TiVo to Offer SDK

Thomas Hawk writes "TiVo has begun an effort to court third party developers to try and figure out a way to provide additional add on type services to somehow differentiate itself from the satellite and cable providers that are presently nipping at their heels. Initially the company plans to release three add ons: a weather information plug in, an RSS reader and a game. David Pogue of the New York Times is out with some of the features [NYT=Check soul at door] that at present already make TiVo a superior offering to the cable and satellite freebies. "

Comments

Re:I guess someone at TiVo downloaded Mythtv

[FredThompson]

Why stop there?

Direct satellite signal recording
Myth NOPE!!!
TiVo Yes

DirecTV with TiVo receivers store the actual satellite signal, not a captured version of an analog signal. Most of what you credit to Myth is really a PC with a video out card. May as well claim Myth supports RAR, WMP, QT, Flash, etc. ad nauseum.

Re:Wow! Really?

[Naikrovek]

yeah you can have your mythtv do all of that. for no monthly fee yes.

but the initial cost of your mythtv box is at least 10x what the initial cost of a tivo is. that's a large barrier of entry.

computer with dvd burner, large hard disk, tuner cards, video card with tv-out, costs a lot more than a tivo.

very tired of this 'mythtv is better than everything else in the whole wide world, and if you don't use it you are an idiot' business that is going on here.

Re:Tivo's popular because of non-technical people.

[crawling_chaos]

Popularity comes from making it easy to use and marketing/brand naming. Microsoft, AOL and others have shown that to the average joe six pack it's not about innovation.

I'm about to do something I never thought I would -- defend AOL. At the time the original AOL was released, it was innovative. Nobody else was packaging a bulletin board system that was as friendly or as feature laden. People started to get on to AOL who found Compuserve or the local BBS scene far too intimidating.

The Internet sort of drove a stake in to that model, and it can be argued that AOL hasn't done any innovation lately (except in the creative marketing and creative accounting fields), but the original product took off because it was something different from what was already out there. Isn't that innovation by definition?

TiVo seems to be in a similar boat. They've brought a technology to the masses that only the truly geeky could have had before. The real question is can TiVo find a way to add a feature that makes owning a TiVo and paying the service contract worthwhile? And before you say that there is nothing out there, remember that many analysts didn't think TiVo would make it this far, as everyone already owned a VCR to tape Friends.

Re:We have a Tivo and a Cox DVR

[Lumpy]

unfortunately you are in the minority.

Rumor has it that a couple of larger cable companies are looking at starting a "trade-in" program on tivo's.

trade in your tivo and get 2 dual tuner HD dvr boxes for free as well as 3 months of free HD/extended premium tier service.

this will pretty much destroy the TiVo when it happens. I love my Replay box, but the dual tuner motorola DVR box records digital channels far better and easier than Tivo or Replay can ever hope to... The advantage of having the decoding and descrambling hardware in the box is huge. While the "cable card" ready tivo is years away.