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Television Media

TiVo switches off UK sales 254

Posted by CowboyNeal from the boop-boop-ding dept.
SmackCrackAndPot writes "On the TiVo Community forum, there is an announcement that TiVo will be switching off UK sales. This was previously reported in November at BizTech Library. It's probably not too surprising, after the BBC spammed TiVo owners with a new comedy show."
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TiVo switches off UK sales More

TiVo switches off UK sales

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  • interesting. (Score:4, Funny)

    by xao gypsie ( 641755 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:40PM (#5247405)
    i find it funny *pun intended* that it took british comedy, of which i am a big fan, to remove tivo, when seemingly no amount of litigation and pointless court hearings can do it anywhere else.

    at least thats my take on things.
    xao

    • The least they could do is make the TiVOs record Coupling. If the BBC wants to force me to watch Kate Isitt for hours on end, who am I to complain?

  • What's the reason for pulling the plug in the UK? Just not economically feasible?

    This doesn't look good for the future of a Canadian version of the TiVo.
    • Naw, we watch american TV. No-one watches the CBC anymore, ever since they yanked Degrassi Jr. High, so our prospects are the same as yours.
      • Ah

        Remember when Joey was pretending to sell Degrassi grass?

        Good times.

        Everybody wants something
        they take your money
        and never give up

        The Zit Remedy ROCK!
      • My new cable in Virginia has a station (News World International) thats mostly Canadian news. It seems so serious and credible compared to CNN/Fox/MSNBC.

  • They did NOT spam (Score:5, Informative)

    by sakusha ( 441986 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:48PM (#5247473)
    What a bunch of crap. TiVo units have a certain amount of memory set aside for "enhanced content" (that means infomercials). If you don't look in the menus, you'd never know it was there, unless you happened to be watching at 4AM when it was captured. In NO way can TiVo be said to be spamming. Someone bought a paid placement. Hey, I hated it when TiVo recorded a bunch of crappy Eminem interviews, but I just didn't watch it, and I certainly didn't whine about it.

    Remember TiVo makes ZERO dollars from hardware sales, they are solely supported by subscription revenues, ad placements, and selling marketing data.

    • Re:They did NOT spam (Score:5, Informative)

      by nrc ( 112633 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @10:51PM (#5247805) Homepage

      Whether people want to consider what TiVo did SPAM or not doesn't make much difference. It had absolutely nothing to do with TiVo's decision. Suggesting that it did makes the original poster, and slashdot look like idiots to any informed observer - which is to say, pretty much "status quo."

      TiVo simply hasn't found a manufacturer who wants to build and sell TiVo equipment for the U.K. without a subsidy. Given TiVo's need to pare expenses to reach break even before they run out of cash, there really is no other option than to pull the plug.

      As for the "SPAM" issue. I enjoy about 75% of the promotional content that TiVo records automatically. Some folks complain about the extra menu item that becomes available when you've got SPAM, but it doesn't bother me in the least. I can just ignore it. It doesn't use my space and it will go away on it's own after a while.

      Yes, you are welcome to consider it SPAM and decline to buy a TiVo because of it.
      • What if a show I want to record is on at the same time as the "promotional material"?

        Does the user get the ultimate say?

        • Re:Scheduling Question (Score:4, Informative)

          by Fishstick ( 150821 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @11:51PM (#5248134) Journal
          Yes, it will always record your "to do" list first. I often set to record things overnight and I've never had something drop because it conflicted with a "showcase" (that's where these sit when they're not on the main menu with a little star).

          In fact, it won't even change the channel on you if you happen to be watching something.

          I was up the other night sleepless, flipping channels when TiVo asked if it could change the channel. I was suprised because I didn't remember setting anything up for 3:30 am on the Discovery Channel, but I let it go because I thought maybe my wife had set to record something.

          So, it changed the channel (with my permission) and proceeded to start recording some previews for "Daredevil". I decided I'd rather go back to some documentary about Rhinos humping or something I was previously watching, so it let me change the channel without complaining that I was interrupting a scheduled recording or anything.

          It went back and picked up the movie previews the next night, I guess because they showed up in a couple days.

          I guess I was a little wary that TiVo was recording what amounts to ads at first. But I really don't mind that much now. Some of the stuff like best buy kind of turns me off, a few things like the daredevil previews I liked, and the rest I really don't even care about.

          Besides, isn't there a backdoor code or something to keep TiVo from recording these?
    • The point is, this TV programme was unsuitable for children, could not be removed from the main menu, and could not be blocked by the content restrictions. Nor could it be deleted.
    • It wasn't 4AM it was 7pm.

      It changed channels without asking (I'd actually changed channels to watch the News and lost the first few minutes because of it). The only obvious way to stop it recording was to reboot the Tivo.

      Amusingly, because the TV schedules are basically fiction over hear the programme ran late and missed half of it anyway :-)

      btw. I don't think this is why Thomson (*not* Tivo.. I do wish the news monkeys would get something accurate for once) stopped producing Tivos... it was just plain lack of sales, plus the fact that the best advertising slogan that Tivo themselves could come up with is 'It pauses live TV!' (well whoopee doo... That's sure worth £400 of my money...)

  • YHBT (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:48PM (#5247477)
    Read the reply comments on that forum. Now read the same hoax going back over the last few months.

    Now HAND.
    • Actually, it's not a hoax. The article is 100% accurate. The article states that no more Tivo's will be manufactured for sale in the UK in the immediate future, but they will continue to be supported. That is absolutely true. If you read the FAQ that is mentioned in the reply ("New members read this"), you'll see a question "I just read TiVo is going to pull out of the UK - is this true?" which basically repeats what was said in the article.

    • Re:YHBT (Score:4, Informative)

      by Huge Pi Removal ( 188591 ) <oliver+slashdot@watershed.co.uk> on Friday February 07, 2003 @04:44AM (#5248864) Homepage
      No, not a hoax. Try here: http://www.tivofaq.co.uk/tivosfuture.htm [tivofaq.co.uk]

      Thompson really have stopped manufacturing hardware. The Tivo servive will continue, but buying new boxes is going to become impossible pretty soon.

      • Re:YHBT (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rcs1000 ( 462363 ) <rcs1000.gmail@com> on Friday February 07, 2003 @06:33AM (#5249127)
        This is ridiculous. Thomson stopped manufacturing TiVos in the middle of last year. This is not news.

        It has been all but impossible to buy a TiVo in the UK for the last few months. This is not news.

        Equally, the idea that TiVo will pull the plug on the UK market is ridiculous.

        They have 35,000 subscribers paying £10 ($15) per month, and just two employees. So... £350,000 revenues a month, two staff, a couple of servers, a few phone calls. They must have some pretty expensive offices for the UK operation not to be profitable.

        My forecast: when TiVo the company (ticker: TIVO) becomes profitable in the back half of '03, then management will again turn their eyes to other markets: Canada, Australia, UK, etc.

        Anyone care to bet I'm wrong?

  • The poor children heard urinal cake humor. (Score:5, Funny)

    by $$$$$exyGal ( 638164 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:51PM (#5247489) Homepage Journal
    Some with families were angry that a post-watershed show had been automatically recorded and could be accessed by children.

    For crying out loud, those people are just looking for something to complain about (which I'm sure you /. folks will understand ;-)). It's not like the show is filled with porn, it looks like the show is like any other brain-dead sitcom. I can just imagine the 10 year old boys waking early on Saturday morning and finding this illicit show on their Tivo. As they watched the tittilating comedy with jokes about urinal cakes, their eyebrows twitched nervously, and they repeatedly looked over their shoulder to see if Mom or Dad were walking in.

    Jeesh.

    --naked [slashdot.org]

    • I always understood that the whole point of a Tivo was not to have to watch crap in the first place. This doesn't sound a hell of a lot better than broadcast TV, complete with commercials and garbage TV.
      • Except the tivo didn't/doesn't force you to watch anything.

        It uses space set asside by the OS so it doesn't even lower your capacity*.

        * unless you were an early adopter which didn't have a space reserve
      • You don't have to watch the promo shows it records. You would actually have to navigate to the show and play it to be "forced" to watch it. On my (US) tivo, they are easily distinguishable. It doesn't take any of your recording time away. I fail to see how this is "not any better than broadcast TV."

    • Mmmmm...urinal cakes...
  • The article uses the term "post-watershed" which apparently refers to programs broadcast after 9pm in the UK.
    This [itc.org.uk] is a page with relevant legal regulations that are implicated...
    Hope that clears up any confusion.

    • Re:"Post-watershed" (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yup, because we wouldn't want kids below the age of 18 or 16 knowing anything about condoms. Or "female sanitary protection" products. Their parents might have to talk to them about those icky subjects. Much better they be shocked when they start to menstruate in the locker room - or fail to.
    • So where exactly does the term "watershed" come from?
      • Or at least this particular usage of the compound "post-watershed" I was unfamiliar with this compound phrase as well and google provided a fairly low (750) set of matches, most referring to broadcast regulations in the UK, the rest actual watersheds in the sense that I did recogize. I can only speculate but...

        A geographic watershed is a region that drains to a single river/lake etc. It is bounded by a line of high ground that differentiates it from the surrounding other watershed areas.

        The phrase "watershed event" is used to denote a particular point at which things become easier - i.e. "The advent of peer-to-peer filesharing was a watershed devent for the distribution of music". :-)

        So it would seem that this usage of watershed is referring to a point of demarcation -- in this case a time of day.

        We are separated by a common language. Sometime I should put my experience on using a Haynes automotive service manual to pull an engine. Language provided an amusing mis-step.

        So I conclude, perhaps incorrectly, that is the point after which programming goes downhill.

    • Your link is to an entirely irrelevant page about advertising on commercial channels, which mentions the 9pm watershed only in passing.

      This [bbc.co.uk] is a link to a relevant page about the BBC's [bbc.co.uk] policy on family viewing and the 9pm "watershed," while this [itc.org.uk] is the equivalent from the ITC. [itc.org.uk]

  • Insane... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Eric_Cartman_South_P ( 594330 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:54PM (#5247512)
    ...before you know it one day major internet providers will start cutting t

  • The Other Tivo (Score:5, Informative)

    by frankthechicken ( 607647 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:56PM (#5247525) Journal
    In the UK, there is a huge push from sky [sky.co.uk] to sell its Sky + service, which is the main competetion for Tivo here. Haven't actually tried the Tivo, but Sky + is an extremely competent package.
  • How's TIVO a threat to BBC anyway since there are no commercials to filter out?

  • Tivo not necessarily pulling out of UK (Score:5, Informative)

    by Edball ( 611096 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @10:07PM (#5247590)
    According to this article:

    http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID= 13703 [europemedia.net]

    Thompson, Tivo's manufacturer is the one that pulled out - Tivo is still looking for new manufacturers.

  • the gilette phenomenon (Score:5, Insightful)

    by peatbakke ( 52079 ) <peat@NospAM.peat.org> on Thursday February 06, 2003 @10:08PM (#5247599) Homepage
    .. also known as the loss leader, seems to be a defining practice in interactive home entertainment these days. That basically means that the company makes no money off the initial sale, but reaps high margins from subsequent purchases necessary to keep that initial device functional.

    It worked extremely well for Sony -- selling the playstation at zero (sometimes negative) margins, then making money by being the sole licenser of games (that they didn't spend money developing) for the platform.

    I think the xbox is taking financially because Microsoft went out and bought a substantial number of good game development companies who haven't been able to release a seriously block-busting game .. but that's another issue.

    TiVo is a completely different story. They're selling the consoles at or below cost .. then trying to make profits by selling mandatory advertising spots to media companies. Unfortunately, there aren't enough TiVo users to convince media companies to pay big bucks for the spots.

    The population of TiVo users has to grow -- and that means they need to lower the cost of their consoles. Dramatically. Even if it means reducing the functionality of the box. When TiVo costs $50, and you can buy it at Wallgreens, that's when advertising and media companies are going to sit up and thing "Holy crap, that's a huge captive audience."
    • ... they need to lower the cost of their consoles. Dramatically. Even if it means reducing the functionality of the box. When TiVo costs $50, and you can buy it at Wallgreens ...

      Um, unless you expect them to sell them for $50 and eat another $50 on each box, this can't be done. The things *need* hard drives, reduced functionality or no.

    • Re:the gilette phenomenon (Score:4, Informative)

      by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @11:21PM (#5247982) Homepage
      They're selling the consoles at or below cost

      TiVo isn't selling the consoles at all. They license out the hardware to companies to produce, and it's up to the companies to make a profit, which is doable. In the past TiVo had to pay the companies to produce the systems, which is a practice they're getting out of. The hardware isn't that expensive to make anymore.

      there aren't enough TiVo users to convince media companies to pay big bucks for the spots

      Hrm, I'd say 500,000 active subscribers is a pretty decent captive audience. And, better yet, it's advertising that you can get exact numbers for the number of eyeballs -- at least in terms of households. TiVo knows when you watch the ads.

      But, you're right... not enough advertisers. I guess that's why I nearly always have something recorded from TiVo. Currently it's Daredevil trailers. Next will be Matrix, Hulk, and other Time Warner movies (I don't recall the entire list). There may be some other stuff in between if time allows, I have no idea.

      The population of TiVo users has to grow

      You're right, and it is. From their last 10-Q:

      Our subscriber base increased 82% over the third quarter of fiscal year 2002, from 280,000 to 510,000 subscribers due to increased consumer demand.
    • This isn't strictly on-topic, but it's amusing nonetheless. King Gillette (that was his name, not his title; he was not a monarch) was a lifelong socialist who despised the idea of personal wealth. In the late 1800's, shaving was a pretty serious chore. Most men had to go to barbershops where they were given a shave with a straight razor. In 1895, Gillette invented the safety razor with the intent of freeing the common man from the burden of having to buy a professionally administered shave.

      The US Army immediately ordered thousands upon thousands of safety razors for their troops. Gillette's invention was a monumental success.

      Almost immediately, Gillette, lifelong socialist and despiser of wealth, found himself one of the richest men in the country.

      Ah, sweet irony. ;-)

  • I could never get it anyway (afaik) but ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by bfree ( 113420 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @10:12PM (#5247618)
    I live in Ireland, a country of around 4 million people compared to the U.K. (our closest neighbour and fellow island just north-west of France, in Europe, about 4000k east of New York) at about 60 million. We were lucky enough to get a half-baked Sky service in Ireland for quite a while, but they never really treated us the same. For example, Tivo's were out, no service :-( They were meant to come in along with a Sky+ [sky.com] box (which is made by pace and which a sky rep told me just before it was being launched had "stolen the bits they needed from Tivo". BTW a quick call to sky's freephone number (yes at 3am) confirmed Sky+ STILL isn't available here and won't be til they launch the interactive services which are coming (and have been for over a year).
    Now I had been thinking for a while that an open/distributed tv listings service for Ireland would be great, but that I might find little help in putting it together! But perhaps if Tivo is closing in the U.K. there might be an existing marketplace who were paying £10/month who are looking for an alternative. I can't imagine it would be the most impossible task to fool a present tv into using the free service. You'd have to reverse engineer the format used by the service, and then (to save making people solder) you'd need to deal with the fact the Tivo has a telephone connection and dials it's own number. You could establish some phone numbers to feed the demand and use a simple router to translate all dialed numbers to the new number or you could make a server to run on a PC (with a modem) that answers the calls and feeds it the data (which the server keeps up to date). There is only one response to this (and sky's attempt to take the £10/month for themselves) and that's to take the money away from them!
    • Ooops, talking to myself again, going mad!
      I meant to put in a link to pace, so here [pace.co.uk] it is. I hope I don't have half a link in the parent, it looks of here (mozilla could be forgiving me).
      Also does anyone know reasonably priced cards with decent drivers providing hardware accelerated TV Capture? What about hardware accelerated Video capture? And btw I mean under Linux and full PAL (preferably all audio formats aswell)? No matter how many times I try to find a card I can feel happy buying, I just can't! How come these guys can build Tivo's so cheap? How come no-one is building PC hardware from the same chips etc or if they are is the code all locked away?
    • I live in Ireland, a country of around 4 million people compared to the U.K. (our closest neighbour and fellow island just north-west of France, in Europe, about 4000k east of New York) at about 60 million.
      It's a sad day when a group of English-speaking people need to be told where Ireland is. I wonder how many of my college classmates know; probably not enough.
    • Now I had been thinking for a while that an open/distributed tv listings service for Ireland would be great, but that I might find little help in putting it together!
      While not free, there is Digiguide [digiguide.com] which has a fairly comprehensive set of TV listings for £6.99/a year (about $10). I don't think that thy publish the protocol used, but I'm fairly sure it's been reverse-engineered, (there was an unofficial palm client floating around a whle back) and I' sure they're not going to complain, as long as you deliver a valid (i.e. paid for) registration key. More clients = more money for them.
  • While this obviously is a misinterpretation/hoax, the risk of something like this happening is why I never considered buying a TiVo. If the company goes under, who guarantees that they will be able to provide the listing service for as long as you have the box? Even if they make such a claim when you buy it, if they file for bankruptcy they are not bound by it anymore. I just don't like the idea of a $300-400 doorstop. And since Time Warner worked out the bugs in the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000, I love their DVR service.. $5/mo box rental and already built-in guide to digital cable, I just love it!
    • This shouldn't stop you...because if you know anything about the TiVo, you'ld know that it runs Linux...and the programming is in a standard format...as a matter of fact, there are scripts for the TiVo that pull data from from free listing sites.

      There's also the fact that you can use the TiVo like a "Smart VCR" to record shows without any listings...

      So, unless you're completely clueless, a working TiVo will never be a "doorstop"...
      • Thanks for the information, I wasn't aware of the ability to use free listings.

        My question now is, since TiVo licenses its technology to hardware manufacturers for free and ONLY makes money from the subscription service, how do they expect to make a money with the possibility of a popular free listing site popping up..?
        • The TiVo hacking community does not support it to a large degree...it's kind of like the hack to read the video fom the player...TiVo doesn't want it done so their wish is respected because of all of the support they give to the hacking community...

          • Re:Why I wouldn't buy TiVo.. (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Enigma2175 ( 179646 ) on Friday February 07, 2003 @12:34AM (#5248313) Homepage Journal
            The TiVo hacking community does not support it to a large degree...it's kind of like the hack to read the video fom the player...TiVo doesn't want it done so their wish is respected because of all of the support they give to the hacking community...

            Support?????? Maybe in the past, but not anymore. The Tivo Series 2 boxes are locked down rather heavily. The boot ROM checks for a signed kernel, if it's not signed, it won't run. The kernel checks for modifications to the file system, if any are found it replaces the files and reboots. Although there have been some reports of hardware hacks to replace the ROM, it's not exactly what I would call "all of the support they give to the hacking community".

            Not to mention the whole 3.2 backdoor code debacle. [slashdot.org] After thousands of hours of CPU time, the project had to be abandoned. The conclusion was that Tivo has either used an invalid hash or very long key sequence as the backdoor code in version 3.2, when previously the codes were short and easily hacked. It is just one more example of how hostile Tivo is becoming to hackers.

            Tivo is attempting to create an image of greater security (keeping out the dirty hackers) on a software and hardware level in order to market the ability to distribute content with the Tivo as a DRM platform. If you can't hack it, you pretty much have to accept any restrictions they put on content delivered to you. They can deliver PPV events that are deleted after 1 day or not able to be recorded at all.

            Fortunately, I have a Series 1 and can do whatever I like with it. I have a backup of every software revision Tivo has put out, so I can revert to an earlier version at any time. I certainly am not going to allow Tivo to send me any more updates, the boot ROM in the S1 is flashable so it's quite possible for Tivo to send down updates that lock me out of my machine.

            New Tivo owners are not so lucky. There is no reverting to an earlier version of your brand-new Tivo. I have recommended Tivo to friends in the past but given the disregard for the community that has staunchly supported them (not only by buying subscriptions but by keeping extraction and guide replacement information difficult and obscure and by adding value for other users-free of charge) I don't know if I can still recommend them. I do like the UI but what really got me to buy one was the hack potential. Now that they have no hack potential, the luster is gone and I see the company for what it is: moneygrubbing fools that will alienate their most loyal users for a few quick bucks.

  • What happens when tivo records a show at 4AM, when you are watching something else? If I'm watching the A-Team on uk gold on my cable box, I dont want tivo flipping the channel half way though. Does it do this?

    • Re:What happens (Score:3, Informative)

      by Kevinv ( 21462 )
      you get a choice. but i've found i pretty much only watch shows already recorded on the tivo (for the commerical skipping) and just let it record what ever it wants from the cable box.

      now if i could just get the cat to stop chewing on the IR blaster that controls my cable box.

      now with the direct tv satellite version of Tivo you can record one show and watch another, or record 2 shows (this is because it records the already compressed version of the show from satellite so it doesn't waste processor power on the encoding, saving plenty of processor for dual recording)

    • Re:What happens (Score:3, Informative)

      by slim ( 1652 )
      What happens when tivo records a show at 4AM, when you are watching something else?

      Personally I'm in bet at 4am. Call me old if you like... ;)

      Anyhow, TiVo records under two circumstances: (1) You've asked it to (2) It's decided you might like it to, based on the thumbs up and thumbs down statistics you've given it.

      When TiVo is not in "live TV" mode, i.e. playing back buffered stuff from the last half hour, it will change channel whenever it feels like it -- because it knows you're not watching live TV. The assumption is that you only ever watch TV via TiVo, and this is what you should do.

      When you *are* watching live TV, TiVo will not attempt to change channel in order to record category (2) programs. If a category (1) program is coming up, it will pop up a dialogue, "You asked me to record xxxx, press OK to change channel or Cancel to stay on this channel and not record it after all".

      Yes, if you're piping output from your cable box around the house, this might cause problems. Not many people are.

  • All TV is "spammed" -- it's a broadcast! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Morgaine ( 4316 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @11:55PM (#5248157)
    For goodness sake folks, you're suppposed to be techies, don't you understand that all TV programming is "spammed" in the sense that it's broadcast to everybody??? That makes it fairly silly to accuse the BBC of spamming. Yeah, the BBC and all TV stations have been spamming us for half a century, it's what they do.

    All TVs, VCRs, and TiVos in the appropriate reception areas received the broadcast, if they were switched on and tuned to the right channel. I've never heard of anyone switching on the telly and shouting in horror, "I'm being spammed!". The TiVos also stored what they were receiving, as that's what they were designed to do with this special content. That really does make this a non-story.

    Please reserve the word "spam" for individually addressed delivery systems delivering the same item to multiple recipients. Applying it to broadcast systems makes no sense at all.
    • But there is a big difference between going through the TV Guide and seeing listings for everything that's on, and scrolling down through TiVo's list of TV shows and seeing an entry for a show that TiVo thinks you "might want to watch".

      You "might need something to make your dick bigger", or you "might want to work from home and make thousands of dollars licking envelopes", or you "might want to see barely-legal teens in provocative poses". That's all spam, because it shows up in your e-mail inbox under the guise of something you "might want". Obviously, most people don't want any of that, and even though it's just a matter of hitting the trash button on those messages, it's still infuriating to receive them in the first place.

      With your TiVo, you have a limited resource (hard drive space) being taken up in significant quantities by each show, and TiVo tells you that you "might want to watch this show" even though there is no real heuristic for determining whether this is the case. And no, if(1){record("show")} does not count as a heuristic.

      It's also different from broadcasting, because a broadcast program is shown by the TV station and then "goes away" in a sense. A program recorded to your TiVo stays around until you delete it, which makes it far different from a broadcast program. It's solely a marketing ploy to take advantage of that, and people don't like it when marketers invade their home without permission.

      On a side note: There is another way to watch your TV. [mythtv.org]

  • Why jump to this conclusion? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Abductor ( 642058 ) on Friday February 07, 2003 @12:10AM (#5248205)
    Why did this thread instantly jump to the conclusion it was over this infomercial issue? Tivo never caught on like wildfire, even though people like me have bought them for their parents and siblings knowing they'd love it like I did. But for whatever reasons it did not become the VCR replacement, and Tivo's stock price has always struggled. Still, to know PVR is to love it. Tivo hasn't gone under, but for example on DirecTV it's no longer called Tivo, it's just part of your DirecTV service. The company did not flourish in one form and so it has taken on other forms. It appears that PVR's are accepted when they are part of a cable or satellite box, i.e., a built-in feature of something else. So I put very little stock in this notion that an informercial brought down Tivo in the UK, when this closure falls right in line with the direction the company has been heading in.
    • Tivo hasn't gone under, but for example on DirecTV it's no longer called Tivo, it's just part of your DirecTV service

      Slightly wrong...

      It's now called "DirecTV with TiVo". Billing is done through DTV, not TiVo, and guide updates are provided by DTV as well (which means program guide data can be different for DTiVos as compared to standalones).

      DirecTV is still using the TiVo service, and paying TiVo a cut of the money.

  • Not the news you wanna hear.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Friday February 07, 2003 @12:45AM (#5248358)
    ... when you've purchased a ReplayTV today.

    Now I understand what all the fuss is about. You really have to sit down, pause a live broadcast, rewind it a bit, then start playing again to understand why this thing is so cool.

    It's a pity that this device that makes me watch more TV is under fire by the TV Industry. Am I going to skip commercials? Yes. Am I going to skip every single commercial? Can't skip commercials while the show is originally airing. I'm using it to catch shows I hadn't seen yet. If the show's good, I'm going to watch it when it airs. The ads are still getting to me, even more so now that I have more shows I want to watch.

    Okay, that horse has been beaten to death. It's just sad that these industries are so short sighted. I mean, think about it, the more fun TV is (i.e. trading shows...), the more interest is generated in seeking interesting content.

    Okay, I'm not really on-topic anymore. Sorry. Just wanted to vent a bit. Hopefully you can imagine my reaction to the headline the day I bought the machine.
    • Am I going to skip every single commercial?
      I watched Sky One for to hours yesterday. In one hour of television, 15 minutes were adverts. Many of the adverts were repeated. Roughly 40% did not apply to me in any way (I have no wish o by feminine hygiene products, or consolidate my debt, for example). Of the remaining ones, most (okay, all) were so irritating that I made a note of the products concerned, so I wouldn't accidentally purchase any of them. When will advertises learn that irritating their potential customers is not a good idea?

  • The Wider View (Score:5, Informative)

    by Inflatable Hippo ( 202606 ) <`ku.oc.oohay' `ta' `oppih_elbatalfni'> on Friday February 07, 2003 @04:40AM (#5248858) Journal
    The withdrawl of tivo from the UK is in part related to the wider mess that is UK terrestrial broadcasting, and there's a bunch of stuff going on that anyone outside the UK wouldn't be expected to know, leave now if you don't care.

    There are theoretically 5 analogue terrestrial channels in the UK, and in many places only 4.

    There is also no single widely available cable network either and if you do have access, it's typically a local monopoly and it's pretty expensive - typically £20-30/month for a descent package.

    The Sky (satellite) service is polular but also expensive.

    Several years ago a digital terrestrial service was launched and failed miserably and with much fanfare. This has recently been re-launched as entirely an entirely free-to-view service and looks set to succeed.

    Now as you can see, we have a real mess of technologies here and if a company such as Tivo wants to sell a premium recorder product they've got a problem. Their marked is spread across satellite, and a multiplicity of analogue/digital terrestrial and cable formats.

    What decoders do they build into their device?

    1. Sky which re-transmits all of the (good) free-to-view channels have their own HD based recorder.

    2. People with only terrestrial analogue are happy with VCRs

    3. The cable market is fragmented technologically.

    4. Digital terrestrial is a new but very small market.

    So they gave up, and I don't blame them - it's a mess.

    B.T.W. Pace have a digital terrestrial HD recorder which might be interesting but it was due before Christmas and there's still no sign.

    Wow I'm boring.
    • You forgot the bit about how, if you deleted all the dross and programming for the mentally handicaped (Kilroy, anything with Andrew Neil etc), it would be hard to fill one channel for any given 24hr period unless you throw in a bunch of films than are already available on video. I don't know what we'll watch after David Attenbourgh snuffs it; at that point I genuinely think I'd be inclined to get rid of the TV altogether.

      TWW

    • There is also no single widely available cable network either and if you do have access, it's typically a local monopoly and it's pretty expensive - typically £20-30/month for a descent package.
      Really? I pay £5/month for cable TV, which gives me far more channels than I want. I pay an additional £35/month for a 1Mbit Cable modem down the same wire. Split 4 ways (shared student house) this works out at £10/month each for broadband and cable TV. The TV portion of this is decode MPEG2 to analogue video -> digitise -> encode to MPEG2 which just seems like a horrible solution) I would buy one. Since I can't, I haven't. The digiboxes supplied by my cable supplier (NTl) are standard models made by Pace, based on a standard for digital TV. If you buy your own igibx, all you need to do is move the card which supplies the encryptino key to the new box. The analogue TV that comes down the same cable can b decoded with a standard TV card. I'm not sure what cable companies you have in your area, but in Swansea (S. Wales) we don't have this problem.
  • According to another thread in the TiVo UK forum [tivocommunity.com], the BBC cocked up. TiVo is NOT pulling our of the UK, just Thompson who make the UK version of the TiVo (though I guess this leaves the UK without a TiVo manufacturer for a while).

    According to the thread this is not the first time this mistake has been made.

  • TiVo died because UK already had better: Sky Plus (Score:5, Insightful)

    by evilandi ( 2800 ) <andrew@aoakley.com> on Friday February 07, 2003 @05:21AM (#5248956) Homepage

    TiVo may have seemed revolutionary in the USA, but in the UK it was just one of many enhanced TV systems.

    TiVo's biggest rival, Sky Plus (Sky+) [sky.com] did everything that TiVo did, and more, came pre-packaged with an installation engineer's visit and had the branding and backing of the UK's largest pay-TV provider, Sky (backed by Rupert Murdoch/Fox corp).

    Sky already had a shedload of TV toys [sky.com]. For instance, I remember one of my business meetings in Texas two years ago, the CEO of this oil firm was saying something like "In the future, you'll be able to watch a football match and zoom in on individual players".

    ...and I thought to myself "I can *ALREADY* do that in the UK with Sky. [skysports.com] We've been able to do it for years! How backwards are these people?"

    Then I glanced down at the predicted coverage map for my GPRS phone in Texas...

    • 2 points here:

      1) Tivo is not pulling out of the UK, Thomson have just stopped making the boxes. Other manufacturers may well step in to start making them.

      2) Tivo was launched in the UK around a year earlier than Sky+, so to say it failed because the UK already had something better is obviously wrong.

    • Re:TiVo died because UK already had better: Sky Pl (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Contact ( 109819 ) on Friday February 07, 2003 @08:41AM (#5249590)
      TiVo's biggest rival, Sky Plus (Sky+) [sky.com] did everything that TiVo did, and more, came pre-packaged with an installation engineer's visit and had the branding and backing of the UK's largest pay-TV provider, Sky (backed by Rupert Murdoch/Fox corp).

      Erm, "everything that TiVO did, and more"? Sky+ doesn't support suggestions, it doesn't support wishlists, season passes don't work as reliably (and until a recent patch used to fail extremely regularly), etc. Sky+ is a fairly good product, but it's much younger than TiVo, and it shows.

  • Hoax (Score:2)

    by nmg196 ( 184961 )
    God I hate slashdot sometimes.

    The posts below the one referenced indicate this is a hoax. If you read the FAQ it contains the following question:

    "I just read TiVo is going to pull out of the UK - is this true? Where can I get a new TiVo box from?
    TiVo are not pulling out of the UK. Read the real truth here. [tivofaq.co.uk]"

    I can't believe that story actually made it on to slashdot.

    Has it got so bad that now even the admins don't read the article?!

    Nick...
    • Fair point - it looks like the service is continuing.

      However, it comes to the same thing in the end.

      I went to comet to try and buy a Tivo on Sunday. They told me they'd run out and no replacement was expected.

      If Tivo arn't getting any new customers then any rate of churn is going to see their subscription income dwindle to zero in short order.

      And they'll shut it down.
    • Sure, TiVo aren't pulling out, just Thompson.

      Try actually *buying* one... staff Dixon's Group stores (including Dixons & Currys) claim never to have heard of it.

      Our local (Edinburgh) Currys superstore has a total of *one* in stock, which the sales staff seem to be doing their best to not sell (compared to the sky+ boxes).

  • The Economist [economist.com] have published an article [economist.com] on the subject today. They conclude that while the TiVo company may be struggling, they revolution they started will continue, as the technology is licensed into a broad range of set top boxes and TVs.

    They also predict that TV advertising will not be killed in the revolution, just the bad advertisements.

  • TiVo the wrong product for the UK (Score:4, Insightful)

    by chrisbtoo ( 41029 ) on Friday February 07, 2003 @05:38AM (#5249005) Journal
    AIUI, the TiVo box works by downloading listings via a dial-up connection, and MPEG-encoding an analogue TV signal.

    The thing is, they released it in the UK after digital TV was "widely" available. IMHO, most of the people that would consider buying a TiVo are likely to be people who have digital TV.

    DVB has digital, in-band listings information that can be updated in real-time if the line-up changes. Additionally, with something like Sky+ or one of the yet-to-surface digital terrestrial or cable DVR boxes, you don't have to decode the MPEG to analogue and then re-encode it to MPEG before you can record it. That makes for a cheaper box, with higher quality audio/video and better compression (so more stuff can be recorded).

    I'm guessing that demand for integrated DVR systems will be much higher than it ever was for TiVo.

  • Firewire outputs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nmg196 ( 184961 ) on Friday February 07, 2003 @06:23AM (#5249107)
    All current PVR/DVR systems are quite restricted in their capability because they only have analog inputs/outputs.

    It's a great shame that people like Sky and NTL (digital satellite and cable operators in the UK) don't put IEEE1394 firewire connectiors (in and out) on all their equipement, so that instead of getting a nice digital signal in MPEG 2 format - converting it to analog, then reencoding it back to MPEG 2 when it would be so easy for the box to just stream out MPEG 2 so that the original source could be recorded unaltered. I can't believe that some enterprising hacker hasn't made an add on board for DVB or digital cable that you can shove inside your box so you can stream the MPEG 2 stream to a PC for digital recording.

    One day all video recorders will be firewire only, record digitally, have access to the program guide and have a built in DVD writer for making recorded shows 'portable'. The thing is, due to lack of innovation, it'll probably take 5-10 years, even though all the technology to do this exists now.

    Nick...
  • of low cost TiVo work-alikes almost ready for the market. TiVo was really nothing more than a Linux PC. If you start from scratch it's possible to build a box with the equivalent functions in a much smaller and cheaper package. Plus, if you pull the TV schedules from teletext rather than via a subscription service it gets even cheaper.

    I expect to see a product (packaged as a 6" cube) in the shops by next Christmas.
    • Tivos were selling for £150, last time I looked. I think you'd be hard pressed to put something together from scratch that came in for less than £200...

      If you were going stay small, you'd need a mini-itx [mini-itx.com] or similar, and one of them plus case plus a video capture card would already put you up to your £150 limit, and that's before you add in memory and a hard drive, not to mention a remote control.

      Even after that, you need the software for it, and none of the free projects doing this kind of thing have reached anywhere near Tivo functionality yet.

      The only way you'd make it cheaper than a Tivo is if you were using bits of old computers you've got lying around, which sure as hell isn't going to make it small or quiet.
  • Apart from ebay, is there anywhere in the UK one can purchase a Tivo nowadays?

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