TVGuide.com will offer TiVo scheduling online (like Yahoo) beginning next year. Great, now where’s that Series3?
Gemstar-TV Guide (NASDAQ: GMST – News), a leading media, entertainment and technology company, and TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO – News), the creator of and leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVR), today announced an agreement that will enable TVGuide.com to offer TiVo’s Online Scheduling to its dedicated group of TV enthusiast users. In addition, the two companies have expanded their existing license agreement with respect to Gemstar-TV Guide technology relating to television service providers. The new online scheduling feature, scheduled to debut in early 2007, will provide TVGuide.com users a simple way to request, via TiVo’s scheduling technology, recordings of their favorite TV shows on their TiVo® Series2(TM) device from anywhere they access TVGuide.com.
Doesn’t look like anything more than another TV-related web site to schedule from. But it gets TiVo more exposure.
I think TiVo is way underinvesting in the TiVo Online site. This has the potential to be a large revenue stream for the company, particularly as a brand adverising play.
I suppose the strategy of licensing out the scheduling platform makes sense. In many respects, it gives TiVo deep hooks into a variety of different sites.