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."
The king is dead! Long live the king! (Score:3, Interesting)
(Translation: Does it matter if TiVo dies as long as something better comes along?)
So how much is a MythTV? (Score:5, Interesting)
-russ
Re:oh man (Score:3, Interesting)
Very True (Score:3, Interesting)
Over Christmas, my grandfather asked about Tivo because his brother had recently gotten one. He really didn't know quite what it was, but he wanted one. So, we went to all the consumer electronics shops and looked into it. It was going to be $100.00 bucks after a rebate, twelve bucks a month, and then he had to get some kind of phone line across the room to the back of the TV. They suggested a wireless phone jack, which was an extra $85 dollars or so.
Instead of messing with all that, I stopped by the Cox office and they gave us a new cable box for free and the extra DVR functionality for an extra ten dollars a month over what he had already been paying. He's not going to notice a big difference between that and Tivo, so it's definitely "good enough".
I like Tivo's announcement about Internet-oriented content, but I just don't think they have a chance. EVERYONE and his mother is going after the set top box "center of the digital living room lifestyle". This includes at least Sony, Cisco, Microsoft, Apple, Nintendo, all the set top box manufacturers and cable providers, as well as many other upstarts. People will want as few boxes as possible (hopefully one), so products like Tivo that don't have the depth of stickiness, that aren't the anchor of critical functionality (cable TV vs. VCR, if you absolutely had to choose which one would it be). As such, Tivo is in big, big, big trouble.
What TiVo needs to do. (Score:4, Interesting)
Open the box, screw this DRM'ed TivoToGo crap. Just open an SMB service, or ftp, or some such.
Sell the box at a profit. I'd pay up to 500 bucks for one, that just worked - always, regardless of whether TiVo is still in business. It's still cheaper than rolling my own with MythTV, and a whole lot less of a hassle.
Since that's not what they're going to do, since TivoToGo turned out to be useless - need a custom app to burn to DVD? And it's not out yet? And I'm supposed to buy what is basically the same Prassi/Stomp/Veritas software that I already have three copies of again for another 50 bucks?
Anyways. I like the TiVo interface. Good riddance to the rest of it.
I've been playing with MythTV. As soon as I get it working to my liking, my series 2 TiVo goes up on eBay. I'm getting there, it's nothing but time and effort.
I already know it'll blow TiVo away, it'll stream recorded content and live TV via VideoLan, which I can watch on satellite boxes, which I plan to be no more than some hacked XBoxes. It'll have (at least) two tuners. It'll record to DVD-R without jumping through hoops. It'll grab content from the 'net.
So on an offtopic note, anyone have an idea how support for the Hauppage PVR150MCE and 500MCE is going under ivtv? I got an itch to order the 500MCE (mmm two tuners, two encoders.. all for roughly the price of the 250), becuase it looks like it will be supported soon.. But I don't want to be stuck with a dud.
So it goes... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ce La Vie (in bad accent) (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:oh man (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So how much is a MythTV? (Score:3, Interesting)
Couple of things here. First off you can get a baseline Tivo (40 hour) for $99 before rebates. I happened to pick mine up on special (after rebate) for $49.99.
The 40 hour Tivo is really about a 25 hour Tivo if you are looking to not have super shit quality on all your recordings. The cost is also a lot more than $50 or $99 because you have to pay the bastards $12.99 a month (or $300 for life).
Ok, so you get a Tivo and a lifetime subscription for $400. You would need to start comparing MythTV at that point. Most people would probably want to also add the extra $50 to $100 (depending on rebates) for a decent HD to equate to something you would probably have with MythTV (say 80GB to 120GB). I would figure the baseline MythTV box would have to start around $500 or so.
Have at it boys.
TiVo has two things going for it (Score:5, Interesting)
* the program guide
* the interface
The program guide is really great, and the interface is incredibly easy to use.
The problem seems to be TiVo spends a lot of its money on the boxes. Hardware costs for the TiVo boxes totalled $68,056,000 for the last nine months of the last fiscal year. That's a lot of hardware.
They're also selling that hardware at a loss. HW Revenues were $60,823,000, with $29,508,000 in rebates. Ouch.
There's not a lot that TiVo can do, financially.
The TiVo service only cost $25,069,000 to run for those 9 months, while TiVo pulled in $81,311,000 in revenue. That means if they stopped selling TiVo boxes, they'd make money (though it's unclear from the revenue numbers if the tech revenues include partner hardware).
That won't expand their customer base, though.
Maybe they could spin off their guide business and license it to other box manufacturers? I'm sure TV Guide would love to buy it from them. It would free the guide to provide services to all the manufacturers, though they obviously have someone doing it already (who knows?).
Maybe they could contract to get the hardware built more cheaply?
The hardware is really killing them. Sure, they can't do a Microsoft (not at less than $1/subscriber/month for licensees). But they don't have to have high-end hardware either.
regardless (Score:2, Interesting)
the only reason tivo didn't go sooner was due to large corporate backing and partnering with directv... even if they go, they'll survive in some form because this industry is gonna happen one way or the other (the other being cable/satellite boxes, etc)
Re:first post (Score:2, Interesting)
- Sound dies if you process the power button on the remote accident. You have to unplug the unit.
- Program audio can get into "skipping", where it'll play a frame, then skip a frame, play a frame, skip a frame. Only way to fix is to change channels. Reweind/FF/Pause doesn't change anything.
- Locks up in the middle programs for no reason. Changing channels somtimes fixes it. When watching programs, you have to start over most of the time.
- Disk drive is noisy (lots of clicking), no sound insulation here like Tivo has.
- Channel changing is slow. No write cache. Pure raw disk IO it sounds like for all programs.
- Multiple tuner support is clunky and broken. It will tell you that you are recording on the current one when you change channels, but, are really recoding on the other tuner. It gets confused easilly.
- TiVo must have a patent on the "predictive response" when you press play. I can always nail that start of my programs with Tivo, but, on the Comcast I overshoot everything.
- The FF/RW functions don't have a way to decrease the speed. (IE, I KNOW this is the last commercial, don't go in 32x fast forward, go slower to 4x FF).
I have to say, I would have loved if TiVo was the Comcast PVR of choice. It's by far a better PVR system. But, re the post, I have to agree it's the nail in the coffin for them. I think the other nail is the intrusive advertising that they plan to do.Re:Ce La Vie (in bad accent) (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:So it goes... (Score:4, Interesting)
What Tivo owners are paying for is the directory service and database compilation that makes the search functions of the Tivo useful. If you want to use it as a simple PVR, yuo can buy a 1st generation box, they had enabled that feature.
If you buy a Series2, you buy it knowing that it does not work without purchase of the Tivo Service. It says so on the Box. Tivo does not charge by the Gig, you can upgrade all models without incurring any extra charges.
All but a very small minority of Tivo owners will continue to buy the serive as long as it is available at it's current pricing and features.
What will kill them is if they disable commercial fast-forwards or jack the price or do some sort of pay per view for previously recorded shows. The second they do that they are dead.
MythTV is free if you value your time. I dont have time to program or manually search for things to watch. I also dont have the interest to mess with building a linux box just to watch TV, for that, I'll buy a tivo and it's service and get on with working and playing with more interesting things.
DirecTiVo / CES (Score:5, Interesting)
The interface is incredible; the remote is the best I've ever used for anything; the programming guide is extremely good... but anyone and their Mom can hack together a DVR at this point (not that it'll be as good as TiVo).
Re:oh man (Score:4, Interesting)
Most people miss the point of TiVo (Score:5, Interesting)
What makesTiVo really great isn't the box, or the interface, or any of the generic PVR features, it's the TiVo service that makes it great and you lose that with everything else. It's the service that's worth it for me and what I don't mind paying for it. All these other PVRs are just hard-drive based VCRs with a GUI. Even a TiVo box is just a hard-drive VCR with a GUI without the TiVo service.
Sure you can get other PVR solutions to download TV-listings and they probably have something like TiVo's season pass where it can follow shows you have season passes to and tape them whenever they air (even if they are pre-empted). The one thing I don't know if anyone else has is the TiVo suggestions. I have my TiVo so well trained I don't have to use the TV listings anymore. My TiVo picks out most of what I watch for me. It's like hiring a personal secretary who knows your tastes.
After I come home for work and eat dinner, I usually have enough shows on my TiVo that TiVo picked for me to keep me entertained until I go to bed a couple of hours later. I don't have to surf channels, I don't even have to look at any listing to see if it's something I might like to watch and tell my PVR to tape it. It's gotten to the point where sometimes I don't even know what's on TV anymore and I don't care because I have more than enough shows I like to watch waiting for me each evening. I don't have to spend 20 minutes each day scrolling through a program listing of 500 channels to find the one program I might like to watch tomorrow and tell my PVR to tape it. For me I don't mind paying $12.95 a month if it means saving me 20 minutes a day in front of a computer or on a TV menu doing "prep-work" for my evening's TV watching. I will sorely miss this if TiVo were to go away.
Re:What TiVo needs to do. (Score:3, Interesting)
Wins and Losses. (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Unlike, say, Microsoft, they never discouraged their users from hacking their boxes. As a result, a huge community of TiVo hackers emerged (see http://www.tivocommunity.com/ [tivocommunity.com]). I upgraded my TiVo's 30 gig hard drive to two 120's, and installed a cachecard/network card combo from 9th Tee, which means I can do fun tricks like scheduling shows and season passes from the road, or watching shows in my bedroom on my XBOX.
2. Really great support. I've only had to call TiVo a couple of times, both for channel lineup issues, but they were always extremely friendly and helpful over the phone. For example, after I moved into my new house, I realized that Adelphia had just upgraded the cable in my area, and TiVo didn't have the lineup yet. So I called support, and the next day, TiVo called me back to tell me that my lineup was added. Simply awesome.
3. Choosing Linux. When I telnet into my TiVo, I get a bash shell. I've installed an ftp server, web server (TiVoWeb), and even installed cron. How cool is that? Plus, this excellent decision has led to new software being developed exclusively for the TiVo (such as a caller id display that uses the TiVo's built-in modem, so you can see who's calling without getting up off the couch). Simply brilliant.
4. The interface. They obviously put a ton of work into it, and it really shows. It just kicks so much ass.
Now obviously, they dropped the ball in a couple of areas. The Comcast merger was just a more recent one. I think these are the two biggies:
1. I think that their biggest problem has always been slow adoption; as long as I've had the thing, I've been seeing ads pop up on TiVo Central giving me hot deals on new TiVo units, which I'm supposed to share with my friends and family. Great, I can save Dad $50 on his new unit. But if they really expect me to convince Dad that he can't live without a season pass on those Seinfeld reruns he loves so much, then they should be giving me the 50 smackers. I'd probably have 10 people signed up under me right now if I got some sort of compensation for it. (By the way, click here [freeminimacs.com] to get a free Mini Mac!)
2. Too expensive. The hardware and service together really do cost too much, unless you got in early like I did (back when lifetime service was $200). They should do what my damn cell phone company does: Knock the hardware down to like $99, and make me pay a very affordable $9.95 a month. If I try to cancel before 2 years are up, hit me with some obscene early termination fee. Yes, I hate it when cell phone companies do this, but that's how they stay in business. Besides, it's not like I'd be foolish enough to cancel my TiVo service anyway. TiVo is heroin. So far, I've paid $499 for TiVo and lifetime service, so TiVo won't make any more money off of me. If they were using my above plan, I would have paid in $589 so far, with more coming in every month.
I would really hate to see TiVo go. I hope they don't. But I suspect that even if the service dies, thanks to the openness of their hardware platform, someone (maybe me) will figure out how to write a script to pull show data off of Yahoo! TV or something. And with Microsoft and MythTV and several others entering the PVR market, there's no question that TiVo's invention is here to stay.
bort.
Re:So how much is a MythTV? (Score:3, Interesting)
BTW, IBM lists the part as costing $1.90.
Re:This is what I feared (Score:1, Interesting)
Replay has been through two bankrupties, and its users still have service. And they are in no danger of losing service.
TiVo has already promised that they have a "dead man's switch" they can throw if they stop service that will allow basic service to continue if TiVo stops supporting users.
And there is a huge hacking community out there already that knows how to provide service to TiVo boxes if TiVo should ever stop supporting users.
But all that is extremely unlikely; the worst case scenario would be TiVo getting bought out by a larger company; TiVo is too big and has too many subscribers to simply disappear. It's not going to happen.
If miniscule Replay can survive, TiVo's future by comparison is that much more secure (from the user's perspective) for many, many years to come.
It's simply a matter of whether TiVo can survive as an independent company or not; it is not a question about whether users will continue to get service or not. No matter what happens, someone is going to acquire those users and continue to provide service in exchange for that monthly revenue stream.
Abosulute worst case scenario (which isn't going to happen), the hacking community will provide ways to get service to TiVo boxes.
Hardware innovation & software supremacy (Score:3, Interesting)
That there has been no compelling reason for a geek to buy new Tivo hardware since I bought my standalone S2 in 2002 is pretty shameful (I don't have DirecTV, so HDDirecTivo isn't an option). It's super shameful that they won't have a CableCard HDTivo until 2006.
Dunno if a hardware move would help now, but hurrying along the CableCard-enabled HD Tivo would sure help.
Tivo also needs to keep their software moving forward; why not an IMDB tie-in (and hence, Amazon) to the details of a show on now playing? Leverage IMDB & broadband to provide me more show info. Use Amazon to generate DVD sales and comissions. This might sound too commercial, but it could be done at least as tastefully as the ads on the main menu.
And add a "geek" mode where we can have access to greater preferences and more recorder control (logical and/or searhces, 'don't ever record', on and on...)
Tivo spends too much time BSing around with features not core to the experience (Tivo2Go, HMO).
Re:So how much is a MythTV? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, a TiVo is only a couple hundred bucks, but a "lifetime subscription" is about $300, so I didn't really spend a huge amount more than the equivalent TiVo.
Re:That was the Replay strategy (Score:2, Interesting)
In theory.
Re:This is what I feared (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How? (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe there are two groups out there doing this - one in Canada and one in Australia. I'm told they currently will not open their code to folks in the US because they want TiVo to stay around and make more units.
I assume if TiVo goes defunct, this code might become available.
ReplayTV SO kicks Tivo's Ass (Score:3, Interesting)
So I repeat, ReplayTV soooooo kicks Tivo's ass.
No one has mentioned the VOIP effect (Score:4, Interesting)
In a nutshell: TiVO's internal modem doesn't work with most VOIP services.
Recently I switched over to Vonage. About a week after my Vonage service began I started getting messages on my TiVO telling me I needed to make my "daily call" because my program data had not been updated for a while.
I checked on the TiVO forums and sure enough there is a problem using TiVO's internal modem with most VOIP services. There are dozens of supposed workarounds but the success rate for these workarounds is apparently grim.
Series I TiVO users are truly screwed. Series II TiVO users can wire an Ethernet cable to the back of their TiVO to get listings via IP. But even TiVO acknowleges that most TiVO users probably don't have Ethernet cables in their living rooms.
There are also many hardware fixes I'm looking into. (But soldering a modem to my TiVO motherboard hardly seems like a fix that most people are going to want to deal with).
The bottom line is this: As VOIP sweeps the nation, its also sweeping TiVO away.
Re:Very True (Score:4, Interesting)
What? You guys have clearly not used Tivo. There's no setting two timers. And Tivo comes with its own channel grid (TV Guide functionality) which has a pretty nice interface. When I want to record a show, I navigate to it (or search for it), and I can record it. I can set season passes to get all episodes, or first runs only. I can set how many episodes of the show to keep on the box for a particular show (so for example, 10 for the Simpsons and 5 for CSI). It uses fuzzy logic to suggest programs that it thinks I might like based on existing programs I record (if I want it to). Now it can even play music and show picture albums I store on my PC in the other room. Pretty much everytime I think 'gee, I wish they'd fix this about tivo,' I find the issue fixed within a matter of weeks with the regular software patches it receives.
And yes, Tivo can access all of the channels that your cable box can receive--it's a unit that runs between your cable box (should you be unfortunate enough to have one) and your TV.
I personally have to agree with the great-grandparent. The Tivo UI is really quite excellent, and one of the reasons that the box was worth $450 ($250 for the box, $200 for the lifetime subscription). Plus the fact that it runs linux. I thought you
well, i have one and i like it (Score:2, Interesting)
I recommend them to everyone i know and everyone i recommend it to buys it and likes it. If they can't make money off a product like that they should fire their entire business and marketing departments. It's like a restaurant that opens, is super busy, and closes 6 months later. That's a sign that somebody didn't think through the business plan. Here's a hint: when you're making up scenarios for that big Excel spreadsheet, and you add up the column for "Staggering Success", and the number at the bottom is still negative, it's time to get a new plan or at least a new spreadsheet.
Hint of bad news from DirecTV (Score:3, Interesting)
Note to DirecTV: I only subscribe to DirecTV FOR TIVO. If you dump Tivo, I'll dump DirecTV. Probably like Best Buy you figured in losing the "small amount" of geek business and you don't care. You should figure in how much business we brought by word of mouth and being tech mentors to our friends (yes, we DO have friends). We'll take THOSE with us, too.
If you subscribe to DirecTV join me and tell DirecTV [directv.com] not to dump TiVo.
If DirecTV screws it up, we'll get into the TiVo saving and Myth TV setup business.
Let's hope the new TiVo CEO sucks in his pride a makes a deal with Comcast and DirecTV to make the "new" DVRs TiVo DVRs.
Otherwise, it won't be the first time that a superior product disappeared due to market, business, and political pressures, - see BetaMax, CP/M 86, Word Perfect, Lotus 1-2-3,
We got ours for Xmas.... (Score:2, Interesting)
It is pretty obvious the CEO is an ego-maniac in the form of the original Steve Jobs. He's making the same mistakes, basically. Thinking they can go it alone is akin to signing a suicide note. This idiot blew it time and time again and now me and thousands of others may end up with a worthless hunk of junk and a wasted $500.
Re:Ce La Vie (in bad accent) (Score:2, Interesting)
I refuse to pay the local cable company for "Digital" (i.e. looks like sh*t on my 50" DLP) cable. DirecTv is the lesser of two evils. And the DirecTivo is very nicely integrated. No fuss no muss.
As for multiple tuners, yes 5 is overkill, but 2 is a minimum for me. I enjoy spending time with my wife, but I also really enjoy shows she would rather not watch. With two tuners we can watch something we both enjoy together while recording my show to watch later. This was a bigger issue, of course, before TechTV got raped, beaten, and left for dead by G4. But I digress
Bottom line, a well integrated dual tuner DirecTiVo is the best solution for me in all aspects. Given the details above, there is just no way to beat the one time $99 setup and $5 monthly for the increase in quality of life.