TiVo’s annual 10-k has revealed that Comcast paid $16 million (fiscal year ending 1/31/07) for continued development of the upcoming Motorola TiVo build. TiVo presumably received funding the prior year, and will receive a recurring subscriber bounty once the platform is deployed. I wonder if Cox sent Comcast a thank you card for footing the dev bill of this TiVo Java port.
Cost of technology revenues increased by $16.1 million for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2007, as compared to the prior fiscal year. These increase in costs are related to the Comcast development agreement and are offset by an equal amount of development revenue recognized as technology revenues.
In addition, we agreed to develop an advertising management system for deployment on Comcast platforms to enable the provision of local and national advertising to Comcast subscribers. Comcast will pay a recurring monthly fee per Comcast subscriber who receives the TiVo service through Comcast. Comcast has also paid us fees for licensing the TiVo technology, and will continue to pay us fees for engineering services for the development and integration of the TiVo service software solution (subject to adjustment under certain circumstances) and will also pay us for the advertising management system.
(via MultiChannel News)
Talk about timely. I was just wondering if there was any news about Tivo coming to Cox soon. Seems like its been awhile since Cox and Tivo made that announcement.
Well, according to the 10-K, Comcast gets most preferred customer status because of their funding, and Cox has to pay some too to tweak it for their particular needs. The deals with Comcast and Cox are also structured such that if TiVo makes deals with other MSOs with better terms, then those terms could also be applied to the Comcast & Cox deals.