TiVo has become the Kleenex of the TV world — a once sovereignbrand that’s become a generic commodity. Yes, we still blazon outrecording a TV show “TiVoing.” But as stockand satellite companies started offering their own DVRs and cheap streamboxes from Roku, Apple and others flooded the market, TiVO has been increasingly marginalized and risks irrelevancy.
That’s changing, though, as the corporationmovesbeyondhardware to the remotemore lucrative world ofsoftware productand licensing. TiVo recently updated its iPad app to include the discovery peculiarity“What to Watch.” It provides personalized curriculumrecommendations based upon your viewing habits and what’s being broadcast right now. block upthe channel grid, What to Watch can tell you Gremlins is on. It’s a gravidupdate to an already stellar app that integrates nicely with TiVo’s set-top box.
And it’s the future of the company.
“We unavoidablenessto get you to the nubyou want byone aristocraticinterface,” said senior vice president of products and revenue, Jeff Klugman.
TiVo always has been capaciousat its core function: recording and watching TV. If you’ve ever utilisethe DVR feature in a generic line of productsbox, you crawl inthat truly useful DVR functionality is tougher than just putting a fast-forward feature on your blood linebox. TiVo’s strong drivealways has been its software, which is intuitive, smoother, and slacklylooks like someone took judgment of convictionto create a UI that flockcan navigate. Unlike offerings from other DVR platforms. Hardware, however, has been another story.
It wasn’t always this way.
Two companies rolledinto CES in 1999 with set-top boxes that recorded television to a hard drive.bothTiVo and Replay TV offered the ability to record your favorite shows and fast-forward through commercials. That didn’t work prohibitedso well for Replay TV, because the commercialisedAdvance feature that skipped every commercial with the push of a button become a giant target for lawsuits from content providers. TiVo’s fast-forward button, on the other hand, didn’t skip commercials, it just flew threw them very, very quickly. depicted objectproviders weren’t so peeved, and the company was largely spared from the lawsuits that contributed to Reply TV’s bankruptcy and left over(p)TiVo to rule the school.
And rule it did. TiVo’s subscribers peaked at 4.4 one million millionin 2007. Time-shifting your favorite shows had caught on, “TiVoing” became a household word and we all watched Janet Jackson’shistoried“wardrobe malfunction” 42,587 times. But TiVo’s killer feature had long since garnered attention from bloodlineand satellite companies, which started adding DVRs to their boxes. Suddenly you didn’t need a TiVo to record an episodeof Lost; your cable box would do it. As TiVo’s subscriber poemtumbled, it called in the lawyers.
TiVo sued EchoStar in 2004, claiming patent infringement of a DVR technology. The baptistrywas settled in 2011 when EchoStar paid TiVo a licensing fee. TiVo also filed suit against AT&T and Verizon over patent infringement. Those cases were settled, and TiVo actto produce DVRs.
All the while Tivo continued to release boxes that did a wonderful job recording shows exactlya horrible job implementing third-party applications from companies like Netflix, YouTube and Pandora. Set-top boxes from Apple, Roku, and Boxee came to market, offering far better integration and implementation. TiVo had a new problem.
But the latest iterationof its bundlesolve most of TiVo’s integration growing pains. Third-party blowservices atomic number 18no longer hidden away. Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, stillComcast’s VOD app are prominently displayed. Netflix works great, Amazon Instant, a subatomicless so. Still, it’s the best TV watching experience out there. The Remote is easy to understand and use, the menus and navigation use real-world quarrelto help you navigate, and recording shows or setting up a season pass doesn’t require a computer knowledgedegree.
The features are improved with each iteration of thesoftware productand the iPad app that controls the TiVo and creates a solid second-screen experience. These improvements underscore the importance of software — and, more importantly, licensing that software to pay-TV operators — to TiVo’s future.
For medium and smaller pay TV operators, partnering with TiVo is a dandyinvestment. The alternative is for the provider to create its own UI and DVR operating system. Something that involves, hiring teams of developers and seekand development. Instead, a company can have TiVo port their software to whatever piece of hardware they’re using. The provider doesn’t have to careabout creating a UI and it can offer a cable or satellite box with brand recognition.
That strategy is nonrecreationaloff. revenue from licensing to providers grew from $4.1 million last year at this time to $8.1 million for the first quarter. It’s also bolstered the company’s subscriber base. The base has climbed to 3.4 million from the low of 1.9 million it saw in July, 2011. Of those, 2.4 million are cable and satellite subscribers. The other million are family linewho have purchased a TiVo-branded box.
Most of those subscribers (1.5 million) are in the United acresthanks to a deal with Virgin Media. Here in the States, TiVo remains that box you bought five years ago whencestuck in a closet when you replaced it with a far cheaper DVR from your cable company. But in Europe, TiVo is becoming the go to interface for pay-TV providers.
The company is making inroads in the U.S. market. A partnership with a cable provider you’ve probably never heard of, Atlantic broadbandhas just been announced. It’s not a full partnership with Comcast or Time Warner, but it’s one of many partnerships TiVo has with U.S. providers. In fact, TiVo has a deal with Comcast to include the provider’s video on demanddepository libraryand that library is scoured by the new What’s on straightfeature on the iPad. And, Charter, DirecTV and Cox are already on the TiVo roster.
“Software is the future of Tivo,” Klugman told Wired. That future might soon put TiVo on a cable box near you.
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Materials taken from WIRED
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