Has TiVo's Fate Been Sealed? 364
ChipGuy writes "Things are getting bleak for TiVo, reports the New York Times, and adds that TiVo blew a major opportunity to team up with Comcast. And that might have cost CEO Michael Ramsey the job. Om Malik writes that 'The fate of TiVo also highlights the dilemma facing a lot of "exploding TV" start-ups. The technology does not necessarily translate into profits and a business,' and breaks down the financials -- over half a billion dollars in losses so far. PVRBlog adds that 'When the story of TiVo is written, this Comcast negotiation could be the point when the company's outcome was decided.' More reactions here."
Ce La Vie (in bad accent) (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't doubt it (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, I have to agree that Comcast has the power to propel TiVo into a different level of play. With that kind of support, they'd have a huge step up on all this exploding competition. That competition is finding ways to improve upon what TiVo already has - free listings, better storage, better interface, etc. Why compete directly when you could stand on the shoulders of Comcast?
Not surprising (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:oh man (Score:5, Insightful)
The product was good, service was good but the rest of the business world (mainly M$) did
As rich and powerful as Microsoft is, they just don't have the kind of power you think they do, especially when it comes to markets outside of computer OSes. I can't believe you're sitting here blaming Microsoft for the fact that Tivo is a poorly run company...
The vast majority of business failures people think were somehow caused by Microsoft were really caused by the ineptitude of the company that went under. When Microsoft goes after a market, a well-run company will push them back (see: Quicken vs Microsoft Money). A poorly run company? Well... Darwin's law kicks in. Is that really Microsoft's fault?
This is what I feared (Score:5, Insightful)
No TiVo for me.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Adelphia isn't alone in offering these nice little DVRs, either. TiVo had a great idea, and now that everybody and their aunt Jan can offer a DVR for a low low price, I just can't see TiVo moving millions of units.
Success? (Score:5, Insightful)
TiVo lovers (I used to be one myself) think this product is terminally cool because, when a TiVo box works correctly, it makes TV watching 100 times more enjoyable. But that, by itself, is not "success". Tivo lovers, though fanatical, are few and far between. TiVo has simply made too many mistakes. The platform is too klugy, so there's always been reliability issues. And if it does break, you have to send it back to the factory, for fees that approach the original purchase price. Even if nothing ever went wrong, most consumers just don't see such an expensive gadget as being worthwhile for what it does. This company is circling the drain.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but good "technology, concepts, and products" is not a guarantee of success. There are other factors: marketing, management, timing, access to markets, and just plain luck. The few techies that get rich making some amazing breakthrough get all the press -- but most innovative tech companies fail.
Which is true of all business. You can get very, very rich, but not without taking very, very big risks.
Re:What TiVo needs to do. (Score:2, Insightful)
Myth has a long way to go. Out of the box it isn't there. Like I said, I've been working with it a lot, in the code and setup and whatnot. I plan to return anything worthwhile I come up with back to the project, if it's possible.
I'm thinking of a parts list that any dope could go to CompUSA to buy and assemble, and a bootable ISO, that just makes it work. Take all the OS tinkering out of the middle. To me, this is what linux should be, where it belongs - task oriented distros that do what they do, and do it well. Hell, that's what TiVo is.
Re:Very True (Score:5, Insightful)
But only because he's never used a TiVo.
I own a TiVo, and hate hate hate using Cox's DVR, which has horrible usability issues, even apart from the response times (over a second for basic operations).
As a random example - if you view a list and press page-down, you're now at the TOP of the next page. Pressing page-down again brings you to the bottom of the page and another press to the top of the next page.
TiVo practically always does exactly what I expect when I press a button, and the layout is so convenient that I never have to look at the remote.
I would gladly buy TiVo's UI people a round of drinks, but could get violent if I ever met Cox's DVR's developers (it looks like they have no UI people and let the programmers do it).
The MPAA/RIAA/DRM/BroadcastFlag/Powell (Score:2, Insightful)
Anything beyond the control of the cable and media cartels will be killed at any cost. We have the FCC killing any dsl beyond the baby bells, by allowing the baby bells to let their copper die through neglect (which has been paid for by consumers many times over through tax deductions on infrastructure during and after deregulation) while they install fiber through the same consumer paid-for-through-tax-deductions infrastructure, while preventing resellers from accessing/sharing the fiber at reasonable costs. My dsl reseller currently pays more for my connection than I would if I purchased directly from my baby bell. On top of that, add cost of reseller isp dns servers, mail servers, other servers, add costs of support, all the other costs, and the baby bells are getting away with murder.
And at the same time, Powell and the FCC do nothing to ensure that end users are allowed to run servers, are allowed to use their dsl (or cable) connections for various purposes (ssh is considered running a server, vpn is considered business class, no mail server, no web server, p2p is considered running a server, so are many other uses). If I'm stuck with 2 sellers, baby bell and cable monopolies, at the very least, Powell and the FCC have to mandate that the common carriers are really common carriers, they have no control over what ports of the internet an end user uses, the entire internet is available to every user.
What good is pushing for an internet infrastructure like Korea has, with 100 mbps connections, when the local monopolies get to control what you can do, with such simple things as vpn, ssh, and similar vital services. Should we all use telnet?
If it is left to Powell, we'll end up with what others have already predicted, an entertainment device controlled by the entertainment cartel. Computing will be dead. Once the baby bells succeed in their single-minded mission of fiber everywhere so they don't have to share their lines with anyone, any guess as to which way prices will go? Choices on what you can or can't do with your connection? Speeds? Really believe you'll get the same speeds with fiber now than you will when the line-sharing competition is out of business? Really believe you'll get upload speeds equal to download? How about a 20 mbps download with a 128 Kbps upload, due to newly discovered "problems" or bandwidth "hogs".
Tivo is just a small subset of the overall problem.
As an aside, how do you use a tivo box that doesn't come from the cable company, if you have cable with a cable set-top box? Is it possible? What functionality does one lose?
Maybe something like ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also sell cheap, stylish dumb terminals with bootable network card, and set-top box ready to serve. These could look like the new iMac, nice monitor, nice keyboard, nice mouse, but with low CPU, no HD, little RAM, etc. This way you can get away with charging a lot for the set-top, as much as or more than a good computer: it doubles as your server
This is the winning combo of 2005. The MiniMac and Xbox2 are light on power, skimpy on playable formats, and not ready to serve as dumb-terminals. They discourage bigger drives, don't burn CDs/DVDs, and don't come with wireless.
Re:So how much is a MythTV? (Score:3, Insightful)
IFF (If and Only If) you have hardware encoding on your video/TV tuner card, MythTV will run on a lower end older CPU. www.byopvr.com claims 233MHz if you have hardware MPEG-2 encoding, but that seems fantastically optimistic. Keep in mind that hardware encoding is fairly expensive -- I just bought the USB-2 Hauppauge PVR for $150 at MicroCenter yesterday. (I'm sure they're cheaper on line, but I can afford instant gratification.) A faster CPU (1.8 GHz is adequate according to some people) will allow you to do software encoding, meaning you can get a cheapo video encoder for $50 or less.
The larger the drives, the more content you can save. ReplayTV figures it in the neighborhood of 1GB per hour saved at crappy quality, maybe 3GB/hour for better. They don't need to be fast -- 5400 RPM IDE will do. If you have an old 20GB laying around, it's probably good enough.
RAM, well, you'll need some. A CD-ROM drive is pretty much a minimum, but a DVD drive will let you playback DVDs. An ethernet connection is probably going to be useful. Audio hardware, you may need that too. There are reports that some on-board nVidia nForce 2 chipsets won't work with MythTV, so if that's your audio choice you might need a cheapo SoundBlaster Live! card. On-board video will probably also be adequate.
And you may end up struggling with xmltv; trying to keep a TV listing grid current can be a challenge, depending on what country you live in.
Bottom line: it certainly doesn't require an Athlon64 or a dual Xeon monster to run one of these. Like anything else, if you pay more you'll get more. There are people who have incorporated MAME consoles into their MythTVs, others build monster gaming machines and only use them as TVs when they're not online. Others simply want a fire-and-forget box like a ReplayTV or TiVo.
All in all, your mileage will vary. You need to consider what assembling and maintaining all this will cost you personally in terms of time. Are you willing to put that much effort into a box you could have just picked up at Best Buy for $400 and never looked at again?
Re:Ce La Vie (in bad accent) (Score:3, Insightful)
The TIVO itself is a box that bundles off the shelf mpeg encoder and decoder, modem chip and a PowerPC 403GCX CPU. The operating system is based on Linux.
I don't know why you haven't had good luck encoding. I have been able to encode on the fly without frame drops on a p3 850 with good visual quality.
Re:Very True (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the price difference makes it worthwhile - for $10/month and no setup fee, no purchase, no contract, and two tuners, how can you go wrong? Plus, it's probably simpler than a Tivo in some respects: the Cox box is also your cable tuner, so you don't have to worry about setting two timers (one in Tivo, one in the cable box) and other such hassles.
--RJ
Re:What TiVo needs to do. (Score:3, Insightful)
MOST of these are being used as PC's, and if you aren't playing with a tuner card, you'll never know that it has MCE.
Dad bought one (as a PC). He played with the MCE stuff a little before deciding it was totally useless and went back to the TiVo.
Re:So it goes... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the service were availabe in my area at a reasonable price, I would.
How many people still have their gas pumped by an attendant?
Everyone getting gas in the state of New Jersey, and me, whenever I am getting gas while dressed well, when it's cold out, etc., etc.
I just don't get your point....HTPC's blow for non-techies in their current state.
Most overlooked points past shitty UIs and complicated setup: you need a remote control....oh yeah, that's right, every one availabe for PCs sucks ass. High quality SVIDEO output still isn't there at a reasonable price. And not-so-expensive PCs tend to be noisy. And hot. And not shaped like the rest of my stereo/tv components.
I deal with IT all day. When I come home and want to watch TV, that's what I want to do. Preiod. Not screw with some HTPC, or ssh into my hacked TiVo because the cron job to grab the listings failed.
Re:This is what I feared (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean you don't have a cell-phone ?
Here's an idea: sell the software (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, it isn't the hardware that makes people loyal TiVo users. I mean, anybody can slap together a digital video recorder. What gets people excited is the clever stuff the software. Not the obvious stuff, like "record every episode of Days of Our Lives" -- that's only slightly more sophisticated than what a VCR does. It's the really clever stuff. Like "they keep watching nature shows, so I'm going to record them without being told, if I have the spare disk space."
You license that software to other PVR makers. And you let anybody willing to pay $10/month subscribe to the data stream. Fewer expenses, just as much money. And no stupid cable/satellite companies saying "take out that feature or we won't pay you a pittance to resell your boxes."
Re:This is what I feared (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't be dense. A lifetime subscription doesn't have to last forever to be worth it, it only has to last long enough to be cheaper than perpetual monthly fees. At this point, that's 23 months. If TiVo lasts 2 more years, "lifetime" is cheaper. I paid $199 more than two years ago-- I've saved more than that. If you have an objection to paying for the service at all that's one thing, but saying "lifetime" is a bad idea just shows ignorance of basic mathematics.
Re:oh man (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:oh man (Score:4, Insightful)
Tivo is dying because cable companies subsidize the cost of the hardware, market it better, and charge less per month than Tivo does. Cox gives me two DVRs for free with digital cable, and charges me 8 dollars a month combined extra for the service for the two units. The unit itself has about 40 hours storage, is approximate in quality to the Tivo Series 1. Is it worth it for me to go out and spend 2x$199 replacing the hardware, only to then have to spend more than 20 bucks a month in service charges? Absolutely not.
Re:Ce La Vie (in bad accent) (Score:3, Insightful)
And it doesnt have dual DSS tuners either.
Oh and it didnt cost $99
ok, $12 a month, ya got me there, why that's 2 whole hours of billings vs how many hours to setup Myth?
For the shows that I want to keep, there's bittorrent.
But Myth is a cool hack and all that, maybe someone will start selling a complete system for somewhere around $250 or so..
Re:This is what I feared (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Success? (Score:5, Insightful)
Erm, really? I've been a TiVo customer since almost the start--I've got two TiVo boxes of my own, and used a very-hacked third for years. I've seen problems with them, sure, but nothing I would blame on TiVo itself.
What sort of reliability issues are you talking about? Whatever they are, they're all news to me.
Now, TiVo's business prospects are a completely different matter, and I do fear they will die before the non-techie public realizes what they can do.
Re:Very True (Comcast's DVR sucks) (Score:2, Insightful)
Comcast's DVR has none of the core "I like this program, automatically record it for me next time" features found in Tivo.
There's no concept of recurring recording of your favorite shows.
The resolution for the graphics on the program guide is so course only a few lines of channel info fit on the screen at once. And a big chunk of the screen is allocated to horribly low quality ads.
Yes Comcast was big and stubborn enough to stick it to Tivo, even if that required sticking it to their own customers.
Can a bunch of us buy Comcast stock and then raise a ruckus at a stockholders meeting?
Ben in DC
PublicMailbox at benslade dot.com
Re:Very True (Score:3, Insightful)
I have used both a Satellite (Non-TiVo) DVR and a TiVo (which I own). I was absolutely floored by how primitive the DVR was, and your comment about setting timers makes me wonder if the DVR you are using is also more primitive.
I NEVER set a timer on my TiVo. I have had friends ask me when a show comes on, and I haven't got a clue. The reason is, I tell my TiVo what to record and it manages all of the details. I never have to set a timer on it or on my settop box (since TiVo changes the channels on the settop automatically before it starts recording).
So, for example, I have a wishlist setup that records movies that were made in the 1920's. I have season passes that record specific shows. But I never have to even think about the details behind these recordings. I just turn on my T.V. and look at the list of what shows are waiting for me to watch.
THAT is the beauty of TiVo and until I see another system that can abstract away the details as well as TiVo does I won't even consider switching.
Re:This is what I feared (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is what I feared (Score:2, Insightful)
My cellphone doesn't depend on a subscription with one particular supplier. If the network I'm on went belly up I could just switch to another.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Success? (Score:4, Insightful)
That "half-a-billion" dollar figure is misleading. That's the IPO money, spent in the dotcom days when a good business plan was to spend millions just to get market share. And spend they did. Very little of that IPO money is left.
They are currently scraping by quarter to quarter, and losing a few million in cash each quarter. But they have millions in the bank, so they can afford to burn some. Almost all their costs are business costs - they have no remaining debt to finance.
Yes, I wouldn't call TiVo a success either. They wouldn't make make a good case study for business school, at least not at this point. But it is not as bleak as the half a billion figure looks.
Consider the MIT graduate, whose parents paid the whole $100,000+ tuition, after grants and scholarships. You might find that he is a net loss for his investors, of perhaps a half a million dollars. But, he has a degree from MIT, a job with a great starting salary, and no student loans. He's not a success yet, but he has a good start. And, just like the folks that bought TIVO at the IPO prices and held on to them, the kid's parents shouldn't expect to see that money back any time soon.
Why I have a Comcast DVR and not Tivo (Score:1, Insightful)
Why?
I never used a TiVo and had no interest in one as I have had 2 VCR's for a long time. Recording programming to a hard drive was a nifty concept but not something I would be willing to sink time or money into.
I signed up for Comcast DVR so I could time shift HD and dolby digital sound encoded programming. Now some people may be in over the air range of network HD stations but I am not. Additionally I have HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and Starz in HD and all of that is only available through my cable box. Since any TiVo type solution will receive the analog video/audio signal from the box that was not an acceptable solution.
This is why (in my opinion anyhow) the Comcast-Tivo thing will be a disaster for Tivo. The Motorolla box I use is OK, but it has some issues. However