Why is TiVo.com selling Slingboxes?

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Today’s mystery: Why is TiVo.com selling Slingboxes? Interesting… I checked in with both TiVo, Inc and Sling Media yesterday. When asked about the relationship between the two companies, TiVo responded with “nothing formal.” My Sling contact is doing some research and will get back to me. If it is indeed nothing formal, what’s the goal here? Is TiVo just trying to make a few extra bucks selling products or is this a case of some back scratching? They’d probably move quite a few units if they added the Slingbox AV as a TiVo Reward. Hm!

UPDATE:  I’ve heard back from my Sling source: Sounds like this is a minor “co-sales agreement.” Nothing major in the scheme of things, but it’s pretty cool to see these two innovative companies collaborating. Should we start the buy-out rumors now? ;)

5 thoughts on “Why is TiVo.com selling Slingboxes?”

  1. I’ve got 60,000 rewards points sitting there. I’ve been just sitting on them, figuring I’ll eventually hit the 85,000 for a Series3. But if they put the Slingbox Pro up, I’d likely bite. Especially if the promised PalmOS client ever shows up. :-)

  2. Good question dave. I wish Tivo built the fuctionality into their boxes. But tivo seems extra risk adverse at the moment and seems to not want to wade into additional legal minefield that some think slingbox is playing in. Although personally I don’t think it’s really going to be an issue.

    Also, it pains me to see Tivo ceding mojo to youtube and sling on stuff they obviously should leverage and get buzz for. What happened to the days of cross seeding startups? (oh yeah, .bomb blowup!)

    Co-sales seems lame, although the two go together like peanut butter and jelly. I don’t see Tivo boxes on slingmedia.com

  3. There’s bound to be a lot of consolidation among time-shifting and place-shifting devices in the next few years. I guess it doesn’t hurt to make friends now and bank a little leveraging power.

  4. Nice!

    And I agree on the Rewards idea. Keep it under 40K points (what I now have saved up) :)

    I used Orb for a while, but was less-than-satisfied, on the whole. Even though it worked on my GSM phone with MPEG4 conversion/uploads straight off the TiVo NPL! Not quite the same as Sling, of course, but adequate … because watching TiVo shows is ALL I envision myself doing on any such device.

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