DrunkenBlog

 Posted by: Tony at January 22, 2005 10:54 PM

Having to pull together the content and technology companies must be a nightmare. Sony is the only one who has them both and who I am watching. Everyone else has to please too many others. Sony has said they are realizing their mistakes and they are the only company with the big entertainment division and the big technology division. Everyone else has to make deals. Set-top box of the future here we come... maybe with the PlayStation 3?

 Posted by: mindflayer at January 23, 2005 04:04 AM

But even TiVo is starting to kowtow to the media industry. Playing nice should not always mean subservience…

 Posted by: Chris Karr at January 23, 2005 07:14 AM

The only one who has really impressed me in this area is Tivo, they have some serious balls and seem to be all about giving the consumer what they want. Their new to-go stuff is just kick-ass. We all speculate about everyone else, and Sony is the sleeping giant here, but Tivo has been the one to try to grab the brass ring. Unfortunately they're pissing off all the content makers in the process.

Unfortunately, that used to be true, but no longer is. Tivo had wonderful cross-platform plans for TivoToGo, but that has fallen by the wayside as they have adopted WindowsMedia-based DRM for their videos. Furthermore, they've been caving to content-owners' interests quite a bit over the past two years. Part of this is to avoid being sued into oblivion like ReplayTV, but there's a strong sentiment amongst the the Tivo user community that Tivo has lost that innovative spirit and has decided on a strategy of appeasing content-owners instead of madly innovating as they were known for in years past. There's a good post summarizing this at Ed Felten's blog.

I used to be a diehard member of the cult of Tivo, but given its recent actions, I've been slowly migrating away from Tivo to a hybrid video archiving and sharing system based off of BeyondTV and misc. Mac applications. It's not as smooth as Tivo, but on the other hand, I have full control over the video - I can put some on my laptop, edit out the commercials, use clips in my own videos, and so forth. While I hesitate to fall into the "Mac Mini is going to be Apple's PVR" conspiracy camp, I have to admit that with Apple + Elgato's EyeTV stuff, all the pieces are there, and just waiting for a nice app to integrate it all.

 Posted by: drunkenbatman at January 23, 2005 01:19 PM

You raise a good point regarding them having to bow to the pressure from the content creators, I was more speaking of their Tivo2go functionality in general. I was seriously surprised that they were getting that big of a jump on people, or even pushing those boundaries due to the land mines they're surrounded by.

 Posted by: Chris Karr at January 23, 2005 02:35 PM

Even with TivoToGo (TTG), Tivo's been eclipsed even before it was released. I don't have TTG yet, but I'm able to do the same things and more with my BeyondTV setup. MSFT has been hawking personal video players that work with MediaCenter content for some time now. The brilliant thing that Tivo did was making it seem like TTG was something innovative and interesting. It was innovative and interesting when they announced it over a year ago, but by the time it made it to market (and some are still waiting for their boxes to be upgraded with the right OS version) Tivo's competitors had introduced similar (and in some cases, superior) functionality.

At the moment, Tivo has three things going for it:

1. The brand - The term "Tivo" is synonymous with DVR.

2. The cost - You can go out and purchase a $100 standalone box after rebate.

3. The user interface - I haven't heard anyone find a better interface.

The problems with these advantages are:

1. "Tivo" may mean DVR in some people's minds, but if people get their "Tivos" from Comcast for less than the real Tivo, that's little consolation.

2. Tivo is losing needed capital in order to expand their customer base while simultaneously being undercut by the cable companies.

3. Tivo's competitors are learning from their UI mistakes and crafting better and better interfaces. Compare a user's view of the Comcast UI from a year ago to a user's view a month ago, and you find that Comcast is making serious progress.

This year will make or break Tivo. With the cable companies flooding the market with their DVRs, Tivo is destined to become a high-end niche product. If Tivo can pull off HDTV DVR functionality in an innovative and useful way, they may survive. If not, Tivo is destined to disappear with analog cable. Unfortunately for Tivo users, it appears that Tivo is more interested in going down on the content industry than they are in developing and deploying a high-end HDTV box that is plug-and-play and works with satellite, cable, and OTA HDTV.

 Posted by: baz at January 23, 2005 02:52 PM

Tivo works well for me and I've looked forward to the 2GO functionality when I upgrade. It would be cool to move it to my laptop and take it with me. There are other PVR solutions out that have more freedom but I don't have the technical skillz or the desire to set it all up. :(

 Posted by: Twist at January 23, 2005 08:12 PM

I have a friend who has had a self-upgraded ReplayTV (got it dirt cheap off eBay because it was listed as a ReplyTV) and I have lusted after a similar unit myself for a few years now. The monthly subscription model and the new broadcast flag stuff are huge turn-offs for me. I would love to build a MythTV box but I am not a Linux user and I am a little scared of trying to get it all to work on my own.