Comments on: TiVo struggles to broaden its horizons

Company scrambles to redefine its business as it courts cable companies, adds new features like KidZone.
Images: TiVo's KidZone

[kim&4catz]

From a TiVo fangirl

I hardly remember life without TiVo. And I really don't want to. It's unfortunate that its alliance with DirecTV worked out so poorly. I have one DirecTV receiver with TiVo, and one with their generic DVR. The generic is just rubbish. Not having kids, I have no need for the KidZone. I wonder what else TiVo is going to come up with to stay viable?

[woggs123]

Give USERS what they want.

Dual Tuners. HD. VOD. Recording optimization across multiple recorders. TRANSFER of LIFETIME SERVICE to NEW BOXES.

I like my two series-2 tivos. I've grown tired of the obvious limitations. Give folks the features they've been asking for for YEARS and maybe it'll turn around.

Kidzone?? Are you kidding? Jeese.

[drfrost]

You've got to be kidding

"TRANSFER of LIFETIME SERVICE to NEW BOXES."

You're joking right? This would drastically cut long term profits. The only reason they would ever offer something like this is because they know people will want to upgrade, need to replace boxes, etc. And they very clearly spell out what you are getting when you pay for it. It's a way for you to save a little bit of money by paying for a lifetime service for ONE box upfront. It was never intended as a lifetime service arrangement for one household. If it had been they would have had to charge a lot more up front for it.

I think this is a good example of consumers wanting everything for free.

Dual tuners are great, but it requires doubling certain hardware components and increasing cost... but I think I would be willing to pay a little extra for it.

As far as HD is concerned.... I'm not sure if that's a good deal or not yet. It can eat disk space far faster than standard TV. Yes, I'd like the picture quality to improve.... but I'm not sure how much of my storage I'd be willing to trade for it to be honest. (As an example, if you estimate analog TV at 640x480 then that's 0.29Mp per frame (raw). The highest HD resolution goes up to 1920x1080 which is 1.98Mp per frame. Just taking the ratio as a rough estimate means my 100 recorder would now be a 15 hour recorder.)

VOD: Yes, it would be nice if Tivo coordinated with your cable box for video on demand programming and recorded it for you. Certainly not a trivial task. Since my cable company doesn't offer VOD, not something that matters much to me at the moment.

Recording optimization across multiple recorders... I only have one tivo box so not a big deal for me. It would be interesting to know what percentage of their market would really be interested in this. Even if I had two boxes I don't think this would be a very big deal for me. Maybe if I had 3 or more... but the percentage of users in that situation has to be pretty small.

My 2 cents...