Looking to tie television to the Internet, digital video recording makers TiVo on June 9 announced online scheduling and home media features among new enhancements and capabilities to its services.
TiVo subscribers can now watch their favorite television shows and connect to favorite online content – music and images included – by connecting the TiVo Series 2 DVR to a home network.
"Now TiVo gives you great TV and a whole lot more," said TiVo service executive vice president Brodie Keast, announcing the new services. "With the home media features built in to the service, subscribers can now enjoy other digital content, like music and photos, the same way they enjoy television with the TiVo service. We will continue to apply the TiVo experience to all of our future service offerings."
The news arrived just as TiVo took what the New York Times called a big blow – satellite provider DirecTV, considered the largest source of TiVo subscribers, selling its entire equity stake (3.4 million shares) in the company, dropping TiVo stock over 14 percent to close June 9 trading at $6.41. The Times said "some speculation" has it that DirecTV might be trying to develop its own digital video recorder, while moving toward Internet downloading might be a way for TiVo to "insulate itself against potential competition from DirecTV."
Indeed, TiVo unwrapped a new multi-service plan that calls for a first TiVo service subscription in a home at the standard $12.95 per month, with each additional service subscription at $6.95 per month, which TiVo says cuts "almost in half" the subscription fee for additional TiVo boxes. The company is also offering a limited-time 10 percent discount on TiVo DVR units, cutting the buying price to as low as $129 with a mail-in rebate.
The online scheduling and the ability to move content between two or more TiVo boxes are part of a bid TiVo says will let all Series2 subscribers enjoy what only TiVo Home Media Option subscribers had enjoyed. Among the new features, online scheduling lets a Series2 subscriber schedule recordings from the office, on the road, or anywhere they can hit the Net, going to TiVo's Website and scheduling what they want and leaving their TiVo DVR to make the changes in just a few minutes.
With multi-room viewing of what they've recorded, Series2 subscribers can move what they want from room to room and share Now Playing lists. They can also access music from any personal computer on their home networks and play it directly onto their home entertainment centers by way of the TiVo digital music player. And the digital photo viewer lets a Series2 subscriber use their TV sets to see digital images they store on any PC on the home network.
The company said that, with digital entertainment content at home rising, the timing for these services is perfect, citing a Photo Marketing Association estimate that, by year's end, 42 percent of American households could own digital cameras, while over 43 million songs have been downloaded from cyberspace to this point, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.
Retailers are making note as well, including digital technology and entertainment retailer Best Buy. "Consumer interest and investment in home networking products and services are soaring and these new home media features from TiVo help consumers easily access all of their digital content," said senior vice president of consumer electronics Mike Vitelli. "These new service enhancements give TiVo unique capabilities for helping consumers bring all the content they love right into the living room entertainment center via the home network."
"[I]f TiVo's Home Media option allows consumers to stream their video downloads easily from their computer to their television," said Motley Fool writer Alyce Lomax, "it ends one of the biggest barriers to digital video downloading right there – the idea that most people don't want to sit on their PC and watch an entire film."
Some analysts think TiVo adding more features and expanding it beyond a mere stand-alone digital recording system makes excellent sense. Yankee Group analyst Aditya Kishore told Wired that cable operators rolling out their own DVRs means consumers might not prefer spending for a TiVo box when they can get the same function for $5 from their cable system operators.
Kishore also said TiVo's function expansions might help drive adoption of broadband video.
