Not that you had any doubts after seeing the beta correspondence and executive comments, and I don’t want to beat a dead horse. However, I did notice TiVo has updated their website to reflect that a 2010 DirecTV TiVo launch is off the table.
Earlier last week (below):
TiVo and DIRECTV have renewed their partnership, which means a new HD DIRECTV DVR featuring the Emmy® award-winning TiVo service is expected to launch to support satellite customers in 2010.
Later last week (above):
TiVo and DIRECTV have renewed their partnership, which means a new HD DIRECTV DVR featuring the Emmy® award-winning TiVo service is expected to launch to support satellite customers in the future.
Additionally, DirecTV.com now states:
We expect the new receiver to launch in early 2011 and we will provide more information as soon as it is available.
Yes, I’ve obsessively been refreshing that web page pretty regularly, anticipating this sort of update.
Also, if I were a TiVo investor I might be a little bit miffed. While TiVo isn’t material to DirecTV’s business, TiVo’s relationship with DirecTV is highly material to theirs. Given the timing, I find it unlikely TiVo was not aware that they possibly couldn’t get it done in 2010 when discussing their quarterly earnings in late August. They didn’t outright lie given their new, vague phraseology (as opposed to the earlier, specific “2010” declarations), but their comments could appear misleading assuming they knew the unlikeliness of launching this year.
“our plan remains to launch DIRECTV by year end”
“we hope to be able to push out late this year”
I think this will be DOA. They -may- get it to market sometime in 2011 (or 2012 or later – who knows) but when they do, everyone will already have some form of alternative and TiVo’s offerings won’t be enough to get them to switch back.
Even now with my TiVo HD, if it were to go out it’d be far easier to just get with the cable company and get one of their DVRs. It might not be ‘as good as’ but it is ‘good enough’.
And by early 2011, we mean fourth quarter.
and in other news, Francisco Franco is still dead.
Honestly, anybody who owns Tivo stock at this point must enjoy pain or something. The only reason I’d consider it would be if I were planning to fire the CEO and the board and sell the company off for spare parts or something.
Nice 75 SNL reference there Charlie! That’s Generalissimo Francisco Franco to you though. I wonder if you realized how apt the phrase was since it was spawned after Franco lingered for a number of weeks before dying. Tivo is clearly going to linger far far longer than that of course…
Dave — do you have any inside knowledge on why this continues to be delayed? Is TiVo waiting on resolution of Dish lawsuits, so they could twist DTV’s arms and get more $$$? Or is R&D pace at TiVo just THAT slow?
No inside knowledge… the best source of info is probably those executive quotes:
Some of it’s timing, some of it’s development, their platform architecture continues to change and develop, and we’re trying to stream into that, and it’s been that as much as anything. Anytime it’s a new development on a fluid platform, it’s going to take time.
Well I hope that when it’s released, they issue it on a good scalable platform that is not outdated by the time it hits the customers home. I don’t want to see the same fiasco as the Tivo Premier, already on underpowered hardware. That thing looks so laggy in all of the video’s I see.
I want to see an updated HD GUI, which is easy to use, friendly, and brings media in from multiple sources. I also want to see Multiroom integration.
How will this fit into my current HR24-200 Multiroom setup? The current software works ok, just needs an HD refresh (as does everyone).
Count me in as one of those people who is dying to switch from cable to DirecTV. . . but not at the expense of giving up TiVo’s wonderful remote and software functionality. We’ve been a TiVo family (with both HD and SD units now) since the late 1990s, and we absolutely love it. (Those who think they can switch to a cable-company box and get “good enough” service are in for a surprise; every cable-company box I’ve tried has been extremely glitchy, if not outright faulty. I have *never* experienced a TiVo unit malfunction that resulted in missing or losing a recording.)
I’ll try to put my expectations on hold for a while, though. And, hopefully, I’ll see a DirecTV HD TiVo unit available before the end of March 2011.
Any more news?
I am running my brothers older Hughes series 1 hardware with a 40G hard drive when the power supply failed on my newer series 2 machine (he is running series 3). I want to stay with DirectTV as we have Lifetime Tivo on our DirectTV account. We purchased our first TIVO with lifetime dial-up that was grand-fathered in when Direct took over servicing.
I was really hoping Direct and TTIVO would get their beans together this year.