Author: Jonathan Greene

Good thing it’s free… though waiting 5 hours to copy a 1 hour program on your network hardly justifies the service. I’ll be interested in reading more when more people connect and we get some public feedback with how well wired ethernet works.

In short, TivoToGo isn’t really usable for me unless I seriously plan ahead or until Tivo adds support for 802.11g adapters. This is disappointing to say the least as I had been waiting for this feature for some time. I’m surprised Tivo didn’t make sure to support at least one faster adapter in anticipation of TivoToGo. [Obvious Diversion]

I’d love to see cable companies offer a way to copy programs. They already have the flagging technology and the DRM enabled, why not extend their reach a bit through the set-top. Quite a few boxes have USB or Firewire which would allow an adapter (for ethernet, wired or wireless) or a direct connection. I realize this is a huge can of worms… but people seem to want this, so why not smack Tivo down another notch with a better ToGo feature.

The New York Times is running a story with some key insight into why Tivo is only where it is today… Ignorance. Tivo’s CEO and Chairman, Michael Ramsey just simply could not let go and this is clearly pushed them down the road to failure.

Tivo is still a niche player even though their brand outweighs the number of units sold, an estimated 2.3 Million. By ignoring the inevitable future, that DVR functionality was more commodity than secret sauce, they allowed anyone interested in entering the market to cruise past them with ease. It can certainly be argued that the Tivo system is more sophisticated with greater flexibility and features, but the failure to market that early on, made it difficult to choose Tivo when you could get a box for free from your cable company.

2 Tuners and HDTV are two significant advances that cable carriers were able to deliver at virtually no cost (set-tops are usually free) to subscribers. The boxes from carriers also come with an installer in many cases and are easy to swap out should you run into an issue – something you’d have to send out for with Tivo and if you a re out of warranty, you might find yourself having to pay for repairs if there was a hardware failure.

The amazing thing is that apparently Tivo was pretty close to doing a deal with Comcast last year, but Ramsey backed out in the final hours thinking they should be getting more money.

After months of hard bargaining, TiVo reached an agreement last summer to offer its pioneering video recording system to customers of the Comcast cable system, according to several people involved in the discussions.

It was potentially a critical deal for TiVo, because Comcast is by far the biggest cable system and also because control of DirecTV, the satellite system that has been the biggest distributor of TiVo, had been bought by the News Corporation, which also owns a TiVo rival.

Yet, at the last minute, Michael Ramsay, TiVo’s chief executive, decided to pull out of the deal. Comcast was not going to pay TiVo enough money or give it enough control over its service, Mr. Ramsay told the company’s board, according to people involved in those discussions.

TiVo’s board backed Mr. Ramsay, a brilliant and headstrong Scottish engineer, who wanted to focus on new technologies to attract customers directly – without distribution of the service by cable or satellite TV companies. But a debate about whether the company made the right choice raged in its executive suite and boardroom.

Here’s a tip… less profit per box but installations in the homes of the largest cable company in the country is better than remaining a niche also ran. As long as the deal was not exclusive, it would most likely lead to deals with other carriers looking to keep up. Comcast is testing all kinds of new DVR and HD systems and probably wants to go with leading edge stuff… the kind of tech Tivo has, well had. Now it simply does not matter. When their HD Cable Card box comes out next year, it will have to fight an even steeper uphill battle for the attention of many already installed HD and SD DVRs courtesy of cable companies across the country.

I’ve been thinking about a post Andrew made at Treonauts on the Third Screen (your mobile) and how even though there are most likely going to be 3 Million users of the Treo alone by year end, there are no video services like you see for other handhelds. Andrew cites a fair number of initiatives that have become public lately all dealing with delivering video to your pocket, but none are Treo or are even Palm compatible.

The device can handle this (try loading a Kinoma MP4 file on a server), assuming a quick, 1XRTT or EDGE connection, the minimum required on the other services. I think the real issue comes down to how the Treo itself is marketed. It’s a business tool, not a consumer device regardless of how many of us are buying it with our own money, instead of corporate expense accounts. palmOne has made this clear again and again with the (granted limited) marketing efforts they have put forth. The limited TV and print that has run for Treo has always been focused on connectivity and remote productivity. There’s no time for fun it seems when you are simply getting it done.

If they were able to focus (and run different themed campaigns against different targets), you might find a carrier specific deal that would push this as an advanced service. Instead, we find nothing from either palmOne or PalmSource who might actually be the more likely of the two to push capabilities.