The Trouble With TiVo 369
BobCratchit writes "Multichannel News has an interesting take on TiVo: The DVR company has incredible mindshare but is totally dependent on cable providers to survive. Cable does not have many good reasons to let TiVo thrive. As a result, TiVo is destined to fade away unless it can carve out a niche as the cool kids' DVR (a la Macintosh) with products like the $299 HD DVR it just announced. From the article: 'TiVo has long been a darling of consumer-tech reviewers -- check out, for example, these happy hosannas from BusinessWeek, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. These guys are constantly befuddled that TiVo hasn't been more successful. Yes, TiVos make cute little popping noises when you click the remote. And they definitely provide cool features, like suggesting shows you might be interested in. But the cognoscenti enamored with TiVo's whizziness ignore a certain reality. It's easier to get a DVR from your cable company. And most people prefer to rent, not own, a set-top.'"
well it seems like the obvious thing.... (Score:3, Insightful)
TiVo Over Cable (Score:2, Insightful)
Get what you pay for (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone I've let play with my Tivo for a while thinks it's cool, but to really appreciate getting cherry-picked recommendations, automatic deletions, season tickets, video podcasts, and other features it's gotta be in your home.
It's too bad TiVo isn't in such great financial shape because all they'd really have to do is give away a bunch of boxes for free and let people play with them for a month. They have it now, pure leased boxes where you just pay your subscription. But it's pricey.
I wonder if they could get puchased by a company with more financial backing.
Re:well it seems like the obvious thing.... (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Not invented here. Cable companies didn't think of it so it's bad. Period. No logic. Just bad.
2. Negatively affects ratings. Since most "cable companies" are subsidiaries of the entertainment conglomerates, you bet the word comes from the mountain top that pvr's are bad. Dings ratings, failure to fully monetize their content.
3. Most consumers believe renting the box is a benefit. This is a dead end for consumers for a million reasons. None of which have to do with convenience.
Tivo apparently has great PR to get reviews by all of those media outlets. Too bad the media conglomerates are one of their biggest advertisers. The good reviews will come to an end for no good reason other than the media conglomerates want tivo dead.
Makes sense to me (Score:2, Insightful)
$10/month from the cable company and you're done (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:well it seems like the obvious thing.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You missed a big one. CONTROL.
Cable companies control the entire DVR user experience when you rent/buy their boxes. (If you buy a box off eBay, the cable company will "update" its firmware).
TiVo doesn't let them do that. Instead of ads plastered everywhere (mine - if you scroll the guide (which only shows 5 channels because the full-screen guide has the top half used) using the up/down buttons, they stick an ad at the bottom of the list, reducing the guide to only 4 channels long, but the ad is a "hotspot" now, so it takes 5 button pushes) - TiVo only lets them have one at the bottom of the main menu (rotates) with the rest hidden under a "Showcase" menu.
It's also not like TiVo can't support stuff like Video On Demand or Pay Per View (I don't use it, I don't care, my "bonus" coupons from the cable company haven't been touched) - they did PPV stuff just fine with DirecTV.
Also, I suspect they know once people go TiVo, they're not going back. There are a lot of unhappy DirecTV customers since the DirecTiVo was discontinued (and I'm sure, many ex-DirecTV customers from those who left when it was revealed that the replacement DVRs are crap, much like the cable DVR). So the Cable company really doesn't want to be beholden to people who get used to TiVo, and who'll leave their cable service behind when they decide to abandon TiVo. They want a nice audience who'll sit infront of the TV, without considering alternative TV providers.
Re:Shouda stayed with DirecTV (Score:3, Insightful)
Enough with the homebrew! (Score:5, Insightful)
Guys (and it's usually guys), we luff ya, but get over it.
It's wicked kewl thyat you can take a spare PC, install some clever software on it, find a source for TV listings, and make it do amazing tricks. Really. Wow. Awesome. Yay you!
But many of the rest of us aren't interested in doing that ourselves. For us, an appliance, like a TiVo, is the way to go. A black box, paying for a service contract, IT JUST WORKS.
I diddle with enough technology, I don't want to with my DVR. I just want it to have a great interface and a steady supply of programming that engages me. Everything else is gravy (and yes, the Tivo has some gravy too.)
So please, whenever you hear the name "TiVo" don't go into a pavlovian MythTV-MythTV-MythTV chant.
We get it. We got it. We're getting annoyed over it. We're getting to the point you're not getting invited to the fun parties because you can't restrain yourselves. Soon you'll be in pushed into the holy roller corner with the Operalytes (poor souls).
Some folks can't understand why anyone would watch TV. Some can't understand why anyone would pay for it. Some can't see a need for a DVR. Some can't see the need for paying a bit more for a TiVo DVR. Some can't understand whyeveryone doesn't just whittle their own DVR out of pine. Please, live and let live and let us hold a discussion without your pulling your homebrew out and wagging at us. It's big, that's nice, now let us talk about the conumer product we're interested in.
It's the subscription. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:TiVo Over Cable (Score:2, Insightful)
Tivo's DVR may be better, but I refuse to pay $12.95 per month for tv listings I can find for free on the internet. I could live with $3.00 a month, and I'll bet Tivo could too.
Sorry, Tivo, you have priced yourself out of the market.
Three quick easy ways for TIVO to Dominate... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Ethernet Network connectivity to allow access to the web as well as network diskspace
2. Allow the users FULL control of the device (i.e. if you hit that 30sec skip button, do the 30 sec skip....)
3. Allow ability to record shows to physical media such as DVD, BluRay, or HDDVD
There you have it. The big three. The first company to release such a device will dominate the market as this is what the consumer wants, not what Hollywood wants. Remember we are a capitalist society, which means the consumer is in charge of what they want, not the corporations (even though the corporations do not want to admit this, their income is directly tied to the consumers purchasing their products).
Re:Myth and cablecard (Score:2, Insightful)
OTOH, I don't have to enter a secret code to get my 30-second skip back after a brownout.
Re:$10/month from the cable company and you're don (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the cable co's DVR sucks. If you have low standards this may not mean much to you, but a lot of people think having a quality product is a reason for a company to survive.
Re:TiVo Features (Score:3, Insightful)
If the owner of the content believed you wouldn't redistribute their content in ways they do not sanction, they might allow Tivo to record it to such an unencumbered format. Problem is, the content owners know for a fact that while you personally may not redistribute people in general will.
How much would you sell your commercial-free archive for? Wouldn't this tend to diminish (if not eliminate) the value of the boxed DVD set the content owner wants to sell? Oh yeah, since they broadcast it they have no rights to the material after that, right? Why should the content owner help in creating a competitor?
Re:DVR (Score:3, Insightful)
My local cable company offers a DVR for a $5 a month rental, if I order the HD Cable package I get one for free. Where is my incentive to buy a Tivo? Not only will have to pay $X hundred up front for the device but I STILL have to pay a subscription fee. Not only that but the HD models aren't compatible with my cable providers HD service.
If I'm going to spend a few hundred dollars I'd rather build myself a SageTV or MythTV box and forget about the subscription fees. At least then I can use the hardware for whatever I want instead of just TV recording duties.
With the options available I simply can't justify buying a TiVo, it's the most expansive, least upgradeable, and least compatible of all the options. And while you could say the same for some wildly popular Apple products, those products sell themselves on style and ease of use... which is something that TiVo doesn't have either, considering it's interface is only marginally better than the alternatives, and style wise I (and probably most people) find it rather ugly. At least with a homebuilt box I can pick the case that best matches my media room.
Re:DVR (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:DVR (Score:3, Insightful)
I can get $LESSER_QUALITY THING for less money than $HIGHER_QUALITY_THING. What's my incentive to buy $HIGHER_QUALITY_THING?
It's the age-old question. Why buy any car but a used Yugo? Why buy a bigger house if a smaller house is cheaper? Why buy real food from a grocery store when you can get a burrito from Taco Bell for less than a buck?
Seriously? Isn't that illegal now? I thought all US cable providers were required to provide CableCards now to allow 3rd party set-top boxes like Tivo full access to all their non-interactive services.
Re:DVR (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Three quick easy ways for TIVO to Dominate... (Score:2, Insightful)
Network diskpace? What are you thinking? 95% of people would have no idea how to set this up or fix a problem if one came up. YouTube access might be nice for the under 35 (or younger) crowd, but the majority of people older than that really just aren't going to give a shit, and it would, as pointed out by others, open Tivo up to (unfounded) lawsuits from big media.
Full control? Seriously, do you think you're talking about the mass consumer here? You're not, your talking about gadget and computer nerds, a small segment of the consumer nation. Most people do not want to hack their boxes, they want something that just works, works simply, works well and (hopefully) works cheap.
They have released DVD burning Tivos and they did not sell well. Granted, they were expensive, but nobody really cared about it either.
Re:DVR (Score:3, Insightful)
That is one of the biggest reasons I went with Myth - I wanted some control over my data. Now I can make my video partition as big as I want, or shrink it at any time I feel like it. I can RAID-5 my storage and not worry about losing 250 hours of TV when a hard drive crashes (a matter of when and not if). I can skip commercials with one click 95% of the time, and jump arbitrary numbers of minutes when that doesn't work. The files are mostly just standard mpg files so I can do what I want with them easily enough (ok - minor rant - what possessed them to write their own player instead of just using an established one as the core? It is WAY to finicky about input file formats...).
Sure, it isn't perfect, but it beats a green screen of death with no easy way to recover and resorting to all kinds of shifty websites to download images.