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Why TiVo's Founders Crashed and Burned With Qplay
Velcroman1 (1667895) writes "Michael Ramsay and Jim Barton created a revolution with TiVo, a device that challenged the notion that we had to watch TV shows when they aired. And they hoped to do it again with Qplay, a device that challenged the notion that short-form videos had to be consumed one at a time, like snacks instead of meals. Qplay streamed curated queues of short-form Internet video to your TV using a small, simple box controlled by an iPad app. So what went wrong? Unlike TiVo, the Qplay box was difficult to justify owning, and thevalue of the service itself is questionable. And as of last week, Qplay is closed."
Tivo has been a financial disaster from the start for everyone but the founders, ipo underwriters and employees. QPlay repeats that pattern but spares public shareholders' pocketbooks.
I love my Tivo, but - I also owned a VCR for the twenty years prior to my first Tivo. Time shifting has been around for 40+ years now.
#DeleteChrome
It's hard to buy something when you don't know it exists.
Perhaps they should have tried advertising.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
nothing says disaster like 289 million dollars a year and a constantly trending upward stock price
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
any device that can be replaced by a free app will fail.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Even as a free app it doesn't seem that useful to me. Youtube already has queue. It even has publicly browsable queues.
If I really wanted to watch 2 hours of cute kittens then I'm sure there is probably a queue that I could hit play on and sit back
and watch. It's fairly simple to queue up a bunch of videos and tell them to play in sequence without interruption.
What exactly did Qplay do that ANYONE would fine useful? It seems like a solution looking for a problem.
I've got a couple of little boxes under my TVs that: can be controlled by my phone or a tablet (and not only Apple-produced ones), can stream video (and not only from 1 specific company). Maybe there's some niche they could've marketed to, but it doesn't come to mind.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I used to have a TiVo, and I loved it. Then for various reasons I had to cancel my subscription. TiVo took it upon themselves to double charge me the cancellation fee. When they refunded my money, they withheld around $10 or so and claimed it was for taxes or something.
I didn't really care about the $10, it was about the principle of the matter. If you make a mistake and double charge me, you should give me back exactly what you took by accident, including any measly taxes. Instead the person I spoke to on the phone was incredibly rude to me and as a result TiVo lost a customer for life.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
16 year old company has had two profitable years--both due to patent settlements. It has half the subscribers it had ten years ago and four times the employees. It may be a great device but it has always been a lousy business for post-ipo investors.
And, what with score 1, your fame doesn't even last you 15 minutes.
I'd be interested in an app that played movies in 10x speed without sound in multiple windows (watch 4-9 10x kittens) and tag the "interesting" ones to add to your "watch later" list. Then watch later. Scan videos at 90x real speed (9 time 10x). That's what you need when there are so many cute kittens that need watching.
Learn to love Alaska
Tivo customer since 2001. I've never heard of QPASS. In all honesty, I can't stand the tivo UI anymore. A year ago I turned off the stupid tivo "blip" sound effects, it made a huge fcking deal. As of this week, my tivo UI was updated (finally) with a more modern UI. I have yet to see it flip back to the 10 year old Standard-Definition interface that they used forever. If there was a serious contender that didn't involve using Comcast's box or building my own, I'd do it... but then again, when the fck is everything going to stream? I have no need for comcast, except that content providers seem unwilling to figure it out.
I made this: http://www.bpftpserver.com
Dude that founded Victoria's Secrets sold it because he KNEW he could start another lingerie mail order company that would blow away VS....
I believe he jumped from the Golden Gate bridge when he went bankrupt...
At least these guys are still alive? Yes?
what the hell was qplay?
He just got really lucky the first time.
Trying to predict what people want is impossible outside of the basics of life:food, water, shelter, ....
I think sex would make a good growth industry...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
This failure is quite simple: The Tivo solved a problem This QPlay did not.
Michael Ramsay and Jim Barton created a revolution with TiVo, a device that challenged the notion that we had to watch TV shows when they aired.
Wow, how old are you*? Do you even know what a VCR is?
*and by "you," I obviously don't mean Velcroman1, the story's submitter, because he didn't actually write any of it.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
You're. Blaming auto type on a non-stock keyboard.
Let me just clarify, that sure fine, Apple developers earn more money from apps. But when your developing a free app that is purely an interface for your hardware it's best not to disclude 90% of the market because you bought a first gen iPad from Steve Jobs for $900.
Nicely said. It never ceases to me amaze me how so many app developers think the millenia old business strategy of "expand your markets" doesn't apply to them.
When the DVD recorder broke, I searched and found that this is the only piece of electronics that has appreciated in value. The one I bought for 500$ brand-new was selling in eBay for 1800$ four year old, but in working condition. Integration with TV-guide listing got broken after analog broadcasts were discontinued. All the cable tv vendors are in collusion with TiVo. All of them want 15$ a month.
If the insanely stupid patent monopoly had not been granted to TiVo we would be seeing 1TB, HD-recording hard disk players with full integration with TV-listings for 100$ flat without any monthly fees.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
TIVO needs to do more partnerships. I love their DVR for DirectTV (DirectTIVO). Now if they did this with other vendors, they would be sitting pretty.
Mediacom has a partnership with TiVo - I got it 6 months ago and it blew my old "generic" DVR away. Never looking back.