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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."
True, there will soon be as many Tivo brands as you care to name.
But people will still call them "Tivo"s.
It's like in the UK, every vacumn cleaner is usually referred to as a "hoover". Or in the US "Xerox".
You cannot buy that brand recognition. Assuming Tivo themselves don't screw up, they will have a healthy share of the PVR industry for a decade or more.
Except for the fact that AT&T broadband and DirectTV are already rebranding Tivo for their set top boxes. There aren't any real competitors yet aside from ReplayTV.
Ooh...but I like the list of related articles:
"Without advertising, we will damage this country"
"72.3% of Tivo viewers skip commercials"
Then again, this is like MSFT reporting that Linux is pretty much dead.
When I read about 'em I thought it was a great idea - trap the shows you want to watch, batch them, sit down and watch the whole lot of them when I felt like it. Then reality set it. I despise television. I don't even own one. So having a TiVo would do me no good.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Umm.. Isn't that a little weird, comparing a little cramped place to take a squat in to a thing to record TV shows on? Sure, there may be more homes with outhouses, but do they really want the outhouse? Probably not. Everyone would LOVE to have a bathroom from MTV Cribs in their house, but they can't. More people probably want a Tivo, but maybe can't afford it, (I don't know the price, so let me be.. ;). Besides, I would think Tivo, or something like it, could be around for a while. Not everyone can be at home to watch their favorite TV shows, and want a way to record them other then low quality VHS tapes.
Ah am not a crook! (\(-__-)/)
When you have to pay $13 a month to receive the channel listing through TiVo when you already get them through your cable box it is not worth it. Replay TV has a free monthly service but you pay outragous prices to get it.
I would much rather get it from my cable company for $10 extra a month and no upfront costs. Even if the features aren't as good as TiVos.
On the one hand, you have people who say "I don't watch TV", when what they mean to say is "I don't watch CRAPPY TV". There's a lot of good shows on that are on at times when people normally wouldn't watch them. I can't stay up late to watch all of Adult Swim on Cartoon Network, so I have my Tivo record it and I can watch it the next day.
On the other, Tivo does have a problem with explaining how it works. It's a lot more than saying "it's a really good VCR!". That's where
the existing user base comes in, as it's a lot easier to show someone how it works and what it does than listen to the PFY at BestBuy practically reading off the sales sheet and not know anything more about it.
I have a DirecTivo, and love it. I couldn't imagine life without it. Recently, I got a letter from DirecTV that from now on, my DirecTivo service was going to be referred to as "DirecTV PVR" and the monthly charge was going to be cut in half.
OK. The service hasn't changed. It's still Tivo software and interface. The monthly cost is half of what it was. The only down side is it records more "Special Preview" nonsense from DirecTV. Tivo still gets paid, and DirecTV has more reason to sell this great technology. What's the problem supposed to be?
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
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.
... and they are everywhere.
And therein is the biggest problem in the media industry: content providers are too lazy to adapt to changes in technology, so they fight innovation to maintain the status quo.
Record companies and file sharing. Cable companies and PVRs. Et cetera.
I own a PVR (not a TiVO, but a higher-end satellite receiver with PVR built-in). It's fan-frickin-tastic. My VCR has been collecting dust for the last year and a half.
And yes, I skip msot commercials. But why do I skip them? 'Cause most of them suck.
There are commercials, however, that I do watch. And often rewind and watch again. And call my wife over to watch with me. These are the funny, intelligent, clever or bizarre commercials. Like the IKEA lamp. Like one for Tourette's syndrome. . Like the Mini and Nissan ones (just 'cause those songs are infectious).
If companies just made better commericals, I don't think people would skip them as much. They skip them because they are boring
At some point (and we've probably reached it), advertizing becomes so ubiquitous that it stops working. People tune it out. Advertisers think the solution is to put up more ads, in more places, in unexpected places. It's only going to piss people off more.
The solution is to make better ads. Why don't they realize this?
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
In the UK BSKYB have licensed the TiVo technology to make their Sky+ boxes. So TiVo are alive an well as long as BSKYB is alive and well, and seeing as BSKYB is the dominant satellite television network in the UK, I'd say that in the medium to long term, TiVo is pretty save as a company, if not a consumer unit.
Thad
When you can also write some neat front-end software for it that provides for all of the TiVo features (too many to name here), and can still bring it under $200, I'll think about it. But only if I don't have to be a sysadmin to use it. I'm a sysadmin enough at work; I want my PVR to not require an intimate knowledge of the command-line.
Oh, and don't forget to package it in a nice little black (or silver) box that fits within my entertainment center.
We won't even get into DirecTiVo here. Mmm, Dolby Digital.
A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
Or is there something in the DVD agreement that prohibits this?
Well two working, and one for parts, and I have to agree that Tivo (the company) is the walking dead.
I declined to buy lifetime subscriptions to their service since I didn't expect them to be around that long, and it was the lifetime of the individual TiVo box. There is a reason I have a TiVo that is just for parts.
Both of the working ones have web access, network cards, and two huge drives. I plan to add the 4 drive adapter in the near future.
It was a cool idea. But with several open source projects to build a PVR out of commodity parts, and the potential to tie several homebuilt ones together in a PVR cluster, I really don't see what TiVo has to offer to the people that are most likely to buy a TiVo. Especially since you can get TV guide information with any of the ATI TV tuner cards.
It is a shame that TiVo (the company) got to spend all of that money showing people what could be done, only to be trampled by all of the cable box and satellite decoder manufacturers running out to implement the "TiVo" idea.
Such is life.
Of course, TiVO, being a small shit, is easier to target by the TV networks. How will the TV networks sue all the TV makers? That's like all the tire manufacturers suing all the car makers - chicken/egg thing again.
Schnapple
All the good shows are generally on at bizarre hours when people dont have the time to watch them, or are at work, or just are too busy in general. Tivo has made TV worthwhile again, with it, you weed out those shows you "dispise" .. You'll NEVER see them again! EVER ! How cool is that? To me it sounds like TIVO is your holy grail. I had basic cable because when I watched TV nothing was on. It was all crap. A friend got a Tivo and I liked how it grabbed Sienfeld at the odd hours .. I got my own, and now I have full DIGITAL cable, with 6 HBOs, and my Tivo is OVERFLOWING with documentries, great comedy skits, and some really fantastic movies on Independent Film Channel! TV *rocks*, but only with a TIVO.
For better or for worse, the costs are being offset by revenue generated by targetted advertising (the SA8000 PVR stuff can do personalized ad insertion), and selling your viewing habits. If you'd prefer to pay $10/mo forever in order to receive targetted advertisements, that's your decision, though I tend to think that a one-time $250 payment is a much, much better deal.
I think that fundamentally, I object to the idea of the thing having a modem :-P. It would be far better if no expensive 'infrastructure' were needed at all - I don't have to pay for an infrastructure to use my oldstyle VCR or microwave oven, so why do it for hard disk video recorders?
I'm sure the money that TV networks get by restricting access to their listings is piddling at best. It would make much more sense for an EPG to be broadcast alongside each channel, then anyone could make tivos without the need for banks of modems and technicians to keep it all running.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com