't personally know of any one who owns either one.
I think the reason is simply price. I would love to be able to use the features of these 2 products, pause live tv, skip commericals on playback, very easy recording of tv shows. But the truth is, this type of convenience is not worth the $400, $500, $600, or more that they charge for the unit. That's in addition to the monthly fee.
For approximately the same amount of money, I can take my whole family camping every weekend thru the summer and have a lot more fun!
Also, I don't think it helped ReplayTV when their units began requiring broadband access in order to download the program guide and software updates. Most people in the country still don't have broadband access.
Enjoy your life, it's the only one you've got!
but things like patents and copyrights discourage competition. The name of the game is to gain as much market share as possible and then do whatever is cheapest to keep that share.
If you really believe that (let's say AOL just to avoid flaming) AOL has innovated as much as it would have in the face of real competition, you just kidding yourself and have a limited imagination. It's only now that other providers are starting to eat into AOL share that they are getting back on the innovation wagon. And it's only because the other provider has deep pockets that they can afford to toss money at the issue (If quality matter, they would have been gone a lonnnng time ago).
OK, hear me out. I'm just not getting the whole "TiVo is da bomb and if you're still using VCRs then you're human refuse" tone. It's not just from these posts but in general.
:)
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but there is a limit to the amount of space you can store programs on a TiVo. What happens if I want to see an episode of Alias I recorded three weeks ago, or the Laverne & Shirley christmas episode I caught on Nick at Nite last year, or "All You Need is Cash" I happened to catch five years ago?** I'm pretty much stuck.
While the commercial skip feature is nice, it's not so much better than the fast forward button to warrant an additional expense. (Plus as an added bonus you can pop in an old tape from several years back. Commercials make fun nostalgia.)
Plus with a VCR, I can tell my friend, "Hey I missed Buffy last night, did you tape it?". Again, I could be wrong, but I don't know if TiVo offers such a feature.
And one argument I've seen in like half-a-dozen posts is how "bulky" VCRs are. Is 3 square feet of shelf space really that precious?
Now I'm not saying Tivos are bad. I'm just stating VCRs are good too.
** Feel free to make fun of my recording choices
1) Gee, an advertising magazine saying that a product that allows skipping advertising is going to fail. There's a surprise.
2) If you don't own Tivo, you don't understand. I have a DirectTv/Tivo system. I can record two things at once, program wish lists, record something after it starts (I'm watching it, decide the wife would like it, so tell it to record the whole program). it records stuff in free space, based on what I watch, some of which I actually watch.
"3) PVR will become a standard feature for most television users but become as unbranded as programmable VCRs." Even on that case You will still need a central company that creates and broadcasts the service and indexing to all the PVR's enabled systems... That company will be most likely TiVo: Since tivo: Only makes money fro the service not from the hardware, unlike other PVR's. Rememver TiVo is a service provider that can modify it's target market if the environment changes.
BSD licensed software can't be stolen....
Other than the reference design, TiVo IS more of a software than a hardware company. All of the TiVo PVRs are made by either Phillips or Sony.
TiVo wouldn't care if someone started giving away TiVo boxes, as long as they were still selling their service, which is their revenue stream.
Most obvious thing wrong with this article: It states that the inclusion of PVR features will be the downfall of TiVo/ReplayTV.
Um, how? DishPVR = rebranded ReplayTV
DirectTV's PVR system used to be known as DirecTiVo - It's no longer called that, but it's still a TiVo system that TiVo is making money off of.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
An advertising journal predicts that a piece of technology that lets you skip ads will fail? Well I'm shocked, deeply shocked I must say... its not as if they have an axe to grind, is it?
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
In fact, I don't personally know of any one who owns either one.
I know several people that do. So much for anecdotal evidence.
I think the reason is simply price. I would love to be able to use the features of these 2 products, pause live tv, skip commericals on playback, very easy recording of tv shows. But the truth is, this type of convenience is not worth the $400, $500, $600, or more that they charge for the unit. That's in addition to the monthly fee.
First, a 60 hour TiVo unit is $300 at Best Buy (after $50 rebate). Second, for years, VCRs cost more than a TiVo does now and they constantly grew in popularity for time-shifting television shows -- despite being less convenient, less reliable, having a much smaller capacity, and producing video of lower quality.
For approximately the same amount of money, I can take my whole family camping every weekend thru the summer and have a lot more fun!
So why not do both. And when you come home from your camping trips, the shows you enjoy will be waiting for you.
I will never understand how people prioritize things. I remember talking to someone who is a smoker, with a habit that probably costs him around $2,000 per year, and he told me that TiVo was too expensive. I see other people who spend a fortune for large projection televisions and then channel surf for hours desperately looking for something to watch -- rather than just buying a TiVo and watching what they want when they want to. Why would someone sit through ten minutes of commercials in every hour of programming that they see. Isn't their time worth anything to them? And the purpose of TV is to entertain. Commercials and an inability to watch what I want when I want detract from the entertainment value.
In closing, I think that it's a good deal for the money.