Apple to Buy TiVo?

vallette writes "Reuters is reporting that Apple may be interested in buying TiVo. Seems like a good fit to me. Both companies stock price is up on the rumor."

Comments

Go for it!

[BWJones]

How can this not be a good idea? A decent PVR setup (with hardware acceleration) has been missing for the MacOS platform. Even though there are software options, they require heavy duty hardware and because there is no hardware acceleration, even a G5 takes a bit of crunching to perform compressions and such. Also, given Apple's video compression technologies such as Pixlet would make ideal means for encoding video for later replay, say on the plane or some such downtime.

Of course the business analysis will make the ultimate determination of whether or not Apple is willing to make the move, (and Tivo has been losing money), but if any company can make it work, while showing the MPAA and equivalent TV organization a past history of success in media with iTunes, Apple is it. Come on, how would you like to in addition to the traditional PVR duties, be able to pull up TV episodes of old series that are not being shown, even in syndication? Or have a truly "on demand" movie library of all sorts, not just the popular canned options that cable companies think will be most profitable?

Maybe it's going here

[loid_void]

Most have seen these pictures.

Figures

[Walker2323]

If anyone can figure this one out it's Apple. Tivo is an amazing product, it just needs to be managed properly. Apple seems to be pretty good at that these days.

Digital hub

[caryw]

This would make sense as it would fit in with their "digital hub" philosophy. My only question is how would they integrate it with their existing product line?
iPodTV anyone?
--Fairfax Underground: Where Fairfax County comes out to play

Alternatively...

[Chordonblue]

Or how would you like to ride in an aircar to your destination, or 'micro-wave' all of your food?

As usual, good ideas never live up to the reality and the problem here isn't so cut and dried. CONTENT is the issue. All I see Apple gaining is the TiVO name (which in and of itself isn't a bad thing). Content suppliers are the ones who will have to meet consumers halfway and if what's been going on with the DMCA, Broadcast Flag, and other nonsense, I don't see this changing.

Now... If Apple decides to take chances and 'loophole' solutions to let their consumers do what they want with the content - THAT would be interesting. So far, it appears the consumer electronics industry as a whole is rolling over when challenged by the likes of the RIAA and MPAA.

Re:Alternatively...

[JPriest]

There is a reason that almost every time you see a computer in a movie it is a mac. Apple has a good relationship with the movie industry.

Re:Alternatively...

[gad_zuki!]

Okay, lets ignore the GIANT divide between PC and TV which Apple has tried to bridge before with its TV Mac or whatever that thing was.

Apple would not only get the name but the familiar and excellent Tivo interface/software. This includes the familiar and excellent Tivo remote. Sure, upside down it looks like a, ahem, little black dildo, but other than that its probably the best remote design out there. They also get Tivo's customer base and a chance to build upon a well-known brand.

Lastly, they also get all that sweet, sweet tv datamining. The data tivo collects makes the Neilson system look like 1950's technology. Apple could better resell or use this information than tivo currently does. Sounds weird? Not any weirder than Apple being the largest online digital music seller and mp3 player producer.

There's a lot to tivo Apple can build on. If apple wants to bridge the TV/PC gap then this looks like a smart move.

The discussions went something like...

[Mr. Cancelled]

"You see we have this new computer that we think would be a nice machine to power a familys media needs... It'll handle DVD's, CD's, mp3's, and a ton of other formats. And it's small! A family could tuck is away somewhere our of the way, and control everything through say a Bluetooth enabled remote. And did I mention it's quiet? You could hear a pin drop with it running a foot away from you".

"Of course it would also nice if we could somehow integrate some PVR-like capabilities into our system... Time shifting and the like... Well say, that's what you boys do, now that I think about it. Look... You could sell media boxs for the next few years, until the cable companies, and the satellite companies put you out of business, Or... You could join up with me, and we can change the world!"

Re:I wish

[protohiro1]

It isn't that big of a reach. People forget that iTunes started with an aquisition: Soundjam MP. Why start from scratch with a set top box when someone else has done most of the grunt work? Given that Tivo runs on linux PPC and MIPS (series I & II) I would imagine the code is fairly portable. And getting it to run on darwin would likely be fairly trivial. If Tivo is a good buy Apple can really save money and time to market by aquiring them.

Mac mini is the next TiVo unit?

[Linuxathome]

A cursory glance certainly highlights pros of an Apple/TiVo merger:

1. Mac mini can be a TiVo unit (just use the S-Video out adapter for your TV set). Although it'll need a TV card (wish they'd come out with something like the Hauppauge Nexus-S satellite TV card).
2. Next generation iPod Photo will probably be iPod Video with content that can be transferred from your TiVo unit (the Mac mini) to your iPod Video portable unit.
3. Apple is probably not happy with just distributing music media (via its iTunes store) but is looking to the future to also provide downloadable video content via an "iVideo" store--what better way to do that than to buy the TiVo customer base and offer them this content.
4. Apple can ensure that the saved video content has the right digital stamps (a la .AAC but for video) to restrict transfer of video to approved "devices" such as other TiVo units or portable accessories.

The one downside I see in this merger is that Apple will probably concentrate less and less on the service of "timeshifting" (i.e. drop it entirely), unless they can ensure that users have a right to that material. READ: unless the bigwigs of TV land is happy about how Apple handles digital rights management of timeshifted/saved content. Although timeshifting and saving media for later viewing is currently acceptable, the logical path that this technology leads to, is the ability to share that content or make it portable--something that is not yet acceptable among Hollywood and the TV networks.

Debt

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Doesn't TiVo have a huge amount of debt? While their product may be interesting, I am under the belief that if Apple were to purchase Tivo, it would mean also having to acquire that debt--whereas, if anything, if Apple just purchased the rights to the TiVo software (to run on a mini, etc) they don't have to take on that debt too.

What does Apple gain from a TiVo purchase vs a license to their tech? If Tivo were making money, there'd be that--but they aren't and their prospects are dim.

I can see Apple licensing the tech, releasing it for free (for Macs) or as part of their iLife tools--and then charging a sub to hit Apple servers for schedule download. And I think they could do really interesting things with DRM content with OS X as a platform. I guess we'll see.

Why not TiVo?

[KingSkippus]

I keep seeing posts about how awful it would be for Apple to buy TiVo because TiVo is losing money and/or subscribers and because of the onslaught of competition from other PVR companies.

Regardless of its declining status, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't TiVo still the current market leader for PVR products? I mean, if Apple DOES want to quickly get into the PVR market, wouldn't it just make sense to buy the market leader and go from there if possible?

It just seems to me that even if TiVo is losing money and/or subscribers and/or market share, it would be a hell of a lot easier for Apple to buy it and turn it around than to start from scratch and overtake them with a whole new product line. Besides, TiVo does still have some interesting things going on. Even though the deal is winding down, they still have the DirecTV subscribers, plus the Home Media capabilities (easily integrated with iPods), plus the Netflix deal, and so on.

Whether or not this actually happens, it seems to me that this would be a sweet deal for both companies, if (and only if) Apple seriously wants to get into the media center market.

(If Apple does this just to "play around" in the media center market, then it will be an unmitigated disaster for both companies.)

cringely's prediction

[qwerbus]

its a very interesting thought to say the least. cringely had me mostly convinced with what he had to say about the mac mini. if this really went down it would be pretty clear evidence that he was right. i honestly think he has to be right, or there's a real chance of people not seeing the light and going with microsoft's IPTV instead. they really did impress me with that at CES.

Blogs are both good and bad for journalism

[Infonaut]

First, thank you for posting this interesting trail of breadcrumbs. The news behind the news shows that reporters are often driven by the desire to scoop the competition, and so don't do their homework properly.

What's particularly interesting about this saga is that it was started by some random guy who could be your next door neighbor or someone embedded deep in Apple. Who really knows?

The sloppy reporting that followed was then exposed by aka-ed, who though not "blogging" it in the most exact sense of the term was for all intents and purposes doing just that - taking advantage of a Web forum to shed a little light on how the rumor got started.

The interplay between traditional "Big Media" players and bloggers is getting weirder and weirder every day.