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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.
Another news site has just found that more outhouses have tivos than homes!
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
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.
I loved my Amiga....
hated AOL...
I should hire out as a consultant :)
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.
Actually Dish Network has it's own home brew PVR that is fairly popular. They pretty much give away the lower-end one for free if you sign up with them. And you can get a more souped up one (dual tuner, more hard disk space) for roughly the price of a regular Tivo and it doesn't have the monthly recurring Tivo cost. The software and UI pale in comparison to the Tivo, but supposedly they have a decent market share (as far as PVRs go).
As said on here many times, though, Tivo is now licensing their software to folks like AT&T and DirecTV, so you will soon be getting a "DirecTV DVR powered by Tivo" instead of a "Tivo". It's a win-win for both sides and will most likely keep Tivo afloat.
...when they pry it from my cold, dead hand.
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.
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.
Yes... and there's a limit to how much space on a VCR tape too. Or your computer's hard drive. TiVos are upgradable (and if you don't feel comfortable doing it yourself, there are companies that will do it for you now and give you a warrantee on their work and/or the unit). We have two TiVos. They came with 30 GB HDs, and we could store about 24 hours of video on them in medium resolution. We did occasionally run into problems with space, since a couple week vacation could cause older programs to be deleted.
I upgraded both with 80G drives, giving them 110G total and roughly 100 hours of video. I have never had anything deleted before I could watch it now. I have programs that are over 6 months old on my TiVo still. My wife has stuff over a year old (or maybe we finally dumped it to tape, I don't recall). Heck, I still have 6+ pages of "Suggestions" recorded by the TiVo, which is over half the storage space.
And if I ever wanted to dump something to tape, then I can - TiVo has a "Record to VCR" feature that makes this easy. But I'd be more likely to rip the video out to my PC and store it on SVCD or something. Which you can't do very easily with a VCR.
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
I can, and have, dumped stuff to tape from my TiVo for friends that missed something - even friends with a TiVo. With Replay you can just send them the episode via Internet. You can, theoretically, do the same with TiVo, but it's not officially supported or condoned.
Yes, that means you'll need a VCR too. I have to dig mine up and pray it still works when I actually need it.
While the commercial skip feature is nice, it's not so much better than the fast forward button to warrant an additional expense
Commercial skipping is really one of the lesser features of PVRs... it's hard for people to get this, but it's true. I'd be deeply annoyed if it wasn't there of course. The real feature is that a TiVo frees you from having to watch TV except when you want to. You don't have to worry about when shows are on - TiVo takes care of it. You don't have to worry about having enough tape in the VCR - the HD records more than any tape. You don't have to label tapes because TiVo has the program guide data already. Watching something live? Phone rings? No problem, hit pause. Or maybe you missed that last line - hit 6 second rewind. And everything's instant.
About the best comparison I can give you is how much better CDs are compared to tapes. Instant access, cleaner, faster, better.