Should Apple Buy TiVo?

st. jude writes "In a story over at Business 2.0, John Battelle says yes. As the man who made music downloading legit, maybe His Steveness can conquer Hollywood's loathing of the PVR next. As a lover of both my TiVo and my Mac, the thought makes this dreamer drool ... TiVo + Mac = iTV ... two great tastes that taste great together? Or just another version of a long-rumored geek fantasy that's as silly as the iWalk?" Although, if it means per-show payments, I'll pass.

Comments

I dunno...

[HebrewToYou]

Is it really necessary for Apple to begin incorporating all these 'traditional,' and I use the term loosely, media devices into their collective? I'm as big a fan of Apple as they come -- I just think that at some point they might be stretching themselves thin. It's not a stretch for Apple to tackle television recording as the next big thing. I'd just rather they spend their time doing something a bit more related to the field of personal computing. But hey, maybe we'll see the return of those Apple TV/Tuner cards like the one in my Ancient Performa 6320. Those were pretty nifty....when I was in middle school. ;)

Re:I dunno...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it really necessary for Apple to begin incorporating all these 'traditional,' and I use the term loosely, media devices into their collective?

Well, yeah. For the last couple years, Apple's big thing has been the digital hub. Steve Jobs says your computer (Macintosh) should be the center of your digital lifestyle, and Apple's mission has been to deliver on that vision. (ack, synergy, paradigm, I sound like a PHB!)

People keep getting all these little gadgets to enhance small areas of their digital lifestyle (pda, pvr, dvd player, portable music player, in-home stereo, digicam, dvcam, etc, etc). Most of them don't have a single, simple way of managing all that. Some of them don't want/need that, but many people would like it. This is where Apple believes they can make a real difference, and perhaps spur another (r)evolution.

One of Apple's claims to fame has always been that "it just works." To achieve this, they do it the right way: by designing each piece of the system to work seamlessly as a whole. As an exapmle, take MP3 players. Buy one of many brands for your Windows machine, and then want to upload your music to it: probably need to install some drivers, maybe some software, and then transfer (make sure you know where your MP3s are kept on the hard drive). Buy an iPod for a Mac, plug it in, It Just Works.

People are used to not knowing how to control or fully utilize their technological gadgets. The old cliche that people don't know how to program their VCRs, let alone set the clock. Apple is trying to say it doesn't have to be that way. They're trying to change all that. But if they stop at simply making their software work with other devices, the user experience isn't quite as good. Hopefully it's better than it was without Apple in the loop, but not as good as it could be. What if PVR XYZ is supposed to interoperate with the Mac, but there are issues due to its design which are beyond Apple's control? What if the manufacturer of PVR XYZ changes something internal that breaks interoperability in newer units without telling anyone?

To avoid this, Apple is branching out and offering their own versions of these things. Well, so far it's basically just the iPod and nobody knows if they will introduce more devices in the future. All they're saying is, buy the system out of all our parts, and it'll just work. If you want to put different parts in your digital setup, go head; it'll probably work just fine, but it may not be as nice as what we can offer.

All that said, who knows if this will ever happen? It will be interesting to see, for sure.

Music and TV not quite the same thing

[mizidymizark]

I think the reason Tivo has been mildly successful is not because of the programming on TV, but because of the features it has. Since most computers can get these same features with a simple TV card, I couldn't see Apple trying to offer this as a service. If they make it easy to record and more importantly, share programing over a network, then I could see Apple being interested. It seems like the Music Store thing has prompted all sorts of expectations for Apple to delve into other forms of media, but I would hope that Apple makes sure the Music Store continues to be a success before diving into these deep pools.

A very good couple.

[zbowling]

The idea is a very exciting to think about. With Apple's track record with working with Unix based products (Tivo being Linux based) and very great history of graphics processing (I haven't worked at a TV station yet that could say that haveing Windows machines is better then having a majority of Macs in the graphics and video departments) the match would be perfect.

Apple also has a histroy of being the underdog with the more soild product and bug free product. I could see Tivo really changing with support from Apple, and maybe a bunch of new features. Apple would benifit in fighting the OS wars again if it owned Tivo. As it has done with products in the past, (such as the I-POD) make them intergrate with only their product (at least at first). I don't know anyone who can't say that the I-POD being only useable on Mac at first didn't help sales of the Mac in at least the smallest bit.

A down side you might see is a change in the policy to allow commerical skipping. Being a larger company with its own active interest in commericals might be compailed to retract some of the ease of this feature. On the other hand it might not because of the competition from SonicBlue's ReplayTV which from what I hear alread has better commerical skipping technology that detects commericals and automaticly skips them. (I own a ReplayTV 4500, which has this feature. From what I have heard, Tivo allows you to manually skip.)

I would buy a Tivo if Apple bought them. I'm a dedicated UNIX/Linux (former Mac user as of 1994), who programs for Windows at work. My interest in Mac is comming back now with their dedication to designing such a soild product.

I'm for an Apple owned Tivo. Its better for everyone (expect Micro$oft, hehehe).

I am sure TiVo is good technology...

[pretentiousPPC]

but really, tell me exactly who is willing to buy a nearly $300 box and then pay $14 a month after that for it to just work properly, and for the the privilege for all of there TV viewing habits to be sold off to marketers? People who are, are stupid, and the company that thinks that this is a decent business plan is even stupider.
Apple's not stupid, and they wont be touching a subscription based company, BTW isn't iTunes suppose to be so great because it isn't subscription based?

At this very moment MS has the technology to just roll over TiVo within the year, they have the Xbox, WebTV, and Windows Media Player, toss all of this into box added with the usual MS marketing and you got a killer app. that will kill TiVo and all the other PVRs at the moment, and anyone in the industry should know this and would balk at attempting to go up against it--everyone except for the likes of Sony.
Sony is the only one with the resources, name, and establishment to beat MS to the punch, too bad for TiVo, Sony likes to keep things in house and won't be knocking on there door to buy them out.

Re:I am sure TiVo is good technology...

[duggy_92127]

...but really, tell me exactly who is willing to buy a nearly $300 box and then pay $14 a month after that for it to just work properly, and for the the privilege for all of there TV viewing habits to be sold off to marketers?

<raises hand>

It's pretty obvious to me that you've never really used a TiVo, nor even looked into the privacy issue. First of all, "my info" is never sold to anybody; aggregate info is sold to networks. TiVo can look at its users' usage as an anonymous whole and say things like "this commercial was watched by 80% of the people" or "only 30% of TiVo owners recorded that show." This hardly gives the network any info about ME.

Second... simply put, TiVo will change the way you think about TV, and depending on how much TV you watch, can literally change your life. I just gave one to a friend as a wedding gift. She was worried she'd just turn into a couch potato, but she says it has had the opposite effect: instead of having to be home when a particular show is broadcast, she can arrange her own schedule and watch the show when she has time. TiVo has freed her from the shackles of network scheduling, and she spends more evenings out with her friends now.

But all that aside, it's just a better way to watch TV. How often to you bother to record a show so you can watch it later? With a TiVo, you can do it in seconds, and no worries about finding a tape or anything. It just there, and it just works.

Of course, in many instances, you only have to do that once. Hear about a new show coming up, might be worth watching? Set up a season pass. Your TiVo will record every episode, even if the network moves it around. You can do this weeks in advance, and only remember the new show when you see it in your TiVo list of shows. Even if the show sucks and you erase the season pass, at least you got to see it.

Of course, we use season passes for everything: grab all the episodes of the shows we like, or always keep a couple "I Love Lucy" on the list so we can watch them when we're doing something else in the living room.

Not to mention wishlists. I thought Amy Smart was pretty cute, so I told my TiVo to grab any sitcom episode that she was in. It found a couple Felicity and Scrubs episodes, which was cool. In fact, I so liked the Scrubs ep that I threw in a season pass for it; we'll see how some other ones are.

Many of these activities you cannot do with a VCR and a TV Guide, or it would take hours of poring over the text and programming the thing, not to mention the tapes. With the TiVo, it's all wrapped up in a truly easy-to-use on-screen GUI. It really is the beginning of the next generation of television.

At this very moment MS has the technology to just roll over TiVo within the year, they have the Xbox, WebTV, and Windows Media Player, toss all of this into box added with the usual MS marketing and you got a killer app. that will kill TiVo and all the other PVRs at the moment...

It was called Ultimate TV, and it bombed, and TiVo never even blinked. Thank you, please play again.

Doug

Re:And

[jlower]

You think TiVo is available worldwide now? You can't even use it in Canada.

Re:This would be silly

[WatertonMan]

While this is true in theory, in practice it isn't. There isn't an equivalent to iTunes for PVR for the Mac. There are some opensource Linux projects that have been ported. But in terms of UI they suck. (At least based upon what I've read and seen) You could in theory use iMovie and pipe the video through your camcorder. But that loses most of what makes a PVR cool - i.e. easy timed recording.

There also is limited *good* hardware for the Mac. Yes there is EyeTV and I know some people love that. Personally I'm not sure I like it as much as a stand alone PVR. I came close to buying one but didn't.

This really is a place Apple could clean everyones clock with. Especially if they had a HDTV version.

Re:One has got to wonder

[diverman]

Wow! Been a while since I've seen someone give props to OS/2. :) Maybe I should unzip my last OS/2 disk image to an old PC just to reminisce. I loved that you could just unzip the disk image and it would boot. Made for really flexible blasting of fresh images to new machines.

-Alex

iMovie Store, anyone?

[davstein]

This sounds like a logical extension of the iTunes Music Store. I would venture guess Apple has a component audio iBox (at the least) in the works.

So, they buy TiVo or make an audio/video box and voila, you can stream not only your iTunes library to your stereo but MPEG 4 video as well! Slap on a Airport Extreme card and you're ready to get jiggy or watch a flick on your TV.

Imagine an iMovie store, where you can buy a movie, burn it to DVD or stream it to your iBox...sounds pretty good, and a logical extension, to me!

Re:the man who made music downloading legit

[Razzak]

True. I'm not buying anything from the Apple store. But it's not just the brand that less evil. He got it so you can stream it and also burn it as many times as you'd like, something nobody else in the industry could get the record companies to agree to.

It doesn't really matter though. In 10 years, You're going to see the big 5 drop from 85% of the record industry to 40%, and we won't be complaining so much.

Re:And

[sogoodsofarsowhat]

Funny i know lots of canadians using Tivo's (especially DTIVO's)..... Dont make me laugh. Do you think its because canadians have different power? There is no reason a Tivo will not work in Canada. (and before you start with the crap about only supplying programming for the US, i suggest you get some US programming up there, yes its available, and is way better then that drivel called canadian TV. Why do i know this, well lets just say, Canadians for one, take their US TV very seriously. MWUHAHAHAHAHAHA)

Why do people buy iPods?

[Johnny Mozzarella]

A Mac with the right software(iTunes) can do the same things.

Apple made an MP3 player because they could make it significantly better. I believe Apple could also make a significantly better PVR. I'm not saying that you couldn't get all the hardware and software together and do it yourself. Apple can deliver the total package.

Also if Apple wanted to expand into downloadable videos, I don't thing users would go for it clogging up their computer hard drives. A seperate hub device that stores all your movies, photos and music and allows them to be shared to your local network would be more appealling.

Imagine if the iPVR could recompress all the shows it's recorded for syncing with your iPod(320x240). Then you could have your video to go.

Re:His Steveness

[Anonymous Coward]

In about 1997, when Apple first brought Steve back, there were lots of jokes making the rounds in the company along these same lines. People called him "His Majesty" or "His Royal Highness" or whatever. He asked everybody to just call him Steve, but people called him nicknames anyway.

Today, people still don't call him Steve. He asks everybody to call him Steve, but people still call him something else.

Everybody at Apple calls him "sir."

When a guy comes along who, despite all his widely reported and entirely true personal flaws, PERSONALLY keeps your employer in business and makes sure your stock shares and options are worth something five years later, you damn well call him "sir."

Per-Show Payments

[TheRaven64]

Although, if it means per-show payments, I'll pass.

I have the oppisite view. I have practically given up watching broadcast TV now. I simply do not have enough life to waste 15 minutes of it in an hour watching adverts. I generally wait for the DVD release (which usually has better sound, better picture quality and no ads). If I could buy an episode of a TV show for a reasonable price (and the reasonable part is important) then I would probably do that.