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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.'"
Tivo..or..Dvr its all the same to me, as long as i can fastfoward commercials
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
I still enjoy my VCR, thank you very much...
No suprise people like renting, as it's quickly becoming the 'new' model for everything.
You don't own a cellphone, you rent it.
You don't own the DVR, you rent it.
You don't own that DVD, you license it.
Pretty soon, you will not 'own' your 'Personal' Computer, you will rent it.
You already effectivly rent the software, it works for the MMORPG, it can work for Microsoft Word.
It's a way to ensure a 100% foolproof revenue stream.
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
It works. All the time, every time, with minor exceptions. I have a wife who loves certain TV programs and will easily strangle anything that doesn't work and record them like they should.
It doesn't require a degree to run Sure, it might lack some more complex features that some people like. It might make annoying, "to-TOINK!", noises when you move around. But an idiot with a blindfold could sort it out, and that makes it easy on me. Not that my wife's an idiot; far from it. But I don't need to be explaining to her how to run the damned TV.
I can screw with it Because I own the box, it's mine. I can hack it, fiddle with it, change out hard drives, use them for something else, add to it, paint it, whatever I want. I might void my warranty, but whoop-de-do. I can because I own it.
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Given the tremendous rate of depreciation of electronics renting seems like a pretty good alternative to purchasing.
Tivo is not beholden to cable companies. Cable companies are required by law to give you a cable card to use their service if you want it. Tivo has a cable card reader in their device to get all that video data. There's nothing legal that the cable company can do about it.
Program data? Tive has a warehouse full of monkeys that contact the networks directly and enter in all the data, or they contract with someone who does, or they have an agreement with the networks to pass xml files back and forth. This is not an issue.
Cable company DVR boxes? These things are pieces of shit. They consistently disable and fail to provide features that people want, and who's to say that cable companies won't just delete your programs remotely if they feel like it, by which I mean, if Fox nicely asks them to delete your episodes of 24 right before the DVD comes out or something.
Sure, Tivo is about to license their software interface to Comcast for their DVR boxes, but it's going to take a serious about face on the part of cable companies if their DVRs are ever going to be what people actually want and not some weirdo solution that tries to please content providers, cable company stiffs, and lastly consumers, and fails to please any of them.
We bought a DirectTV Tivo several years ago and fell in love with it. We would still be using it except that all of a sudden we couldn't connect to the service any longer and kept getting messages saying we needed to fix it. We tried and tried, called customer support, tried again and again. Nothing we did worked to fix the problem. What was happening was when it dialed out it would connect to the service then drop the connection. Oh we could still use Tivo, we got the program guide updates and all that but we kept getting the error messages. We were determined to find out why. Finally after many hours of plodding through customer service hell, both DirecTV and Tivo, we found out that because Tivo and DirectTV had a falling out, they no longer support each other and there was no way it was ever gonna get resolved. We could keep going the way we were for a while but eventually bad things were gonna happen. We looked into it and found out that we could get the DirecTV DVR for less than we paid for monthly Tivo service. And we didn't have to buy the box. We don't like the new one as much as we did Tivo but I guess we'll get used to it. And what's better is if they decide to obsolete this box, we get another one for free. Not like the Tivo doorstop that we have now...
How can Tivo hope to stay around if they are going to treat loyal customers like this? They won't easily get anymore business from us because of this, no matter how much we liked them...
Anyone have any ideas as to what I can do with my old Tivo hardware?
Is there any Series III hack yet to avoid the TiVo subscription in favor of an open source solution?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If Tivo were bought by DirecTV, do you think that anyone who doesn't subscribe to DirecTV would be able to get one? Look at what DirecTV tried to do with Major League Baseball. They signed a deal to be the exclusive carrier of Extra Innings (which is the package with all the out of town games on the extra channels), and didn't want to let go of it until there was a giant uproar, John Effing Kerry got involved, and the cable companies started trying to throw their weight around.
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.
Just be so broke you can't afford a cable box or a TiVo. Then you don't have to worry about it.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
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.
I have DirecTV, and two Direct-Tivo boxes, both SD. I'd love to go to HD, but I don't want their DVR. When we moved recently, my wife had a conversation with the CSR about it, and they offered an upgrade to an HD DVR. She turned it down, preferring to stick with her Tivo, and the CSR replied that not only was that the prevailing opinion, but he himself was sticking with his Tivo over their in-house DVR. Several of my friends have tried the DirecTV DVR, and found it to be slower (even slower than the Tivo), and harder to use, with fewer features, and a terrible program guide. I hope they wake up soon. I'm stuck with satellite in my new house, but my new TVs are HD, and it's a shame to waste their capability.
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"
That's the first I heard that theory of why it failed.. Do you have any references to support that?
Everything I have read said that once News Corp / Murdoch came into the picture, they were either going to lowball Tivo's cut of the subscription fees or move to the DVR product that News Corp owned (thus keeping all the $$ for themselves). Considering the fact that Tivo never made a profit during that time, and have only briefly been in the black, I tend to think it was more of an attempt to keep his business running than greed.
Another plausible theory expressed at the time was that News Corp tried to take a larger stake in Tivo (they already owned 10%) and were denied, because Tivo feared it would eliminate their possibility of working with cable companies.
Now that News Corp is selling off (has sold?) their stake in DirecTV, there are rumors of renewing the Tivo relationship:
http://www.tvpredictions.com/tivo060507.htm That clearly points to it being a News Corp issue.
No, it doesn't, if you have Comcast and no other options for cable. The firmware on their Motorola boxes is hideously buggy, and people just accept the fact that it will randomly crash, freeze up, miss recordings, et cetera. (Much like people accepting the BSoD back in Win3.1/95/98 days.) But you're right: some folks in other cable markets have noted their DVRs work just fine, and in those markets TiVo really has to something that sets it apart from these others.
I think that what TiVo needs is greater TV/Net integration. So far, TiVo partners with Unbox to deliver movies over the Net, and you can use Home Network Applications to do things like browse Flickr, listen to podcasts, et cetera. This is neat (except that HNA is awfully slow on S2 units), but it is mostly a nifty but unessential toy. Nobody says, "Hey, I've gotten have a TiVo so I can run the Hot or Not Browser HNA application!"
Like many other TiVo owners, I find that I rarely, if ever, watch live television. What TiVo ought to be doing is direct competition with On-Demand offerings, by partnering directly with NBC, ABC, Fox, et cetera. These networks already offer their shows to be streamed over the Internet -- why not allow a TiVo to download shows directly? Then the ability to integrate other Web features seamlessly becomes really cool.
For example, right now you can already set up Wishlists by actor or director. But with Internet On-Demand, they could take it a step further: say you're watching an episode of Law and Order, and there's this guest star that you know you've seen before, but just can't place, and it's driving you nuts. You pause the show, bring up the show information which lists the cast, move the cursor to that actor's name, click, and you get something like an IMDB biography including other things the actor has done. And if those other things are available as downloads, you can choose to get them and watch them. Or perhaps you're watching an old rerun of Leave It To Beaver on TVLand? They could serve up interesting trivia about the show (maybe via "Pop-Up Trivia" that can be enabled or disabled at will by the viewer), or link to a documentary about it.
Networks worried about DVR customers skipping commercials? Change the way advertising is done, perhaps by providing a list of products seen on the show with links to further information about them. (Anything but making ads unskippable, which would basically be a poison pill for consumer acceptance.)
Now, make standard TV downloads free of charge (the way On-Demand usually is) and recoup the costs through a higher subscription cost. Make subscription costs per household, not per unit, and make show transfers between units trivial or transparent. They can still charge for On-Demand PPV offerings, which would probably be used more often since people could say "Hey, I liked Christopher Walken in this movie -- hey, the TiVo says he's in this other one, so I think I'll purchase that movie too!"
There are plenty of other things they could do too. They need to take a page from Apple's book: the goal is not just to provide neat services, but to make those services as easy to understand and use as possible. They could set up "TiVo Addresses" for subscribers that let them pass home videos and photos between each other as simply as possible (i.e. "Grandma-friendly interface"). Since customers won't be watching live television anymore, they could partner with the National Weather Service (or The Weather Channel, or Intellicast, or whomever) to provide on-screen weather alerts, or even CNN/MSNBC/etc. for big news alerts if people so chose. (Consider: a "Press Thumbs Up for more" that took you to a radar screen, or a short video clip about a news event, and then let you seamlessly return to what you were watching when you're done.)
This is what I'd love to see TiVo evolve into. This sort of thing could turn TiVo into a cable, satellite, or hell, IPTV killer, by making them the sole delivery mech
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.
Remember the days of AVR (analog video recording) set your timer record your show.. pop out a VHS tape? If tivo integrated just one thing (the pop out of media) it would skyrocket TiVo. I have a PC setup at home with DVR software and once a week I copy all shows to dvd. There are about 10 shows that i watch mainly all anime or cartoons. I also have my digital cable box with DVR built-in but I only use it for channel changing because I want to have a record of the shows I watch last beyond "the drive is full" erasure.
some people are a "glass half empty" some are "glass half full" i'm a "there is something in the glass be happy" person
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?
because i don't give a crap about HD content or digital cable and i don't have satellite cable.
for the record, my series2DT tivo has 2 tuners, so i can watch and record different channels at the same time, or record 2 channels and watch a third on the cable setting on my tv, having it split to both my tivo and my tv's coax input.
i had a tuner break on my tivo. only one of them had the issue (it was black and white), but the other tuner worked fine. even though i'm out of the original warranty, they replaced it for free (well, they charged me for the new box until they received the old one).
i don't get a guide with my extended basic cable, so i get that with my tivo subscription.
my tivo remote integrated perfectly with my tv and is able to change channels (though i usually change them with the tivo), turn the power on and off, adjust the volume, and switch between the various inputs.
i also happen to like the little sound it makes.
i bought the tivo wireless adapter on sale at amazon and it connected flawlessly to my WPA2 protected, MAC filtered, hidden SSID wireless network without a hitch and has never lost connection. it connects smoothly to my computer to grab music, movie, and image files. my computer easily grabs tivo recordings without issue as well.
since i don't care about having digital cable or HD content, i see no reason to switch.
please me, have no regrets.
What DO you get if you put these together?
The author of the article apparently perceives support of 4.3 million fanatic users as a burden!!??!!! I propose that Google would do well to buy TiVo.
Granted, there are additional costs beyond an acquisition: building the wireless infrastructure, merging it all together... but to put this in perspective, I just checked market caps:
- GOOG $158 Billion ($158,390 Million)
- TIVO $.55 Billion ($000,550 Million)
(NB: GOOG's Market Cap went up $190M while I was writing this post.)Lessee, $4.6B + $0.55B = $5.1B for nation-wide reach, a fanatic user-base (TiVo users), direct access to what customers are watching (more data!), YouTube tie-in capability (they already have a distributed video infrastructure)... what's not to like?
Heck, google could afford to give TiVos away, and have a guaranteed platform on which to sell its ads - nationwide, just for a few $billion more.
Prediction: if Google gets the wireless spectrum it is looking for, I expect to see "GooTiVo" (TM) within a year.
Here's another one. A big reason why many people get cable is for better quality. But with this new TiVo and an ordinary roof antenna, it is possible in many areas to pull in all of the network channels in full HD quality, and with TiVo, you can watch what you want when you want. So who needs hundreds of channels to flip through when you've got a 12 hour backlog saved on your TiVo? Of course, there are movie channels and cable channel special shows like The Sopranos, but are they really worth paying $50 a month for cable, when pretty much anything that's any good will be available soon on DVD and a basic NetFlix account costs just $5/ month?
Just wait awhile, till it starts forgetting to record shows, or recording random crap you don't want. Or it records something, and won't let you watch it. Or just starts crashing. Or you get more than a few recordings on it, and the GUI becomes unusably slow. I've heard of so many failure modes - and the solution is always "well, we'll give you another box, and see what happens". Guess what - that never solves it, the new one starts doing the same thing before much longer. The GUI is by all accounts wretched, and pretty much universally loathed.
See this, or this, or this, or this, or this for some reviews of the steaming pile that SA calls a DVR. And in two months, let me know how that 8300HD is working for you.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"