Sean
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 Posted:
Thu Nov 10, 2005 2:56 am Post subject:
Forbes magazine on TIVO |
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Go ahead you Tivo Rumpswab losers, show all of us how much smarter you
are than me and the people at Forbbes who know TIVO is doomed unless
it gets bought by somebody with deep enough pockets to rescue it from
disaster.
Read the article but if you;ve read my posts the last few years you
can save your time.
NEW YORK - In a new-media world that changes as quickly as couch
potatoes click through channels, Yahoo! may be the closest thing there
is to a sure bet--enormous market share, plenty of cash and a brand
that works throughout the world. You can't blame TiVo for trumpeting a
tie-up Monday morning.
Take a closer look, though, and you'll find little there to cheer up
the set-top box company's investors. Yes, the Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO -
news - people ) deal will let a third of TiVo (nasdaq: TIVO - news -
people ) subscribers program their boxes via the Web. But they could
already do that via TiVo's own Web site, as well as through Time
Warner's (nyse: TWX - news - people ) America Online.
And yes, TiVo says it will soon let some of its users call up some of
Yahoo!'s data, like traffic, weather and eventually photo albums. But
the tech world has been offering viewers the chance to watch something
other than movies and TV in their living room for years, and they
haven't been clamoring for it. And note that Yahoo!'s deal isn't
exclusive--the Web giant can offer the same stuff to any of TiVo's
competitors.
But even if there was more there there, the Yahoo! deal wouldn't solve
TiVo's fundamental problems--it needs to find a way to add more
subscribers while fending off competitors with much bigger war chests.
Give TiVo credit for getting the digital video recorder (DVR) into the
hands of 3.6 million subscribers, and creating awareness of the
concept in the minds of millions more. Consumers now routinely refer
to "TiVo-ing" a television show, even when they're using a rival's
video recorder.
Problem is, those rivals are cable companies like Time Warner and
Comcast (nasdaq: CMCSA - news - people ) and satellite-television
providers like EchoStar (nasdaq: DISH - news - people ). They've spent
billions of dollars building and improving their network
infrastructures, and now routinely offer their TiVo-like boxes for
less than half the $12.95 per month TiVo charges.
The cable and satellite companies use their DVRs to help keep
high-paying customers; TiVo uses its DVR as its sole source of
revenue.
"It's unfortunate," says Hoefer & Arnett analyst April Horace. "TiVo
spent millions of dollars educating the consumer. But the world that
it's playing in now has significantly deeper pockets."
Meanwhile, TiVo's deal with Rupert Murdoch's DirecTV (nyse: DTV - news
- people ), which commands about two-thirds of TiVo's subscriber base,
expires in 2007, and Murdoch is already rolling out his own rival DVR
product.
Today he announced a pact with General Electric's (nyse: GE - news -
people ) NBC Universal that will let DirecTV subscribers with the
house-brand DVR download commercial-free episodes for first-run shows
like Law and Order: Special Victims Unit for 99 cents, just hours
after they premiere.
TiVo's best hope will be more deals like the one it has signed with
Comcast, the country's largest cable company. Sometime next year,
Comcast will begin offering a TiVo-branded DVR--but even then, the
cable operator will be able to sell its own brand of DVR.
Naveen Chopra, TiVo's director of business development, says today's
Yahoo! deal will likely be followed by more. The company may try to
partner with other portals and is looking at a way to allow cell phone
users to access their TiVo as well, he said. "There are almost an
infinite number of things we could do," he added.
But unless any of those things generate more subscribers, it's all for
naught. "This could ultimately make TiVo more interesting," says
Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Michael Kelman. "But in order for
it to make it more interesting, it's got to get in somebody's house. I
don't know if this is going to get it into somebody's house."
TIVO - Dead Company Walking
Sean
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