Photo by Mike Demers
It’s hard to believe that it’s almost been 3 years since TiVo announced that they were rekindling their relationship with DirectTV and yet consumers are still waiting for the DVR to drop. I’d say that even for TiVo, this kind of delay has to be some kind of record, except we’re also still waiting for the Comcast/TiVo DVR to launch.
Given the long lag time and complete radio silence by TiVo and DirectTV on the issue, I tuned into DirectTV’s 2nd quarter earnings call hungry for more information. Unfortunately, the call didn’t offer very many tasty morsels.
During the call, DirectTV’s CEO Michael White never actually mentioned TiVo by name, but did say that they the company planned on unveiling a new “high end” user interface in the fall (so far so good.) From the transcript of the call,
“the connected home experience is a fantastic experience. It’s going to get even better this fall with our new high-definition user interface and I think as we add more VOD titles, it’s just going to be more and more kind of pull from consumers I think for that experience and as I said, the good news is, we know it pays. It pays out because of the increased $2.50 in ARPU we get from it. But if we just kind of work in our way through some of the operational complexities of these, I think we’ve got a wireless capability that we’ll be launching this fall, as well as I think we’ll make it available to even more homes.”
He mentioned that this DVR would be entirely in high definition, would include multi-room functionality and would blow people away with it’s connected features. While it’s entirely possible that the DVR White is referring to, could be a generic update, a comment at the end of the call made me suspect that he was actually talking TiVo.
“we’ve got probably still some more work to do to fill in some more VOD content and really, with the HD user interface, really make that experience top for the consumer. I think we’re bringing Pandora, bringing in a bunch of things making it absolutely knock your socks off experience with the customer. And as I said, were already getting more than we had planned in ARPU lift out of those customers. So I feel great about the connected box strategy. I think we’re just working through some of the operational things.”
As far as I know, TiVo is currently the only DVR that provides support for Pandora.
On the surface this all may sound like good news to weary DirecTV customers, but once you actually dive into the details things get much less exciting. During the Q&A, White clarified that by “fall”, DirectTV really meant “the 4th quarter” and would later clarify that by the 4th quarter, he really meant closer to midway through it, since they didn’t want analysts to consider any revenue impact from a launch. Worst of all though, it sounds like DirectTV is following in Comcast’s footsteps, by limiting initial availability of the “new features” to select geographic regions.
“I think the nomad product, which is the ability to port your content from your DVR onto your iPad, I expect you’ll see that in some geographies before the end of the year, will probably going to do with in a fewer geographies to make sure that that’s working flawlessly before we roll it out so rollout might be in 2012. But you’ll see that before the end of the year, the high-definition user interface comes in in the fourth quarter.”
Given that it’s taken Comcast at least two years to expand out of the New England markets, I can’t help but wonder if there is some kind of clause in TiVo’s contract that encourages these sorts of soft launches. Previously, TiVo CEO Tom Rogers had argued that one of the benefits to TiVo being a software company is that they could download their software all at once to their partners and achieve tremendous scale almost overnight. As these rollout continue to “launch” though, this doesn’t look like a very accurate expectation for customers or shareholders to have.
While I’m sure that TiVo is very busy counting all of the money that they’ve made from their business dealings with Dish, it’s frustrating to see “legitimate business partners” continue to pay peanuts for development deals, when it’s clear that they’re only really interested in the patent protection. Instead of being upfront and honest with their customers though, both companies continue to string them along, while we’re forced to wait unreasonable periods for a product that will be obsolete before it’s even launched. For TiVo fans that are still holding out for DirectTV support, the only advice I can offer, is to go pick up a TiVo premiere, a set of HD antennas and make sure to tell DirecTV that you’ll enjoy saving hundreds of dollars per year while enjoying a better DVR.
#1 by MegaZone on August 5, 2011 - 8:38 am
Davis,
The Comcast-TiVo deal is dead – they cancelled it and stopped work on the software-TiVo load for Comcast DVRs earlier this year. The deal was replaced by a new deal allowing retail TiVo Premiere DVRs to support Comcast OnDemand content, similar to the earlier deal with Cox. The new deal is supposed to start rolling out either around the end of this year or early next year, starting with the SF Bay Area. New England customers currently using the soft-TiVo solution will be transitioned away from it as well, encouraged to switch to the retail solution as it is phased out completely.
As for Pandora – the Verizon FiOS DVR supports it as well. And it is on several HDTVs, Blu-ray players, etc: http://www.pandora.com/in-the-home So I wouldn’t read too much into it. DirecTV could simply be adding Pandora to their own DVRs.
#2 by Davis on August 5, 2011 - 8:46 am
I don’t understand why the Comcast deal would be terminated, Charter says that they’re ready to launch in early 2012 and I was under the impression that they had similar system requirements. Maybe I’m missing something from the technical angle, but it “feels” like Comcast’s reasons for withholding access has more to do with limiting competition without getting their pants sued off then any technical hurdles. Good point on the Verizon Pandora support, certainly with Pandora now being publicly traded, they would be seeking new distribution sources. If White was referring to a DTV DVR though, I think we can read too much into it (maybe just something different) because it would be a knife in TiVo’s back.
#3 by Sam Biller on August 5, 2011 - 9:30 pm
The original Comcast deal to deploy TiVo software on Moto STBs via a software download was terminated in May 2011 and replaced by the deal allowing TiVo retail devices to access the Comcast VOD catalog in select areas served by Comcast. Here is a link to the press release –> http://investor.tivo.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=106292&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1561261&highlight
#4 by Davis on August 6, 2011 - 8:14 am
That’s a dirty deal, I didn’t realize that the old agreement was going to to be invalidated by VOD access, but that does look to be the case. It sure doesn’t seem like a very good trade off to me. Not only does Comcast retain patent rights until 2019, but once allvid gets enacted, TiVo won’t really get anything, that they wouldn’t have had anyway.
#5 by Sam Biller on August 6, 2011 - 11:32 am
“once allvid gets enacted”
Isn’t that a big “if” allvid gets enacted. The CableCo’s are towing the company line that allvid will cost them many millions of $ to enact while at the same time they are facing tough economic times with subscriber losses, etc. I’m not holding my breath for allvid. I think its a “wait and see” on whether these “retail” deals provide any subscriber uplift for TiVo. They are certainly a step-above the current situation especially since Comcast has agreed to market and install the capability in the larger markets.
#6 by MegaZone on August 7, 2011 - 12:51 am
As far as Charter goes – it is a very different arrangement from the old Comcast deal, and more like RCN & Suddenlink. The original Comcast deal was for the ‘soft TiVo’ – loading the (pre-)OCAP TiVo software interface on existing DVRs – originally Motorola units, and they were supposedly working on a SciAtl/Cisco port as well. But they always had problems making it work well – generally blamed on the performance. The units weren’t high powered and you had the base OS, then a Java layer, then the TiVo software.
The end goal was a tru2way/OCAP TiVo interface that could be loaded on any tru2way STB – but tru2way stalled and was never fully deployed. I think Comcast ended up changing directions and never deployed all the head end changed needed to deploy and support the software (a LOT of the features actually relied on the head end for the heavy lifting, even scheduling, very different from normal TiVos). It died on the vine.
The Charter arrangement is based around deploying TiVo HW – it looks like they’ll be deploying the TiVo Premiere Elite and TiVo Preview, and maybe the TiVo Premiere. The same hardware RCN & Suddenlink are using.
#7 by RP on August 12, 2011 - 3:02 pm
Unfortunately I don’t believe CEO Michael White was inferring to the new DirecTivo unit, but rather their new HR34 which is suppose to be out near the end of this year. The HR34 will be the new high end DVR for the company as it will be an actual Home Media Center (RVU) DVR. This device will be the center media hub for video content in a DirecTV connected house. The HR34 will allow streaming to any RVU clients / other devices like an C30 Home media client, or TV’s like Samsung D6000 without any additional hardware required. DirecTV has also shown screen shots with streaming directly to laptops (search engadget for HR34 or RVU). I’m assuming the nomad unit would likely tie into the HR34 by acting as a RVU client and pulling the TV shows and transcoding it for all your other mobile devices (iPhone/iPad/etc).
To be honest I wish he was referring to the new DirecTivo as I love TiVo and personally still have 3 x HR10-250s running in my house; but from a video interview with Tivo CEO (Tom Rogers) last year (I think it was a CNET interview) he stated the new DirecTivo unit would use the old interface, not the HD premier and would not contain all the features that exist in the Premier unit. Time will only tell though.