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."

Comments

Brand recognition

[Duds]

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..

[Enry]

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.

DirecTivo has been re-branded "DirecTV PVR"

[K8Fan]

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?

Re:Control

[Greedo]

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 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 ... and they are everywhere.

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?

Licence

[codemonkey_uk]

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.

Re:I agree

[Ciannait]

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.