TiVo Moves to Bypass Cable

Thomas Hawk writes "TiVo is throwing in the towel on cable. According to CEO Mike Ramsay, 'offering service through one of the primary cable platforms is not the best way to grow our business at this time, because the economics are not very attractive, instead, we have decided to embrace the PC as our friend.' This may add to the complexity of an already convoluted message that TiVo has been criticized for being unable to articulate to the masses. In the same article TiVo says it plans to introduce a new line of recorders that will accept CableCards. The company has declined to say when new machines will be introduced or how much they will cost. Most significantly, there is still no elaboration as to whether this new standalone box will be able to record cable or satellite HDTV."

Comments

Lost

[confusion]

First, I am a huge Tivo fan. I've got 2 of em, and I would be lost without them.

Tivo's recent actions have left me pretty convinced that they're lost. They don't seem to have a cohesive business plan on how they are going to fend off all the "generic" pvr/dvr's that come free with cable or satellite service, or for the onslaught of PC based solutions.

Tivo certainly has refinement and ease of use in its court, but I can see that eroding quickly. They are having to keep adding new features under the same pricing model just to stay competetive.

Long live Tivo...

Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/

Re:Lost

[Hollins]

I'm also a TiVo subscriber and huge fan.

The rub for me is that most competing PVR services are owned by companies that are also content creators or which have close ties with content providers. Look at the contractual relationship between Comcast and Viacom, for instance, or even DirectTV and the NFL. So I'm very suspicious of Comcast offering PVR service with my cable package while Viacom is lobbying congress for extensions to the broadcast flag.

I think it comes down to a question longevity. If TiVo dies, then I expect these other providers will begin crippling PVR features. However, after the broadcast flag becomes effective, Viacom may start pressuring Comcast to deploy DRM restrictions, at which point TiVo becomes the hero, and shores up market share.

Regardless, things don't look good for TiVo in the long term. Their hardware is a loss-leader that is entering the commodity realm, free software implementations of the same features are improving rapidly, and we seem to be converging on effective web services that can serve the data I currently pay a subscription fee for.

How about this

[yorkpaddy]

I doubt this is what Tivo will do. but, how would this work. Tivo could act like a cable provider, but use the internet as the transfer medium instead of coaxial cable. Networks could offer tivo shows which they could offer to their users. The users could watch the shows at any time based on their choosing. The super small cable channels (Outdoor life network, knitting central...) would love this. ? ... profit

Re:huh

[plilja]

A cable card is a hardware card, issued by your cable provider, that allows the decoding of cable channels that are broadcast with encryption. I don't believe any of the large cable companies are currently issuing cable cards, but they are supposed to start issuing them by the end of 2006. Cable cards are required for any third party hardware to decode encrypted channels on third party hardware. Pretty much all extra content (HBO, Pay-Per-View, etc.) is encrypted, and most of the cable companies are concidering, or already have, started to encrypt non-extra content as well (that is any content above "basic-cable" level).

Translation from exec talk to geek

[the angry liberal]

'offering service through one of the primary cable platforms is not the best way to grow our business at this time, because the economics are not very attractive, instead, we have decided to embrace the PC as our friend.'

Translation: Guys, we have not posted a profit yet and our doors have been open almost 8 years. We have got to do something FAST! Drop the cable, push the DirecTV DVR and extend functionality to the PC fast. Otherwise we are going to lose more investors.

I like my Tivo, but I wish these cats would figure out some way to make a profit.

Killer App

[itoleck]

What TIVO needs is a new box with a midget inside that does all of my work, so I have time to watch TV!

RIGHT HEADLINE - WRONG CONCLUSION

[pikapp767]

I've researched this issue and the headline of the article is correct. TiVo is moving to bypass cable but not by throwing the whole system away and not allowing you to record cable BUT by integrating a cable card into a standalone TiVo box. This eliminates the need for a cable decoder. Their intent is to differentiate themselves further from the cheap knockoff PVRs that the cable companies are deploying. As an avid TiVo user myself I assure you that TiVo will not be dropping the capability to record cable programming.

Here is an article that better describes what TiVo is doing: http://olympics.reuters.com/audi/newsArticle.jhtml ?type=technologyNews&storyID=7252458/


More information and analysis will most likely be available at my source for TiVo information http://www.tivoblog.com/ tomorrow.

Re:First Post!

[chrispitude]

Yeah, this is my first post.

Folks seem a bit confused here. Tivo aren't talking about dropping support for recording programs off cable.

Find someone who has digital cable *and* Tivo. The only way to decode digital cable is through the cable company's crappy set-top box. This means you are also stuck with their crappy program guide, poor MPEG decoding, and sub-par signal quality. To make things even more fun, the Tivo must resort to things like IR blasters to change the channel. When you tell Tivo to change the channel, it has to send fake button presses to the digital cable set-top box to change channels.

Go find someone with this setup. Try it. It sucks.

When Tivo talk about breaking their dependence on the cable company, what they mean is to break this dependence on cable company set-top boxes to decode digital cable. The way to do this is with CableCard, which provides all of the decryption needed to decrypt and decode digital cable signals. This *includes* pay channels as well. In other words, you'd be able to use the Tivo *as* your digital cable box, in addition to getting the nice Tivo program guide and DVR capabilities.

It's definitely a very good thing.

Oh yeah, and I got a chuckle out of all those posts saying that the free PC linux/windows DVR programs are going to take over the market. Yeah, I can't wait to see my dad install linux on a PC, install a PVR card and appropriate drivers, and get it all working. In fact, I bet he's thrilled about the idea of having a PC on all the time in the living room. Geez, he can barely find the play button to get a DVD going, folks. If you don't sell my dad and tens of millions like him, you don't get the market.

- Chris