TiVo is looking to expand their influence.
TiVo to Let Users Buy Movie Tickets, Check Traffic
New Services they plan to offer include the ability to purchase movie tickets, check traffic and weather, listen to radio and podcasts, and view photos on Yahoo!.
Seems an ass-backwards approach when compared to say, Microsoft, who started with a computer OS, and then added media center functionality. Wonder which approach will work better.
the thing that amazes me is that it took them this goddamned long to make stuff like this publicly available. it’s like they fired all the engineers at tivo in like 2001 and are just now hiring new ones.
It shouldn’t be surprising that it took this long. The groundwork for these features, Home Media Engine, was first rolled out in early 2005. They’d been working on it since TiVo acquired Strangeberry and begin integrating their features into the TiVo. And TiVo has been continually introducing new features. Keep in mind they had engineering commitments for the DirecTV platform. Then they developed the DVD-RW platform which was licensed by Pioneer, Toshiba, and Humax. They’ve made a number of additions to the units over the years, and not just the splashy ones like the originally Home Media Option and then later Home Media Engine.
And for features like these you need content partners. In this case, Yahoo, Fandango, and Live365. TiVo now has over 1.3 million standalone users, a little over 300,000 of those users have their TiVo’s connected to broadband, and the percentage is rapidly increasing. Until they had enough Series2 standalone users on broadband (remember, DirecTV blocks these things, and without broadband you can’t use them), TiVo wasn’t an interesting partner. They’re subscriber base is finally to the point that it is becoming attractive to other companies – which we’ve seen with the increase in TiVo ad sales, as well as content partnerships like these.
I don’t think the Tivo:Microsoft analogy is valid at all. The TiVo is a specialized device that runs a suite of software designed explicitly for that device; Microsoft, by contrast, is a huge company that writes a very large number of applications designed to work properly on wide range of hardware configurations. It’s as if GM decided to add a DVR and a system to get traffic reports to their next model of automobile; are they in competition with Microsoft because you can also watch television on your computer?
How many households run MCE on their televisions? I would wager that the number is a small fraction of the total DVR users. For better or for worse, Microsoft has not seriously entered this market, and the limited entry they have made into it depends entirely on hardware vendors over which they have little direct control (such as HP).
(Disclaimer: From my limited experience with MCE, I vastly prefer it to TiVo but do not prefer it to software like MythTV that supports open formats and many opportunities for user customization.)
The move by TiVo, as Dave suggests, is long overdue, considerations about the company’s other priorities not withstanding. Home Media Engine was almost certainly not a requirment for adding the ability for a TiVo to display traffic reports to the software — or if it was, then they have seriously deficient engineers working for them. Commitments to partners like DirecTV, as important as they may be, can only take resources away from the more important goal of producing an improved software platform for the devices, insofar as those commitments require engineering work that does not also further that goal.
The fact that TiVo is only now expanding their software to include additional features like those mentioned in the linked article is a serious strategic blunder for the company, at least IMHO, because they have already lost significant market opportunities. Consider, for example, that several large cable providers, including Comcast, have chosen to offer less functional but substantially cheaper DVR units along with their other services. Each customer who chooses to rent such a box does so because the device offers functionality substantially identical to recent versions of the TiVo platform, but at a vastly reduced price.
In my view, TiVo has made other errors of judgement. Adding advertising, attempting to “lock down” recent versions of the recoder to prevent user customization (”hacking”), supporting so-called “DRM” restrictions on what content can be recorded and how long it can be viewed for, etc., have alienated the core market segment for DVRs while coming at the expense of more visible features that may have driven increased consumer satisfaction with the device itself. You can’t bill “now less hack-able”, or, “now with more restrictive DRM support!” as a feature in your advertisting.
The fact that the company is now trumpeting the ability to get traffic reports on your TiVo as some sort of break-through — hardly an awe-inspiring new feature — seems to me to be an attempt, made too late, at creating renewed customer interest in their mediocre platform.
Actually, J, I find your analogy flawed.
The differences are not, as you point out, even remotely comparable to your GM analogy. Your statement:
“The TiVo is a specialized device that runs a suite of software designed explicitly for that device; Microsoft, by contrast, is a huge company that writes a very large number of applications designed to work properly on wide range of hardware configurations.”
is incorrect if applied to the only operating system Microsoft offers that has any integrated media features (such as DVR), Windows MCE. While it is true that Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition 2005 does indeed run on a more substantial and diverse list of hardware, it is not a universal solution. Adding drivers for new hardware, while possible, is still not supported for the end-user. In fact, Windows MCE has not ever been released as a standalone OS to the public. It is OEM only. And its predecessor, MCE 2004, did not even allow the addition of new hardware! (Hacks not withstanding).
So one could argue, and indeed I am, that given Microsoft’s own admission of a desire to replace all the technology in the livingroom with one of their branded consoles or at least a machine running their OS, and given their strides forward in getting to that goal, that TiVo is indeed playing catch-up. Since TiVo started as a DVR and is only now adding other functionality that any ordinary PC can perform, it’s easy to see how they are running counter to MS’s strategy.
As I said, I wonder which approach will come out a winner. While I hope for substantial competition in the marketplace, I must admit that Microsoft seems to have an edge. I use Windows MCE 2005, and find its ease of use and robust feature set to be way beyond anything TiVo has in the pipe.
I agree with you that TiVo is a mediocre platform, although I am forced to ask how much of your criticism stems from impartial comparison and how much from you rancor due to their somewhat chafing new business practices.
This is the part where I point out that tivo is just a linux box running a very nice, very slick interface on top of some reasonably stock hardware. The technical hurdles to be overcome in offering anything MCE can offer are fairly low. The biggest would, I believe, be UI-related. Their unwillingness to offer a larger variety of features can only, I presume, be attributed to their desire to not piss off the content providers. I’m hoping their recent “download from your tivo to your ipod/psp” play signals a change in that area.
That being said, I don’t think that these features are really going to be pulling anyone in, on either platform. Offering PC functionality on a TV screen has yet to be proven to be a compelling sell. Microsoft stating it wants to own your living room doesn’t mean it’s a fait accompli *cough*webtv*cough*. In fact, I think their only serious chance of getting that done is via the 360, not through HTPCs. And the strategy there is similar to what Palm did with the PDA. They stopped trying to put a PC in your hand and put something that was an extension of your existing PC there instead.
Quoting Caesar over at ars:
With the price of a laptop with integrated wireless dropping below $500, I don’t see people buying a PC just to put in their living room instead, especially when that PC is substantially pricier. They’ll take the limited functionality of the $8/mo cable box dvr.
If it helps, think about trying to explain to an aunt or something why she should buy an HTPC.
you> It lets you use a real computer from your living room, and it does all the recording stuff that the cable company wants to charge you an extra $8/mo to do.
aunt> I don’t want a keyboard hanging off my tv.
you> We can get you a wireless one, no problem. And most of the stuff you can do using the remote anyway.
aunt> But why can’t I get one of those cheap laptops from walmart? Then I could look up recipies in the kitchen while I’m cooking, too.
you> You can just print them out, auntie.
aunt> That printer runs out of ink every week, and it costs more than the printer did for a new cartridge.
you> But this way you can add a new hard drive for more space when you need it.
aunt> Your uncle got us a dvd recorder at walmart for $60. If I put my shows on a dvd, I can give ‘em to my friend Mabel when I’m done with ‘em.
I can go on, but you see where I’m going with this. HP’s “digital entertainment centers” run a minimum of $1500. Dell’s “entertainment pcs” run as low as $550, which is a huge improvement over what they used to charge you, but they’re PC form-factor, not something most people want to put in their entertainment center. Add to that the fact that stores are actively pimping dvd recorders and tivos, cable companies are pimping their dvr solutions, and nobody seems to really want to sell HTPCs, and I don’t see a compelling argument in favor of MS being able to take over your living room with MCE.
Well, maybe yours, Carl, but everyone knows you’re MS’ bitch anyway.
Also, we’re all dancing around the fact that everyone and his mother who is seriously interested in making a play for the living room is stuck waiting for cablecard 2.0 to come out. I can hear the gnashing of teeth at tivo headquarters all the way over here in Southborough on that front.
While the economics seem to be a more compelling argument for TiVo, the truth is it isn’t that economical. Face it, the cheapest these boxes go for now is about $50 after rebate, provided you purchase the subscription for at least a year. At $13 a month, that’s $156 + $50, plus you continue paying the sub for the EPG after that or have it crippled. If you just buy the lifetime sub, that’s $299, bringing the cost of this box up to $349. Now it isn’t all that much cheaper than the Dell boxes. And the Dell boxes do more. Ugly, yes, but functional.
And the new Media Connect software from Microsoft allows all the wonderful streaming you spoke of, without the cumbersome set-up worries. I’ve been playing with it over the past few days, and while I have some security concerns, the feature set IS nice.
First, people never look at the full cost of things. Ever. Nobody reads the fine print. They just look at the flashy “$50 after rebate!” and buy it. And even with the lifetime sub, it’s still $200 cheaper than the cheapest dell htpc. Which is an additional 60% or so price increase. Not something to scoff at. All to get something that looks really ugly, is harder to learn, and has a marginal increase in functionality for most peoples’ purposes.
Don’t discount the ugly factor (cf. ipod vs. the rest of the mp3 player market), and especially don’t discount the hard to learn factor. Tivo managed to sell to people who were afraid to try to program a vcr because they spent a lot of time and money getting the interface right, right down to the remote control. Hell, they even include nice big color pictures explaining the different wiring strategies you might want to use, down to showing you pictures of each different type of cable and plug.
But you missed (or dodged) my main point, which was that people who want to do pc things in their living room are going to want a cheap laptop, not a cheap htpc. If they even know what an htpc is in the first place, since nobody’s really been spending any money marketing those things.
Carl, how does anything you wrote even address what I said? You wrote that TiVo’s approach was “ass-backwards” when compared to Microsoft, because Microsoft started out by writing an operating system. Why does that even matter? Does everyone who wants to write a DVR application have to start off by writing an operating system? The comparison between the two “approaches” is totally flawed — it’s like saying that anyone who wants to write an office application needs to start out by writing their own operating system, otherwise they’re just playing “catch-up” to Microsoft, which is just absurd.
As for MCE, it’s just Windows XP with a DVR application layered on top. That’s it. Pretty much exactly the same thing that TiVo was already doing years earlier, as Dave points out in his comment above. Which is why it’s all the more surprising that MCE has become a much more functional platform than TiVo — what’s TiVo been doing for the past three years? Oh, that’s right, they had that deal with DirecTV. Glad to see that spending all that time adapting the software for the DirecTV deal worked out so well for them.
Finally, TiVo’s new business practices haven’t “chafed” on me at all, since my Series 1 model hasn’t had a software update in two or three years. I was evaluating each software package based on my limited experiences with them. I liked the MCE software better, in part because the machine could be used to run regular Windows software, such as games or a web browser — and I liked MythTV even more because it offers that same advantage, while also offering the flexibility of recording shows into an open media file format.
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