TiVo Updates Aereo.com (with marketing fluff)

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Picking up Aereo’s assets back was one of TiVo’s more inspired marketing moves. But I wonder if it’s being squandered…

Since the deal closed, TiVo has sent out several waves of email campaigns to Aereo castaways… that may not be resonating, as TiVo, in its current form, isn’t much of an Aereo replacement.

tivo-aereo

Harnessing Portlandia to tug on those cord cutting heart-strings, TiVo ratchets up the rhetoric today as they move into aereo.com with an impassioned 237 word plea. Some highlights:

Aereo harnessed the power and potential of OTA television with digital recording capability-without having to be a cable or satellite subscriber. Well, that experience is here in an even better way with TiVo.

Because of the Supreme Court’s Aereo ruling last year, OTA television won’t be delivered in the exact way Aereo had pioneered. However, TiVo shares Aereo’s disruptive spirit and is committed to viewers who want to save money and still get a great DVR service, without having to pay a cable or satellite bill.

This is a major improvement over the Aereo service, which did not integrate the over-the-air and streaming service viewing experiences.

And thank you for helping us keep the Aereo dream alive.

Sadly, my takeaway is that TiVo’s “late July” announcement was either overstated, they couldn’t deliver as scheduled, or changed tack… since there’s absolutely nothing new here — same Roamio OTA pricing, no cloud storage option. Ah well, perhaps the mysterious TiVo Bolt and new DVR hardware will soon excite us.

9 thoughts on “TiVo Updates Aereo.com (with marketing fluff)”

  1. By the way, never mind those certificate errors as they try to sign aereo.com with tivo.com — after dropping a cool $1m on Aereo, they couldn’t afford another $60 SSL cert. ;)

  2. “By the way, never mind those certificate errors as they try to sign aereo.com with tivo.com — after dropping a cool $1m on Aereo, they couldn’t afford another $60 SSL cert”

    A genuinely funny subject to mock, but what about you? Extrapolating from Gruber’s income, and considering your blog covers a much wider number of topics than his, I estimate ZNF! clears over $3M/year, and still you can’t afford to go https?

    —–

    I really do hope TiVo is forced to submit the updated Aereo to the FCC. Assuming the marketing fluff is stuffed inside the unit, it’d likely be flammable, posing a major fire hazard.

  3. I can afford – prices are now reasonable enough (especially on my new/current host – $75/yr to buy/install). But I have both lingering WordPress technology concerns (in relation to my host) and ad-serving concerns. Thinking next year is probably the year – whether I do it myself or move everything to WordPress.com and get out of the hosting business. Pros and cons to that approach. I mostly enjoy my independence but it comes with a cost (in time).

  4. “I can afford”

    I would hope so. Given the valuations for Buzzfeed and Vox, and given that an extrapolation of how much the median viewer (who’s probably just like me) visits ZNF! vs Buzzfeed+Vox, I’d say your blog should be valued at somewhere north of $10B.

    Now you just need some kind of monopolistic media company to invest in order to prove your valuation.

  6. July 31 is a blue moon day, and Roamio was launched on a blue moon day. They’re not above being cheeky like that… but it might be pretty unlikely.

  8. Aereo “Killer App” was for people who COULD NOT get OTA signals, for whatever reason. Tivo is not solving that problem.

  9. “Aereo “Killer App” was for people who COULD NOT get OTA signals, for whatever reason. Tivo is not solving that problem.”

    Bring it up with the Supreme Court, who I think decided incredibly incorrectly based on a clear reading of the law.

    However, the Aereo precedent got used this month successfully in a lower court by an OTT service that wanted to pay a minimum FCC fee for OTA retransmission, (an option that was weirdly denied to Aereo). So there’s a halfway decent chance that folks like you who can’t get OTA signals could well have an OTT option in the future, though likely at a higher price than Aereo, and perhaps without the DVR capabilities of Aereo.

    For the other folks who can get OTA signals, hopefully TiVo will roll out a highly compelling product one of these days.

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