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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."
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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?
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And mysteriously my TiVo no longer skips those retina burning iPod commercials
Most have seen these pictures.
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
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.
Well, at least the TiVo service already somewhat goes with the current Apple naming scheme...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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
Great. Now my Tivo will play even fewer games.
Not sure if the bandwidth requirements are there yet, but it would be an interesting proposition. iPod::iTMS, TiVo::iMVS (iMovie Video Store). Given TiVo's crapping on the Mac lately by not supporting AAC and no Mac support for TiVo2Go, I think this is purely wishful-thinking on the analyst's part.
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
Saw funny run-down of the Apple product cycle in someone's sig today. This cracked me up.
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.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
"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!"
Call me crazy, but based on the last few financial quarters, I'm guessing that Steve jobs has a better handle on his business than you do. If he does this deal, it's going to be because he thinks he can make it work.
WTF is up with the blue plastic crack? How many current Apple products come in blue plastic?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Really, why would Apple want Tivo? Last I heard tivo was starting to fall on hard times.
Far better off just making their own PVR software. You can already hack together a pretty nice PVR using a Motorola DCT-6200 and a Mac. see here : http://macteens.com/more.php?id=410_0_1_0_C
The only reason Apple might want tivo is to leverage themselves somehow into the way that cable/satellite/ip content is distributed, just to block M$ push. Maybe i'm missing something but I don't see how buying tivo would help much if any with this.
That said I would love to see a nice Mac Mini DVR from Apple. That said if they don't make one, not too hard to make one yourself.
I, for one, welcome our iPippen overlords
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Tivo fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Tivo (a revision 3) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 minute show from one machine to another. 20 minutes! At home, on my MiniITX running MythTV, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Tivo, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this program transfer, the Channel Guide will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even the media player software for the PC is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Tivos, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Tivo that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Tivo's faster Linux architecture. My ReplayTV with 8gigs of HD runs faster than this machine at times! From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Tivo is a superior machine.
Tivo addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Tivo over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
(Word to the mods.)
Misery Loves Company.
Wonder when Apple will pick up BSD cause that's been dying forever, oh wait.
A cursory glance certainly highlights pros of an Apple/TiVo merger:
.AAC but for video) to restrict transfer of video to approved "devices" such as other TiVo units or portable accessories.
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
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.
Linux at home
1) Why would a TiVo need to run on OS X?
2) Why would it be difficult to port the actual PVR software to OS X?
3) Why would it cost you $699?
4) Why would it be in blue plastic?
I suspect it would cost $499 and come in a Mac mini shaped box as additional software, and it would integrate with some kind of media software, like iTunes, and use Rendezvous to stream it across the network to all your Macs/PCs, and it would be compressed in H.264
GPL Deconstructed
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.
--
$tar -xvf
TiVo would seem to fit much better into Steve Jobs's portfolio than into Apple's product line...
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.)
TiVo Sale Rumors -- link
by: phillipswann 02/23/05 12:21 pm
Msg: 239226 of 239994
http://www.swannisez.com/tivorumor022305.html
(If you look at that link now, it's a rehash of Reuters news concerning the rumor, with no hint that Swann -- who has probably scared himself half to death by singlehandedly moving the market -- started this rumor himself)
At 3:11 pm, Marketwatch issued a sloppy story that credited an entity called "Inside Digital Media" for cracking the apple buyout story. However, if you visit the site, you will find a blog entry that presents a well-reasoned rationale as to why Apple should buy Tivo, but no hard news at all.
Subsequently, analyst Steven Kroll, Jr. (whose dad is a senior partner at the same firm) provided the "what we hear on the street" quote that Reuters served up.
No one seems to have bothered at all to trace this garbage to its specious sources.
I own some Tivo, and was watching all of this today because I was considering cutting my losses (this dog had lost one-third of its value in a month). Instead, I'm holding on and hoping for a short squeeze, or even the possibility that the rumors will alert video-on-demand competitors to what a bargain TIVO's 3 million subscribers would be for anyone seeking a toehold on the living room.
So, while it looks to me that the rumor is only that, I wouldn't be too surprised if it became reality.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
...I would be psyched because it would mean tivo wins. I've never seen a BSOD in hi-def. I look forward to it.
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.
the toothpaste is frozen
No, Tipple.
"Dad, during the Superbowl halftime, I saw a Nipple on the Tipple!"
Table-ized A.I.
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.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Too bad its probably not true, given the history of the rumor above.
l , and obviously they've also done the music portion.
My 1st generation TiVO is already a box that sits in my living room, connected to my stereo, from which I could play songs/videos pulled off my hard drive. An I'm running Mac OS X. Considering I ended up buying a second device to do just the music piece of this http://www.slimdevices.com/ if Apple came out with a new TiVo that did this plus movies, I'd have to seriously consider upgrading my TiVO.
Its inevitable and obvious that Apple was going to eventually build a device to serve as the home entertainmentcomputer connection. For one thing, Steve Jobs said so about 8 years ago. They already have the codec to use for the video portion: H.264/AVC http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/index.htm
Whether or not they do an iVideos store is probably moot in the end. TiVo is a success just doing broadcast TV, the real growth would be becoming the defacto standard for digital cable and satellite. TiVO hasn't really persued this, but I expect Apple might, there's nothing sacred about the settop box business, and Apple has already show willingness to license iPod to other vendors like HP/Motorola.
Nor does iVideos require broadband. DirecTV is already marketing cheap movies to PVR owners like myself. Come to think of it, even without broadband you could easily sell a service that was satellite based and offered you a menu of 100 different movies a month. After all, over pay per view, I already have a menu of about 25 movies/month, and the only reason its only 25 is because they repeat the movie all day long. With a Tivo, they would only have to broadcast a movie once.
Hmmm... The TiVo already has a modem, so it could connect to a master server, order any movie from a long list of movies, then get the movie downloaded in one burst via the satellite. Since multiple people could mooch off the same movie download, it might be possible to have a list of 1000 movies available. If you picked an obscure movie, you might have to wait 24 hours for a download slot to open. It would be inconvenient, but if new releases were instantaneous (since you could start in the middle of any running download), its proabably acceptable.
So say $500 for a new box that plugs into my existing video crap, lets me download from a list of 1000 movies over my satellite dish, replaces my sqeezebox for music (one less thing), stores all my DVDs for easy playback (less crap in the living room). In a word, hmm...
TiVO couldn't do it alone, but Apple and TiVO could do it together.