Life beyond the lawsuit… we’re beginning to get a clearer picture of TiVo’s long term intentions and they appear quite focused on delivering advanced television software and services on whatever platform potential operator partners have in mind. And, with an emphasis on the European market, TiVo is promoting a new Network PVR solution and IPTV integration from IBC. Europe, via Virgin Media, already represents about 50% of installed TiVo units and may grow at a faster rate given new initiatives underway and this Continental lingo, including “PVR” and “catchup” TV. Beyond a greater willingness from overseas Tier 1 providers to play ball, TiVo also recognizes some cost savings with foreign deployments. From CEO Tom Rogers at their quarterly call:
With our international deployments, all of that infrastructure is hosted by the operator and, therefore, our direct cost of service tends to be significantly lower than it does here in the U.S.
We previously caught an ActiveVideo demo of a cloud-based TiVo experience running via Roku (!), yet it’s looks like this IBC iteration of the TiVo nPVR runs on a Harmonic back-end infrastructure, piped through through Entone Kamai 500 and Cubiware/Evolution Digital set-top boxes.
The most interesting tidbit from TiVo’s recent announcements are the potential social features (which may or may not make it to US retail Roamio customers):