ReplayTV is leaving the hardware business once all 5500 models have been sold. Additionally, D&M Holdings has ported ReplayTV software to the PC platform which will begin shipping next year bundled with Hauppauge tuner cards. ReplayTV intends to become solely a software and services company as first disclosed last summer with their intentions in the Chinese market. More details on offerings and pricing models will be available early next year.
ReplayTV has always had a solid, usable UI running on nice hardware. Commercial skip and DRM-free video have also been major pluses for me. However, the various lawsuits and ownership changes doomed Replay to second tier or worse. Assuming D&M Holdings see value in the product and stays the course, I’m hopeful ReplayTV will find new life as a software solution. Sling Media, are you guys listening?
Reuters says: A company spokeswoman said ReplayTV will complete its transformation from a hardware manufacturer to a DVR software and services provider with the sale of all remaining 5500 Series DVR models, probably by the end of 2005. More product and pricing details for ReplayTV’s software will be announced in 2006, the company said.
I think this is going to be a hard fight for ReplayTV. While they’ll be bundled with the cards, the tuner card market is much smaller than the CE market. And they have established competition. The ReplayTV name isn’t well known in the general market since they’ve basically been out of the retail world for 2 years, and never had a huge presence to start with. On top of that, there is the 800 pound Gorilla in the form of Windows XP Media Center Edition, which has been squeezing the 3rd party DVR packages out of the market already. Many PC vendors are making MCE the standard load now – if you have MCE, why use 3rd party software?
To me this seems like like AOL using ‘Netscape’ on a bunch of their products. I doubt the new RTV PC software is going to share much with the old platform. Probably features, in general, but I’d bet on it being a new implementation really. They’re just looking for any residual value in the name.