SharkJumping

The CEO of Tivo, Tom Rogers (earlier post here), announced that Tivo may give away its DVR's for free with a long term subscription.  What was the market and industry reaction?  Yawn....   Why is that?  It's because Tivo is unfortunately no longer a market or thought leader.  When was the last time someone talked about their Tivo?  It's a big change from being featured on sitcoms ("My Tivo thinks I'm gay) a few years ago, and where users like me were bragging about how cool this service was.

Why the changes?

• Tivo hasn't kept up with the technologies - there is still no stand alone dual tuner box (can watch 2 shows at once) and still no High Def box, leaving the opening wide for the cable and satellite companies to pitch their superior offerings.
• The cable and satellite firms have redoubled efforts to address the category after ignoring it for the first couple of years - the bundled offerings give users fewer boxes and are easier to set up.
• News Corp's DirecTV unit, responsible for 2/3 of all 4M Tivo subs, has started to sever ties with Tivo in order to very aggressively push its own DVR's.  Tivo doesn't have any real control over its existing DirecTV subs, so its actual addressable customer base is much smaller than what it first appears.
• The better Tivo software and user interface hasn't improved all that much in the last few years, allowing competitive services to get closer in functionality and appearance.  Although Tivo is probably still better, it's not $5-10 a month better...
• Which is why its announced deal with Comcast to offer Tivo as a premium DVR option no longer is attractive as it first seemed since the market has caught up with them.  I just don't believe that even a small percentage of users are going to choose to pay an extra fee to download the Tivo interface to their Comcast box.
  
• Finally, some of the really cool offerings with the Tivo2, such as the ability to offer extra functionality through the box like movie tickets and Tivo-to-Go portable content, haven't taken off due to either better alternatives or a lack of applicable portable hardware.

So what's the future?  Not much, unless Tivo can protect its IP with a win in its lawsuit against DISH/Echostar, which would then presumably be followed by additional lawsuits and possible settlements.   A year ago I would have thought that they would be an attractive acquisition for a variety of companies, but I think they're instead just sliding into irrelevancy - Comcast would seem to be the most likely buyer, but I suppose any set top maker, such as Cisco, would be interested as well.

I blogged about my lousy experience a few weeks ago attempting to have Comcast install TV and High Speed services at my house - see post.  We tried again last week, and it was a much better experience, with a great technician who showed up on time and who was pleasant, knowledgeable and efficient.  The short of it is that after a few days with the Comcast high speed and DVR/HD/OnDemand services, I don't think the satellite gang (DirecTV and Echostar) or telcos (ATT, Verizon) can match the cable offering, at least without the staggeringly expensive and time-consuming fiber build out that the telcos are doing.

High Speed
I'm seeing real world download speeds of 6MB+ from Comcast, about double what I was seeing before.  I didn't think that would matter in most cases, but it starts to be noticeable as we spend more time with rich media and as we attach more Internet-connected devices in the house.   I'm noticing a slight delay in the initial connection, but am not sure if that's Comcast or my network, and the speed is snappy right after it.  On the upload speed, 350KB+ is what I'm seeing, which is fine, but I still think the telcos could differentiate a bit for a decent group of users by focusing on a robust upstream offering (and no, I have not had the energy yet to dive back into the port-forwarding situation that is Sling Media to see if I can get that to work).

DVR and HD
I have a Motorola DCT 6412 dual tuner HD DVR with a 60 hour video capacity (15 for HD).  This was a key reason for the switch since DVR's break about once a year in my experience, and I definitely didn't want to pay $500+ for an HD one, as the satellite services want consumers to do.  The interface could use a little bit of work since searching isn't quite as easy as I hoped, but all of the basic DVR functionality is there, and the integrated box works nicely, especially now that I programmed the remote to skip 30 seconds forward.  You can record 2 shows at once, although not 2 HD shows.  You can't access the DVR from the other television, as I could with the Dish 522 box, but we never really did it, and you can access On Demand from there, which is a great alternative.  The HD programming is a little more limited than I have seen from DISH, but it has all of the basics such as local networks (key, especially for Olympics), premium channels, ESPN and a couple of others, and after watching the Olympics in HD, there is no way to go back to SD.

On Demand
I originally thought that the smaller hard drive size would be a big issue (vs my DISH 522 with 100 hours), but what has been the revelation to me has been the strength of Comcast's On Demand free VOD system, especially as a parent.  The non-kids offerings are a mixed bag of content, with some real gems, but also a lot of random stuff, and an interface overwhelmed by the amount of content.  However, the children's offerings are so good that there is no need to record any shows on the DVR since there is such a breadth and depth of kids shows.  Given that this is a feature which satellite can't easily match due to its delivery method, I can see why Comcast is pouring it on in this area, especially since it is almost like having a DVR on every TV.

Conclusion
When I switched to DISH 2.5 years ago, it was because the because the integrated DVR/satellite system was simply a better offering - more channels, high quality, big DVR and lower price.  On the high speed side, the DSL offerings were slower, but cheap enough that it didn't matter for that type of content.   I can definitely say that the landscape has changed right now, and that the Comcast offerings are clearly superior to the alternatives, and probably worth a 10-20% premium over competing systems, which is the premium I'm paying after discounts.  The only way I see that being challenged in the short term is by the new fiber systems from ATT & Verizon, but we're a long way from seeing wide spread distribution of those offerings.

Dick Cheney - just sticking in random hot search words to see if it matters to blog search engines