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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
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?"
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.
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.
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's problem is surely their attempt to follow a subscription-based model rather than just selling boxes. It might have been better to manufacture PVRs, sell them at a reasonable price (which is still far above what they cost to manufacture, given the price drops in components over the past few years) and when the market peters out, just retire gracefully and return the profits to shareholders.
Trying to build up a base of paying subscribers may look good on the company's accounts, but shareholders are surely not under any illusions that these subscribers are guaranteed to stay around forever. Meanwhile potential customers (like me) stay away from TiVo because we don't want to pay a subscription for something (TV listings) which is available for free anyway, and the box will become useless once TiVo goes bust or discontinues service. The idea of PVRs is bound to take off, but you can't take that to mean that any particular company will survive.
Just sell the damn things like toasters, pocket the money, and stop making them when it becomes unprofitable. That's all there is to it.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
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.
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!
Call me cynical, but I don't believe for a second that you can satisfy all the above requirements for a $200/box flat fee.
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.
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
Why is this insightful? Tivo are not only making money by selling subscriptions, they are also licensing their technology to companies (Philips and Sony, for example) who sell the hardware. They basically incur ZERO costs licensing the technology (other than legal fees, I guess) whereas the manufacturers have to worry about startup and production costs.
Also, the Tivo service is NOT something you can get for free by looking the listings up on TVGuide.com. It does a lot more than just matching up the listings to what you want to record, it also figures out what you like to watch, and recommends shows that maybe you haven't heard of by (anonymously) collecting the viewing habits of others like you, and correlating the data. Personally I really like this service, as although I sometimes get some whacky programming (I don't speak Spanish, but my Tivo sometimes thinks I do) I also get many shows which I never would have watched otherwise, but which turn out to be shows I really enjoy.
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.