TiVo: Officially Jumped the Shark

[Jeremy Charette]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.tivo.com/2.3.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.tivo.com/2.3.asp</a><br /><br /></div><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/2.0_bb_aslow.gif" /> <br /><br />News has been coming out about TiVo's pricing changes, and though the investors may be happier, frankly, I think they'll see sales plummet and subscriptions drop dramatically in the coming months. You see, TiVo's attractiveness was (at least for me) the low subscription price. Just $12.95 per month. Cheaper than a DVR from Time Warner, with all the benefits of the program guide and recording functionality. Even better, it has an interface my mother could love (and she does!). Recent enhancements have made it an even better deal, with the ability to stream music and photos from my PC, download shows to a Portable Media Center, share files between TiVo boxes, and setup recordings over the internet...no wonder TiVo fanatics are, well, fanatical!<br /><br />But with these recent pricing changes, that advantage over cable and satellite providers has disappeared. If you ask me, consumers don't want to be locked into a multi-year service plan. Those that do would have already purchased a lifetime subscription, which is no longer being offered. The only way to get anything close to the original $12.95 per month fee previously offered, is to pre-pay for 3 years of service at a cost of <b>$469</b>! If you want the old $12.95 per month plan, get a box at retail, otherwise expect to pay alot more for monthly TiVo service.<br /><br />Perhaps we should interview the management at TiVo and find out: what were they thinking? :?

[jeffd]

Yea, I figured it was about time to perform corperate suicide for tivo. ;)

The higher "lowest" monthly payments and the compleate removal of the lifetime subscription pretty much cut out half their interested audience.

[tasi]

Personally I think they're phasing out direct subscriptions. There will be better deals to get TiVo from you cable provider (eventually).

I think TiVo is just preparing for the cable companies to adopt the TiVo software into their hardware, and then eventually only selling subscriptions through the cable companies.

If that's not what they're doing, then God help them, this will be a disaster.

T.

[Jeremy Charette]

They've already stated that they're trying to get out of the TiVo box business, and license the software to content distributors, but I think that's going to be an uphill battle. Cisco (who now owns Scientific Atlanta) has already said that they aren't interested, and that in their opinion user interfaces aren't that hard to develop. I think you'll find the same response from Motorola, the #2 cable/satellite box maker. There's no "might be" here, this is going to be a disaster for TiVo. There's no value add for the customer. If they had developed a whole new suite of services, and then upped the price at the same time, it would be justified in the eyes of the consumer. But just raising the prices for the sake of increasing profits? A sure recipe for driving customers into the arms of competitors.