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TiVo Will Die
Espectr0 writes "Yahoo! News has a PC Magazine-reprinted story about why they think the TiVo will die because of rising competition. From the article: 'It's always hard to write an obituary, especially when the subject is still alive. It's especially hard for me, because I love the little guy like a brother. But, alas, TiVo will die. I was one of the first reviewers to get my hands on an early TiVo box. I compared TiVo with ReplayTV, and although I really wanted to like ReplayTV, TiVo won my heart over.'"
Long live my VCR!!!!!
So, when did it become fashionable to predict the deaths of everything from consumer eletronics to companies? There's already two links on the front page to death knell articles, I can't swing a stick on a news site without clubbing a few more. Are article writers making up for bad karma they accrued during the hypehypehype days of the dotcom boom?
And why "death"? I understand exaggeration makes for good entertainment, nobody wants to read an article titled "Man goes to work, has uneventful day, returns safely home". But even though he brings up several good points.. why? Is it impossible to consider that the market might not jump as anticipated, or the company/product can adapt to a new environment?
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
now tivo? i wonder how many times tivo will die in 28 years..
Let me guess, they will die because they are partnered with Apple.
Tivo is painfully expensive for the actual service. They offer it for $400 for the "lifetime" of the device. If the thing dies 1 day after the warranty, you paid $33 a month for an overhyped VCR, plus the $220 to get it. I own one, and enjoy it finding me shows.. but really, what in the hell are you going to do with 40 hours of MacGyver?
Considering the partnerships that Tivo has made with DirecTV and Time Warner Cable, I don't see them going any anytime soon. Not to say never, but I believe that this announcement is a little premature.
Now, if you are talking about stand-alone Tivo units, yeah they will probably go away, but I am willing to accept that to have one component on my AV rack instead of two.
They can have my TiVo when they pry... umm... it out of... umm... when they pry ME out of... umm...
oh crap...
-
The present "street price" of a "DirecTV DVR with TiVo Serivce" is only $99, with only a $4.95 per household DVR service fee that is waived for subscribers to DirecTV's highest programming plan and is not charged multiple times if there is more than one DirecTiVo in the same household. There is of course a one year committment required to avoid a $300 early cancelation fee, but that's standard for all new DirecTV units.
So, let's not compare apples to oranges. The standalone TiVo risks getting priced out of the market, and the HD TiVo is not yet ready for mass distribution, but the DirecTV model is flying off the shelves. The Moxi product isn't available to consumers outside of limited testing markets yet, and News Corp's yet to release a US-aimed PVR or even say they're going to do so so all that product has is speculation by pundits. When your biggest competitors are pure vaporware, I'd say your company is doing pretty good.
Seeing as we're on a roll today...
Researchers believe Sun will die in 5 billion years
Indie music geeks have attained the level of zen ennui where they deem bands passe before the last flyer reading "2 GUITARISTS SEEK DRUMMER" is done printing at Kinko's.
Now computer geeks are achieving the same thing by declaring every new technology dead before it's even managed to hit its stride. It does not make you a geekier person, or a better one, or a smarter one, to say this crap.
I guess the reference is to Janet's Breast
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
He's got his numbers all screwed up.
I just got a DirecTv w/Tivo box and it cost $99 and the service is $4.95 per month.
I like microcars
Who will die first?
Or will Duke Nukem Forever release before any of them die?
Clearly, they should've just written the article this way:
It is official; Netcraft confirms: TiVo is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered TiVo community when IDC confirmed that TiVo market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent TiVocraft survey which plainly states that TiVo has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. TiVo is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent television viewer comprehensive recording test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict TiVo's future. The hand writing is on the wall: TiVo faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for TiVo because TiVo is dying. Things are looking very bad for TiVo. As many of us are already aware, TiVo continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeTiVo is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeTiVo developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeTiVo is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenTiVo leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenTiVo. How many users of NetTiVo are there? Let's see. The number of OpenTiVo versus NetTiVo posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetTiVo users. TiVo posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetTiVo posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/PVR. A recent article put FreeTiVo at about 80 percent of the TiVo market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeTiVo users. This is consistent with the number of FreeTiVo Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of TiVo, abysmal sales and so on, FreeTiVo went out of business and was taken over by TiVo who sell another troubled PVR. Now TiVo is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that TiVo has steadily declined in market share. TiVo is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If TiVo is to survive at all it will be among PVR dilettante dbblers. TiVo continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, TiVo is dead.
Fact: TiVo is dying
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
TiVO has a new product called TiVoToGo. It should be a Media Center killer, since it will give you the added flexibility you need without having to have yet another crashing Windows box in your house. Here's the press release: "from TiVO. I think this new product will give users what they really want, which is more flexibility for managing their content, and having a 'library' capability that doesn't fall short at the size of the TiVO box. Rich
AOL is dying
Apple is dying
Civilization on Mars is dying
Shouldn't this story be in the *BSD section?
sulli
RTFJ.
Look. TiVo won't die. So the reviewer says he likes ReplayTV better and that TiVo won't dominate the market in years to come.
But that's ok.
Consider the home PVR market. By all accounts, it's a growing market. In years to come, let's say that it's a $10B market. Even with just 10% market share, that's $1B. Not chump change.
Honestly it's like saying AOL will die. Fading into obscurity, being obsolete, etc are not equivalent to dying. Last time I checked, AOL still had 24.3 million subscribers. All joking aside, let's assume 20m actually pay. That is still $400m/MONTH which is a CASH stream that I dare not to cough at.
Personally I think the death of TiVo will come when the public finds out about non-subscription encombered PVRs. =
and with some models, basic 3 day service is included
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Which will pull through? Which won't? Who's going to be next? Place your bets!
Seriously, though, I think that licensing to DirecTV et al will help out TiVo in a pretty substantial way.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
I don't tape things anymore, I 'Tivo' them. The phrase 'to Tivo' has become pretty ubiquitous in the past few years and is synonymous with PVR recording.
With that sort of name recognition, they're not going away any time soon. They may get bought, but the name will be around for quite some time.
Article failed to mention SnapStream, and that's probably a huge possible TiVo killer. As a Dish Network customer, I find the Dish 500 suitable enough to take care of recording the shows I program it to, and with the option of recording them on one of my PC's using SnapStream, so I can take it with me on a laptop if I chose? Unreal. I highly doubt the "death of TiVo" is approaching, and perhaps with some better PR they'll climb out of whatever dark hole other companies are trying to put them in, but there are tons more options these days. ...and Moore's law is no excuse for the death of any technology, only the explanation by which that technology should progress beyond levels of doubt and bad publicity.
I just saw a commercial late last night on my cable box from Adelphia (my cable provider) that stated that there is either available now, or coming soon, a PVR (TIVO-like device) for my digital cable.
Although I will hate giving my cable company another $10 a month to rent this thing, if I were a betting man I'd say it a lock.
*Can't wait to waste more of my life watching the TV shows I can't stay awake to see*
Adult Swim, Monty Python episodes, and all the Comedy Central shows I can handle!!! WOO!
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
yet...
The article assumes Tivo will never release another version/improvement or will never implement HDTV or tap into digital cable boxes "digital" stream...
I love my tivo (I'm still building my own home brew one though because it's fun )... I kinda wish I had gotten replayTV (networking features mainly), but after their boneheaded near bait and switch PR blunder I feel better not supporting them with my purchase.
*shrug* The article was right about the dangers of the cable companies offering built in PVR's into their digital cable boxes (as a matter of conveience not necessarily signal quality/degredation concerns)
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Shaped like a dog bone, it was simple to use, easy to understand, and a pleasure to hold.
If you didn't read the article, you may not know what the author means when another poster quotes the article! :)
Moore's Law - Just because you can put an MPEG2 stream onto a hard drive without converting to analog, doesn't mean a TiVo isn't a better way to do it than a clunky piece of crap set-top box from your local spam^H^H^H^Hcable company. TiVo wins marketshare because of its UI, not because it's doing anything technologically revolutionary. Moore's law merely means that the cost of silicon will continue to drop -- but the cost of building a TiVo is about the same as the cost of building anything else. TiVo's strength - its usability - is a function of good design, not the cost of silicon.
HDTV - And next week, IPv6 to take over the world! Enough said.
Murdoch / DirecTV - Then he'll buy TiVo outright, which will also be good for TiVo. Why oust it in favor of something less useful but cheaper, when Moore's Law says both the clunky and the useful products are going to be the same price?
The article's an unwarranted slam against TiVo and only towards the end do we find the real motivation:
So that's the real reason for this poorly-thought-out slam: The author used to get serviced to orgasm from the company whenever he flashed his press credentials. But today, he gets the same customer service as the rest of us get... from every company we do business with. It's phone support. It's going to suck Deal with it.
What's next? Netcraft author denied photo-op with cute daemon-suited ch1x0rz at LinuxWorld, and writes a report that confirms FreeBSD is dying?
Just to keep things in perspective, this article is written by PC Magazine's editor. What, if anyone knows, is ZD's ability to see the future? Seems to me this publication a long time ago became a Microsoft ad channel.
I have no experience with Tivo, nor HDTV, nor cable. I watch TV from a Radio Shack antenna mounted on my roof. So, in TV terms I'm pretty much Fred Flintstone. At the same time, I'm not exactly sure what my incentive is to upgrade to the products that are listed as being the killers for Tivo -- and the thought of Tivo is pretty appealing to someone like me that still uses their VCR.
The article claims that "2004 is the year of HDTV". What does this mean? HDTV penetration becomes 50% of households? This doesn't seem possible with the current penetration being 1-2% (last I checked). Admittedly, Tivo has a need to change its products and strategy over the next few years, but I think the same could be said for any technology based product.
Sleep is for the Weak
I'm pretty certain it's already dead in the UK, killed by Sky+, the Sky TV combined digibox/PVR (although I think it was probably on the way out before then, partly down to high prices at launch).
one of many problems: "The next fatal problem for TiVo is high-definition TV signals. 2004 will be the year America embraces HDTV. The Super Bowl looked tremendous in HD, movies are amazing, and in May, when ESPN begins broadcasting SportsCenter in HD, the contest will be over."
OK, so HDTV has been coming Real Soon Now (tm) for, what, a decade? And this yahoo (no pun intended) thinks SportsCenter is going to propel it to the massses? In the next 8 1/2 months? No one ever said HDTV wasn't good. It's just expensive (capable TV, plus tuner, plus whatever) and supported channels are few and far between. Yet somehow, at today's prices, everyone in America is going to buy a new, big, expensive TV and related gear this year? Uh-huh.
In any case, he seems to think TiVo is unable to change. Yeah, TiVo is absolutely unflexible and will be totally unable to adapt to *any* changes in the market. They're going to stubbornly make one product and go under when there's no more demand for it. This article is such non-news I don't even know what to say about it.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The idea of charging $13/mo for a programming schedule will die. I forsee that there will be so much competition for DVR's and PVR's that the service fee will keep dropping down to free.
Then, they will have a simple box to type ANY phone number or IP Address (if a network interface is present) to download from, and cable/satellite providers will give you free access to a scheduling server of some sort, and there will be a standard for these schedules.
Hypocrisy is the 8th deadly sin.
I just converted a box at my house to a Media Center PC for the fun of it. It can do everything a Tivo can do, everything a regular DVD player can do, everything a regular stereo can do, and everything a WinXP Pro machine can do.
When normal people want toast, they buy a toaster. They don't take a previously-existing, alternate kitchen appliance, tear it open, and make it capable of producing toast.
The key to making a name for TiVo was impressing the geeks, as they were most likely to be the early adopters. The key to selling TiVo is to convince the regular people that it's easy-to-use, provides a valuable service, and that it's priced within reason. Seeing as every person I know who has used my TiVo for a few minutes has purchased one, geek or not, I believe it has adequately met those criteria.
TiVo won't die because they have patents on the whole DVR idea.
This is one case where patents are good. TiVo, and DVRs in general, aren't really that obvious - VCRs and such aren't really prior art.
Now that everyone and their brothers are making DVRs, well, TiVo owns the IP behind all of it. They can go off and sue/license the technology to anyone, and they'll be hard to stop. Plus they learned from Apple's mistakes and filed the right kinds of patents.
There you go - patents aren't all bad.
This totally neglects TiVo's patent portfolio. They're far from sunk. As it is they don't make hardware...
YES, Tivo is dead.
My prescient mind, armed with my incredible understanding of market economics (from my hours in high school econ, and the occasional Wall Street Journal articles) predicts the downfall of this device... and here's why:
It works too well, has real value, and makes watching television easy in a glut of channels, all the while searching for programs you like.
That just sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Nobody ever became rich giving the public what they wanted... people became rich selling patches, add-ons, and ancillary crap to something that hardly worked, suckering in the customer with the hope that THIS WAS THE THING THAT WAS ACTUALLY GOING TO WORK WELL THIS TIME.
Tivo needs to get Ron Popeil on the phone, and let him break it down for them.
See? Get with the new economics! You don't make millions anymore giving the customers what they want! You have to release a crappy, non-transparent technology and then CHARGE THEM FOR UPDATES! Please. You need to think like Gates to survive these days. The money is not in giving them what they want. The money is in giving them something that doesn't work that they think will work, and then charging them huge bucks to GET IT TO WORK RIGHT AFTER ten generations later.
Tivo should die for getting it right the first time. This is America people. Our economy would collapse if we produced products that actually worked, where would all of the tech support workers be? All of the patch engineers? More importantly, where are all the freaking extra charges that make you a Fortune 500 company when you innovate and give the public what they want in a good product?
Face it. It is just like health care. The money ain't in the cure, the money is in the medicine.
Tivo screwed up. They deserve to die for NOT screwing their customers.
Among the people I know, only a few that are my age (late 20's, early 30's)even watch TV any more. Most are like myself: we have a TV for watching DVD's and games. If there's a TV show worth watching, it'll come out on DVD. I literally haven't watched TV outside of one that's blaring in a bar or restaurant for several years. I don't miss it. My TV is usually on with a movie or game, but no crap TV or the commercials that go along with them. As far as I'm concerned, Tivo can live or die... I don't really care.
The Tivo service is still available and while you can't buy a new one, they sell on ebay for more than they cost new!!!
So dead I don't think so, but not as alive as I'd like them to be.
Please don't let the attitudes of a few reviewers lead you to conclude that all computer geeks like to predict the death of computer technology.
Remember, the "Death of Apple" has been predicted for so long that it's become a standard joke, so I hardly think it counts. If nothing else. Microsoft has a vested interest in Apple staying alive. They need competitors to fend off the world's Monopoly laws, and Apple is a better competitor to have than Linux. Why? Because Apple isn't trying to take over the world and doesn't have masses of developers and users out for blood. Apple has a bottom line to worry about, and while Linux companies have to worry about money, Linux itself does not.
Computer journalists love to predict the impending death of a technology, because it gets more readers. It's more sensational to say something is dying than to say it is facing challenges from a shifting market.
The only person who speaks for me is me, and I haven't heard or read all that many people predicting the death of technology.
Besides, the articles listed today are hardly "New technology" whose death is being predicted "before it's even managed to hit its stride." Both Apple and TiVo have been around the block and had high points as well as low.
As a side note, I'd like to caution everyone against confusing being critical of a new technology with predicting it's death. Lots of new technologies are being awaited with baited breath, and others are declared DOA because they're either obvious vapor ware like the Phantom Game Consol, not mature enough to take to market just yet (Nintendo Virtual Boy) or a technology looking for a market (Remember those Smell Cards they were developing?)
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Look. TiVo won't die. So the reviewer says he likes ReplayTV better and that TiVo won't dominate the market in years to come.
First off, the article states explicitly that the author prefers TiVo to Replay and all of its alternatives.
Secondly, he states that as much as he loves TiVo, he thinks they're doomed. As much as I love TiVo, I can't bury my head in the sand and assume they won't die just because I don't want them to.
The PVR market is already changing, and TiVo needs to get ahead of the trends in order to stay competitive. Standalone boxes will most likely go away in the next 3-5 years. TVs will come equipped with PVR functionality and have built-in cable tuners, thanks to the cable card specification.
TiVo has done a brilliant job with its UI and it's light-years ahead of other manufacturers in terms of partnerships with consumer electronics manufacturers, and its deal with DirecTV is heavily driving growth in its customer base, but the future is about building PVR functionality into TVs or cable boxes, and TiVo has no cable-box partnerships and hasn't shown any signs of being able to penetrate that market.
Now, on to my criticisms of the article. Louderback assumes that the HD-capable DirecTV TiVo receiver will stay at $1000 for any length of time. He's clearly wrong on that. The price will come down quickly once DirecTV determines that HD TiVo ownership drives subscriptions to HD content. The manufacturing costs will decline as volume increases and the prices of 250GB HDs falls, which will encourage DirecTV to eventually subsidize the price of the receiver to drive sales of HD packages.
And likewise, the cable set-top box market might dry up and blow away entirely once cable card-enabled TVs start to hit the market. And TiVo will be able to sell standalone TiVos that could replace cable set-top boxes for customers who have older TVs. Yes, TiVo suffers a price disadvantage compared to the offerings of the cable companies, who are looking to "lock in" subscribers, but the advent of cable card will negate some of the lock-in advantage anyway.
At any rate, it's difficult to predict the future. I think Louderback's column was more intended as a shot across TiVo's bow than a true prediction of their death. I think he wants them to sit up and take notice of the threats that surround them so that they can devise adequate solutions to their problems, and I think he'd desperately like for them to return his calls or emails.
Lets face it tivo owners, the suits are turning the product into shit. Remember the dawn, great little box that you could hack, run own stream extracting ftp server, hack in OSD of caller ID, hack in remote scheduleing.. just about anything you can think of. Then the suits came out with Series 2.. ugh, no hacking (save bios hack, 2card monty), and then came Home Media Option, or as I like to call it, an over priced package of all the cool hacks we stole from the community and impleneted like shit. Fast forward to today, the hacker community is giving up on tivo, the real PVR hacks are coming out for things like MythTV, Freevo.. etc.. and Tivo has yet to pull out any new features.. wait.. the did add TVGuide ads on everything what a great day that was. Tivo will die mostly becouse the product development has been ignored. There are a few things Tivo could do to save its self. First come out with an HD tivo that supports caputre via firewire, as we are all know FCC has told cable providers they need to add firewire out by april 1, btw the few providers that already support firwire have a great side effect, no OSD from the cable box so the OSD stacking problem is SOLVED. Second slash the price of the Unit to just above costs, if it cost $400~ a unit then they have production chain problems. They should be able to get the unit cost down below $100, do direct sales of $150, but allow retail to carry it at what ever they want. Finally, bring back hacking, put the protectvie seal, add the warnings about voiding wartnee.. yada yada.. but let the community back in to hacking, thats where all the good ideas came from anyways
(Disclaimer: I am a DirecTV subscriber who is quite happy with his DirecTivo receiver.)
Moore's Law: A complete non-sequitur. Tivo's value was never in the MPEG encoder. That merely provides compatibility with analog sources. It's the software, stupid. That's where Tivo still maintains the lead. Louderback has a good point that Tivo should have pursued a deal with Echostar more aggressively, instead of waiting until it was too late and whipping out the patent hammer, but getting to that point was a long, irrelevant trip. I guess he needed to fill a few column-inches.
HDTV: Again, the hardware is not where Tivo makes the money. Ensuring sufficient storage and throughput for multiple HD streams must have cost some R&D bucks, but everything related to decoding HD is expensive right now. Yes, the HD DirecTivo costs a whopping US$1000. But there's no such thing as a cheap HD STB, unless you go rummaging on eBay. Until something forces the STB prices down in proportion to screen prices, $1000 will be what the market bears. Maybe that's why the Moxi is still vapor...
Howlin' Mad Murdoch: Finally, a good point. I don't think I'm alone in thinking that Rupert Murdoch is going to ruin what is, smart card paranoia aside, a Good Thing. DirecTivo manages to hit the sweet spot between power and usability. I'd hope that, once he gets some Tivo-knowlegable people in his organization, he'll stick with Tivo when DirecTV becomes Sky America.
This sig intentionally left blank.
$20 / month? On what planet? It's only $12 or so, not $20. Besides, I got a lifetime subscription a year and a half ago, so a few more months and it will have reached the break-even point. After that, it's effectively free. Sure you can build your own, but not all of us have the time or energy. Five years ago I did, but now that I've got a disposable income, I'd much rather buy a better engineered product that just plain works.
Next time, check your facts before posting.
-jason
If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...
There is a workaround to this problem. It won't let you record two shows, but you can watch one while you record another. Basically, you set up a second connection to the TV from your cable box or antenna that by-passes the TiVo unit altogether. It also won't work on channels that need to be de-scrambled by your cable box like HBO or Showtime, but at least you can watch one and record another.
TODO: Insert witty sig
Death of "Mod Parent Up" posts predicted - film at 11:00.
It isn't even limited to electronic media. Dead tree versions used to publish the same crap. Check the newspapers and magazines in the supermarket check-out line. Many of those don't even limit themselves to some insignificant item, either. They'll edit the photos to make them fit the story.
It's all about generating chatter. Whether on-line or at the water cooler.
But now, on-line means page hits which equates to popularity / ratings which means advertising dollars.
First, PVRs aren't going to die, does anyone really care if they are getting their service from TiVo, ReplayTV, DirecTV, Dish, comcast, or whomever might decide to put the box together and package it with software? Assuming the software is good and the box works correctly it doesn't matter to me at all.
Second, as to whether or not the cable companies squeeze out TiVo, it will be interesting, but TiVo would survive easily on just the DirecTV customers. They probably wouldn't be as big, but the company wouldn't die. They also may end up cutting deals with cable companies in the future as well.
Third, HDTV ruining the game? This is purely ridiculous. If the DirecTV HD Tivo box costs $1000 than most of the price has to be in the components used to supply HDTV or temporary inflation because someone wants gigantic profit margins. The only thing different about the TiVo is that it will require a bigger HD, but you can get a 200 gig drive now for near $100, so there's no reason that the price should inflate that dramatically based on the TiVos requirements. If the cost of the HD equipment is that much more it will hinder HD not the TiVo, and the expense will be more for anyone switching to HD, since the TiVo cost of it only needs to be about $100 (at most) than a non TiVo HD player. Also, the idea that HDTV is going to rule 2004 seems pretty ridiculous to me. Sorry, I think I'm going to need more than about 5% of my channels to broadcast in HD before I could claim HD rules TV. While higher quality HD TV has it's benefits, and it will eventually take over, there are relatively few things that I care enough to spend big money on products to watch in HD. Most TV (news, sitcoms, tv dramas etc) plays out fine in non HDTV. If there's a high premium to buy an HD decoder box (for cable or DTV) I'm not going to buy one regardless of whether or not it has TiVo in it. I also think I'm the only one left who detests the widescreen format. (who here has a TV in their house that's bounded by horizontal space more so than vertical space? You get the extra height for free because you run out of width, so you might as well get the 4-3). Also, if I see one more idiot with a widescreen TV who stretches out the picture and tells me how good it looks I'm going to kill them. You just took a non HD broadcast, stretched the picture to make everyone look fat, and then brag about how great your TV is. Brilliant. (sorry for the rant)
Finally, I will agree that TiVo will be in big trouble if it can't keep it's deal with DirecTV. The points above are only worth mentioning if it has the deal with DTV in place. I do think that integrated PVRs are going to be the future. No one wants extra boxes, and there is no advantage to having your box and your PVR seperate, so getting into contracts with places to do digital is the way to go.
Did anyone notice that the end made no sense with respect to the rest of the article? He goes through this whole argument about why TiVo will die, mostly centered around lower-priced competition coming in, but then his analysis is that the company is arrogant and unresponsive. Huh? Where did that come from? How did we get from Point A to Point B here? It sounds more like he feels snubbed, his poor journalistic pride got hurt, and so he decided to write an article on why this company is going down. Not that I think he's totally wrong, it's just that I think his motives are suspect and he's missing this thing called "logic" in his conclusion.
The author goes into great detail about how smart the cable company offerings are and digital-to-analog arugments without even mentioning the fact that the majority of cable television subscribers are analog customers.
This is rapidly changing. Here in Southern California, ALL of the cable companies are offering a dominately digital service for under $40, and a rapidly uptaking channels from their analog system into their digital one. My local cable company, for example, offers a digital tier that is exactly the same price as the 51-channel "analog" service. You cannot even find the analog service in their promotion: if you were to call and order "cable", you'd get a digital-tier package with digital set-top boxes.
His point is valid, and his point is that TiVo is reacting slowly to market force changes. Here in SoCal, Adelphia and Time-Warner have been aggessively marketing their digital tier packages, and Time Warner has been adding the 1-2 punch of their sub-$10 PVR service and programming on demand. Why would I buy a TiVo now if I could get a PVR from my cable company for less than TiVo's monthly service?
Plus, Time Warner offers a service that TiVo dosen't: programming on demand. At the moment, the offerings are trim, but on their premium digital tier you can get popular programming ON DEMAND. If I hear from a friend that tonight's CSI episode was really cool, and I don't typically watch CSI, I can still get it via Time-Warner's programming on demand service after the fact.
That is exactly his point. The CONVERGENCE of cable set-top box, broadband digital cable, and PVR is going to be what kills TiVo. TiVo was an awesome first-generation product.. but the next-generation PVR will likely just be local storage of streamed content via broadband cable. And, since TiVo's arrogance locked them out of the cable market, they'll forever now be behind.
The author also failed to mention that the chairman of TiVo also sits on the board of directors at NetFlix. Imagine the possibilities there.
Sure, that's great. But, where I live, my cable company is Time-Warner. My local cable company dosen't just share a single board member with a large media producer: they are part of the same company. That has real possibility: they own the pipe, they own a piece of the content on the pipe, and they own one of the production companies producing the content on the pipe. Netflix is a red herring: who needs to ship out discs to your customers when you have a nice fat pipe between you and them that you control? Netflix is also increasingly getting competition, and it will be interesting to see five years from now where they stand, especially with Wal-Mart getting in the "mailing discs rental" business.
Again, it's about CONVERGENCE. Whoever has the most bits of the pie will likely be the winner. And, at the moment, the cable companies have the most bits, with the Dishers a close second. That makes it look like DIRECTV would be TiVo's saving grace, but as he pointed out, that's unlikely given their corporate style.
This dosen't even touch upon regulatory issues, like HDTV's "broadcast" flag, and the recent FCC proposal that may result in VHF TV disappearing from many markets in 2006.
It'll be fun to watch, but I will be surprised if TiVo is a big player in a few years.
The year 2004 will be THE year for HDTV! Hahahaaha. Great premise. Do you work part time at Best Buy?
My favorite is that the final 'nail' in Tivo's coffin will be when ESPN starts airing some sportcrap in HDTV. Oh no, the end!
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
Enough with the crying "Wolf!" already. First, the difficulty of explaining a PVR was going to kill TiVo, then copyright zealots were going to kill TiVo (remember when Dvorack said using TiVo was "theft"?), then Microsoft's UltimateTV was going to kill TiVo, then Replay's ability to file swap was going to kill TiVo, then negative press was going to kill TiVo (such as when Advertising Age Magazine published an article claiming that more U.S. households had outhouses then had TiVos), then new competition from settop boxes was going to kill TiVo. When TiVo was a smaller company people said that its small size would kill it, and then when it grew larger they said that its larger size would kill it.
Since TiVo gets press everytime somebody thinks up a new reason for it to die, that must mean that a lot of people love it and care to read news and rumors relating to it, and based on that I'll make my prediction. I predict that TiVo will die when people stop wondering about when it will die.
From the article:
Give a TiVo to your friends for a month and you'll have to pry the remote out of their cold, dead hands.
Umm... thanks buddy, but if it has that effect on people, you can keep it!
Isn't predicting the death of technology just a really easy thing to do? Errr . . . I mean . . . THIS JUST IN! Pixels, cell phones, and wheelbarrows will be replaced by a newer, more better-er thing.
Monster Zero is the reason we cannot live on the surface, but must live forever live underground like this.
Sure markets are changing, products are changing, pricing changes everything changes. The secret of a successful company is that it will adapt: develop new products, make them cheaper, have new services, partner with other companies. The author implies that TIVO will stay mostly as it is now and the world is changing. If Ford would still build the T-Model, well...
TIVO is in a favourable position. They have a lot of know how (also in the way of providing services, which is important), their brand is strong (almost used as synonym for PVR) and may have asignificantinstalled base (not sure about this). As every start-up pioneering a new market they have now to keep up with the fact that there will be competition from established players, change in distribution models etc. That's quite normal, it's a challenge. But it's by no means a sure death. (Of course, it might be more profitable to sell to another player, but this is not a death!)
But sure, I bet many people were convinced of "Microsoft will die because IBM is going to do PC operating systems now (OS2)" too.
Seriously. They stop because of a lack of innovation, and what is left after said innovation stops is what diehards will continue. OS/2, anybody?
This sig no verb.
Did you read article? Sure, Tivo is fine now, but what happens when DirecTV drops it and builds its own?
If your entire argument that Tivo is in fine shape because of its partnership with DirecTV, then Tivo is NOT in good shape.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Sorry, this is my first post here and I assumed responses would be threaded appropriately considering this forum is run by a hi-tech outfit. I'll try to keep responses to the flow of conversation. First of all, (and besides the blasphemy :) this article is inappropriate considering The TiVo is not dead nor dying yet. It is as inappropriate as Time running a cover on "Why Bush Has Already Lost the Election" or "Why You Need To Dump Your IBM Stock Now".
Yes, TiVo has a difficult fight simply because it is the "early adopter", which generally means that when huge corporations find someone making a profit in a new market, they jump in and take over. We've seen it before. Anyone remember when everyone predicted the death of Amazon.com because all the other publishers jumped into the market? If this was simply the case, Apple would have died off 20 years ago.
The author also goes on to blast TiVo for not having HDTV recording until this year. This is utterly ridiculous when it's clear that trying to push technology the public isn't ready for is the basis for TiVo's problem. DirecTV's new HDTiVo is superior in functionality to anything on the market allowing simultaneous recording of two HDTV programs from satellite and/or off-air programming. Nobody else offers anything close to this.
I have no more a crystal ball than the author of this article. It is very clear that TiVo has and is continuing to come up with new ways to innovate and expand. By adding HomeMedia media option I can hear about a program and go to my Palm and tell my TiVo to record the show no matter where I am. They have already made deals with software publishers to allow TiVo content to be burned to DVD (along with DRM). Whether TiVo survives as a standalone set top unit remains to be seen. TiVo began by diversifying itself with licensing to different manufacturers including DirecTV. Who knows what the future holds with "Strangeberry."
This past Christmas we saw a flood of new technology in PVRs and PVR to DVD recording units. Yet these things function no better than a crappy VCR. Clearly, whatever these companies do, they will be following the development path of TiVo. They can either license TiVo's software or take the time and money to develop the equivalent consumer friendly software and still pay TiVo to license the patents they own.
No matter what, calling a corporation dead when it's not even down is poor and wildly speculative journalism.
The main reason TIVO is going to die is because of a total failure to innovate their product. The TIVO was absolutely awesome 2-3 years ago. I still love my TIVO but I am constantly disgusted by their failure to improve the product.
Some things that should have been implemented AGES ago:
1) The ability to store shows in folders. It would be very convenient to have all your episodes of (Insert Show Here) in a single folder.
2) The ability to sort your programs by ANYTHING other than time/date stamp. Sorting by name sure would be nice.
3) The ability to start recording LATE rather than just early. With shows that start at stupid times like 8:59 now, it would be nice to start recording 1 minute late to avoid overlap.
4) The ability to still record part of a show if there is overlap. Just because something overlaps for 5 minutes doesn't mean the later show should just be abandoned.
5) Sharing shows between multiple TiVOs.
Finally, the recent revelation that TiVO logs EVERYTHING you go: when you pause, what parts of a show you watch more than once, etc. and sells this data really hurt TiVO badly.
I didn't mind them keeping aggregate data on what shows got recorded because that helps me. If the shows I watch are considered "popular" then it is less likely they will be cancelled.
But I definitely don't like them being able to record data on when I pause, when I fast forward, what I watch more than once, etc. That is an invasion of privacy. Furthermore, I suspect this additional logging is the reason why so many TiVO owners I know report far more problems and lags when performing such operations.
The failure to innovate and the implementation of incredibly invasive logging are what will kill TiVO. Those actions make the environment RIPE for a competitor to steal customers.
-Michael
Threshold RPG
Everyone's been posting Jim Louderback's premonition of TiVo's death like it's the Gospel, and so I feel compelled to tell you exactly why Jim (a reporter who's been naysaying the TiVo for years) is wrong, and that punchy three-word headlines don't equate to a balanced market analysis.
The simple reason TiVo will live is because TV is intimate. People want ownership of their experience, and they want ownership of the resulting media. This is exactly the opposite of what cable and satellite companies want.
Of course TiVo as a standalone appliance will fade away as Decoder-PVRs become common, but they'll grow into three other markets: The referenced cable/satellite set-top boxes, DVD-R burning hybrids, and as an integrated component of television sets. Two of these hybrids are already on the market (DirecTiVo and two different DVDiVos) and the third, Toshiba and Phillips TVs with integrated free 'tivo lite' will be here by Christmas.
Saying that Cable-PVRs will squash TiVo is like saying that cable squashed the VCR, when in reality it made it much stronger. For all the benefits that a cable PVR has (that it seems cheaper because the cost is built into your monthly charge), there's no content provider in the world who would ship a device that would record to DVD, and no network that would deign to be included in a service that did.
Recording to a DVD isn't as easy as recording to a tape, and this is where an integrated 'export this show to that disc' solution really shines. If you're going to buy a DVD anyhow, the incremental cost of adding PVR functionality is a gimmie. And yes, within the next 4 years it will be an incremental cost.
TiVo is source independent. Cable, satellite, bunny ears or closed-circuit TV, TiVo is your box. As each content provider has their own proprietary system, if you change providers, you have to change systems, a shift as big as switching from Mac to Windows. Oh yeah, and your shows are gone, too. It's content lock-in, and it's one of the big reasons Dish Networks wants you to use their box, so leaving their fold is more painful, even when they suddenly drop CBS, MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon because of a contract dispute.
As long as content providers carry copyrighted material on their networds, they'll be hobbled by the demands of organizations like the MPAA and Viacom who will use all the leverage they have to inhibit the end user's ability to export to any portable digital media. Standalone PVRs and in-TV PVRs are farther outside their control, and as that control is flexed, PVR customers will flock to these options.
TiVo-in-TV, which Sony plans to market later this year, is another gimmie. It will provide a free 3-day window to the future, with an inexpensive up-sell to season pass functionality. The TV-TiVo-DVR box is probably about 24 months away.
Jim's main point is that TiVo will fail because the costs of enteing the market and delivering product are dropping rapidly, but this is likely why they'll succeed. TiVo will never be a Yahoo or other conglomorate, but they will become a platform standard with a steady revenue stream. When prices fall uniformly, users flock to the best solution, not the cheapest. Getting PVRs into peoples hands cheaply, on the backs of other products is exactly why the market will succeed, and when the market succeeds, TiVo will likely be at the top of it, based on product quality.
True, you won't have to buy a $299 box for your parents to bring them the light, but when you see the glow in their eyes, talking about the magic recording TV they bought at Best Buy last month, you can bet it'll have a little guy with two antennae and no arms stickered onto the remote.
Kevin Fox