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Interview with TiVo CEO Tom Rogers
Thomas Hawk writes "Bloomberg did an exclusive interview with TiVo's Tom Rogers this week where among other things he discussed the possibility of TiVo offering a subscription only pricing model (i.e. no upfront cost to buy a TiVo box), the increasingly important role that advertising, ironically, is playing in their current business model, and details on the upcoming Series 3 standalone HDTV unit due out later this year."
Okay... I take it you're a dissatisfied customer...
Someone save me from this sanity.
I hate the fact that I pay them for the hardware. I pay for the subscription. They still throw advertisements and clutter up the main menu. I've been debating on getting rid of tivo. This article is a slap in the face to tivo users.
Ideally, a company like Tivo or Google (or whoever, Apple?) would offer ala carte cable programming over IP. This would be a huge win for telco broadband, since it would weaken the symbiotic relationship between cable TV and cable broadband.
If I could get DSL speeds equivalent to what I get from Time Warner, and be able to buy only the channels I want, I'd drop them in a heartbeat, assuming it costs less than $80/mo in total..
It's only a matter of time now until Tivo will go away. I don't think they will be able to compete once the cable companies have good PVR's. (and I mean good ones, not the crappy Comcast ones)
Look at the current state of things...you have Tivo struggling to get their HDTV version to market and Comcast has one already in use in households around the country. The Comcast box is fine, it's the software interface that currently sucks. Once they get that nailed (and I believe they will) they are going to be the powerhouse in PVR's. Them and every other cable company out there. Drives are getting cheap, and as Comcast gets more units out there, they will improve their interface. And you have ReplayTV (who in my opinion has a superior product to Tivo). They just dropped out of the hardware business (like Tivo innevitably will) to go into software only. Their software equals Tivo's, and now we will have that available on the PC (or perhaps sold to Comcast for a new interface?)
Tivo is fine and dandy...they road ReplayTV's coat tails in the beginning and then took the forefront, and eventually became "the PVR" that everyone knows. But honestly, their business model is going to have to change very significantly soon...there's no reason at all to buy a Tivo anymore when I can get a free box from Comcast (which is why they are going to go to the service only option) and once Comcast has a decent software interface, that's just one less box I need in my entertainment center if I have one built into my cable box!
The good news is that he just saved money on his car insurance by switching to Geico.
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
Try streamwired. For only 8$ a month i get over 100 shows playing 24/7. Its not the greatest quality, but for the money, you cannot beat the value. I love being able to sit down and have simpsons, family guy, american dad, futurama, and even more obscure shows like daria, rocko's modern life, pinky & teh brain, and the list goes on. www.streamwired.com (It might seem like blatant avertising but its worth sharing, im not giving refferer urls)
Why I am RedHot Mad at DirecTV
DirecTV used to be my favorite Satellite provider. When they launched TiVo service I got even more excited. However, it looks as if DirecTV has gotten "too big for their britches". In my opinion their parent company Murdoch's News Corp. is a bunch rich bastards who couldn't care less about their customers. News Corp. also owns NDS which is a competing DVR company. Naturally, not caring about the wants or needs of their customers they are trying to force NDS down our throats and drop TiVo as an offering. In order to make it "seem" like they are making things better for us they have stopped all software updates for the DirecTV versions of the TiVo that add new features. That way, they can make their offering look better. In reality, their product is weak at best and they have purposely made our TiVo machines limited in functionality. I find this tactic to be monopolistic at least and in my opinion it is fraudulent. Unfortunately for me, I just bought a DirecTV HD-TiVo and signed a year long contract. I can assure you that if they don't get their act together, I will no longer be a customer the day my contract expires. New smaller companies who care about their customers and who are willing to offer the customer the services they want will soon be nipping at the heels of DirecTV. I'll be looking for that company and they will get my money. I am also encouraging all of my friends and family to drop DirecTV and move to someone else when their contracts are up. I feel like on-line petitions are worthless, but if you haven't already signed it, please sign the following petition: DirecTV TiVo Petition. While signing this might help, the only effective way to get companies like this to wake up is to hit them in their pocket books. It's sad, because DirecTV used to be small and care what customers wanted.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
a company like Tivo or Google
I wish Google would buy Tivo. It would seem to be symbotic for both companies -- since Tivo is trying to get into broadband video delivery, and Google is trying to collect a corpus of video for Google Video. Plus, Tivo would elevate above PVR and into (i know, I know, but it's different this time) set-top box, going beyond the TV recording focus. Plus, the companies would then fare better against MS's assaults on both fronts.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
good points, I agree.
but I don't think TiVo will do content over IP until they can figure out a way to exclude non-windows users with a straight face, and then lie to them about future support.
I understand the CEO uses a Mac? but aparently not TiVo itself or he'd know how pathetic and lame their treatment of mac using customers has been.
I'm sarcastic, but not bitter, but I do have a comcast DVR box on order as of yesterday. my tivo doesn't do HD, and I won't upgrade it until there is mac support for tivo. tivo will probably just lose me with their indifference to myself, and surely a decently sized section of their existing customer base.
I disagree. The telcos don't see enough revenue in being pure data carriers, especially when they're forced to beef up their physical networks to compete. They want their fingers in programming, which has a larger potential revenue stream. In fact, telcos are moving into direct competition with the cable companies, while the cable MSOs move into data and POTS and compete with them! Both are worried that pure IP program distribution, along with the continuation of network neutrality, will carve away much of their most lucrative business. In many ways competition will be good for consumers, but it is also likely the data carriers will be forced to look for some sort of exclusive content to keep them from being forced to compete on price or service, which is quite costly. Think of how many different channels you already need to subscribe to to see all the games of your favorite baseball or football team? Look at the example of DirecTV tying down the out-of-market importation of NFL football. As the teclos and cable MSOs get my desperate, they will take desperate measures. Disclosure: I am employed in broadcast TV. I own a very small position in Comcast as part of my retirement fund.
You wouldn't rape your grand mother, so why would you TiVo?
Remeber kids, piracy is a crime!
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
http://news.com.com/TiVo,+Comcast+reach+DVR+deal/2 100-1041_3-5616961.html
I am running head first into the future for Television and creating a Video On demand system at home. Recording TV is dead, Watching a TV or subscribing to a channel lineup is dead. The future is to subscribe to a specific list of shows. Granted nobody offers a "legal" way to do this so Coupled with a modified MythTV backend and bittorrent I am getting only the shows I want as well as the content I want in the way I want it. I am using hardware playback units (DSM-320 for SDTV DSM520 for HDTV) and a central server to supply the content to the TV's
It works great and only has manual components for me because the content providers are still way behind in their technology. But it will get there. Someone doing an iTunes type of show distribution in Mpeg4 compressed for HighDef will take off like mad and will completely kill all the cablt Tv companies almost overnight (IF the greed is not rampant and they charge insane pricing for each episode.) Hell they can even still keep the advertising in the show downloads and still get people viewing the commercials.
REcording TV is dead, Broadcast TV is dead, Cable TV is dead. They all just do not know it yet.
On demand from suppliers is the future. and I am not waiting for it.
What I don't understand is since Tivo holds a bunch of patents why aren't they going after the other PVR producers? I figure they must have some legal angle to pull a "SCO" on Comcast, Cox, DirecTV, Dish and other companies that are edging them out of the marketplace. At least in the case of Tivo they were one of the first, the best, and shouldn't be upstaged by second rate monopolist-funded copycats.
Uh, doesn't mainstream IP television need to wait a few years for the infrastructure to catch up? I've tried playing with services like V-spot and the like, and they are spotty at best. Please let me know if I'm wrong, but is this really ready for prime time?
Horns are really just a broken halo.
I think subscription only pricing is their best bet. At this time, I can get a DVR from my cable company for my digital cable service for about 5 dollars more a month. How does TiVo plan to compete with that with their current price structure? I understand that people like the features that come with tivo more than other boxes, but I think mine is just fine, works like a charm, and I don't have to pay 100+ down and 10+ a month. If TiVo wants to truly compete, they need to either just focus on providing the boxes to cable companies directly to deliver to customers, or on other pricing schemes (such as, pay 500 dollars get TiVo for life--or until we go Bankrupt--as well as cheap upgrades to future boxes/software updates) or no cost for the units, can get an upgrade free every two years, and a minimal monthly cost (as in 10 dollars--120 a year is reasonable).
Lets see what happens.
TiVo UK still exists, operates, services, updates, rocks... but for some inexplicable reason one piece of the puzzle is now missing...
The Hardware...
What on *earth* is going on at TiVo UK?
Which deal with which devil leaves the UK market uncontested like this?!
FUD!!!!!!!!!!!!
1. Tivo showed their HDTV box at CES 2005, and again at 2006. It isn't a technology issue, it is a wait for the Cable Card standards and certifcation (2.0 which allows up and down stream still isn't finished!)
2. Comcast and Tivo are working together. Comcast is paying Tivo to port their software to the Comcast Motorola box. The status as of CES 2006 was that key functionality was working. Tivo will get recurring revenue for every subscriber that chooses Tivo interface and Tivo and Comcast will split advertising revenue generated through Tivo's advertising services.
http://news.com.com/TiVo,+Comcast+reach+DVR+deal/
3. Business is fine. Rogers (CEO) said during last Growth Conference in December that the company could ad 500k subscribers on break even cash flow. There are plenty of other networks besides Comcast/Dish/DirecTV that cannot afford to build and design their own DVR.
DVR is evolving. Tivo SA2's all have broadband through USB. Series 3 (shown at CES 2006 and rumored to be in beta) will have built in broadband. Generic DVRs do not talk to your network. Play your MP3s, show your picture collections, let you view RSS feeds, etc...
Tivo defends their "Time Warp" patent in Texas this March against Dish. That is one of the patents in the Patent Office's Museum.
Tivo has a 1% churn rate, a rare feat in cable and television services.
Tivo is going worldwide (TGC).
Now, I assume we're all pretty good with computers, so I have to ask; Why would any of you buy a tivo? you pay monthly for it, are limited by tivo hardware, and it's got a gay name. Why not build or use one of those computers you have in storage, put two 500gb hds in raid0 and install media center edition? Works just as well, and when u need more space, pop in a new harddrive. You can even burn your movies straight to dvd... what more could you ask for?
My unit started switching me to infomercials during primetime. I called tech support several times. At first they denied it could even do that then they finally admited it but said it was doing that to down load updates. I asked them how do I stop it? They said you can't. It was supposed to do it late at night but mine was doing it during primetime. I said stop it from switching or I drop the service. They said they can't so I dropped the service. I'm not paying $13 a month to be force fed infomercials. They offered me three months free to stay, I said keep the months and stop switching me. They look at it as a revenue stream I look at it as obnoxious for an expensive service to do. $13 is a lot to pay for a TV guide service. If they can't make money at that I'd suggest restructing the company not looking at how we can screw the customers. I have a feeling I got caught up in a test program to see if customers would resist being switched to infomercials. In my case it was a big yes since I cancelled my service. I question their honesty on the subject since they started off deying it was possible then they made excuses. When will advertisers get it through their heads it you sell to people 24/7 they shut down and aren't receptive to any advertising? I'm waiting for a matress or pillow company to embed audio chips in their products to sell to us in our sleep. I'm sure it frustriates advertisers that there's 8 hours a day they can't sell to us.
Yeah, I know what you say is true for ad-supported TV. And so it's true for Fox News.
But it isn't true for DirecTV. You are the customer for DirectTV, not the content providers. This is true for several reasons, among them that you can get the same content from other companies. Also, because you are PAYING DirectTV. Also because DirecTV doesn't sell ads.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I love TiVo's interface and teh 30-second skip "hack". I will not take a PVR AND a Cable box. So several years ago I got a Sony SAT-T60 DirecTV/Tivo unit and loved every minute of it, it was bliss. Hacked in a larger drive and the varible bit rate recording, two tuners!
I have seen ReplayTV and Cox's (Scientific Atlantic) and they but suck interface wise. My wife love the 30 second skip, so she would like Replay's commercial skip, but the TiVo interface takes the cake.
So I move to where I cannot have a dish so I get Cox and buy a second hand Series 2 Tivo. Love it, but in a larger drive, Only hate the single tuner. So now i can get DirecTV but they ditched TiVo, and they new DVR sucks ass too. What was wrong, TiVo licening fees to high? Looked at Dish, their DVR sucks too.
So am in the market for a second DircTV Tivo, even though they no longer support it (they got to support their current customers) and my wife sees this new Series 3 and says we should just get that and stick with basic cable.
I have a Series 2 TiVo and have installed Galleon on my PC. I am able to download public domain videos (like the original DOA and the old Superman cartoons) from the Internet Archive to my PC, and pull them to my TiVo from the PC. If the video is not in the MPEG2 format TiVo needs, that's okay because Galleon can transcode it by calling external programs.
.... ummm ... nevermind, nothing to see here, move along.
My point is -- all the technology is here today. Hak.5 and DiggNation show up using BitTorrent (which I leave seeding for 2 weeks to show my support). Galleon transcodes to MPEG2 and serves to TiVo. I go to TiVo, pull down from PC and enjoy. Heck, I bet there are even people out there using some of the BT clients that read RSS feeds to automatically download regular TV shows. I guess I am a big chicken since do IT inside the financial community and would lose my career if the studios sent their lawyers to my door. But if SciFi sold a subscription to buy a season of BSG for $25, I would be all over it even if I had to seed torrents to make it happen. If I could get old episodes of Deep Space 9 or Babylon 5 -- sold. If I could get more Firefly episodes right from Mutant Enemy without going through a studio -- I would PRE-PAY (Hear that Joss?).
Now, here is the problem I see. The TiVo 3 will support more codecs, support HDTV, and have more power. All of this becomes a lot more feasible with a TiVo 3, but TiVo now has a deal with Comcast. Comcast would probably not be happy if TiVo suddenly turned their PVR into the new cablebox of the IPTV revolution. Can anyone say lawsuit?
So, as much as I love my TiVo and the company, if they are stuck in bed with the devil, maybe Google needs to take the cash and go create their own IPTV PVR. Heck, Microsoft could even do it today using MCE and/or xBox 360 if they just
The better UI is on the way.
anyone else remember that ill-fated sony software pvr from 5 years ago, that got rolled into the airboard-renamed-locationfreeTV?
if that had been offered EVERYWHERE rather than on vaio only, would've beaten the MCE to the punch by a fair bit
now, however...
interesting mod, btw, if you've already set up tivotogo, over at dvreverywhere.com (i hear it was tivoanywhere until tivo decided that it was time to stop embracing their mod community)
You'd be surprised what's not on the map in this country. - Mulder
Until Tivo can beat zero dollars a month and zero dollars up front for a mythtv box, I'm not interested. Plus my mythtv box actually lets me skip commercials and record HBO.
I hate sigs.
For much more information on the series 3 TiVo, with demos and all, check out this video interview.
PPV movies, TV shows and the like make better sense over IP because they can be ordered, queued and displayed once sufficient buffering has taken place. It's odd that cable companies would allow such a thing to take place, as they currently are the only player in the PPV market. Quite possibly cable modem users will be throttled to telco network destinations (assuming Tivo partners with a telco company) the way telcos are planning to throttle Google.
I gave up on TiVO after they wouldn't let me transfer my lifetime subscription to a new unit (only a referb at my cost) after their software upgrade turned it into a paperweight.
However, there's a standards group called Open Cable that will roll out later this year. It will allow development of new applications across all cable box platforms, and make it easier for retail set top boxes. This is how TiVO will get back in business, in my opinion. There is no way they'll be able to beat Motorola and Scientific Atlanta/Cisco on volume, cable system integration, or hardware support. Cable companies are good at just swapping out a bad box and giving you a new one (one of the few things they seem to do well. Troubleshooting is a whole other problem). How can they compete with that?
http://www.opencable.com/
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Why do I use TiVo?
1. I got mine for $134.
2. It just works.
I also have two MCE computers. They require constant attention to keep working. And they often just don't. One day I realized that it was supposed to have switched channels and started recording a show, but hadn't. I switched to the channel and there was the show. I hit the guide button and there was a red dot on it. But it wasn't recording and there was no red dot in the systray. The history page said "This episode will record." I don't know how it though it was doing that when it wasn't even on the right channel and wasn't recording. That's just one example of an endless parade of malfunctions.
Now MCE does have it's advantages too. But the only one that matters to me is this: I can hook up a second monitor and watch TV on it at my desk in my home office (as long as I don't want to play a full screen game on the primary).