TiVo PC Could Be a Game-Changer 191
An anonymous reader sends in an article by Andrew Keen (author of "The Cult of the Amateur") about TiVo's new TiVo PC, which he believes could seal the fate of advertising on online videos. Just as TiVo let viewers zap commercials on broadcast TV, TiVo PC — a TV tuner that can be plugged into a PC — will let Net viewers of the likes of Hulu.com and ABC.com skip commercials in the nascent medium of online video.
Keen believes that TiVo's business model involves (besides selling lots of $199 boxes) mining and selling the far richer stream of user behavioral data that TiVo PC will enable.
Why? (Score:4, Informative)
TV tuners are by no means anything new, the only difference this really has is that it has the TiVo name. I dare say that most people who want to plug a tuner into their PC already know this and can probably install software that does everything this does, except for free.
I can't see it changing anything, as far as I'm aware, there isn't a teribly big market for TV tuners (there's a market all right, but it's nowhere near as big as say graphics cards or even sound cards, I'd bet - most people simply don't like being hunched over their monitor to watch TV and those that want to watch it on their actual TV would be better off with a standard TiVo box, or similar, anyway).
Author an Idiot! (Score:5, Informative)
The Tivo Software for the PC is simply a reproduction of the Tivo software in the tivo boxes that works on your Windows PC. It's not going to allow you to skip or record online videos, it will allow you to skip and record TV.
Troll alert (Score:5, Informative)
For those unaware of who this is, this is the guy who compared user-generated content to communism.
I'm not kidding. [weeklystandard.com]
Re:Troll alert (Score:5, Informative)
Ah yes, the guy who wrote the book titled "The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture" [amazon.com] or the full subtitle of "How blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today's user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values".
Some more great quotes from Andrew Keen in an interview with Paula Newton on CNN [youtube.com].
Perhaps one of these days I'll actually read into this guy some more under the guise of "Know Thy Enemy", but at the moment I have better things to do with my time.
He's also given a talk at Google [youtube.com] by the way.
Re:This isn't sustainable (Score:3, Informative)
1) because you get the Tivo interface
2) reviews have said that you can transfer the recordings to other Tivos, so it integrates just like any other standalone Tivo.
Re:This isn't sustainable (Score:4, Informative)
you're paying for the delivery system, not the content.
That's like saying there shouldn't be ads on the internet because you pay for broadband.
Re:Wait a second (Score:2, Informative)
Somewhere in the world, at two difference advertising agencies, two overpaid campaign managers are explaining to their bosses how ads for car insurance and for supplementary health insurance could have been confused like that.
Thank you.
I thought that too, and was about to make a +5 insightful comment about how all the advertisements are getting us to remember them through the amusing stories they tell... how we remember the ads, but not the products anymore.
Then I saved myself from looking silly by finding this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC0k8iJ-ZOg [youtube.com]