TiVo 3.0 Arrives

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With Rovi’s acquisition, TiVo 3.0 has arrived. In the short term, we know there will be hundreds of (unfortunate) layoffs in the name of “corporate synergy” and shareholder value. Yet, while the current iteration of TiVo begins today, we won’t entirely know what this newly merged company is all about for another 12-18 months. Sadly, for ZNF regulars, there are indications that retail hardware will once again be deemphasized given stagnant sales and an uncertain (cable) landscape.

19 thoughts on “TiVo 3.0 Arrives”

  1. I had so much more to say on the topic and had wanted to define the prior two eras… but I’ve got a baby to entertain and haven’t slept more than 4 hours straight in about 9 months. So how about you guys flesh things out here in the comments. :)

  4. Rich, I’d linked Multichannel’s coverage above and would say this new proposal is less favorable (to TiVo) than the ‘Unlock the Box’ edition. Their delayed OTA-only offering looks to be a more promising short-term business opportunity if they get the marketing, pricing, and endpoints right… also assuming they can launch before the new management (potentially) shifts course. Hope springs eternal!

  5. “Would say this new proposal is less favorable”

    Yes, agreed, I’m actually a little worried about the new proposal. I can’t find any mention of the DVR in that scenario. Surely the FCC will require the providers app to allow an external recorder access to the app stream right? If it doesn’t it’ll be worse than it is now with the CableCard.

  6. Mike’s comment above about missing statements about DAVe’s in the new FCC proposal was exactly what I was thinking when I read it!

  7. I doubt it’s TiVo 3.0 so much as the end of TiVo. But I guess we’ll see, won’t we?

    Ultimately Apple had the right idea; offer a streaming box with an excellent user experience, a fully supported rich appstore, and cement deals with content providers to offer pointcast on-demand programming over IP. But if _Apple_ couldn’t make the content deals happen, Rovio sure as heck can’t either.

    I just don’t see a path forward now. Pour one out for TiVo, homies.

  8. Not really that excited about the app style future. It seems like we are going backwards with it and not moving forward to something better than cable card. First, what platforms will each cable company be required to build an app for? Roku, Apple TV, Android TV, Tinzen, etc. Leaving that up to them to decide isn’t great. Then the real problems with the idea. First, losing the DVR ability and the ability to FF past commercials. It will be like on-demand and require you to watch all commercials. Yeah that is going to suck. Then the interface. Instead of a quality interface designed by a company like Tivo, your going to have Comcast or Cox design something. That is how their cable boxes used to be and it really took outside competition to force them to design something halfway decent. When you remove that competition your going to be stuck with whatever they give you. Not looking forward to this at all.

  9. I think the app-centric future is looking to downplay the local saving of content. Content providers want to host archives of their choosing so people can be eternal revenue streams. So, I don’t think DVRs are part of the new vision of the future of cable TV unless it’s a DVR from the cable company.

  10. At first I thought maybe bad for Tivo but wait a second. Tivo was the first and only to put it all together in one box, unifying traditional cable or over the air with the most popular apps like Netflix, hulu, Prime etc. Have you wondered why no sling or Sony Vue on Tivo? Imagine all those TiVo’s from premier level on out able to offer there own sling like service, but better. They weren’t big enough to take on geting the content contracts where others have failed, like intel, but now with Rovi size they can. This new FCC thing I see more of a help to Tivo, if you aren’t going to use the cable company’s box who’s box you gonna use to bring it all together? This is not without an uncertain time but Tivo is a survivor and without them we probably wouldn’t have cable cards. They have matured as the only real third party device that’s already here. Many who have tried it, usually don’t want to go back to several boxes, it’s all there, streaming with cable, with OTA, with a future over the top service like sling, it’s all there and it’s refined. If cable companies want to do this stuff, patents will be paid to Tivo, so there are several ways Tivo can profit, not to mention all the smaller cable operators that are going to embrace Tivos system as there own, and has already been happening The path is not clear but Tivo is way ahead, being the only middle man of choice for the people, if they knew they had a choice, for many years now. In my opinion it will be hard to make a better interface than what they have already made.

  11. I don’t know, a streaming tivo head unit doesn’t sound that bad. Sending data to a Roku, PlayStation, XboxOne, smart TV, appletv app…

    Ice only ever been disappointed with tivo with my premiere and the slow interface. My 1.0 was great, my DirecTIVO’s we great, my premiere was slow but still better than the alternative, and my Romio is awesome.

    My concern is that tivo has never been great at apps. I just don’t know if they have the skill set to push out all the apps and support them to warrant streaming boxes.

  13. Yes, I am less than thrilled with the switch over. I am currently running OTA and the mapping between channels is pretty bad.

    Normally I get CW on channel 20-1. But now there are TWO “20-1” channels, one is which is a religious channel that I can’t even receive. Guess which of the two “20-1″s has the CW metadata? The new season is right around the corner and I will have to use my Tivo like it is a DVR, setting a fixed time each night for the WRONG channel.

    Contacted Tivo twice who told me to talk to my “provider” (I am OTA…who is my provider? God?) and I also submitted an “incorrect channel lineup” note and still waiting on nothing. They also told me to reconnect every day, which it does automatically btw…and half the time when I try to on my own, I did a “connection error” or a “account verification” error. Never used to do that. And when did they pull their telephone support? It kind of sucks.

    How hard is to switch to new guide data? And why did they wait to the new TV season to do this. Really stupid decision.

  15. My fear is we will look back on the CableCARD as the real golden age of competition. This app model is stupid and I have a feeling it will turn out to be a really poor experience. There will be so many loopholes large enough to drive trucks through that benefit the cable companies.

  16. “My fear is we will look back on the CableCARD as the real golden age of competition.”

    Some commenter on this site kept repeating for years that we were living in the Golden Age of CableCARD™…

  19. “CableCARD: the Golden Age of Television that 1% of Cable Subscribers Participated In!”

    The one percent, not by wealth, but by tech knowledge! A golden age, indeed!

    Legends and stories will be told for generations.

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