Profitable for the MPAA when they sue the proprieter for unlicensed public performance of their copyrighed works.
That was my first thought also. Of course, they could try to negotiate for such rights, but I doubt the publisher would be interested.
On the other hand, he could get DirecTV; they have plans specifically designed for Business Viewing Areas which would be legal. They don't seem to offer premium channels like HBO (not surprising, I suppose), but they offer plenty of sports channels, which could draw quite a crowd.
Here in Cincinnati, there's a business which is a combination nightclub/laundromat -- customers routinely do their laundry in the presence of a live band! Why not a combination laundromat/sports bar? That could be a hit!
The client-server model that the "old internet" has relied on is broken. The ad-revenue cycle is destroying quality of service, shutting down many good sites permanently, and we're losing vast quantities of content in the process.
The "old Internet" was funded by government and academic institutions, and commercial activity was forbidden on the backbone. Spam was nonexistent, nobody launched DDoS attacks and few people bothered to forge email addresses, though plenty knew how. Nothing was wrong with the old Internet; it just wasn't mainstream.
The "new Internet" has many more resources online, but we suffer the excesses of commercialism at the same time. Between spam and ad-supported websites, we are bombarded by as much advertising online as in the physical world, if not moreso. And, as in the physical world, we're tired of the constant advertising, and it's losing effectiveness. It's the "new Internet" that's broken, because the advertising business isn't working too well to support most online content.
Maybe it's time we find a way to actually pay for all this content we desire? I'm not sure how best to implement it, but if you were to take the costs involved with providing the most useful services, and divide those costs among the millions upon millions of Internet users, it would probably be fairly cheap on a per-user basis. Maybe it's time for the Internet to find a better way than annoying advertising to sustain itself?
I'm beginning to wonder if marketing isn't a bit like antibiotics -- useful in moderation (to find out about products you didn't know of but would want), but dangerous to overuse (because it generates resistance which makes it become generally lrdd effective), and it doesn't matter if some marketers restrain themselves, because the abusive ones can ruin it for everyone.
I believe the marketing profession has created for itself a Tradegy of the Commons. The incessant advertising on all fronts has lessened the value of all advertising. There's just too much of it. Some marketing is useful to the consumer; if they don't know that a product is out there, they can't buy it, even if they'd like it. Most companies, however, seek to shove their products down the consumers throats with a barrage of advertising. This is counter-productive, and it explains the ever-growing hostility people are beginning to feel towards advertising in general.
I don't see any easy solutions to this, but I have an uneasy feeling that this form of advertising-driven capitalism may be due for a major reckoning, and the results could be ugly...
Okay, I just sent it again. This time, I also copied the response address that I used the first time (from the autoresponder message). Hopefully one or both will reach you!
You know what? They don't just look for e-mail addresses to send mail to. They also use the e-mail addresses as reply-to addresses. I found this out when I got an email from a guy who was puzzled by my auto-responder emailing him. It turns out that somebody sent a message to me and used his address as a reply-to address. Weird, Iddn't it? Fortunately he was very nice and we got that all settled, but it is a little disconcerting that the addresses are used in ways like that.
That was me. Why didn't you respond to the last email I sent you?
Anyhow, I wasn't puzzled; I knew the junk mail you received had my address forged. I just find it annoying to be impersonated that way, and with your autoresponder, I figured you were paying more attention than most. So I decided to respond to your autoresponder so you'd know that it didn't really come from me.
I never really considered the virus aspect before; perhaps all the mail with my address forged is sent by Klez or another virus; I never tried to determine that. Still obnoxious, but somehow it seems less objectionable for a virus to forge my email address than having a spammer using my address fraudulently for commercial gain...
By personal policy, I refuse to obfuscate my email address, even on Slashdot. My primary email address really is and I refuse to hide it just because abuse of Internet email by spammers and virus code is so rampant. I've had this email address for 8.5 years now, and I've been using the Internet for 15 years. I'm just too damn stubborn to be cowed into hiding my email address after all these years. If someone wants to legitimately send me email, I want that to be possible, even if I've never heard of the person before. So I'll take the risk of getting spammed.
Of course, I do get tons of spam mail. I have it partly under control with filters, but mostly I just ignore it. I may well setup an autoresponder myself at some point -- I'll be more than happy to find a way to block spammers, as long as legitimate mail can still get through...
Kudos! You've pretty much summed up most of the reasons why I love Google. As far as I'm concerned, they've proven themselves sufficiently over the years that I will give them the benefit of the doubt in an ambiguous situation. Google is one of the best examples of the Right Thing winning by superior quality. Google is constantly changing what they do, but I hope they never change the way they do them!
And there WERE some Y2K failures. Few enough though, for people to beleive it was a hoax, but this is because most systems were fixed! If nothing were done, many things would have failed with varying degrees.
If nothing had been done, it would not have been hype at all.
I agree. It's like the recriminations happening now around September 11. Everyone wants to know why nobody did anything to stop people from crashing planes into buildings. Suppose someone had hyped it up years ago, and made a big deal of keeping it from happening? Suppose they were successful? September 11 never would have happened, but we'd probably have people claiming it was bogus, that we were protecting against a non-existent risk, and it was a complete waste of money.
Hindsight is 20/20. People claim Y2K wasn't a big deal because others were actually successul at fixing most of the problems! Y2K rolled over with nary a hitch, causing people to think it must not have been an issue after all. We could have used a high-profile disaster or two, to convince everyone that their Y2K diligence wasn't wasted! (Of course, some scammers did jump on Y2K, but there was a real issue to worry about too.)
Actually, a friend of mine was listening to ham radio during the rollover, and heard about an alarming near-disaster. Apparently, one of the nuclear missile silos in Russia malfunction due to a Y2K bug and got well into the launch sequence before they managed to shut it down! (Far enough that the launch doors were supposedly opened to prepare for a launch.)
Of course, we didn't hear anything about this in the mainstream press, but there was such fear and paranoia about Y2K that they probably hushed up stories that didn't seem serious enough to risk hysteria over... (I heard rumors of other Y2K failures that weren't reported, or were ascribed to some other convenient cause.) Perhaps there were enough actual failures to demonstrate the risk, but if most were covered up, is it any surprise that people now consider the whole thing a hoax?
I understand that you are an enthusiatic fan of the company, but that's not going to save them.
Why should it? I'm just one customer/stockholder. I never claimed that I would be their salvation.
The fact that you have a lot of equipment already, and claim you aren't an early adopter, is part of what makes you an early adopter. When you refer to "Wife Acceptance Factor", then you are an early adopter.
I didn't deny being an early adopter. What I said was that I'm not one of the earliest adopters. Yes, compared to the mainstream, I'm an early adopter in computers, electronics and technology. However, there are plenty of really early adopters who jump long before I'm willing to. So yes, you could call me an early adopter, but it's all relative. Someone I consider a "real" early adopter jumps on new technologies almost immediately, instead of waiting for years as I often do. (Granted, sometimes I wait so long mostly for financial reasons.) You could call me a "late early adopter", I guess. I'm earlier than the mainstream, but late among early adopters.
And regardless of where the "Wife Acceptance Factor" terminology originates (I think I picked it up from Slashdot, actually), I believe that it represents (to some degree) a metric of mainstream acceptability, as many geeks have wives with more mainstream viewpoints...
"Promise to release a magic code"
This is totally bogus. I'm sorry to be blunt, but it is. The idea that they will be solvent enough to run a server that can be contacted for warehoused units which are sold 3 years down the road, well, that's just not going to happen.
I'm not suggesting that they could continue to run a server after going under. I got the impression that the "magic code" was probably a top-secret backdoor code that could be entered by the user to disable the authorization checks. But that's just a guess. I don't really know.
Obviously, there's no certainty at all that such a promise would be carried out -- many things could change in the process of going bankrupt. Users might well be left out in the cold by the company, but I'm glad that they've at least said that they don't want that to happen to their customers.
Anyhow, I'm not too concerned about it. If TiVo fails and users are stuck, someone will jump in. Maybe it will be a hacker, finding another solution. (As I understand it, some of them know already how to do it.) Maybe it will be another company, charging for the same service (either reverse-engineered or purchased from a defunct TiVo's assets). With over half a million users already out there, someone will address the problem, if it should ever arise. I'm not willing to lose sleep over it.
The main problem is that this is teathered technology, and teathered technology sucks: it has value only so long as the company that built it remains actively solvent.
True enough. And I'm not thrilled with tethered technology either. I've accepted it as a "necessary evil" in this case. It's a calculated risk, just as buying a DirecTV receiver is. I'm just as tethered by DirecTV as TiVo. I can't readily switch to another satellite or cable provider; all my investment in DirecTV equipment would become useless. I'm not happy with this, but I've decided to overlook it.
I'd have a lot more confidence in "the TiVO answer" to the problem if it automatically went into that mode after a prolonged period of bing unable to contact the mothership, and it took an action by the user to get it to contact the mothership again, later. Instead, it's another "beamed power" device, which quits functioning entirely.
How realistic is that? It's trivial to create a "prolonged period of being unable to contact the mothership" -- leave the phone line unplugged. How could they get people to pay for their subscriptions if they could just wait long enough for the requirement to vanish on its own?
This implies at least two tuners, and probably three. Television programming is intentionally adversarial between highly rated shows; first-run episodes of "The Practice" are never scheduled to run against "Carlton Sheets" or "Ron Popeil" infomercials: it just doesn't happen. The shows people want to watch are on in opposition to each other, and so are the shows people *don't* want to watch.
I find this network practice reprehensible and shortsighted, but you're right, it's typical. But then, that's part of why I have two DirecTV receivers with TiVo. That gives me 4 tuners, which is enough to resolve most (but not all) conflicts. On the other hand, my coworker in the next cube loves Friends, but hardly watches anything else. For her, one tuner would be plenty. It all depends on your interests.
If I were running a network, I would run fewer shows (there's too much crap already), but show them several times a week -- probably once or twice in prime time, at least twice during the day, and a couple times in the middle of the night, including reruns from the previous week. Reruns on companion networks ("repurposing") also fits in nicely here. This is the sort of thing HBO does -- instead of trying to force viewers to pick which popular show to watch, give them ample opportunity to see all the ones they want. There was no reason to move Survivor to 8:00 PM on Thursday night to see if it could beat Friends.
I would also avoid moving shows around the schedule. Some of the most popular shows (like ER) have never moved from their timeslot, while others (Quantum Leap, Mad About You, and many others) were obviously hurt badly by schedule hopping. Of course, with my TiVo, I personally don't care much anymore.:-) Networks need to learn that people are creatures of habit, and a popular show doesn't drag viewers to another night like a leash. More often, it loses viewers and makes it very difficult for new viewers to find the show as well. How many ratings drops and cancellations were preceded by rampant schedule changes?
The technology has to be aware of the environment in which it operates; largely, it isn't.
I don't know what you mean by this.
A 'very compelling message' is one which you do not have to work to communicate, because your customers will do the work for you.
I'd argue that the customers are doing the work for TiVo, through word-of-mouth advertising. However, it's slow going. The message is compelling, but it's not easy to communicate. The only reason existing customers try so hard to communicate it anyhow is because it's so compelling. They want their friends and neighbors to benefit from the PVR as they do. But it takes a long time to convince people, at least right now. If the message wasn't so compelling, existing users would just give up and not worry about their friends missing out on this wonderful technology...
Your argument in this regard is a "Build it, and they will come" argument. It's the classical bogus technologist argument that thinks if you build something cool, everyone will want it. In reality, they've built something with a high "geek factor", which fails to be a "whole product".
In what way does it fail to be a "whole product"? What does that statement even mean?
The "geek factor" here is that it's digital, uses hard drives instead of videotapes, and runs on Linux. As a geek, I thought it was cool for those reasons, but that wasn't reason enough for me to buy it, unless I had money to burn to buy it as a cool geek toy.
I only decided to buy it after I finally understood the benefits it offered me as a television viewer, not as a geek. These benefits are of mainstream appeal, and very compelling. But they're very hard to communicate, because they sound like "cool geek toy" arguments to those who don't "get it". It's hard to really understand without experiencing it firsthand for a few weeks.
The deficiencies in the product that they've addressed so far in order to *try* to make it into a whole product, are all based on the idea of additional revenue... that they are offering a service, which has value, instead of making up for a deficiency in the product model that makes the product unusable without it.
I'd ascribe that to trying to address deficiencies in the marketing. As I've said, many times, the value of the product (or "service", whatever) is real and present, but very difficult to communicate. TiVo's marketing department has an unenviable task -- communicating a message which is nearly impossible to communicate. They try, but it's a steep uphill battle.
The product isn't lacking; it's just hard to market.
Then they try to go to a subscription model, in order to turn the pain into a recurring revenue stream, to make their investors happy, instead of trying to make their customers into evangelists.
Their subscription model wasn't a desperate attempt to recoup revenue from a failing product. They've used the model since day one. Moreover, they've always offered lifetime service, with a goal of having 50% of their customers sign up for lifetime service -- so some of their cash would be upfront, and some would be ongoing. They raised the price of the lifetime service from $200 to $250 because the option was too popular. About 60% were buying lifetime service, so they raised the price to try to bring it down to 50%.
It's true that they no longer offer lifetime service for DirecTV models, but I'm sure DirecTV insisted on discontinuing it. DirecTV has been taking a much more active role in their partnership; as I understand it, DirecTV just took over customer support completely and is now marketing the units as "DirecTV DVR" systems, dropping the TiVo brand name on the new Series 2 models...
Here is the proof in the pudding: how many people have purchsed a TiVO due solely to your wife's evangelism of the product? I.e. she did not have an early adopter maniac (e.g. you) propping up her argument to the person.
I don't know of any yet, but several of her friends, and even contractors working on the house, have taken a serious interest in TiVo, due to her evangelism alone. (It's possible that there have been some sales as a result; I wouldn't necessarily know.)
And keep in mind that even as an "early adopter maniac", it took (literally) weeks for a friend of mine with TiVo (another "early adopter maniac") to convince me to buy it. And I'd presumably be predisposed to buy into his arguments, right?
I'm willing to bet that this number is zero, or that your wife is abnormally tolerant of new things, having been immunized by you.
In other words, you refuse to consider the possibility that you're wrong. Either this piece of data would confirm your preconceived notions, or you've already got an excuse in mind for why it should be inapplicable.
If you really want to prove your point, why don't you go buy a TiVo (preferably a DirecTV model) somewhere with a 30-day return privilege? Keep it and use it for the 30 days. If it's not compelling, return it at the end of that time. Whether you keep it or not, you'll probably better understand the message that TiVo evangelists are trying to convey. And if you keep it, having argued so much against it, that would truly be evidence that TiVo's got something!
As far as "they just need to find their market" goes... they've had 5 years to do that, and they haven't done it yet.
What, now there's a time limit to establish a market? If the number of customers had levelled off, and was now dropping, I'd say you're right, that the market just isn't there or at least isn't a mainstream market. But that's not what's happening. TiVo's customer base continues to grow every year, and there's no sign of that growth abating. The market is there, even if market penetration is slow.
If they're successful, what does it matter if it's an overnight success or one built over the course of years? (I'd argue that the latter probably has more staying power anyhow -- overnight success sometimes becomes yesterday's fad.)
The bottom line is that they need to change what they are selling.
You certainly haven't justified this bold claim. They are selling something that works, and makes their customers very happy. That doesn't sound like a losing formula. No, it doesn't garner instant mainstream acceptance, but is that really indispensible?
I've been in the same boat, working for a company that wasn't willing to change what they were selling, and which then tried to milk a subscription model as a revenue source, and all the while, doing it with an incomplete product. It's hard to watch someone else make the same mistake.
If you want to convince me that TiVo has a half-assed product and is trying to compensate by squeezing customers for subscription revenue, you'll have to do better than this. I use the products every day, and you obviously don't. They work great. Yes, I can come up with ideas to improve them, but nothing's perfect. The product does everything they claim, and I don't really care whether they call it a "service". It works.
You can continue to argue from ignorance, but why should I give those arguments more weight than my own experience as an actual user of the product?
[P.S. If you stop using your +1 bonus, so will I. I'm not sure anyone else is still interested in reading this debate anyhow.]
I guess they'll "brilliantly" go bankrupt, then, from selling something that's so much not what people to expect it to be that it have an over 3 month sales cycle (e.g. your wife).
My wife is probably not representative of the market as a whole. I already have so much electronic equipment in the house that she tends to be very opposed to introducing more into the house, since it's just clutter to her. She hated the idea of the TiVo because it represented just that much more clutter in the house.
Once she got used to having it, she loves it, and wonders how we ever get along without it. When a product can win over someone who starts out dead set against it, that's a pretty strong endorsement.
Put another way, TiVo's Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF) is quite high -- once they get it.
Look; without the umbilical back to them through UUnet dialup, what functionality do you lose?
In principle, the DirecTV model could function indefinitely from the satellite alone. The standalone would quickly run out of guide data.
However, in practice, the software has a builtin time bomb to disable most of the advanced features if too much time passes without reaching TiVo's servers. (Something like a month or three.) The older 1.x standalone models could operate in a limited-functionality mode with manual recordings without service, which was optional. Newer models require the service, and say so on the box.
Should TiVo collapse as a company, representatives have promised that they would release a magic code to disable that authorization check to enable the TiVo's to continue to function without being able to reach the TiVo service. (The standalone models would still run out of guide data, but someone would probably step up to feed it data another way.) I believe TiVo would probably follow through on this promise if the death of the company were imminent.
You're obviously an early adopter, despite needing the purchase approval to buy the thing. Your wife probably "saves" you from a lot of new technology. But as an early adopter, you probably also have an Internet connection and don't need a seperate umbilical.
I'm not one of the earliest adopters. Yes, I have an Internet connection (I've been using the Internet for 15 years), DirecTV, TiVo, and a DVD player. However, each of these technologies was available for years before I got around to buying it. I tend to be ahead of the mainstream, but I usually wait to see how badly the real early adopters get burned before buying in myself.
Your claims are also a little grandiose... in fact, you can't record everything; you are limited in the number of simultaneous channels by the number of tuners you have available.
What I said was that you "record everything you're interested in", not that you record every channel. Obviously, the number of tuners limits the number of overlapping programs you can record, but you can always buy additional TiVo units to increase the capacity. I have 2 DirecTV units, with 4 tuners between them. That's usually enough for me, and I record many shows. For some people, one tuner would be sufficient. It depends on the person.
Don't distort my words. I never said "record everything" in an unqualified manner like that. I meant that you tend to end up recording most of the programs that you watch, rather than watching most programs live and recording a few, as people do with VCR's. It's a fundamental difference in the way you approach television.
Rather than positioning the thing as a product they want to sell to consumers, they need to position it as one that consumers want to buy.
Well, they've tried. But it's not enough to have the right message (you want this, for all these reasons). For marketing to be effective, it must be able to communicate that message to prospective customers. TiVo actually has a very compelling message that really resonates with people, but it seems to be damn near impossible to communicate that message successfully with traditional marketing techniques. The people who "get" the ads are the ones who've already gotten the message, not the ones they need to reach yet.
Large sales do not come from "push", they come from creating "pull" in the market.
Because of the difficulting communicating their message, this won't happen overnight. However, it is happening, through word-of-mouth advertising mostly. Eventually, after hearing their friends rave about their TiVo's long enough, people will tend to decide that there must be something to this TiVo thing that they're just missing (which is true) and give it a try. Then they become hooked and start raving to their friends.
Ultimately, this is very effective, but it's also slow right now. It takes a long time to convince people still because relatively few people are talking about it, and it seems to have marginal value, on the surface. However, someday it will reach a critical mass where "everyone" seems to be talking about TiVo, and buying PVR's, and suddenly the demand will explode because it'll be the new trendy thing, like DVD players are now.
Maybe TiVO should think about hiring Guy Kawasaki as a marketing consultant: his ideas in this area worked for Apple.
I don't know. I'm not familiar with him.
If I were running TiVo, I'd stop running TV ads entirely now. Their brand name is sufficiently known to be nearly synonymous with the PVR industry, almost dangerously so. (Think Kleenex or Xerox.) Instead, they should team up with DirecTV to promote TiVo and DirecTV together by giving away as many DirecTV receivers with TiVo as possible to many celebrities, pundits, reporters, TV personalities, etc. Give them the boxes and the service for free. They'll end up talking about it, and it will be worth more to them than all the TV ads combined. (They're already doing this to some degree, but they could probably do a lot more if they used the money that would otherwise would be spent on traditional advertising...)
Basically, TiVo is an excellent product with a tremendously satisfied, loyal, enthusiastic and vocal user base, and a compelling message that resonates strongly with most people, once they finally get it. Word-of-mouth advertising will take care of the rest. It's only a matter of time.
The only real danger is that TiVo's cash could run out before they reach a cashflow breakeven point -- but they've done a remarkable job of cutting their costs, increasing their revenues, and finding additional investors, despite the state of tech stocks in the last 2 years. They've survived this long, and I believe they'll make it to the breakeven point. This issue should be resolved in the next year or two, one way or the other.
Assuming TiVo survives as a company, I believe they'll be very profitable down the road, even if that means 10-20 years from now. That's okay, I have faith in them. Meanwhile, I'll buy as much of their stock as I can, while it's still fairly cheap...
If you buy the lifetime service, then you are paying only once. That's still an option on the standalone models.
Lifetime service is no longer offered on DirecTV models. I imagine DirecTV insisted on doing away with it, since their service is subscription-oriented. So you technically don't have the option to buy a new DirecTV model and not pay a TiVo subscription indefinitely.
However, I don't think that really matters. You can only use the DirecTV models with DirecTV service anyhow, so you're already locking yourself in there. You get the ability to tune to two different channels at once and record both -- ignoring the hardware cost of 2 DirecTV receivers and 2 VCRs, just having 2 normal receivers on your account would cost you an extra $5/month for the "mirroring" charge to be able to tune 2 channels. DirecTV receivers with TiVo, despite being dual-tuner, count as one receiver to DirecTV.
So you can get the capability to tune a second channel for an extra $5/month either way -- with normal DirecTV receivers, it's a mirroring charge; with the TiVo combo receivers, it's a TiVo subscription charge. To be able to record 2 DirecTV channels at once (for overlapping programs), you'd need to pay an extra $5/month regardless, and the TiVo gives you so much more.
Money is fungible; does it really matter what the description on the line item is? The TiVo solution is cheaper than pairing 2 DirecTV receivers with 2 VCRs. No, it doesn't give you the ability to equip 2 TVs in the house like separate DirecTV receivers can, but it has plenty of other advantages. Even without being able to buy the lifetime service anymore for DirecTV units, it still doesn't seem like you're getting cheated, considering the costs of the alternative.
(To be honest, I'm surprised DirecTV doesn't charge a mirroring charge for the second tuner, just because they could get away with it!)
The risks inherent in their business model are not your concern. But they provide sufficient value for the subscribers to justify charging them -- they're not just extorting money because they can. The subscribers are getting something for their money. Ask around. You probably won't find many TiVo owners who got rid of the box after a couple months or canceled the service because it wasn't worth it to them. What does that tell you?
If TiVo folded all of their costs into the product, it would be very difficult to reach the mass market. And as a niche market, they'd have to charge far more money. They charge $250 extra for lifetime service now, based on a business plan that demands they obtain a million or more customers to break even. Imagine if TiVo couldn't count on getting that many customers? It would be a niche market product, for which they would probably have to charge $2,000 or more, just to cover their engineering costs to develop the product. Would that really be better?
Instead, they're trying to keep it as affordable as possible, and using a subscription model is part of how they're doing it. People dislike to pay subscriptions when they can avoid it, but if they value the product/service enough, they'll do it anyhow.
There's no lack of perceived value in TiVo's service to their customers. There's some difficultly conveying the value to potential customers, however. This won't kill the product, but it does slow the rate of adoption, at least for now. If we ever reach the point where the perceived value is well-understood by the general public, you can expect PVR sales to skyrocket. Even now, TiVo has had a faster adoption rate so far than the VCR did, or CD players, or the Internet. Give it time, it'll become ubiquitous. Mark my words!
They outsource the dialups to UUnet, but it's still a costly infrastruction that needs to be paid for.
As for the "it's a VCR" comment, that's exactly the misconception that makes it difficult to market the TiVo. TiVo owners know better; prospective customers usually do not. That's why the market penetration has been relatively slow, moreso than the subscription costs.
Just because you *can* tie it into a subscription service that forces ads down your throat doesn't mean you *should*.
The alternative is to build all the costs in upfront, as ReplayTV did, which would drive up the sticker price several hundred dollars. Then we'd be hearing everyone bitching about how it costs too much...
If they just sell it as "a better VCR", they would be fine.
It's not just a "better VCR", and until you understand that, you'll never see the true value it provides. For several years, I considered it to just be a "better VCR". It sounded cool to have a digital VCR, especially based on Linux, but ultimately, it just didn't sell me. That's just not reason enough to buy it.
It took many conversations with a TiVo-owning friend over several weeks before I could truly understand what it was all about, at which point I realized this wasn't just a better VCR. I really wanted it, once I understood, but it took 3 months to convince my wife to let me buy it -- in her mind it was just one more gadget to clutter the house. 2 months after we bought it, my wife was extolling the virtues of TiVo to everyone she could -- after she started out determined to hate the thing for invading her house!
By calling it a "better VCR", it's clear that you just don't get it. Neither did I at first. It's very hard to really get it, without actually living with a TiVo for a few weeks and getting used to it. Then you wonder how you ever lived without it.
The whole is much, much greater than the sum of its parts. On the surface, the TiVo just looks like a digital VCR with a built in program guide. However, it's the way these elements are smoothly integrated into one system that really makes the difference -- it fundamentally changes the way you watch TV.
You stop worrying about when your favorite shows are on; it just records them and you watch them at your convenience, not when the network executives dictate. If the phone rings, you just pause the TV and answer it, without missing anything. You never have to suffer the "200 channels but nothing's on" syndrome, because there's always something there worth watching. You stop watching live TV almost entirely, because it's more convenient to be able to fast-forward through commercials and watch your shows in any order.
TiVo changes your TV viewing habits in a way that VCRs never could. There's no hassle, no effort. You record everything you're interested in, not just those things that are so important that you mustn't miss them. It's the ultimate timeshifting device, and a VCR can't even come close.
It's truly a compelling product, which is why I'm sure it will be successful and profitable in the end. However, it's hard to convey the value in a few words -- you really have to experience it to fully understand what all the hype is about.
You know, after I bought a TiVo and came to understand what it was all about, those cryptic early TiVo commercials finally made sense to me. But they never did the job of making me want to buy the product. That took an evangelist who spent several hours convincing me, plus a lot of research on my own.
Yeah, the "TV Guide" feature is nice. But I have lived this long with my analog VCR without that feature, I'm probably going to be able to survive until Thursday.
Sure, you'll survive. Luckily for you, ignorance is bliss -- because you don't understand what TiVo is all about, you don't realize what you're missing. You don't realize the degree to which you've become a slave to your TV until you're released from that bondage. If you've never tasted freedom, it's no surprise that you aren't yearning for it.
Most likely, TiVO will die, when DVD-RW replaces VCRs, while TiVO is futzing around trying to generate a revenue stream other than "unit sales".
Nope, because what the TiVo does is completely different. Perhaps traditional VCRs will give way to DVD-RW someday, but not TiVo. They don't even belong in the same product category. TiVo was right to call it a "PVR", not a "digital VCR".
Remember VOIP? Do you own an IP Telephone? No? But you're a *nerd*! If a *nerd* won't buy one, what chance have you got to sell it to people with lives!?!
It's the people who have lives who benefit most from TiVo. This is a product that appeals to everyone that likes to watch TV... once they finally understand what it's all about. Getting them to understand is the hard part!
Your VOIP vs. digital PBX example is irrelevant. TiVo isn't trying to sell you a product that will be useless until everyone buys in. They're selling a product that can improve your quality of life, and it works now.
I disagree. If I need a second tuner it's for watching porn in the bedroom, therefore I have to pay the extra $5 a month for the receiver in the bedroom PLUS the extra $5 a month for Tivo unit in the living room. Two tuners in the same room and on the same receiver buys me nothing but an extra $5 a month. So no, it's not a wash.
It gives you the ability to see shows that conflict on the schedule by tuning to two channels at once. Normally you can't do this without two DirecTV receivers, and the second receiver would cost you the save $5/month extra. This way, you don't even have to own a VCR to catch two shows that overlap with each other. It's a good deal.
Besides, don't you want to record that porn in the bedroom, for when there's nothing good on? You could get 2 DirecTivo units, one for each room, and pay $10/month extra instead of the $15/month extra it would cost for 4 DirecTV receivers. (Okay, maybe 4 tuners is overkill for you, but I've used all 4 of mine at once before and still needed another, though not for porn!)
TiVo users talk about their monthly fee like the company is a charity case. A modem dialing into a mainframe and downloading some data shouldn't cost $13/month. If it does, they're doing something wrong and deserve to go under.
It doesn't. But that's not all you're paying for. You don't pay upfront for the software or upgrades, so you're actually paying for it too. Software doesn't write itself; do you really expect them to give it away for free without getting paid for it some other way?
TiVo doesn't run their own dialup modem banks; they outsource that job to UUnet. UUnet surely doesn't charge them $13/month per customer, but it could easily be as much as $5-7/month or so...
The important thing to keep in mind is the software. The subscription fee pays for the software, not just the guide data. That's not so outrageous, is it?
That would be fine, except now I've got a $500 device that stops working when Tivo goes out of business or decides they no longer want to support my hardware.
People take the same risk with satellite receivers. Realistically, if TiVo ever goes out of business, someone will make it possible to use the TiVo units by replacing the underlying infrastructure. It's probably not as big a risk as it seems.
If you're already paying for DirecTV, the listing are coming over the satellite, right? You'd think someone would make a device to read those listings and sell it. But they won't because they are all GREEDY BASTARDS.
DirecTV may be greedy bastards, but their data is encrypted, and the only way you're going to be able to make a box that works with their system is to work with them (as TiVo did). Nobody can hope to do it behind DirecTV's back.
Should you have to pay $5/month to use DirecTV's guide data on the TiVo when you're already paying for DirecTV? Personally, I don't think so, but it does provide more guide data for you -- normal DirecTV receivers show 2 days of guide data, while TiVo and UltimateTV receivers get 12 days. (They say up to 14 days, but it always seems to be 12 days.)
As far as I'm concerned, the real reason to pay a TiVo subscription for the DirecTV units is to pay for the software on the TiVo (and upgrades), not for the guide data itself. Remember that TiVo does not charge you upfront for their software -- there's no "TiVo software tax" incorporated into the price of the TiVo systems. Nevertheless, that software is quite valuable, and it didn't develop itself; they deserve to be paid for it.
I want to buy the device, but they refuse to sell it. They only want to RENT it, and I'm not interested in renting things I should own.
You can "buy" the standalone -- just pay for the lifetime service upfront ($250) and view it as part of the purchase price. Until recently, that was also an option for the DirecTV models. I'm sure DirecTV insisted on getting rid of the option, since they prefer the subscription model.
But really, you are buying the box itself; if you want to take a sledgehammer to it, you have the right. (DirecTV claims to retain ownership of their access cards, however -- I don't know if this would stand up in court, but they claim it.)
Considering the way the DirecTV mirroring charge works, the TiVo service might as well be free. To get the ability to record two channels from DirecTV without a PVR, you'd need two standalone DirecTV receivers, connected to two VCRs. The second DirecTV receiver would cost you an extra $5/month from DirecTV, which is the same extra monthly cost as the TiVo service on the PVR.
Since both tuners count as one receiver in DirecTV's eyes (only one access card), you get much more functionality than the 2-receiver/2-VCR solution, for less money!
The monthly cost would be the same, and the upfront hardware cost would be less, because the upcoming Series 2 DirecTivo should be about $200, which is much less than the cost of 2 DirecTV receivers and 2 high-quality digital VCRs and 30 hours of tape would cost. (Since the recording quality is perfect on the DirecTV units, this is the closest thing to a fair comparison.)
There is, quite simply, NO reason that Tivo is a subscription service, except for the fact that they CAN, so they did. Which is why I don't have one yet.
True, they didn't have to choose that model. They could have built all the costs into the upfront price of the box (as ReplayTV did), only to hear everyone bitching that it's a great box, but too expensive. Part of the reason for the subscription is to defer paying much of the cost until later, to make it more affordable.
Yes, they hope to continue collecting subscription fees longer to make more profit, if possible. So what? They're continuing to provide value by upgrading the software regularly, and you're not expected to pay for each update on the "upgrade treadmill".
If you have DirecTV, want to be able to watch things that conflict on the TV schedule (e.g. Survivor and Friends) and you only watch DirecTV channels exclusively, the DirecTivo is really a no-brainer -- you'll get more value, functionality and quality then you would with 2 receivers and 2 VCRs, at a lower cost. If you buy 2 DirecTivo's, you save money on a monthly basis, since the mirroring charge for the second receiver mirrors the TiVo service from the first receiver at no extra charge, so you save the $5/month mirroring charge you'd have to pay for normal DirecTV receivers.
The standalone unit is undeniably more expensive, but you can still buy lifetime service, and not be tied to a monthly subscription fee for an indefinite period of time. I strongly recommend the DirecTV unit over the standalone whenever possible, for cost and quality/efficiency reasons. The only reason to get the standalone is for the flexibility of recording from any video source.
If you really want to buy a TiVo, then do it. It will change the way you watch TV forever. You won't regret it -- ask any TiVo owner! If at all possible, get the DirecTV model, even if that means dumping cable and installing a satellite dish -- it really has compelling advantages. If you can't live with only what DirecTV offers, then bite the bullet and pay the upfront cost to buy a standalone with lifetime service. It's still worth it despite the high cost, although the DirecTV model is a much better deal...
While I generally agree with what you are saying, the fact that you need a thousand words to explain it is part of the problem why TiVo will not last long with a subscription-based business model. I am also a TiVo owner, and I see the value in paying for the service, but Jane and Joe Sixpack do not. Yet those are the folks who will have to be convinced if TiVo is to gain enough viewers to become profitable.
The inability to adequately describe what a TiVo does, and the value it offers to the customer, is the main difficulty in marketing it. I don't think this problem will go away for quite a while, because it takes time to percolate into the public consciousness.
You're right that people tend to be initially disgusted by the idea of a monthly subscription fee. Yes, this discourages people from getting the box in the first place, when they're already having trouble understanding why they should care about having the box in the first place. This does make it harder to acquire new customers.
However, once those customers are acquired, the vast majority love the product and become enthusiastic supporters. Most will let go of their resentment toward the subscription fee, or at least accept it as a necessary evil. Few TiVo owners would go back to the old way of watching TV, even if that means paying subscription fees indefinitely. TiVo commands a level of customer satisfaction that would be the envy of most companies. Ultimately, it's the enthusiastic word-of-mouth advertising that really supports the company; TV commercials alone just don't convince enough people to buy the product. (Especially those vague early ones!)
TiVo probably needs about a million customers to start making a profit. They're over halfway there already. They haven't hit cashflow breakeven yet, but I believe they'll make it. (However, expect the stock price to remain low until this becomes more certain.)
I agree that integrating the service into satellite and cable boxes is the way to go; that's what they've done with DirecTV, and it works very well. It's a perfect synergy, and people are already used to paying a cable/satellite bill every month -- an extra $5/month for TiVo won't bother them that much...
Why does it need to upload usage and debugging data?
It doesn't need to. By default, it uploads anonymous usage data for aggregate analysis -- for example, that's how they were able to tell that the Britney Spears Pepsi commercial was the most-watched Superbowl commercial this year. They don't collect personally-identifiable information without explicit permission. (If you have a software problem they need to debug, or you want to be a beta tester, they'll ask such permission.)
And if it really bothers you to be tracked even anonymously, you can opt out of that too. Personally, I decided it was fine to gather the anonymous data -- if they can tell the networks what shows are popular, or help advertisers craft more entertaining commercials, I'm all for it. Perhaps someday millions of TiVo owners will provide much more accurate information than the few Nielsen households who currently wield far too much influence...
And why should I pay a monthly subscription for the privilege of doing that? Software upgrades, well, perhaps: but many other appliances have software too, and they don't require a subscription.
They also don't get automatic software updates, in most cases. The DirecTivo update to enable the second tuner effectively doubled the value of the box, but it didn't cost any extra.
Realize that TiVo can't afford to pay engineers to write all this great software, and then just give it away. That's a guaranteed path to business failure, which means no more software. They can take a loss now, and some business risk, for the promise of future revenue. That's exactly what they've been doing.
When you buy a TiVo off the shelf, you've paid nothing for the valuable software on it. Instead, they seek to be paid for the software as part of the subscription fee. In years past, TiVo subsidized the hardware (to keep the sticker price down), and thus took a loss for every TiVo that was sold. This loss also had to be recouped from the subscription fee. (Cost reductions in the Series 2 have eliminated the hardware subsidy, as far as I know.)
Without the TiVo software, a TiVo box is little more than a custom Linux system. And while there's free Linux PVR software out there, it's not even in the same league with TiVo's software. If you could just buy the TiVo box without software, and buy the TiVo software for it off the shelf for another $250, would that be somehow less objectionable to you?
Listen, nobody likes to pay extra monthly fees. But they have a business to run, and they have to pay their costs and try to make a profit. They're doing a great job; I want them to stay in business. I won't begrudge them charging what they must to do so. I get a lot of value from my TiVo's. Ultimately, it's a small price to pay, and I'm glad that paying a lot more upfront is not the only option.
An Ethernet port and all that stuff is great. But it needs to be optional. You should be able to plug the box in, have it get the EPG data from broadcasts, and start using it. All these wonderful software features like tracking the shows you prefer are very handy, but no justification for paying a monthly fee. You might as well say that use of MS Word requires regular payments to Microsoft to keep the ability to open your Word documents, er, wait...
Microsoft would love to have a subscription model for their software, but it doesn't go over well. But their "upgrade treadmill" tends to be even worse. At least TiVo is honest about wanting to derive a steady revenue stream as long as you're steadily receiving value from their product. They provide additional value by releasing new software updates without additional charge. Things could be worse.
Bear in mind that with UltimateTV, Microsoft never offered the option of lifetime service -- it was $9.95/month, forever. TiVo offered lifetime service from the start, and still offers it on standalone models. It's no longer offered for DirecTV models, but I strongly suspect that DirecTV insisted on discontinuing lifetime service as an option -- their business model is heavily subscription-based. But they lowered the monthly cost,and given the mirroring charges, it's really not a bad deal at all.
You seem to be offended to be asked to pay for something that doesn't seem to be costing TiVo enough to justify what you're paying. You're ignoring the value of the software itself, which is really the key component of the system in the first place. Do you really expect TiVo to put that much work into the software and then just give it away for free? Or would you rather be paying hundreds of dollars more to buy the product in the first place?
Subscriptions are somewhat unpalatable, but the alternatives aren't necessarily much better...
I think that fundamentally, I object to the idea of the thing having a modem:-P. It would be far better if no expensive 'infrastructure' were needed at all - I don't have to pay for an infrastructure to use my oldstyle VCR or microwave oven, so why do it for hard disk video recorders?
Because it needs to send and receive data from the "mothership", and your microwave doesn't. If you're a hacker, you can add an Ethernet card to some TiVo models and have it use your existing Internet connection and local network to call home instead of using the modem. There are rumors that this may even be officially supported someday with the Series 2 models, using USBEthernet adapters...
I'm sure the money that TV networks get by restricting access to their listings is piddling at best. It would make much more sense for an EPG to be broadcast alongside each channel, then anyone could make tivos without the need for banks of modems and technicians to keep it all running.
Restricted or not, you still need to get that data onto the box. You also need to download software upgrades, and upload usage and debugging data. That's why the infrastructure is needed.
The DirecTV models do get their guide data over the satellite, by the way. But they still need to call home for the other reasons.
I have a TiVo but they had three strikes against them:
1) Increased price
This only applies to the monthly service on standalone models. It went up from $10/month to $13/month. The DirecTV models went down from $10/month to $5/month. Also, the Series 2 models (with faster CPUs, more memory and USB ports) cost less than the Series 1 boxes. My Series 1 combo box was $400, the Series 2 boxes list for $200. (I don't think the Series 2 combo box is out yet, but it's due out later this month, I think.)
Anyhow, you should have had the foresight to buy the lifetime service. There was never any promise not to raise the monthly service price, after all. More importantly, it only takes about 2 years to break even on the lifetime service. If you had an extended warranty also, you could ensure making it past that break-even point, in the event of any untoward event happening to your TiVo.
All in all, I don't see much cause for bitching about the price -- for the most part, it's gone down, not up. The only thing that went up is a cost you could have locked in by buying lifetime service in the first place. Half of TiVo's customers had enough sense to do that, why didn't you?
2) At the same time, they added advertising
TiVo has always been quite upfront about their intent to work with network and advertisers to develop creative new marketing tools. As long as I'm not forced to watch advertising (as DVDs sometimes do), I'm okay with that.
After all, the networks do need to pay for all those shows I want to record somehow. I don't feel obligated to watch the boring 30-second commercial spots, but I will watch good commercials if they catch my attention. Meanwhile, if they can come up with a better way to advertise, I'm all for it. Anything's better than the shotgun-style advertising we live with now!
3) They put Eminem content on my TiVo.
Get over it. You don't have to watch it. If you don't like Eminem, ignore it! Wow, that's difficult. You're upset that they're using some of your hard drive space for sometime other than your recordings? Deal with it. TiVo has reserved part of your disk space for their use since day one. Why? To provide content just for TiVo users, and to enable new services including advertising.
If this was so offensive to you, you could have bought a ReplayTV box instead. They don't care about pissing off the advertisers and networks. Of course, they may get sued out of existence for their hostility toward well-funded media interests. TiVo chooses to work with them instead; it's all a question of philosophy.
Once that Eminem crap is off my box, I'm cancelling the sub.
One more thing -- if buying a subscription offends you so much, why don't you just buy the box and spend the extra $250 for lifetime service?
Except that it's the lifetime of the unit you bought, not you as a subscriber. That's the problem that I have as we all know that they're going to come out with new units with some must-have feature that only the new units support.
I would prefer something like "lifetime service for any unit as long as I don't cancel my service, if I cancel, I have to resubscribe".
Yes, it's the lifetime of the unit. But the lifetime subscription follows that unit if you resell it. The original poster objected to the subscription model and wanted the box sold "like a toaster" where you pay once and forget about it. Well, you can view the lifetime subscription as your alternative to "opt out" of the subscription model, effectively building the cost of the service into the cost of the box.
Sure, you'd rather that "lifetime service" covers you for life rather than a box. So would I, as a customer. As a shareholder, I wouldn't recommend that they offer that option, simply because there are real costs involved in providing the service, and having an open-ended liability is dangerous. Sooner or later, the boxes will die.
However, lifetime subscribers shouldn't be cheated. I'd like TiVo to guarantee that the lifetime service will be valid at least as long as it takes to break even -- if the box dies before that break-even point, they should transfer it to a replacement box. Right now there's no guarantee like that, although it's possible they'd do it on a case-by-case basis for customer service reasons. (Or maybe not; I don't know.)
Personally, I wanted to ensure I'd get the maximum benefit from my lifetime service, so I purchased the 5-year extended warranty from Circuit City. TiVo will transfer lifetime service under warranty programs, including extended warranties. If you want to protect your investment in lifetime service, that's the way to go.
I paid about $90 for the extended warranty, on top of the $400 I spent on the TiVo and the $200 I spent on the lifetime service. (All these prices have changed since.) With tax, my initial costs were over $700, but I know I'll get at least 5 years of use out of it. At the original rate of $10/month, 5 years would have cost $600 instead of $200, so I'm saving money. Even at the current rate (for combo boxes) of $5/month, 5 years would cost $300, so it's still a guaranteed savings. And if my box lasts 7 years, or 10 years, that's even more savings. My second combo box gets free TiVo service as long as I keep it on the same account with the first one, too. (This is another benefit of the DirecTV units that's not available on the standalone models.)
If they simply didn't use a subscription model, and folded the costs into the purchase price (as ReplayTV did), you wouldn't be complaining that you want a discount on the next model for owning the previous one -- is it really fair to complain that the "lifetime" service is only for the lifetime of the box? Given that it can be transferred to a new owner (to whom it's worth as much as paying for lifetime service themselves), it seems quite fair, even if it's not as much in the customer's favor as we'd prefer... (If you couldn't transfer the service to a new owner or to a new box, that would be cause for complaint.)
It's not that simple. To do what TiVo does, and do it well, they really need a large number of users to support the infrastructure. Since standalone boxes have ongoing costs associated with providing the service, a subscription model makes sense.
ReplayTV tried to just sell boxes as their model; it hasn't worked well. They had to charge $650 when TiVo was charging $400. Guess who picked up more customers faster?
Arguably, the DirecTV combo units don't really provide a service from TiVo, since they leverage the guide data already being sent over the satellite. (However, I believe this data has been enhanced for the TiVo.) On the other hand, the subscription price for the DirecTV units has been reduced to $5/month, which is the same as the "mirroring" charge to have a second receiver on your DirecTV account. Since the DirecTV receivers with TiVo have two tuners, you get the second tuner free, and pay the $5/month for TiVo service instead, so it's a wash.
If you have two combo boxes, you only pay the extra $5/month for a second receiver, not another $5/month for the TiVo service -- the "mirroring" charge covers mirroring the TiVo service as well. I have a combo box with lifetime service (which is no longer offered for combo boxes), and my $5/month mirroring charge gives my second combo box the benefit of lifetime server, as long as both remain on the same account.
Meanwhile, the price of service has increased to $13/month for standalone boxes, but that's not so unreasonable, considering that maintaining the infrastructure for all those boxes to dial in with modems is quite expensive, not even counting the cost of preparing the data and updating software.
Ultimately, if TiVo can get over a million subscribers, they should be profitable by that point. Right now, they're more than halfway to that target, and still losing money, but it was part of their business plan from day one. You'll probably see TiVo turn a profit by 2004 or 2005.
As for what shareholders think, I am a shareholder, as well as a customer, and I don't have a problem with their subscription model. Most of the subscribers will stick around indefinitely, once they've got the hardware. TiVo is very good at what they do, and it's a killer product. It's just hard to market because the true value of the product is hard to convey. TiVo's greatest asset is word-of-mouth from their enormously loyal, extremely satisfied customers. Meanwhile, I'm going to buy as much TiVo stock as I can afford while it's still cheap.
One more thing -- if buying a subscription offends you so much, why don't you just buy the box and spend the extra $250 for lifetime service? Then you don't have to pay the subscription cost, and you can treat it as if you bought it at the combined cost.
You can't get lifetime service with the DirecTV models anymore, but so what? You get a second tuner in the combo box for the same monthly cost as a second standalone DirecTV receiver would cost you, so if effect it doesn't cost anything. More importantly, the combo boxes record directly from the satellite with 100% perfect recording quality, because you watch the EXACT same stream of MPEG2 bits live as you do when you play back a recording. Better yet, it's also much more efficient in disk space usage. The combo boxes thus have better recording quality than "Best" mode on the standalones, while using similar amounts of disk space as the "Basic" mode on standalones, which is said to be roughly the quality of VHS EP (6-hour) mode. The only real downside to the combo boxes is that you can't record from other video sources, only DirecTV. But with DirecTV's improved local coverage, that may not be an issue for you.
If you already have DirecTV and only watch the satellite, the "DirecTV receiver with TiVo" combo box is a no-brainer. If you use cable, it might be worth switching to DirecTV for the advantages. If not, you can buy a standalone (with lifetime service if you don't like subscriptions).
Regardless, if you like TV, get a TiVo -- preferably the DirecTV combo version. It's worth it. You'll never watch TV the same way again, and you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. And that is why I bought the stock; very few products have such an impact. My wife hated the idea of getting a TiVo (more gadgets) and it took 3 months to convince her to let me buy it. Within a few weeks, she was no longer mad about it, and within a couple months, she was extolling the TiVo's virtues to everyone she could. She had her mind made up to hate it, and it still won her over. If TiVo can do that, they can do anything!;-)
What I've been saying all along is that the English language needs a gender-neutral singular pronoun for people. I propose "te" (pronounced "tee," but with one 'e' like he, she, we, me).
I don't think new words will be invented. I believe that singular usage of "they", "them" and "their" will become accepted usage.
In fact, it appears that the Oxford English Dictionary already sanctions singular gender-neutral usage! Here is the normal (plural) definition of "they" from the OED:
B. Signification. I. 1. a. As pronoun of the third person plural, nom. case; the plural of he, she, or it: The persons or things in question, or last mentioned.
However, there is also a singular definition of "they":
2. Often used in reference to a singular noun made universal by every, any, no, etc., or applicable to one of either sex (= 'he or she').
Similarly, here is one of the definitions of "them":
2. Often used for 'him or her', referring to a singular person whose sex is not stated, or to anybody, nobody, somebody, whoever, etc. Cf. THEY 2.
Correspondingly, a definition of "their":
3. Often used in relation to a singular n. or pronoun denoting a person, after each, every, either, neither, no one, every one, etc. Also so used instead of 'his or her', when the gender is inclusive or uncertain. Cf. THEY pron. 2, THEM pron. 2; NOBODY 1b, SOMEBODY. (Not favoured by grammarians.)
Each of these had examples going back centuries. Perhaps the grammarians are being inappropriately pedantic on this point?
The OED documents singular usage of "they" as "he or she", "them" as "him or her" and "their" as "his or her". Political correctness often demands that people avoid using "he", "him" and "his" as gender-neutral pronouns, even though these are considered grammatically correct. Constructs such as "he or she" or "he/she" are awkward. Invented words like "hir" instead of "his or her" are confusing. Spoken usage has drifted toward the singular usage of "they", "them" and "their" for the sake of convenience, without loss of clarity.
In short, the grammarians should get with the times and sanction the singular usage for written use as well, so we can put this issue to rest. This is, after all, how real languages evolve -- first in common usage, then "officially". Too bad grammarians are pedantic by profession; they'll probably have to grow old and die before the next generation of grammarians can sanction it, having grown up with it as common usage...
Meanwhile, perhaps we should all take a stand and adopt the written usage to match the spoken usage. When someone claims that this is "incorrect", point them at the Oxford English Dictionary, which is considered the highest authority on the English language, after all. Grammar teachers may not like it, but should we really listen to them over common sense and the OED?
If you would keep a C/C++ core and add a PHP presentation layer, then you could just as readily keep the same C/C++ core and add a Perl presentation layer, which would work better. They could use Perl to whatever extent they intended to use PHP -- if they have native C/C++ code that's already debugged, it may be worth using -- I'm not suggesting that they should necessarily rewrite the code in Perl just because they can.
That being said, I see nothing wrong with implementing enterprise applications entirely in Perl. For many applications, you won't need the speed of C/C++, because Perl is nearly as fast for many purposes. When the raw speed is important enough, it's always possible to optimize the hot spots with C/C++ code, if necessary.
Implementing enterprise applications entirely in PHP, on the other hand, strikes me as a poor idea in general, and a worse idea for Yahoo with their existing base of 3 million lines of Perl code...
Yes, of course they should use mod_perl. That's a given. It's a powerful and efficient interface between Apache and Perl, and no serious enterprise web applications should eschew mod_perl for CGI. (Of course, PHP advocates routinely compare the speed of PHP with mod_php against Perl CGI without mod_perl, for an apples-to-oranges comparison...)
As for the method of presentation, Mason is just one of many options. (Some of the options offer the PHP approach of embedding code into the HTML, if you really want to go down that path.) They could also implement their own template system easily enough if the common ones are too slow or don't meet their needs. I wrote one alone in a week or two, which worked quite well and was used for a production web application to manage email accounts.
There are plenty of options for handling the presentation, and they could have found or created a suitable option without much effort. There are very good reasons to lean toward a separation of code and presentation for enterprise applications, but PHP's predisposition is for embedding code in the HTML, which inevitably leads to problems...
If you really want to mix code and data, you can easily write Perl code which consists mostly of quoted HTML, with variable substitutions and code blocks as necessary. With the myriad quoting options Perl offers, there's no reason for this to be any less readable than PHP code embedded into an HTML page, and it should be at least as fast.
Keep in mind that the main "advantage" PHP has is being "easy" because you can intermingle PHP code with HTML so readily. This is great for beginners and single-developer sites. It's not so great if you want programmers to develop the business logic and web designers to create the HTML.
PHP does not make sense for enterprise applications...
Yahoo SHOULD be using Perl, not PHP.
on
Yahoo Moving to PHP
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The reasons given for "Why Not Perl?" were:
There's More Than One Way To Do It - This is a feature, not a flaw! Perl is much more flexible and powerful than PHP. Maintainability comes from coding standards, not language limitations.
poor sandboxing, easy to screw up server - Perl can create sandboxes with the Safe module... (And if there's any rough edges, Yahoo's engineers could probably handle it.)
wasn't designed as web scripting language - So what?? With mod_perl and HTML::Mason or TT2, Perl fits this niche well, without PHP's predisposition towards mixing code and data.
These excuses for not using Perl are hardly compelling; they sound like rationalizations. Perl is a more natural fit for Yahoo's needs, especially considering that they already have 3 million lines of Perl code.
But they plowed ahead with PHP, and what did they learn?
very easy to get some pages up quickly - Expected, but Perl would have been nearly as easy, and probably much easier for their existing Perl programmers.
But mixed app/presentation problematic - PHP code and HTML forever intertwined - Surprise, surprise! This is exactly why PHP is inappropriate for enterprise applications. PHP encourages such shortsighted design. Beginners like it, but engineers should know better.
PHP != Perl - The "implement twice" problem - They knew that they had 3 million lines of Perl in the backend; why didn't they leverage it? This was avoidable.
PEAR != CPAN - repository smaller, less mature than CPAN - Again, this was a foreseeable problem.
Surprises for people used to coding Perl - It's not just that some semantics differ. Experienced Perl programmers forced to work in PHP have to live with the frustration of having to write ugly convoluted code for things that would be clear and simple in Perl. PHP 4 filled in many gaps, but it just doesn't work as well as Perl does. (I speak from experience here.)
So let's see. Their problems with PHP basically boil down to the fact that it's not Perl. (Despite the claims of PHP advocates, it's just not an equivalent substitute.) Of course, any experienced Perl programmer familiar with PHP could see these issues coming from miles away. They rejected Perl as an option, claiming that it wouldn't be maintainable, then discovered the amount of discipline required for PHP -- would following good coding standards for Perl really have taken any more discipline?
Perl was a natural fit for their needs, and the obvious choice. The entire presentation seems to be an exercise in rationalization, attempting to justify a poor strategic decision. They should have used Perl. (Even now, they should probably abandon PHP and use Perl instead, to save themselves from getting further entrenched into this bad decision...)
Since Slashdot has been around for years, and the stories are archived for years, isn't it about time to actually display the year in the dateline of the story?
This story already says "Tuesday October 01, @09:00AM" -- if we're spelling out the day of the week and the month, surely we can afford a few extra characters to identify the year for posterity? "Tuesday October 01, 2002, @09:00AM" isn't that much longer, after all...
(As an aside, it also looks a little odd to pad the day of the month with a leading zero when words are spelled out in full...)
Slashdot Mirror
Profitable for the MPAA when they sue the proprieter for unlicensed public performance of their copyrighed works.
That was my first thought also. Of course, they could try to negotiate for such rights, but I doubt the publisher would be interested.
On the other hand, he could get DirecTV; they have plans specifically designed for Business Viewing Areas which would be legal. They don't seem to offer premium channels like HBO (not surprising, I suppose), but they offer plenty of sports channels, which could draw quite a crowd.
Here in Cincinnati, there's a business which is a combination nightclub/laundromat -- customers routinely do their laundry in the presence of a live band! Why not a combination laundromat/sports bar? That could be a hit!
The client-server model that the "old internet" has relied on is broken. The ad-revenue cycle is destroying quality of service, shutting down many good sites permanently, and we're losing vast quantities of content in the process.
The "old Internet" was funded by government and academic institutions, and commercial activity was forbidden on the backbone. Spam was nonexistent, nobody launched DDoS attacks and few people bothered to forge email addresses, though plenty knew how. Nothing was wrong with the old Internet; it just wasn't mainstream.
The "new Internet" has many more resources online, but we suffer the excesses of commercialism at the same time. Between spam and ad-supported websites, we are bombarded by as much advertising online as in the physical world, if not moreso. And, as in the physical world, we're tired of the constant advertising, and it's losing effectiveness. It's the "new Internet" that's broken, because the advertising business isn't working too well to support most online content.
Maybe it's time we find a way to actually pay for all this content we desire? I'm not sure how best to implement it, but if you were to take the costs involved with providing the most useful services, and divide those costs among the millions upon millions of Internet users, it would probably be fairly cheap on a per-user basis. Maybe it's time for the Internet to find a better way than annoying advertising to sustain itself?
I'm beginning to wonder if marketing isn't a bit like antibiotics -- useful in moderation (to find out about products you didn't know of but would want), but dangerous to overuse (because it generates resistance which makes it become generally lrdd effective), and it doesn't matter if some marketers restrain themselves, because the abusive ones can ruin it for everyone.
I believe the marketing profession has created for itself a Tradegy of the Commons. The incessant advertising on all fronts has lessened the value of all advertising. There's just too much of it. Some marketing is useful to the consumer; if they don't know that a product is out there, they can't buy it, even if they'd like it. Most companies, however, seek to shove their products down the consumers throats with a barrage of advertising. This is counter-productive, and it explains the ever-growing hostility people are beginning to feel towards advertising in general.
I don't see any easy solutions to this, but I have an uneasy feeling that this form of advertising-driven capitalism may be due for a major reckoning, and the results could be ugly...
Okay, I just sent it again. This time, I also copied the response address that I used the first time (from the autoresponder message). Hopefully one or both will reach you!
You know what? They don't just look for e-mail addresses to send mail to. They also use the e-mail addresses as reply-to addresses. I found this out when I got an email from a guy who was puzzled by my auto-responder emailing him. It turns out that somebody sent a message to me and used his address as a reply-to address. Weird, Iddn't it? Fortunately he was very nice and we got that all settled, but it is a little disconcerting that the addresses are used in ways like that.
That was me. Why didn't you respond to the last email I sent you?
Anyhow, I wasn't puzzled; I knew the junk mail you received had my address forged. I just find it annoying to be impersonated that way, and with your autoresponder, I figured you were paying more attention than most. So I decided to respond to your autoresponder so you'd know that it didn't really come from me.
I never really considered the virus aspect before; perhaps all the mail with my address forged is sent by Klez or another virus; I never tried to determine that. Still obnoxious, but somehow it seems less objectionable for a virus to forge my email address than having a spammer using my address fraudulently for commercial gain...
By personal policy, I refuse to obfuscate my email address, even on Slashdot. My primary email address really is and I refuse to hide it just because abuse of Internet email by spammers and virus code is so rampant. I've had this email address for 8.5 years now, and I've been using the Internet for 15 years. I'm just too damn stubborn to be cowed into hiding my email address after all these years. If someone wants to legitimately send me email, I want that to be possible, even if I've never heard of the person before. So I'll take the risk of getting spammed.
Of course, I do get tons of spam mail. I have it partly under control with filters, but mostly I just ignore it. I may well setup an autoresponder myself at some point -- I'll be more than happy to find a way to block spammers, as long as legitimate mail can still get through...
Kudos! You've pretty much summed up most of the reasons why I love Google. As far as I'm concerned, they've proven themselves sufficiently over the years that I will give them the benefit of the doubt in an ambiguous situation. Google is one of the best examples of the Right Thing winning by superior quality. Google is constantly changing what they do, but I hope they never change the way they do them!
And there WERE some Y2K failures. Few enough though, for people to beleive it was a hoax, but this is because most systems were fixed! If nothing were done, many things would have failed with varying degrees.
If nothing had been done, it would not have been hype at all.
I agree. It's like the recriminations happening now around September 11. Everyone wants to know why nobody did anything to stop people from crashing planes into buildings. Suppose someone had hyped it up years ago, and made a big deal of keeping it from happening? Suppose they were successful? September 11 never would have happened, but we'd probably have people claiming it was bogus, that we were protecting against a non-existent risk, and it was a complete waste of money.
Hindsight is 20/20. People claim Y2K wasn't a big deal because others were actually successul at fixing most of the problems! Y2K rolled over with nary a hitch, causing people to think it must not have been an issue after all. We could have used a high-profile disaster or two, to convince everyone that their Y2K diligence wasn't wasted! (Of course, some scammers did jump on Y2K, but there was a real issue to worry about too.)
Actually, a friend of mine was listening to ham radio during the rollover, and heard about an alarming near-disaster. Apparently, one of the nuclear missile silos in Russia malfunction due to a Y2K bug and got well into the launch sequence before they managed to shut it down! (Far enough that the launch doors were supposedly opened to prepare for a launch.)
Of course, we didn't hear anything about this in the mainstream press, but there was such fear and paranoia about Y2K that they probably hushed up stories that didn't seem serious enough to risk hysteria over... (I heard rumors of other Y2K failures that weren't reported, or were ascribed to some other convenient cause.) Perhaps there were enough actual failures to demonstrate the risk, but if most were covered up, is it any surprise that people now consider the whole thing a hoax?
I understand that you are an enthusiatic fan of the company, but that's not going to save them.
:-) Networks need to learn that people are creatures of habit, and a popular show doesn't drag viewers to another night like a leash. More often, it loses viewers and makes it very difficult for new viewers to find the show as well. How many ratings drops and cancellations were preceded by rampant schedule changes?
Why should it? I'm just one customer/stockholder. I never claimed that I would be their salvation.
The fact that you have a lot of equipment already, and claim you aren't an early adopter, is part of what makes you an early adopter. When you refer to "Wife Acceptance Factor", then you are an early adopter.
I didn't deny being an early adopter. What I said was that I'm not one of the earliest adopters. Yes, compared to the mainstream, I'm an early adopter in computers, electronics and technology. However, there are plenty of really early adopters who jump long before I'm willing to. So yes, you could call me an early adopter, but it's all relative. Someone I consider a "real" early adopter jumps on new technologies almost immediately, instead of waiting for years as I often do. (Granted, sometimes I wait so long mostly for financial reasons.) You could call me a "late early adopter", I guess. I'm earlier than the mainstream, but late among early adopters.
And regardless of where the "Wife Acceptance Factor" terminology originates (I think I picked it up from Slashdot, actually), I believe that it represents (to some degree) a metric of mainstream acceptability, as many geeks have wives with more mainstream viewpoints...
"Promise to release a magic code"
This is totally bogus. I'm sorry to be blunt, but it is. The idea that they will be solvent enough to run a server that can be contacted for warehoused units which are sold 3 years down the road, well, that's just not going to happen.
I'm not suggesting that they could continue to run a server after going under. I got the impression that the "magic code" was probably a top-secret backdoor code that could be entered by the user to disable the authorization checks. But that's just a guess. I don't really know.
Obviously, there's no certainty at all that such a promise would be carried out -- many things could change in the process of going bankrupt. Users might well be left out in the cold by the company, but I'm glad that they've at least said that they don't want that to happen to their customers.
Anyhow, I'm not too concerned about it. If TiVo fails and users are stuck, someone will jump in. Maybe it will be a hacker, finding another solution. (As I understand it, some of them know already how to do it.) Maybe it will be another company, charging for the same service (either reverse-engineered or purchased from a defunct TiVo's assets). With over half a million users already out there, someone will address the problem, if it should ever arise. I'm not willing to lose sleep over it.
The main problem is that this is teathered technology, and teathered technology sucks: it has value only so long as the company that built it remains actively solvent.
True enough. And I'm not thrilled with tethered technology either. I've accepted it as a "necessary evil" in this case. It's a calculated risk, just as buying a DirecTV receiver is. I'm just as tethered by DirecTV as TiVo. I can't readily switch to another satellite or cable provider; all my investment in DirecTV equipment would become useless. I'm not happy with this, but I've decided to overlook it.
I'd have a lot more confidence in "the TiVO answer" to the problem if it automatically went into that mode after a prolonged period of bing unable to contact the mothership, and it took an action by the user to get it to contact the mothership again, later. Instead, it's another "beamed power" device, which quits functioning entirely.
How realistic is that? It's trivial to create a "prolonged period of being unable to contact the mothership" -- leave the phone line unplugged. How could they get people to pay for their subscriptions if they could just wait long enough for the requirement to vanish on its own?
This implies at least two tuners, and probably three. Television programming is intentionally adversarial between highly rated shows; first-run episodes of "The Practice" are never scheduled to run against "Carlton Sheets" or "Ron Popeil" infomercials: it just doesn't happen. The shows people want to watch are on in opposition to each other, and so are the shows people *don't* want to watch.
I find this network practice reprehensible and shortsighted, but you're right, it's typical. But then, that's part of why I have two DirecTV receivers with TiVo. That gives me 4 tuners, which is enough to resolve most (but not all) conflicts. On the other hand, my coworker in the next cube loves Friends, but hardly watches anything else. For her, one tuner would be plenty. It all depends on your interests.
If I were running a network, I would run fewer shows (there's too much crap already), but show them several times a week -- probably once or twice in prime time, at least twice during the day, and a couple times in the middle of the night, including reruns from the previous week. Reruns on companion networks ("repurposing") also fits in nicely here. This is the sort of thing HBO does -- instead of trying to force viewers to pick which popular show to watch, give them ample opportunity to see all the ones they want. There was no reason to move Survivor to 8:00 PM on Thursday night to see if it could beat Friends.
I would also avoid moving shows around the schedule. Some of the most popular shows (like ER) have never moved from their timeslot, while others (Quantum Leap, Mad About You, and many others) were obviously hurt badly by schedule hopping. Of course, with my TiVo, I personally don't care much anymore.
The technology has to be aware of the environment in which it operates; largely, it isn't.
I don't know what you mean by this.
A 'very compelling message' is one which you do not have to work to communicate, because your customers will do the work for you.
I'd argue that the customers are doing the work for TiVo, through word-of-mouth advertising. However, it's slow going. The message is compelling, but it's not easy to communicate. The only reason existing customers try so hard to communicate it anyhow is because it's so compelling. They want their friends and neighbors to benefit from the PVR as they do. But it takes a long time to convince people, at least right now. If the message wasn't so compelling, existing users would just give up and not worry about their friends missing out on this wonderful technology...
Your argument in this regard is a "Build it, and they will come" argument. It's the classical bogus technologist argument that thinks if you build something cool, everyone will want it. In reality, they've built something with a high "geek factor", which fails to be a "whole product".
In what way does it fail to be a "whole product"? What does that statement even mean?
The "geek factor" here is that it's digital, uses hard drives instead of videotapes, and runs on Linux. As a geek, I thought it was cool for those reasons, but that wasn't reason enough for me to buy it, unless I had money to burn to buy it as a cool geek toy.
I only decided to buy it after I finally understood the benefits it offered me as a television viewer, not as a geek. These benefits are of mainstream appeal, and very compelling. But they're very hard to communicate, because they sound like "cool geek toy" arguments to those who don't "get it". It's hard to really understand without experiencing it firsthand for a few weeks.
The deficiencies in the product that they've addressed so far in order to *try* to make it into a whole product, are all based on the idea of additional revenue... that they are offering a service, which has value, instead of making up for a deficiency in the product model that makes the product unusable without it.
I'd ascribe that to trying to address deficiencies in the marketing. As I've said, many times, the value of the product (or "service", whatever) is real and present, but very difficult to communicate. TiVo's marketing department has an unenviable task -- communicating a message which is nearly impossible to communicate. They try, but it's a steep uphill battle.
The product isn't lacking; it's just hard to market.
Then they try to go to a subscription model, in order to turn the pain into a recurring revenue stream, to make their investors happy, instead of trying to make their customers into evangelists.
Their subscription model wasn't a desperate attempt to recoup revenue from a failing product. They've used the model since day one. Moreover, they've always offered lifetime service, with a goal of having 50% of their customers sign up for lifetime service -- so some of their cash would be upfront, and some would be ongoing. They raised the price of the lifetime service from $200 to $250 because the option was too popular. About 60% were buying lifetime service, so they raised the price to try to bring it down to 50%.
It's true that they no longer offer lifetime service for DirecTV models, but I'm sure DirecTV insisted on discontinuing it. DirecTV has been taking a much more active role in their partnership; as I understand it, DirecTV just took over customer support completely and is now marketing the units as "DirecTV DVR" systems, dropping the TiVo brand name on the new Series 2 models...
Here is the proof in the pudding: how many people have purchsed a TiVO due solely to your wife's evangelism of the product? I.e. she did not have an early adopter maniac (e.g. you) propping up her argument to the person.
I don't know of any yet, but several of her friends, and even contractors working on the house, have taken a serious interest in TiVo, due to her evangelism alone. (It's possible that there have been some sales as a result; I wouldn't necessarily know.)
And keep in mind that even as an "early adopter maniac", it took (literally) weeks for a friend of mine with TiVo (another "early adopter maniac") to convince me to buy it. And I'd presumably be predisposed to buy into his arguments, right?
I'm willing to bet that this number is zero, or that your wife is abnormally tolerant of new things, having been immunized by you.
In other words, you refuse to consider the possibility that you're wrong. Either this piece of data would confirm your preconceived notions, or you've already got an excuse in mind for why it should be inapplicable.
If you really want to prove your point, why don't you go buy a TiVo (preferably a DirecTV model) somewhere with a 30-day return privilege? Keep it and use it for the 30 days. If it's not compelling, return it at the end of that time. Whether you keep it or not, you'll probably better understand the message that TiVo evangelists are trying to convey. And if you keep it, having argued so much against it, that would truly be evidence that TiVo's got something!
As far as "they just need to find their market" goes... they've had 5 years to do that, and they haven't done it yet.
What, now there's a time limit to establish a market? If the number of customers had levelled off, and was now dropping, I'd say you're right, that the market just isn't there or at least isn't a mainstream market. But that's not what's happening. TiVo's customer base continues to grow every year, and there's no sign of that growth abating. The market is there, even if market penetration is slow.
If they're successful, what does it matter if it's an overnight success or one built over the course of years? (I'd argue that the latter probably has more staying power anyhow -- overnight success sometimes becomes yesterday's fad.)
The bottom line is that they need to change what they are selling.
You certainly haven't justified this bold claim. They are selling something that works, and makes their customers very happy. That doesn't sound like a losing formula. No, it doesn't garner instant mainstream acceptance, but is that really indispensible?
I've been in the same boat, working for a company that wasn't willing to change what they were selling, and which then tried to milk a subscription model as a revenue source, and all the while, doing it with an incomplete product. It's hard to watch someone else make the same mistake.
If you want to convince me that TiVo has a half-assed product and is trying to compensate by squeezing customers for subscription revenue, you'll have to do better than this. I use the products every day, and you obviously don't. They work great. Yes, I can come up with ideas to improve them, but nothing's perfect. The product does everything they claim, and I don't really care whether they call it a "service". It works.
You can continue to argue from ignorance, but why should I give those arguments more weight than my own experience as an actual user of the product?
[P.S. If you stop using your +1 bonus, so will I. I'm not sure anyone else is still interested in reading this debate anyhow.]
I guess they'll "brilliantly" go bankrupt, then, from selling something that's so much not what people to expect it to be that it have an over 3 month sales cycle (e.g. your wife).
My wife is probably not representative of the market as a whole. I already have so much electronic equipment in the house that she tends to be very opposed to introducing more into the house, since it's just clutter to her. She hated the idea of the TiVo because it represented just that much more clutter in the house.
Once she got used to having it, she loves it, and wonders how we ever get along without it. When a product can win over someone who starts out dead set against it, that's a pretty strong endorsement.
Put another way, TiVo's Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF) is quite high -- once they get it.
Look; without the umbilical back to them through UUnet dialup, what functionality do you lose?
In principle, the DirecTV model could function indefinitely from the satellite alone. The standalone would quickly run out of guide data.
However, in practice, the software has a builtin time bomb to disable most of the advanced features if too much time passes without reaching TiVo's servers. (Something like a month or three.) The older 1.x standalone models could operate in a limited-functionality mode with manual recordings without service, which was optional. Newer models require the service, and say so on the box.
Should TiVo collapse as a company, representatives have promised that they would release a magic code to disable that authorization check to enable the TiVo's to continue to function without being able to reach the TiVo service. (The standalone models would still run out of guide data, but someone would probably step up to feed it data another way.) I believe TiVo would probably follow through on this promise if the death of the company were imminent.
You're obviously an early adopter, despite needing the purchase approval to buy the thing. Your wife probably "saves" you from a lot of new technology. But as an early adopter, you probably also have an Internet connection and don't need a seperate umbilical.
I'm not one of the earliest adopters. Yes, I have an Internet connection (I've been using the Internet for 15 years), DirecTV, TiVo, and a DVD player. However, each of these technologies was available for years before I got around to buying it. I tend to be ahead of the mainstream, but I usually wait to see how badly the real early adopters get burned before buying in myself.
Your claims are also a little grandiose... in fact, you can't record everything; you are limited in the number of simultaneous channels by the number of tuners you have available.
What I said was that you "record everything you're interested in", not that you record every channel. Obviously, the number of tuners limits the number of overlapping programs you can record, but you can always buy additional TiVo units to increase the capacity. I have 2 DirecTV units, with 4 tuners between them. That's usually enough for me, and I record many shows. For some people, one tuner would be sufficient. It depends on the person.
Don't distort my words. I never said "record everything" in an unqualified manner like that. I meant that you tend to end up recording most of the programs that you watch, rather than watching most programs live and recording a few, as people do with VCR's. It's a fundamental difference in the way you approach television.
Rather than positioning the thing as a product they want to sell to consumers, they need to position it as one that consumers want to buy.
Well, they've tried. But it's not enough to have the right message (you want this, for all these reasons). For marketing to be effective, it must be able to communicate that message to prospective customers. TiVo actually has a very compelling message that really resonates with people, but it seems to be damn near impossible to communicate that message successfully with traditional marketing techniques. The people who "get" the ads are the ones who've already gotten the message, not the ones they need to reach yet.
Large sales do not come from "push", they come from creating "pull" in the market.
Because of the difficulting communicating their message, this won't happen overnight. However, it is happening, through word-of-mouth advertising mostly. Eventually, after hearing their friends rave about their TiVo's long enough, people will tend to decide that there must be something to this TiVo thing that they're just missing (which is true) and give it a try. Then they become hooked and start raving to their friends.
Ultimately, this is very effective, but it's also slow right now. It takes a long time to convince people still because relatively few people are talking about it, and it seems to have marginal value, on the surface. However, someday it will reach a critical mass where "everyone" seems to be talking about TiVo, and buying PVR's, and suddenly the demand will explode because it'll be the new trendy thing, like DVD players are now.
Maybe TiVO should think about hiring Guy Kawasaki as a marketing consultant: his ideas in this area worked for Apple.
I don't know. I'm not familiar with him.
If I were running TiVo, I'd stop running TV ads entirely now. Their brand name is sufficiently known to be nearly synonymous with the PVR industry, almost dangerously so. (Think Kleenex or Xerox.) Instead, they should team up with DirecTV to promote TiVo and DirecTV together by giving away as many DirecTV receivers with TiVo as possible to many celebrities, pundits, reporters, TV personalities, etc. Give them the boxes and the service for free. They'll end up talking about it, and it will be worth more to them than all the TV ads combined. (They're already doing this to some degree, but they could probably do a lot more if they used the money that would otherwise would be spent on traditional advertising...)
Basically, TiVo is an excellent product with a tremendously satisfied, loyal, enthusiastic and vocal user base, and a compelling message that resonates strongly with most people, once they finally get it. Word-of-mouth advertising will take care of the rest. It's only a matter of time.
The only real danger is that TiVo's cash could run out before they reach a cashflow breakeven point -- but they've done a remarkable job of cutting their costs, increasing their revenues, and finding additional investors, despite the state of tech stocks in the last 2 years. They've survived this long, and I believe they'll make it to the breakeven point. This issue should be resolved in the next year or two, one way or the other.
Assuming TiVo survives as a company, I believe they'll be very profitable down the road, even if that means 10-20 years from now. That's okay, I have faith in them. Meanwhile, I'll buy as much of their stock as I can, while it's still fairly cheap...
I agree, they deserve to be paid for it - once.
If you buy the lifetime service, then you are paying only once. That's still an option on the standalone models.
Lifetime service is no longer offered on DirecTV models. I imagine DirecTV insisted on doing away with it, since their service is subscription-oriented. So you technically don't have the option to buy a new DirecTV model and not pay a TiVo subscription indefinitely.
However, I don't think that really matters. You can only use the DirecTV models with DirecTV service anyhow, so you're already locking yourself in there. You get the ability to tune to two different channels at once and record both -- ignoring the hardware cost of 2 DirecTV receivers and 2 VCRs, just having 2 normal receivers on your account would cost you an extra $5/month for the "mirroring" charge to be able to tune 2 channels. DirecTV receivers with TiVo, despite being dual-tuner, count as one receiver to DirecTV.
So you can get the capability to tune a second channel for an extra $5/month either way -- with normal DirecTV receivers, it's a mirroring charge; with the TiVo combo receivers, it's a TiVo subscription charge. To be able to record 2 DirecTV channels at once (for overlapping programs), you'd need to pay an extra $5/month regardless, and the TiVo gives you so much more.
Money is fungible; does it really matter what the description on the line item is? The TiVo solution is cheaper than pairing 2 DirecTV receivers with 2 VCRs. No, it doesn't give you the ability to equip 2 TVs in the house like separate DirecTV receivers can, but it has plenty of other advantages. Even without being able to buy the lifetime service anymore for DirecTV units, it still doesn't seem like you're getting cheated, considering the costs of the alternative.
(To be honest, I'm surprised DirecTV doesn't charge a mirroring charge for the second tuner, just because they could get away with it!)
The risks inherent in their business model are not your concern. But they provide sufficient value for the subscribers to justify charging them -- they're not just extorting money because they can. The subscribers are getting something for their money. Ask around. You probably won't find many TiVo owners who got rid of the box after a couple months or canceled the service because it wasn't worth it to them. What does that tell you?
If TiVo folded all of their costs into the product, it would be very difficult to reach the mass market. And as a niche market, they'd have to charge far more money. They charge $250 extra for lifetime service now, based on a business plan that demands they obtain a million or more customers to break even. Imagine if TiVo couldn't count on getting that many customers? It would be a niche market product, for which they would probably have to charge $2,000 or more, just to cover their engineering costs to develop the product. Would that really be better?
Instead, they're trying to keep it as affordable as possible, and using a subscription model is part of how they're doing it. People dislike to pay subscriptions when they can avoid it, but if they value the product/service enough, they'll do it anyhow.
There's no lack of perceived value in TiVo's service to their customers. There's some difficultly conveying the value to potential customers, however. This won't kill the product, but it does slow the rate of adoption, at least for now. If we ever reach the point where the perceived value is well-understood by the general public, you can expect PVR sales to skyrocket. Even now, TiVo has had a faster adoption rate so far than the VCR did, or CD players, or the Internet. Give it time, it'll become ubiquitous. Mark my words!
"Infrastructure" my arse; it's a VCR.
They outsource the dialups to UUnet, but it's still a costly infrastruction that needs to be paid for.
As for the "it's a VCR" comment, that's exactly the misconception that makes it difficult to market the TiVo. TiVo owners know better; prospective customers usually do not. That's why the market penetration has been relatively slow, moreso than the subscription costs.
Just because you *can* tie it into a subscription service that forces ads down your throat doesn't mean you *should*.
The alternative is to build all the costs in upfront, as ReplayTV did, which would drive up the sticker price several hundred dollars. Then we'd be hearing everyone bitching about how it costs too much...
If they just sell it as "a better VCR", they would be fine.
It's not just a "better VCR", and until you understand that, you'll never see the true value it provides. For several years, I considered it to just be a "better VCR". It sounded cool to have a digital VCR, especially based on Linux, but ultimately, it just didn't sell me. That's just not reason enough to buy it.
It took many conversations with a TiVo-owning friend over several weeks before I could truly understand what it was all about, at which point I realized this wasn't just a better VCR. I really wanted it, once I understood, but it took 3 months to convince my wife to let me buy it -- in her mind it was just one more gadget to clutter the house. 2 months after we bought it, my wife was extolling the virtues of TiVo to everyone she could -- after she started out determined to hate the thing for invading her house!
By calling it a "better VCR", it's clear that you just don't get it. Neither did I at first. It's very hard to really get it, without actually living with a TiVo for a few weeks and getting used to it. Then you wonder how you ever lived without it.
The whole is much, much greater than the sum of its parts. On the surface, the TiVo just looks like a digital VCR with a built in program guide. However, it's the way these elements are smoothly integrated into one system that really makes the difference -- it fundamentally changes the way you watch TV.
You stop worrying about when your favorite shows are on; it just records them and you watch them at your convenience, not when the network executives dictate. If the phone rings, you just pause the TV and answer it, without missing anything. You never have to suffer the "200 channels but nothing's on" syndrome, because there's always something there worth watching. You stop watching live TV almost entirely, because it's more convenient to be able to fast-forward through commercials and watch your shows in any order.
TiVo changes your TV viewing habits in a way that VCRs never could. There's no hassle, no effort. You record everything you're interested in, not just those things that are so important that you mustn't miss them. It's the ultimate timeshifting device, and a VCR can't even come close.
It's truly a compelling product, which is why I'm sure it will be successful and profitable in the end. However, it's hard to convey the value in a few words -- you really have to experience it to fully understand what all the hype is about.
You know, after I bought a TiVo and came to understand what it was all about, those cryptic early TiVo commercials finally made sense to me. But they never did the job of making me want to buy the product. That took an evangelist who spent several hours convincing me, plus a lot of research on my own.
Yeah, the "TV Guide" feature is nice. But I have lived this long with my analog VCR without that feature, I'm probably going to be able to survive until Thursday.
Sure, you'll survive. Luckily for you, ignorance is bliss -- because you don't understand what TiVo is all about, you don't realize what you're missing. You don't realize the degree to which you've become a slave to your TV until you're released from that bondage. If you've never tasted freedom, it's no surprise that you aren't yearning for it.
Most likely, TiVO will die, when DVD-RW replaces VCRs, while TiVO is futzing around trying to generate a revenue stream other than "unit sales".
Nope, because what the TiVo does is completely different. Perhaps traditional VCRs will give way to DVD-RW someday, but not TiVo. They don't even belong in the same product category. TiVo was right to call it a "PVR", not a "digital VCR".
Remember VOIP? Do you own an IP Telephone? No? But you're a *nerd*! If a *nerd* won't buy one, what chance have you got to sell it to people with lives!?!
It's the people who have lives who benefit most from TiVo. This is a product that appeals to everyone that likes to watch TV... once they finally understand what it's all about. Getting them to understand is the hard part!
Your VOIP vs. digital PBX example is irrelevant. TiVo isn't trying to sell you a product that will be useless until everyone buys in. They're selling a product that can improve your quality of life, and it works now.
I disagree. If I need a second tuner it's for watching porn in the bedroom, therefore I have to pay the extra $5 a month for the receiver in the bedroom PLUS the extra $5 a month for Tivo unit in the living room. Two tuners in the same room and on the same receiver buys me nothing but an extra $5 a month. So no, it's not a wash.
It gives you the ability to see shows that conflict on the schedule by tuning to two channels at once. Normally you can't do this without two DirecTV receivers, and the second receiver would cost you the save $5/month extra. This way, you don't even have to own a VCR to catch two shows that overlap with each other. It's a good deal.
Besides, don't you want to record that porn in the bedroom, for when there's nothing good on? You could get 2 DirecTivo units, one for each room, and pay $10/month extra instead of the $15/month extra it would cost for 4 DirecTV receivers. (Okay, maybe 4 tuners is overkill for you, but I've used all 4 of mine at once before and still needed another, though not for porn!)
TiVo users talk about their monthly fee like the company is a charity case. A modem dialing into a mainframe and downloading some data shouldn't cost $13/month. If it does, they're doing something wrong and deserve to go under.
It doesn't. But that's not all you're paying for. You don't pay upfront for the software or upgrades, so you're actually paying for it too. Software doesn't write itself; do you really expect them to give it away for free without getting paid for it some other way?
TiVo doesn't run their own dialup modem banks; they outsource that job to UUnet. UUnet surely doesn't charge them $13/month per customer, but it could easily be as much as $5-7/month or so...
The important thing to keep in mind is the software. The subscription fee pays for the software, not just the guide data. That's not so outrageous, is it?
That would be fine, except now I've got a $500 device that stops working when Tivo goes out of business or decides they no longer want to support my hardware.
People take the same risk with satellite receivers. Realistically, if TiVo ever goes out of business, someone will make it possible to use the TiVo units by replacing the underlying infrastructure. It's probably not as big a risk as it seems.
If you're already paying for DirecTV, the listing are coming over the satellite, right? You'd think someone would make a device to read those listings and sell it. But they won't because they are all GREEDY BASTARDS.
DirecTV may be greedy bastards, but their data is encrypted, and the only way you're going to be able to make a box that works with their system is to work with them (as TiVo did). Nobody can hope to do it behind DirecTV's back.
Should you have to pay $5/month to use DirecTV's guide data on the TiVo when you're already paying for DirecTV? Personally, I don't think so, but it does provide more guide data for you -- normal DirecTV receivers show 2 days of guide data, while TiVo and UltimateTV receivers get 12 days. (They say up to 14 days, but it always seems to be 12 days.)
As far as I'm concerned, the real reason to pay a TiVo subscription for the DirecTV units is to pay for the software on the TiVo (and upgrades), not for the guide data itself. Remember that TiVo does not charge you upfront for their software -- there's no "TiVo software tax" incorporated into the price of the TiVo systems. Nevertheless, that software is quite valuable, and it didn't develop itself; they deserve to be paid for it.
I want to buy the device, but they refuse to sell it. They only want to RENT it, and I'm not interested in renting things I should own.
You can "buy" the standalone -- just pay for the lifetime service upfront ($250) and view it as part of the purchase price. Until recently, that was also an option for the DirecTV models. I'm sure DirecTV insisted on getting rid of the option, since they prefer the subscription model.
But really, you are buying the box itself; if you want to take a sledgehammer to it, you have the right. (DirecTV claims to retain ownership of their access cards, however -- I don't know if this would stand up in court, but they claim it.)
Considering the way the DirecTV mirroring charge works, the TiVo service might as well be free. To get the ability to record two channels from DirecTV without a PVR, you'd need two standalone DirecTV receivers, connected to two VCRs. The second DirecTV receiver would cost you an extra $5/month from DirecTV, which is the same extra monthly cost as the TiVo service on the PVR.
Since both tuners count as one receiver in DirecTV's eyes (only one access card), you get much more functionality than the 2-receiver/2-VCR solution, for less money!
The monthly cost would be the same, and the upfront hardware cost would be less, because the upcoming Series 2 DirecTivo should be about $200, which is much less than the cost of 2 DirecTV receivers and 2 high-quality digital VCRs and 30 hours of tape would cost. (Since the recording quality is perfect on the DirecTV units, this is the closest thing to a fair comparison.)
There is, quite simply, NO reason that Tivo is a subscription service, except for the fact that they CAN, so they did. Which is why I don't have one yet.
True, they didn't have to choose that model. They could have built all the costs into the upfront price of the box (as ReplayTV did), only to hear everyone bitching that it's a great box, but too expensive. Part of the reason for the subscription is to defer paying much of the cost until later, to make it more affordable.
Yes, they hope to continue collecting subscription fees longer to make more profit, if possible. So what? They're continuing to provide value by upgrading the software regularly, and you're not expected to pay for each update on the "upgrade treadmill".
If you have DirecTV, want to be able to watch things that conflict on the TV schedule (e.g. Survivor and Friends) and you only watch DirecTV channels exclusively, the DirecTivo is really a no-brainer -- you'll get more value, functionality and quality then you would with 2 receivers and 2 VCRs, at a lower cost. If you buy 2 DirecTivo's, you save money on a monthly basis, since the mirroring charge for the second receiver mirrors the TiVo service from the first receiver at no extra charge, so you save the $5/month mirroring charge you'd have to pay for normal DirecTV receivers.
The standalone unit is undeniably more expensive, but you can still buy lifetime service, and not be tied to a monthly subscription fee for an indefinite period of time. I strongly recommend the DirecTV unit over the standalone whenever possible, for cost and quality/efficiency reasons. The only reason to get the standalone is for the flexibility of recording from any video source.
If you really want to buy a TiVo, then do it. It will change the way you watch TV forever. You won't regret it -- ask any TiVo owner! If at all possible, get the DirecTV model, even if that means dumping cable and installing a satellite dish -- it really has compelling advantages. If you can't live with only what DirecTV offers, then bite the bullet and pay the upfront cost to buy a standalone with lifetime service. It's still worth it despite the high cost, although the DirecTV model is a much better deal...
While I generally agree with what you are saying, the fact that you need a thousand words to explain it is part of the problem why TiVo will not last long with a subscription-based business model. I am also a TiVo owner, and I see the value in paying for the service, but Jane and Joe Sixpack do not. Yet those are the folks who will have to be convinced if TiVo is to gain enough viewers to become profitable.
The inability to adequately describe what a TiVo does, and the value it offers to the customer, is the main difficulty in marketing it. I don't think this problem will go away for quite a while, because it takes time to percolate into the public consciousness.
You're right that people tend to be initially disgusted by the idea of a monthly subscription fee. Yes, this discourages people from getting the box in the first place, when they're already having trouble understanding why they should care about having the box in the first place. This does make it harder to acquire new customers.
However, once those customers are acquired, the vast majority love the product and become enthusiastic supporters. Most will let go of their resentment toward the subscription fee, or at least accept it as a necessary evil. Few TiVo owners would go back to the old way of watching TV, even if that means paying subscription fees indefinitely. TiVo commands a level of customer satisfaction that would be the envy of most companies. Ultimately, it's the enthusiastic word-of-mouth advertising that really supports the company; TV commercials alone just don't convince enough people to buy the product. (Especially those vague early ones!)
TiVo probably needs about a million customers to start making a profit. They're over halfway there already. They haven't hit cashflow breakeven yet, but I believe they'll make it. (However, expect the stock price to remain low until this becomes more certain.)
I agree that integrating the service into satellite and cable boxes is the way to go; that's what they've done with DirecTV, and it works very well. It's a perfect synergy, and people are already used to paying a cable/satellite bill every month -- an extra $5/month for TiVo won't bother them that much...
Why does it need to upload usage and debugging data?
It doesn't need to. By default, it uploads anonymous usage data for aggregate analysis -- for example, that's how they were able to tell that the Britney Spears Pepsi commercial was the most-watched Superbowl commercial this year. They don't collect personally-identifiable information without explicit permission. (If you have a software problem they need to debug, or you want to be a beta tester, they'll ask such permission.)
And if it really bothers you to be tracked even anonymously, you can opt out of that too. Personally, I decided it was fine to gather the anonymous data -- if they can tell the networks what shows are popular, or help advertisers craft more entertaining commercials, I'm all for it. Perhaps someday millions of TiVo owners will provide much more accurate information than the few Nielsen households who currently wield far too much influence...
And why should I pay a monthly subscription for the privilege of doing that? Software upgrades, well, perhaps: but many other appliances have software too, and they don't require a subscription.
They also don't get automatic software updates, in most cases. The DirecTivo update to enable the second tuner effectively doubled the value of the box, but it didn't cost any extra.
Realize that TiVo can't afford to pay engineers to write all this great software, and then just give it away. That's a guaranteed path to business failure, which means no more software. They can take a loss now, and some business risk, for the promise of future revenue. That's exactly what they've been doing.
When you buy a TiVo off the shelf, you've paid nothing for the valuable software on it. Instead, they seek to be paid for the software as part of the subscription fee. In years past, TiVo subsidized the hardware (to keep the sticker price down), and thus took a loss for every TiVo that was sold. This loss also had to be recouped from the subscription fee. (Cost reductions in the Series 2 have eliminated the hardware subsidy, as far as I know.)
Without the TiVo software, a TiVo box is little more than a custom Linux system. And while there's free Linux PVR software out there, it's not even in the same league with TiVo's software. If you could just buy the TiVo box without software, and buy the TiVo software for it off the shelf for another $250, would that be somehow less objectionable to you?
Listen, nobody likes to pay extra monthly fees. But they have a business to run, and they have to pay their costs and try to make a profit. They're doing a great job; I want them to stay in business. I won't begrudge them charging what they must to do so. I get a lot of value from my TiVo's. Ultimately, it's a small price to pay, and I'm glad that paying a lot more upfront is not the only option.
An Ethernet port and all that stuff is great. But it needs to be optional. You should be able to plug the box in, have it get the EPG data from broadcasts, and start using it. All these wonderful software features like tracking the shows you prefer are very handy, but no justification for paying a monthly fee. You might as well say that use of MS Word requires regular payments to Microsoft to keep the ability to open your Word documents, er, wait...
Microsoft would love to have a subscription model for their software, but it doesn't go over well. But their "upgrade treadmill" tends to be even worse. At least TiVo is honest about wanting to derive a steady revenue stream as long as you're steadily receiving value from their product. They provide additional value by releasing new software updates without additional charge. Things could be worse.
Bear in mind that with UltimateTV, Microsoft never offered the option of lifetime service -- it was $9.95/month, forever. TiVo offered lifetime service from the start, and still offers it on standalone models. It's no longer offered for DirecTV models, but I strongly suspect that DirecTV insisted on discontinuing lifetime service as an option -- their business model is heavily subscription-based. But they lowered the monthly cost,and given the mirroring charges, it's really not a bad deal at all.
You seem to be offended to be asked to pay for something that doesn't seem to be costing TiVo enough to justify what you're paying. You're ignoring the value of the software itself, which is really the key component of the system in the first place. Do you really expect TiVo to put that much work into the software and then just give it away for free? Or would you rather be paying hundreds of dollars more to buy the product in the first place?
Subscriptions are somewhat unpalatable, but the alternatives aren't necessarily much better...
I think that fundamentally, I object to the idea of the thing having a modem :-P. It would be far better if no expensive 'infrastructure' were needed at all - I don't have to pay for an infrastructure to use my oldstyle VCR or microwave oven, so why do it for hard disk video recorders?
Because it needs to send and receive data from the "mothership", and your microwave doesn't. If you're a hacker, you can add an Ethernet card to some TiVo models and have it use your existing Internet connection and local network to call home instead of using the modem. There are rumors that this may even be officially supported someday with the Series 2 models, using USBEthernet adapters...
I'm sure the money that TV networks get by restricting access to their listings is piddling at best. It would make much more sense for an EPG to be broadcast alongside each channel, then anyone could make tivos without the need for banks of modems and technicians to keep it all running.
Restricted or not, you still need to get that data onto the box. You also need to download software upgrades, and upload usage and debugging data. That's why the infrastructure is needed.
The DirecTV models do get their guide data over the satellite, by the way. But they still need to call home for the other reasons.
I have a TiVo but they had three strikes against them:
1) Increased price
This only applies to the monthly service on standalone models. It went up from $10/month to $13/month. The DirecTV models went down from $10/month to $5/month. Also, the Series 2 models (with faster CPUs, more memory and USB ports) cost less than the Series 1 boxes. My Series 1 combo box was $400, the Series 2 boxes list for $200. (I don't think the Series 2 combo box is out yet, but it's due out later this month, I think.)
Anyhow, you should have had the foresight to buy the lifetime service. There was never any promise not to raise the monthly service price, after all. More importantly, it only takes about 2 years to break even on the lifetime service. If you had an extended warranty also, you could ensure making it past that break-even point, in the event of any untoward event happening to your TiVo.
All in all, I don't see much cause for bitching about the price -- for the most part, it's gone down, not up. The only thing that went up is a cost you could have locked in by buying lifetime service in the first place. Half of TiVo's customers had enough sense to do that, why didn't you?
2) At the same time, they added advertising
TiVo has always been quite upfront about their intent to work with network and advertisers to develop creative new marketing tools. As long as I'm not forced to watch advertising (as DVDs sometimes do), I'm okay with that.
After all, the networks do need to pay for all those shows I want to record somehow. I don't feel obligated to watch the boring 30-second commercial spots, but I will watch good commercials if they catch my attention. Meanwhile, if they can come up with a better way to advertise, I'm all for it. Anything's better than the shotgun-style advertising we live with now!
3) They put Eminem content on my TiVo.
Get over it. You don't have to watch it. If you don't like Eminem, ignore it! Wow, that's difficult. You're upset that they're using some of your hard drive space for sometime other than your recordings? Deal with it. TiVo has reserved part of your disk space for their use since day one. Why? To provide content just for TiVo users, and to enable new services including advertising.
If this was so offensive to you, you could have bought a ReplayTV box instead. They don't care about pissing off the advertisers and networks. Of course, they may get sued out of existence for their hostility toward well-funded media interests. TiVo chooses to work with them instead; it's all a question of philosophy.
Once that Eminem crap is off my box, I'm cancelling the sub.
Suit yourself. It's your loss.
Sure, you'd rather that "lifetime service" covers you for life rather than a box. So would I, as a customer. As a shareholder, I wouldn't recommend that they offer that option, simply because there are real costs involved in providing the service, and having an open-ended liability is dangerous. Sooner or later, the boxes will die.
However, lifetime subscribers shouldn't be cheated. I'd like TiVo to guarantee that the lifetime service will be valid at least as long as it takes to break even -- if the box dies before that break-even point, they should transfer it to a replacement box. Right now there's no guarantee like that, although it's possible they'd do it on a case-by-case basis for customer service reasons. (Or maybe not; I don't know.)
Personally, I wanted to ensure I'd get the maximum benefit from my lifetime service, so I purchased the 5-year extended warranty from Circuit City. TiVo will transfer lifetime service under warranty programs, including extended warranties. If you want to protect your investment in lifetime service, that's the way to go.
I paid about $90 for the extended warranty, on top of the $400 I spent on the TiVo and the $200 I spent on the lifetime service. (All these prices have changed since.) With tax, my initial costs were over $700, but I know I'll get at least 5 years of use out of it. At the original rate of $10/month, 5 years would have cost $600 instead of $200, so I'm saving money. Even at the current rate (for combo boxes) of $5/month, 5 years would cost $300, so it's still a guaranteed savings. And if my box lasts 7 years, or 10 years, that's even more savings. My second combo box gets free TiVo service as long as I keep it on the same account with the first one, too. (This is another benefit of the DirecTV units that's not available on the standalone models.)
If they simply didn't use a subscription model, and folded the costs into the purchase price (as ReplayTV did), you wouldn't be complaining that you want a discount on the next model for owning the previous one -- is it really fair to complain that the "lifetime" service is only for the lifetime of the box? Given that it can be transferred to a new owner (to whom it's worth as much as paying for lifetime service themselves), it seems quite fair, even if it's not as much in the customer's favor as we'd prefer... (If you couldn't transfer the service to a new owner or to a new box, that would be cause for complaint.)
It's not that simple. To do what TiVo does, and do it well, they really need a large number of users to support the infrastructure. Since standalone boxes have ongoing costs associated with providing the service, a subscription model makes sense.
;-)
ReplayTV tried to just sell boxes as their model; it hasn't worked well. They had to charge $650 when TiVo was charging $400. Guess who picked up more customers faster?
Arguably, the DirecTV combo units don't really provide a service from TiVo, since they leverage the guide data already being sent over the satellite. (However, I believe this data has been enhanced for the TiVo.) On the other hand, the subscription price for the DirecTV units has been reduced to $5/month, which is the same as the "mirroring" charge to have a second receiver on your DirecTV account. Since the DirecTV receivers with TiVo have two tuners, you get the second tuner free, and pay the $5/month for TiVo service instead, so it's a wash.
If you have two combo boxes, you only pay the extra $5/month for a second receiver, not another $5/month for the TiVo service -- the "mirroring" charge covers mirroring the TiVo service as well. I have a combo box with lifetime service (which is no longer offered for combo boxes), and my $5/month mirroring charge gives my second combo box the benefit of lifetime server, as long as both remain on the same account.
Meanwhile, the price of service has increased to $13/month for standalone boxes, but that's not so unreasonable, considering that maintaining the infrastructure for all those boxes to dial in with modems is quite expensive, not even counting the cost of preparing the data and updating software.
Ultimately, if TiVo can get over a million subscribers, they should be profitable by that point. Right now, they're more than halfway to that target, and still losing money, but it was part of their business plan from day one. You'll probably see TiVo turn a profit by 2004 or 2005.
As for what shareholders think, I am a shareholder, as well as a customer, and I don't have a problem with their subscription model. Most of the subscribers will stick around indefinitely, once they've got the hardware. TiVo is very good at what they do, and it's a killer product. It's just hard to market because the true value of the product is hard to convey. TiVo's greatest asset is word-of-mouth from their enormously loyal, extremely satisfied customers. Meanwhile, I'm going to buy as much TiVo stock as I can afford while it's still cheap.
One more thing -- if buying a subscription offends you so much, why don't you just buy the box and spend the extra $250 for lifetime service? Then you don't have to pay the subscription cost, and you can treat it as if you bought it at the combined cost.
You can't get lifetime service with the DirecTV models anymore, but so what? You get a second tuner in the combo box for the same monthly cost as a second standalone DirecTV receiver would cost you, so if effect it doesn't cost anything. More importantly, the combo boxes record directly from the satellite with 100% perfect recording quality, because you watch the EXACT same stream of MPEG2 bits live as you do when you play back a recording. Better yet, it's also much more efficient in disk space usage. The combo boxes thus have better recording quality than "Best" mode on the standalones, while using similar amounts of disk space as the "Basic" mode on standalones, which is said to be roughly the quality of VHS EP (6-hour) mode. The only real downside to the combo boxes is that you can't record from other video sources, only DirecTV. But with DirecTV's improved local coverage, that may not be an issue for you.
If you already have DirecTV and only watch the satellite, the "DirecTV receiver with TiVo" combo box is a no-brainer. If you use cable, it might be worth switching to DirecTV for the advantages. If not, you can buy a standalone (with lifetime service if you don't like subscriptions).
Regardless, if you like TV, get a TiVo -- preferably the DirecTV combo version. It's worth it. You'll never watch TV the same way again, and you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. And that is why I bought the stock; very few products have such an impact. My wife hated the idea of getting a TiVo (more gadgets) and it took 3 months to convince her to let me buy it. Within a few weeks, she was no longer mad about it, and within a couple months, she was extolling the TiVo's virtues to everyone she could. She had her mind made up to hate it, and it still won her over. If TiVo can do that, they can do anything!
I don't think new words will be invented. I believe that singular usage of "they", "them" and "their" will become accepted usage.
In fact, it appears that the Oxford English Dictionary already sanctions singular gender-neutral usage! Here is the normal (plural) definition of "they" from the OED:However, there is also a singular definition of "they":Similarly, here is one of the definitions of "them":Correspondingly, a definition of "their":Each of these had examples going back centuries. Perhaps the grammarians are being inappropriately pedantic on this point?
The OED documents singular usage of "they" as "he or she", "them" as "him or her" and "their" as "his or her". Political correctness often demands that people avoid using "he", "him" and "his" as gender-neutral pronouns, even though these are considered grammatically correct. Constructs such as "he or she" or "he/she" are awkward. Invented words like "hir" instead of "his or her" are confusing. Spoken usage has drifted toward the singular usage of "they", "them" and "their" for the sake of convenience, without loss of clarity.
In short, the grammarians should get with the times and sanction the singular usage for written use as well, so we can put this issue to rest. This is, after all, how real languages evolve -- first in common usage, then "officially". Too bad grammarians are pedantic by profession; they'll probably have to grow old and die before the next generation of grammarians can sanction it, having grown up with it as common usage...
Meanwhile, perhaps we should all take a stand and adopt the written usage to match the spoken usage. When someone claims that this is "incorrect", point them at the Oxford English Dictionary, which is considered the highest authority on the English language, after all. Grammar teachers may not like it, but should we really listen to them over common sense and the OED?
If you would keep a C/C++ core and add a PHP presentation layer, then you could just as readily keep the same C/C++ core and add a Perl presentation layer, which would work better. They could use Perl to whatever extent they intended to use PHP -- if they have native C/C++ code that's already debugged, it may be worth using -- I'm not suggesting that they should necessarily rewrite the code in Perl just because they can.
That being said, I see nothing wrong with implementing enterprise applications entirely in Perl. For many applications, you won't need the speed of C/C++, because Perl is nearly as fast for many purposes. When the raw speed is important enough, it's always possible to optimize the hot spots with C/C++ code, if necessary.
Implementing enterprise applications entirely in PHP, on the other hand, strikes me as a poor idea in general, and a worse idea for Yahoo with their existing base of 3 million lines of Perl code...
Yes, of course they should use mod_perl. That's a given. It's a powerful and efficient interface between Apache and Perl, and no serious enterprise web applications should eschew mod_perl for CGI. (Of course, PHP advocates routinely compare the speed of PHP with mod_php against Perl CGI without mod_perl, for an apples-to-oranges comparison...)
As for the method of presentation, Mason is just one of many options. (Some of the options offer the PHP approach of embedding code into the HTML, if you really want to go down that path.) They could also implement their own template system easily enough if the common ones are too slow or don't meet their needs. I wrote one alone in a week or two, which worked quite well and was used for a production web application to manage email accounts.
There are plenty of options for handling the presentation, and they could have found or created a suitable option without much effort. There are very good reasons to lean toward a separation of code and presentation for enterprise applications, but PHP's predisposition is for embedding code in the HTML, which inevitably leads to problems...
If you really want to mix code and data, you can easily write Perl code which consists mostly of quoted HTML, with variable substitutions and code blocks as necessary. With the myriad quoting options Perl offers, there's no reason for this to be any less readable than PHP code embedded into an HTML page, and it should be at least as fast.
Keep in mind that the main "advantage" PHP has is being "easy" because you can intermingle PHP code with HTML so readily. This is great for beginners and single-developer sites. It's not so great if you want programmers to develop the business logic and web designers to create the HTML.
PHP does not make sense for enterprise applications...
- There's More Than One Way To Do It - This is a feature, not a flaw! Perl is much more flexible and powerful than PHP. Maintainability comes from coding standards, not language limitations.
- poor sandboxing, easy to screw up server - Perl can create sandboxes with the Safe module... (And if there's any rough edges, Yahoo's engineers could probably handle it.)
- wasn't designed as web scripting language - So what?? With mod_perl and HTML::Mason or TT2, Perl fits this niche well, without PHP's predisposition towards mixing code and data.
These excuses for not using Perl are hardly compelling; they sound like rationalizations. Perl is a more natural fit for Yahoo's needs, especially considering that they already have 3 million lines of Perl code.But they plowed ahead with PHP, and what did they learn?
- very easy to get some pages up quickly - Expected, but Perl would have been nearly as easy, and probably much easier for their existing Perl programmers.
- But mixed app/presentation problematic - PHP code and HTML forever intertwined - Surprise, surprise! This is exactly why PHP is inappropriate for enterprise applications. PHP encourages such shortsighted design. Beginners like it, but engineers should know better.
- PHP != Perl - The "implement twice" problem - They knew that they had 3 million lines of Perl in the backend; why didn't they leverage it? This was avoidable.
- PEAR != CPAN - repository smaller, less mature than CPAN - Again, this was a foreseeable problem.
- Surprises for people used to coding Perl - It's not just that some semantics differ. Experienced Perl programmers forced to work in PHP have to live with the frustration of having to write ugly convoluted code for things that would be clear and simple in Perl. PHP 4 filled in many gaps, but it just doesn't work as well as Perl does. (I speak from experience here.)
So let's see. Their problems with PHP basically boil down to the fact that it's not Perl. (Despite the claims of PHP advocates, it's just not an equivalent substitute.) Of course, any experienced Perl programmer familiar with PHP could see these issues coming from miles away. They rejected Perl as an option, claiming that it wouldn't be maintainable, then discovered the amount of discipline required for PHP -- would following good coding standards for Perl really have taken any more discipline?Perl was a natural fit for their needs, and the obvious choice. The entire presentation seems to be an exercise in rationalization, attempting to justify a poor strategic decision. They should have used Perl. (Even now, they should probably abandon PHP and use Perl instead, to save themselves from getting further entrenched into this bad decision...)
Since Slashdot has been around for years, and the stories are archived for years, isn't it about time to actually display the year in the dateline of the story?
This story already says "Tuesday October 01, @09:00AM" -- if we're spelling out the day of the week and the month, surely we can afford a few extra characters to identify the year for posterity? "Tuesday October 01, 2002, @09:00AM" isn't that much longer, after all...
(As an aside, it also looks a little odd to pad the day of the month with a leading zero when words are spelled out in full...)