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.'"
Renting == Future Model (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't own a cellphone, you rent it.
You don't own the DVR, you rent it.
You don't own that DVD, you license it.
Pretty soon, you will not 'own' your 'Personal' Computer, you will rent it.
You already effectivly rent the software, it works for the MMORPG, it can work for Microsoft Word.
It's a way to ensure a 100% foolproof revenue stream.
Re:Renting == Future Model (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah,yeah, you can call it subscribing to the guide service, but then why does it completely stop working when I stop paying? it should work as a VCR and let me access everything I recorded when on the service.
I know that some of the wierder DVD recorders have a "tivo basic" that does just that, but the older Tivo's and the new HD units dont.
Great Things for TiVo (Score:5, Interesting)
It works. All the time, every time, with minor exceptions. I have a wife who loves certain TV programs and will easily strangle anything that doesn't work and record them like they should.
It doesn't require a degree to run Sure, it might lack some more complex features that some people like. It might make annoying, "to-TOINK!", noises when you move around. But an idiot with a blindfold could sort it out, and that makes it easy on me. Not that my wife's an idiot; far from it. But I don't need to be explaining to her how to run the damned TV.
I can screw with it Because I own the box, it's mine. I can hack it, fiddle with it, change out hard drives, use them for something else, add to it, paint it, whatever I want. I might void my warranty, but whoop-de-do. I can because I own it.
what TiVo needs to do is: (Score:1, Interesting)
Loved ours but... (Score:2, Interesting)
How can Tivo hope to stay around if they are going to treat loyal customers like this? They won't easily get anymore business from us because of this, no matter how much we liked them...
Anyone have any ideas as to what I can do with my old Tivo hardware?
Re:Renting == Future Model (Score:3, Interesting)
Except you own the hardware, and can do anything you want with it. By your definition, you "rent" cellphones, too, since if you stop paying, it doesn't work (well, emergency calls do, but TiVo works as a nice TV tuner with a 1/2 hour trick play buffer, too).
Try that with your cablebox DVR - open it up, pop out the hard drive. Then return it. You'll find that you'll be charged some huge fee because the cablebox "doesn't work - user tampering". With TiVo, you own the hardware. Even if you buy one brand new from the store, you can drop it out of a plane to look at the crater it makes. You can't return it, but hey. If you stop paying your Cable company, they'll want the box back and charge you some huge fee because it's broken.
Re:DVR (Score:2, Interesting)
Although I suppose it's even worse now that I have to compile it to parallel-process on a couple of Opterons just to be able to do 1080p. Once my setup upgrades start costing less than $2000, I'll upgrade to HDTV
TiVo Lite versus DIY (Score:3, Interesting)
Is there any Series III hack yet to avoid the TiVo subscription in favor of an open source solution?
Re:Shouda stayed with DirecTV (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:DVR (Score:3, Interesting)
Like the equivalent of a pre-built MythTV box. Or a Media Center-ish small form factor PC for the living room. Or like an AppleTV, with a service to download stuff. The kind of thing that's powerful, but that grandma could use.
And cheap program data, cheap hard drive upgrades, DVD burning, the whole works. Not the expensive, limited, single-purpose box it is now. Until then, I'll be happy with my own custom box. But I won't recommend it for grandma.
Re:Great Things for TiVo (Score:1, Interesting)
It does the things you're most likely to want, it does them well, and it does them easily and reliably.
I also run BeyondTV on a PC, which can remove commercials, but it doesn't do it perfectly, so I'd rather use TiVo and skip manually. I haven't used any other DVRs but I hear about them crashing, failing to record, and so on.
Re:Renting == Future Model (Score:2, Interesting)
What tivo needs to survive (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It's the subscription. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:DVR (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong, I really like MythTV, but when it loses its only source of reliable guide data, I anticipate some serious problems.
Re:$10/month from the cable company and you're don (Score:3, Interesting)
for the record, my series2DT tivo has 2 tuners, so i can watch and record different channels at the same time, or record 2 channels and watch a third on the cable setting on my tv, having it split to both my tivo and my tv's coax input.
i had a tuner break on my tivo. only one of them had the issue (it was black and white), but the other tuner worked fine. even though i'm out of the original warranty, they replaced it for free (well, they charged me for the new box until they received the old one).
i don't get a guide with my extended basic cable, so i get that with my tivo subscription.
my tivo remote integrated perfectly with my tv and is able to change channels (though i usually change them with the tivo), turn the power on and off, adjust the volume, and switch between the various inputs.
i also happen to like the little sound it makes.
i bought the tivo wireless adapter on sale at amazon and it connected flawlessly to my WPA2 protected, MAC filtered, hidden SSID wireless network without a hitch and has never lost connection. it connects smoothly to my computer to grab music, movie, and image files. my computer easily grabs tivo recordings without issue as well.
since i don't care about having digital cable or HD content, i see no reason to switch.
Wireless Spectrum, Google, and TiVo (Score:5, Interesting)
What DO you get if you put these together?
The author of the article apparently perceives support of 4.3 million fanatic users as a burden!!??!!! I propose that Google would do well to buy TiVo.
Granted, there are additional costs beyond an acquisition: building the wireless infrastructure, merging it all together... but to put this in perspective, I just checked market caps:
- GOOG [cnn.com] $158 Billion ($158,390 Million)
- TIVO [cnn.com] $.55 Billion ($000,550 Million)
(NB: GOOG's Market Cap went up $190M while I was writing this post.)Lessee, $4.6B + $0.55B = $5.1B for nation-wide reach, a fanatic user-base (TiVo users), direct access to what customers are watching (more data!), YouTube tie-in capability (they already have a distributed video infrastructure)... what's not to like?
Heck, google could afford to give TiVos away, and have a guaranteed platform on which to sell its ads - nationwide, just for a few $billion more.
Prediction: if Google gets the wireless spectrum it is looking for, I expect to see "GooTiVo" (TM) within a year.
Re:DVR (Score:4, Interesting)
Off air recording (Score:3, Interesting)