Comments on: Comcast to Take TiVo National by Year End?

By: Glenn

Glenn — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:48:58 +0000

Agree with all of this, never believed it in the first place. The fact that they haven’t mentioned the Tivo interface on Comcast hardware in A-G-E-S means its near dead.

I’d actually make it broader than that. Given how poorly this worked, I’d be starting to tone the death knell for OCAP/tru2way at this point. The cable industry missed the self-imposed July 1 deadline, and by quite a bit at this point. Given that I don’t see any more tru2way ready TVs coming out this Christmas do you? I assume the electronics giants are going to start renegging on their end as well. And with that tru2way will die a well deserved death.

The bad news is that this will also mean the rumored Tivo Series 4 won’t be coming to a retailer near you any time soon either, and we’ll all be stuck with these stupid rebooting tuning adapters for the forseeable future.

I think the whole cable industry is going to be overwhelmed by the coming “Over the Top” video revolution myself.

By: spsmyk

spsmyk — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:30:48 +0000

Yeah I think Cypher has it…Tivo-esq experience, not Tivo itself. Comcast continuing to believe that they can polish up standard offering to make it more Tivo like…make it prettier and nobody will notice that it isn’t really Tivo…

I concur with Robert and his TivoSoft solution is dead analysis. I always assumed they would have to partner on a cable hardware offering in conjunction with the cable cos., except I can’t figure out a deal that makes economic sense for anyone unless they build such a crappy DVR that they can effectively support it through monthly fee with no hardware subsidy, which I guess could work, but if it is crappy enough to cover hardware on a monthly subsidy does it kill the Tivo brand ‘experience’.

I’m just not sure how you cover the more expensive hardware and still make it worthwhile to Tivo, cable company and the consumer. As a shareholder and customer of Tivo, I wish they would figure it out – well, actually as a shareholder, I hope they just pursue patent infringement claims and drop all consumer offerings

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:01:25 +0000

It's as I suspected... Comcast just emailed me after they had Melissa send out a Twitter correction: "Prior tweet regarding national Tivo rollout was incorrect, no plans at this time" Having said that, I know Davis is an optimist. Perhaps she's just not cleared to make such a bold announcement and it will come to pass. I still highly doubt it.

By: ZeoTiVo

ZeoTiVo — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:17:01 +0000

the motorolla hardware was simply a non starter for anything – then add in difficulty of making it all a downloadable upgrade and it was simply smoke from someones pipe from the get go.
SO this national rollout is either more smoke “hey it is available, but oddly not many are asking for it”
or it is indeed just TiVo-esque changes to existing DVR software/guide
or it is a new box for Comcast to deploy. If Comcast had to test it though in time to deploy it this year then how come no one heard of it. Comcost is only semi closed about its betas.

I vote for some chnages to existing things and the support person was couching it in terms the person she was helping would like hearing.

By: cypherstream

cypherstream — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:25:39 +0000

I wonder if Tivo wrote their software on a more open Java based standard platform if they could of done more with it on the Moto box. But I don’t think the Moto OCAP layer was ready in time… resulting in much convoluted assembly and C level code, very complicated and not very optimized.

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:06:40 +0000

I tried the comcast dvr with the tivo software and it was really bad in:
1. major lags in interface flow and commands.
2. dvr would lock up all the time.
3. limited tivo functionality.

Really put a damper on my 3 year experience with the original tivo dvr. Its a shame that more people and companies dont get behind tivo since I really find it to be a great interface with smooth functionality flow.

By: Robert Mugabe

Robert Mugabe — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 23:37:41 +0000

ComcasTivoRola will never make it out of New England. It is far more likely that TiVo will develop a new hardware solution.

A Comcast branded, TiVoHD variant, with an internal (and long fabled) tru-2-way adapter for use on the Comcast network will replace Motorola as the standard DVR to new customers, and by attrition to the exsisting over the coming years.

SoftTiVo is all but R.I.P.

PS – Its has been a long time since anybody even mentioned the Comcast SoftTiVo solution for ScientificAtlanta boxes…

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:07:07 +0000

bkdtv, Davis and I are in agreement with your deployment milestone suspicions – he and I have discussed this at length. While the contract isn’t public, he’s seen enough in the various filings to believe timetables are in effect on both sides and most likely one reason why TiVo had to restate the deal given the delays. I wish he’d write up more of these analyses beyond my own Inbox. Regardless of what ComcastMelissa was told or knows/doesn’t-know, I just don’t see a way for them to get from 1 market/franchise to all in the next 3.5 months.

cypher, something like that occurred to me as well. But mentioning TiVo by name and the Boston market led me down a different path. I’ve got inquiries out to both these guys for comment. Of course, I doubt they’ll reveal anything of interest.