Charter continues to spin down their TiVo Premiere leasing program with a request that all remaining units be returned:
On September 10, 2013, TiVo Premiere service from Charter will no longer be available. To avoid interruption in your service, please visit a Charter Store before September 10, 2013 to exchange your current TiVo equipment and remote for Charter DVR® equipment.
Of course, this is specific to Charter-issued hardware versus agnostic TiVo retail DVRs – that will continue to function as expected. And this isn’t doesn’t necessarily foreshadow the end of the road for the two companies, as they’ve been exploring options for a next generation platform… Perhaps intending to channel the TiVo experience via cloud-based ActiveVideo or Pace XG1 hardware, as now deployed on GCI?
FWIW, in the Pace booth at the Cable Show, I held a Charter-branded TiVo remote. But I didn’t have a chance to speak with anyone to determine if it was just an old sample or an active project.
https://twitter.com/davezatz/statuses/344536290013880320
That never happened… ;)
I just switched from TIme Warner (TWC) to RCN cable in Manhattan, due to losing CBS/Showtime, and as part of the $99 triple package received a RCN TiVo Quad box with integrated VOD. TiVo seems like a perfect fit for the smaller cable outfits as TiVo customized it for RCN with RCN logo on screen and adding a large VOD button to the TiVo remote.
Now when I want to watch Showtime or HBO on demand or catch up on The Killing on AMC on demand I just hit one button. So for certain shows I no longer need to record them.
And this leaves RCN free from having to deal with R&D of set top boxes and software.
Hopefully with the new generation of TiVo boxes, which will finally allow real applications to run thanks to modern Broadcom SOC’s as well as WiFi and MoCa, more cable companies will see the value in partnering with TiVo.
Now if I could only get RCN to add Netflix back to the TiVo box but it’s a fair trade-off for VOD. After using Netflix on my PS3 or Roku3 I’ve no want to run it on current TiVo hardware.
Would the TiVo experience run faster on a Pace XG1 or Active Video solution? AFAIK the Pace XG1 is more like a NetBook in terms of performance. Then the whole cloud thing… You could throw a huge server cluster at it and run things faster than an outdated Broadcom SoC.