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The Trouble With TiVo
BobCratchit writes "Multichannel News has an interesting take on TiVo: The DVR company has incredible mindshare but is totally dependent on cable providers to survive. Cable does not have many good reasons to let TiVo thrive. As a result, TiVo is destined to fade away unless it can carve out a niche as the cool kids' DVR (a la Macintosh) with products like the $299 HD DVR it just announced. From the article: 'TiVo has long been a darling of consumer-tech reviewers -- check out, for example, these happy hosannas from BusinessWeek, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. These guys are constantly befuddled that TiVo hasn't been more successful. Yes, TiVos make cute little popping noises when you click the remote. And they definitely provide cool features, like suggesting shows you might be interested in. But the cognoscenti enamored with TiVo's whizziness ignore a certain reality. It's easier to get a DVR from your cable company. And most people prefer to rent, not own, a set-top.'"
is for tivo to sell/rent their dvr's through the cable company. Its not like the cable company makes their own dvr's currently
I have a lifetime subscription, but if I didn't and was torn between paying the cable or TiVo bill, I'd dump cable first. TiVo can pull programming off an antenna, and reception willing, would still be able to time shift a lot of shows to my schedule. So, I don't agree that TiVo is dependent on cable. Better with cable, yes. But not dependent on it.
My karma is in a nose dive
Anyone I've let play with my Tivo for a while thinks it's cool, but to really appreciate getting cherry-picked recommendations, automatic deletions, season tickets, video podcasts, and other features it's gotta be in your home.
It's too bad TiVo isn't in such great financial shape because all they'd really have to do is give away a bunch of boxes for free and let people play with them for a month. They have it now, pure leased boxes where you just pay your subscription. But it's pricey.
I wonder if they could get puchased by a company with more financial backing.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Given the tremendous rate of depreciation of electronics renting seems like a pretty good alternative to purchasing.
Why on earth would you buy a Tivo when you can rent a HD DVR for $10 from your cable company which is cheaper than the required Tivo subscription! Not to mention you have to buy a $300 - $600 box from Tivo. Until they have free subscriptions they aren't going to get any market share. Sure their software and hardware are both better, but the cable company DVR works just fine.
You say that like it was TiVo's choice. DirecTV is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch also owns a company that manufactures DVRs. You do the math.
Guys (and it's usually guys), we luff ya, but get over it.
It's wicked kewl thyat you can take a spare PC, install some clever software on it, find a source for TV listings, and make it do amazing tricks. Really. Wow. Awesome. Yay you!
But many of the rest of us aren't interested in doing that ourselves. For us, an appliance, like a TiVo, is the way to go. A black box, paying for a service contract, IT JUST WORKS.
I diddle with enough technology, I don't want to with my DVR. I just want it to have a great interface and a steady supply of programming that engages me. Everything else is gravy (and yes, the Tivo has some gravy too.)
So please, whenever you hear the name "TiVo" don't go into a pavlovian MythTV-MythTV-MythTV chant.
We get it. We got it. We're getting annoyed over it. We're getting to the point you're not getting invited to the fun parties because you can't restrain yourselves. Soon you'll be in pushed into the holy roller corner with the Operalytes (poor souls).
Some folks can't understand why anyone would watch TV. Some can't understand why anyone would pay for it. Some can't see a need for a DVR. Some can't see the need for paying a bit more for a TiVo DVR. Some can't understand whyeveryone doesn't just whittle their own DVR out of pine. Please, live and let live and let us hold a discussion without your pulling your homebrew out and wagging at us. It's big, that's nice, now let us talk about the conumer product we're interested in.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Tivo wont die because of the cable companies' DVR, Tivo is a much better product. But I could easily see Tivo dieing out because of the mandatory subscription. If anything that is what is going to kill them. I love my Tivo but there's no justifying the high monthly subscription.
There are three easy changes that TIVO can do that would allow them to dominate, let alone survive.
1. Ethernet Network connectivity to allow access to the web as well as network diskspace
2. Allow the users FULL control of the device (i.e. if you hit that 30sec skip button, do the 30 sec skip....)
3. Allow ability to record shows to physical media such as DVD, BluRay, or HDDVD
There you have it. The big three. The first company to release such a device will dominate the market as this is what the consumer wants, not what Hollywood wants. Remember we are a capitalist society, which means the consumer is in charge of what they want, not the corporations (even though the corporations do not want to admit this, their income is directly tied to the consumers purchasing their products).
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
If it doesn't work for a particular show, I turn it off (menu button) and hit the instant replay button.
OTOH, I don't have to enter a secret code to get my 30-second skip back after a brownout.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Why on earth would you buy a Tivo when you can rent a HD DVR for $10 from your cable company which is cheaper than the required Tivo subscription!
Because the cable co's DVR sucks. If you have low standards this may not mean much to you, but a lot of people think having a quality product is a reason for a company to survive.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Yahoo shows you ads with the listings. The ads pay for the listings. Would you want ads popping up on your Tivo? No? Well, that's why you are paying.
If the owner of the content believed you wouldn't redistribute their content in ways they do not sanction, they might allow Tivo to record it to such an unencumbered format. Problem is, the content owners know for a fact that while you personally may not redistribute people in general will.
How much would you sell your commercial-free archive for? Wouldn't this tend to diminish (if not eliminate) the value of the boxed DVD set the content owner wants to sell? Oh yeah, since they broadcast it they have no rights to the material after that, right? Why should the content owner help in creating a competitor?
yeah, IMO this is the problem with TiVo... well that and subscription fees.
My local cable company offers a DVR for a $5 a month rental, if I order the HD Cable package I get one for free. Where is my incentive to buy a Tivo? Not only will have to pay $X hundred up front for the device but I STILL have to pay a subscription fee. Not only that but the HD models aren't compatible with my cable providers HD service.
If I'm going to spend a few hundred dollars I'd rather build myself a SageTV or MythTV box and forget about the subscription fees. At least then I can use the hardware for whatever I want instead of just TV recording duties.
With the options available I simply can't justify buying a TiVo, it's the most expansive, least upgradeable, and least compatible of all the options. And while you could say the same for some wildly popular Apple products, those products sell themselves on style and ease of use... which is something that TiVo doesn't have either, considering it's interface is only marginally better than the alternatives, and style wise I (and probably most people) find it rather ugly. At least with a homebuilt box I can pick the case that best matches my media room.
Collector's Edition
The MythTV devs, along with devs from other projects, have started the Schedules Direct project to address this issue.
I can get $LESSER_QUALITY THING for less money than $HIGHER_QUALITY_THING. What's my incentive to buy $HIGHER_QUALITY_THING?
It's the age-old question. Why buy any car but a used Yugo? Why buy a bigger house if a smaller house is cheaper? Why buy real food from a grocery store when you can get a burrito from Taco Bell for less than a buck?
Seriously? Isn't that illegal now? I thought all US cable providers were required to provide CableCards now to allow 3rd party set-top boxes like Tivo full access to all their non-interactive services.
Ahhh ... there's a difference. Verizon FIOS's On Demand isn't in HD -- so as a result, torrents off the internet have better picture quality than their video tap. Maybe that will change someday, but I guess I won't see it because I'll be using my Tivo. :-)
I've had my tivo die a few times - took reimaging to get it working again.
That is one of the biggest reasons I went with Myth - I wanted some control over my data. Now I can make my video partition as big as I want, or shrink it at any time I feel like it. I can RAID-5 my storage and not worry about losing 250 hours of TV when a hard drive crashes (a matter of when and not if). I can skip commercials with one click 95% of the time, and jump arbitrary numbers of minutes when that doesn't work. The files are mostly just standard mpg files so I can do what I want with them easily enough (ok - minor rant - what possessed them to write their own player instead of just using an established one as the core? It is WAY to finicky about input file formats...).
Sure, it isn't perfect, but it beats a green screen of death with no easy way to recover and resorting to all kinds of shifty websites to download images.