While perusing the merger-related deluge of regulatory filing for notable nuggets, I came across two fairly significant TiVo developments that I’d previously missed… in that Virgin has contracted the company to power its next-gen 4k set-top box (that probably isn’t a traditional DVR) in the UK and has extended their partnership through 2020.
Virgin Media is TiVo’s largest customer, by far, and the continued relationship surely assuages investors (and Rovi) over the short-term. Although, you have to wonder, at what point does Virgin’s parent company, Liberty Global, go for presumably more favorable pricing and corporate synergies by integrating their own Horizon platform?
From Liberty’s quarterly call:
Yeah, I’d say, exactly as Tom indicated to us that this new box is going to be 4K box. It’s pretty high powered box that will get a refreshed TiVo UI on it later this year. And then in the following years, our goal is to get Horizon across all of Europe. And EOS box is this new 4K box that’s going to be the engine for the next generation video for Liberty.
Sounds like great news. Now if TiVo could just partner with a system in the US to have as large a deployment as in the UK.
With Rovi suing Comcast and TiVo suing Samsung, many of those doors will remain closed and they’ve likely moved on from the idea.