Yes, the leaks were true. Rovi intends to purchase TiVo.
While TiVo creates amazing products and has successfully deployed their solution to numerous cable operators around the world, beyond patent litigation and licensing, they haven’t found much financial success. Basically, the writing was on the wall.
After blowing a 2015 holiday launch and abandoning their $1m “Aereo” acquisition, the TiVo Bolt OTA is seemingly shelved as an updated OTA-only Roamio DVR has been announced, featuring a generous 1TB of storage and favorable pricing, running $400 — that’s “all-in” with lifetime service, no recurring fees. Available May 2nd, this larger capacity Roamio OTA includes all the classic features you’d expect and a few … Read more
As with TiVo’s last software update, version 20.6.1 will primarily resolve additional open issues as the bulk of development and testing cycles are likely reserved for the upcoming OTA-only Bolt variant. So this isn’t exactly the most dramatic or blog-worthy topic and I didn’t really dig deep into what, specifically, this revision provides for Premiere, Roamio, and Mini owners. However, we’d previously … Read more
As TiVo marketing continues to struggle, amidst “Patent Trollvi” merger rumors, the company appears poised to shake up Bolt pricing come May 2nd. While retail sales have been on the upswing, I wouldn’t call them stellar and I can’t imagine TiVo would outright raise prices. However, I could envision a scenario where they drop the bundled year of service to lower … Read more
As we ponder an uncertain TiVo retail future, the non-DVR company ;) has just updated TiVo Online with a valuable new feature for existing customers. TiVo’s marketing team remains missing in action, but reseller Weaknees has the details: If you have a Series3, Series4 (Premiere), Series5 (Roamio) or Series6 (Bolt), you can now bulk transfer recordings from the old TiVo to the … Read more
As we ponder an uncertain TiVo retail future, the non-DVR company ;) is now selling a MoCA bridge ($80) to wire up multi-unit households that don’t have Ethernet colocated with their hub. You will need one TiVo Bridge Adapter if your DVR cannot use a wired Ethernet cable to connect to your home network. If your DVR can use … Read more
TiVo’s always had a bit of a marketing problem. Yet it’s not exactly clear if it’s because their value proposition is difficult to communicate (possibly) or their efforts are misguided (definitely) or a bit of both (likely). But it’s deliciously ironic that they’ve announced they’re dialing back their advertising spend … the very same month their research unit indicates a … Read more
