TiVo Offers $200AUD Home Networking Down Under

Filed under ‘those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it’, TiVo and Seven are repeating history Down Under. The recently introduced Australian Home Networking Package runs $200 AUD (~$150 USD) and enables TiVoToGo, Photo & Music sharing from PC, multi-room viewing, and provides the TiVo Desktop Plus software for video transcoding. Ozzie TiVo HD clock in at $699 AUD, with 7 day over-the-air (Freeview) EPG and no fees. So a motivated customer who buys two TiVos would be “rewarded” with a $150 fee if they’d like to transfer shows between units as we freely do in the US.

TiVo’s been down this path before here in the US… In the early Series2 days, expanded DVR options, such as multi-room viewing and PC photo streaming, were upsold as the TiVo Home Media Option (HMO) for a flat $99. Given TiVo owners are already paying a hardware premium, at some point the company wisely dropped that fee to market these features as a value-add.

It’s probably obvious where I stand on this business model. But I don’t claim to be an expert on the Australian television marketplace. And there’s a variety of financial considerations at play as Seven discusses in their surprisingly frank and interesting pricing FAQ:

TiVo in Australia is not owned by TiVo Inc in America. Hybrid TV is the licensee for the TiVo service in Australia and in exchange for that right – we pay TiVo a license fee on everything we sell and we often also have to pay 3rd party license fees for the Australian region. Obviously in America TiVo does not pay itself a royalty so their price is lower. These license fees add to the cost of our products here in Australia. This is a normal business arrangement between any licensee and licensor – nothing unusual.

Also notable, as in the US, TiVo rates Mac owners as second class citizens. (Notice the agreement in the lower left of the screencap above.) “Official” support for TiVoToGo and shipping video back to TiVo units won’t be provided (without Roxio software, at a cost, I assume) to those running OS X. And you can forget about automated computer-based video podcast aggregation, conversion, and streaming.

I find the Home Networking Package warning on TiVo Australia’s site somewhat amusing: “Please observe copyright laws.” What exactly does that mean and is the average citizens aware of those laws? Heck, has the legal system even ironed out fairuse in the digital age yet? These are rhetorical question, by the way – it’s obviously a CYA move made by the legal team.

Back in the US, I’ve always felt TiVo should eat their Desktop Plus codec licensing fee instead of passing it on to consumers ($25). Again, as a means to differentiate themselves from generic DVRs, without the complexity and bad taste of upselling. As these users would be a subset of TiVo owners, instead paying licensing fees on every downloaded copy of TiVo Desktop, programmatically determine who’s using the transcoding features. TiVo’d take a hit from folks who try it just once, so maybe build in a one week trial behind the scenes and transparent to customers.

(Thanks for the tip, Troy!)