TiVo and DirecTV have not only extended their recicrpocal do-not-sue clause, they’re getting back into bed for some new hardware. The original HD DirecTiVo supports only MPEG-2 and has been out of production for a few years, while DTV screwed around with NDS. Although they’ll likely continue marketing NDS DVRs, offering TiVo as an upsell with less subsidized hardware.

The current TiVo HD platform should be sufficient for decoding DirecTV’s MPEG-4 HD content once they integrate satellite tuners - which supports their aggressive goal of rolling this out next year. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse for Dish…

DIRECTV, Inc. (Nasdaq: DTV), the nation’s leading satellite television service provider, and TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVR), announced today that they have extended their current agreement, which includes the development, marketing and distribution of a new HD DIRECTV DVR featuring the TiVo(R) service, as well as the extension of mutual intellectual property arrangements.

Under the terms of the non-exclusive arrangement, DIRECTV and TiVo will work together to develop a version of the TiVo(R) service for DIRECTV’s broadband-enabled HD DVR platform. The product will support the latest TiVo and DIRECTV features and services, including TiVo’s Universal Swivel Search and TiVo KidZone. TiVo will develop the new HD DVR for an expected launch in the second half of 2009.

UPDATE TiVo has just clarified for me that the service will run on DirecTV hardware, not the TiVo HD hardware as I had assumed.

Trying something a bit different here..

We often find ourselves commenting on a variety of stories around the blogosphere. Topics that we’d maybe like to cover but just don’t get to, content that is slightly off topic, or news that doesn’t justify an entire post. So the experiment here will be aggregating some of our recent web comments back to ZNF. To get going, the initial batch is mine. But I’d like to also include Dale, Davis, Brent, and Mari if they’ve got the motivation to keep track of their contributions.

Related, I continue to micro-publish on Twitter - tweets can be viewed as a web page, subscribed to via RSS, followed within your own Twitter account, added to FriendFeed, viewed in the ZNF sidebar, etc.

And, now, onto the blog comments:

Netflix: Faulty Hardware Took Us Down
Interesting that they blame one piece of hardware, when it looks like all Netflix’s distribution centers were out of commission for a time. Unless they took the others offline until they identified the problem, or they have multiple instances of that one piece of hardware. Still smells like a software issue…

New Palm Treo Pro to be made by HTC
HTC designed at least one other Treo - I think it was maybe the 750. And of course they’re also supposedly behind the Xperia X1. What I don’t get with the Treo Pro is the meager 2mp camera. Also the timing is a bit weird with the new 800w on Sprint. Who can figure Palm out.

Buffalo LinkStation Mini: small backup drive with big capacity, remote media streaming
I wonder how it really works in a mixed-OS environment? I had an earlier LinkStation that allowed me to store/see files from PC and Mac, but one of them couldn’t see the other’s files on the NAS. It also had a loud fan, though this Mini obviously has no fan. Mirroring option is very attractive… But I’m tired of the clutter and wonder if I should get a Time Capsule to replace my USB Maxtor.

Rekindling Interest in Amazon’s E-Book Reader
I’ve seen three Kindles in the wild. Two in cafes and one on a cruise. The design isn’t as sexy as I’d like given the price point. I’m shallow like that. But the big problem for me is that I don’t read enough books to get a decent return on my hardware investment. Drop the price by 50% and their customer base would increase exponentially. Can’t do that due to costs? Fine, give me a Kindle iPhone App and you’re selling tons of razor blades without needing to mess with razors.

Sneak Peek: The WB Launches Tomorrow
I’ve been looking at the WB beta video site for awhile too - I like the more singular focus on per show pages and large nav elements (compared to Hulu), but agree the interface could use some work. Would like to see them build communities around series and would like to see them offer entire series - these seemed to vary during the beta and I’m not sure what will hit the web tomorrow. Most interesting to me, though probably less relevant to the masses, is their television content offerings which didn’t originally air on the WB. Interesting licensing questions here…

TiVo To Partner With Entertainment Weekly
TiVo’s “partnering” with Entertainment Weekly pretty much sounds like another Guru Guide. These things have pretty limited value in my opinion - both as a customer and in evaluating the cross-marketing potential. If Guru Guides evolve to the point where customers can share recommendations with friends, I’d be more interested…

Do you want your devices pre-loaded with content?
The ZunePass and Rhapsody models can probably be understood by consumers and be economically viable if a major market player like Apple introduced similar. Mark’s proposition is unsustainable if Apple intended to make money on the service.

Pre-loading content may work if you’re talking about dropping a few current artisits or hits that the studios want to push as a way to upsell albums or additional tracks. But, yeah - as far as lots of content and hitting relevant genres, good luck. Maybe it works with the teen crowd, but our adult tastes are eclectic.

I think I remember an old Samsung Yepp MP3 player I had years ago having a bunch of tracks on it. I’m sure it didn’t persuade me to buy the album and it didn’t incentivize me to buy that player over another.

TiVo held their quarterly call yesterday and, while I don’t pretend to be financial analyst, I’ll share my uninformed observations.

As TiVo sometimes does, the Investor Relations group began their earnings day by releasing a bit of fluff news to the press - I don’t know if this is designed to distract the market to soften the blow, juice the stock price, or what. Regardless, I didn’t bite.

The quarterly results seem generally positive… TiVo was guided to just their third profitable quarter (!), though this is largely due to a continued reduction in marketing expenditures - perhaps accounting for the net loss in subscribers. While the majority of these folks retired from the obsolete DirecTiVo platform, stand-alone TiVo unit subscriptions were also in decline. (Fully amortized Lifetimed units also push the subscriber number down, but they didn’t volunteer exactly how many that is.) However, TiVo has no debt, plenty of cash on hand, and I get the sense they feel like they’ll be coming into even more related to EchoStar’s patent infringement. Going forward, TiVo expects to pick up additional customers via newer channels consisting of the MSO dealios (Comcast, Cox) and their Australian offering.

Related to the tech itself, I didn’t come across many interesting nuggets. It’s expected that Cox will begin offering their custom TiVo solution this fall in New England. Related, Comcast is expected to increase both their marketing and market presence beyond New England beginning next month. Specific regions weren’t disclosed, but I heard something somewhere a long while ago that Denver was to be one of the initial sites. We shall see.

In regards to a Series4 Tru2way TiVo unit, it doesn’t look we’ll be seeing anything soon. Surely not in 2008. According to CEO Tom Rogers:

The retail Tru2way issue, we have agreed with the cable industry that we would look to provide a OCAP or Tru2way retail device. It is something that we would like to do, meaning something that a consumer could go into any retailer and purchase and plug it into any cable system anywhere in the country and it would just work. There are a number of CEs that are focused on Tru2way devices. Our view is that that whole regime is going to take more time to be clarified and to get the ability for players such as ourselves to build on a national uniform homogeneous basis. We are not alone among the consumer electronics players seeing that that is going to be a slower process than the cable industry may have liked, and certainly issues that we see along the way we bring to CableLabs’ attention, although there isn’t any one at this point that I would necessarily say conflicts with our objectives.

I can’t say I’m surprised with TiVo’s conservative approach given recent industry reports. I’m not even sure this needs to be a priority. However, an interim solution of a TiVo HD with integrated SDV tuning adapter would go a long way towards maximizing TiVo compatibility within the shifting cable landscape. In other cable marketplace news, TiVo doesn’t seem overly concerned with Cablevision’s network DVR. According to Rogers, “a lot of legal issues that still need to be resolved on that front” and there’s an “inadequate capacity at this point for broad scale deployment of a network DVR solution.”

Seeking Alpha TiVo Call Transcript
TiVo Quarterly Earning Release

Woot’s offering the TiVo HD (refurb) for a low $165, shipped. Like all Woot deals, you’ll need to act fast. As in today. And before they sell out. I believe this is the lowest we’ve seen THD and it’s a great price to get in on. With the money you save, I suggest picking up the very nice TiVo Glo remote to replace the traditional TiVo controller - unless you’re using a Harmony or similar.

(via Gizmo Lovers)

I’ve noticed a decent amount of energy waste coverage lately. The general theme has been specific to devices that consume electricity while in standby mode or even powered off. While I’m lazier than I am cost conscious or environmentally aware, it did get me wondering what exactly goes on in my apartment.

So I went around my place with a Kill A Watt measuring the consumption levels of various digital media hardware (and a few other devices for comparison) when not actively engaged.

Some interesting discoveries… The Netflix Roku box draws the same amount of power (5 watts) when not in use as my DivX-capable Philips DVD player when in use. The Staples shredder draws 2 watts when in standby and when powered “off.” Most surprising, though, are my two Panasonic HDTVs which appear to pull less than 1 watt when shut down - kinda negating a lot of the bad press, if accurate. (One set confirmed by CNET. Perhaps older televisions are more demanding.) Here’s the complete breakdown:

• Watts - Device
• 42 - TiVo Series 3*
• 38 - TiVo HD*
• 38 - TiVo HD XL*
• 18 - Vudu*
• 13 - ZvBox
• 11 - Slingbox PRO-HD
• 8 - Ooma Hub
• 7 - Slingbox Solo*
• 5 - Roku Netflix box
• 4 - Neuros OSD*
• 3 - Panasonic cordless phone
• 3 - Maxtor OneTouch 4
• 2 - Xbox 360
• 2 - Shredder
• 1 - Sony alarm clock radio
• <1 - Panasonic HDTV (x2)

Obviously, these various components are consuming electricity when not in use. Shutting down the TiVo units isn’t a reasonable option, so a remote powerstrip kill switch is out of the question. But devices like the Roku and Xbox 360 only need power when the television is on, making Smart Strip-like adapters appealing. These solutions cut power to peripheral devices when the primary device (television, in this case) is off. In the meantime, I’m taking a page out of Brian Lam’s and Jeremy Toeman’s book - by simply unplugging. Since the Xbox probably won’t see much playing time until the next Call of Duty arrives and I’m still waiting for mainstream blockbuster content from Netflix (Roku), both these devices have been unplugged (along with the shredder). At the same time, it’s worth keeping these numbers in perspective - my electric bill jumped over $90 once the outside temps passed 85 and I cranked the AC, while the TiVo Series3 is responsible for only about $2.25/month.

I just swung by a local Best Buy and noticed their TiVo HD units listed for $225. While I’ve seen refurbs as low as $185, I’ve not personally seen retail prices much lower than $250ish… (Though, there’ve been reports of Costco pushing the THD for $219.) Not sure if this is an unadvertised special, specific to open-box units, or a mistake. But if legit, it’s a good deal on a new TiVo.

While this isn’t exactly the TiVo+Amazon announcement I was hoping for (that’d be HD Amazon video downloads), Amazon customers with broadband-connected Series 2 or Series3/TiVo HD units will now have the ability to initiate product purchases - triggered via in-show advertising overlays or search:

Starting today, TiVo will launch the new service to consumers by merchandising products related to several high profile shows, including but not limited to The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Colbert Report, and Burn Notice. Consumers will also be able to use TiVo’s Universal Swivel Search to easily explore and buy products associated with their favorite shows, movies, actors, and directors, directly from the television set

Today Amazon adds multi-platform video streaming (think web browser) to their Unbox arsenal. Initially, the Amazon Unbox movie and TV video service required a Windows player install or Plays for Sure portable device, which was followed by the TiVo playback option. And now they appear to be dabbling in Netflix Watch Instantly and Hulu territory as they begin “Video on Demand” beta testing. Though I wonder, from a branding perspective, if they’re making a mistake… “Video on Demand” is clearly more descriptive than “Unbox,” but it’s also unremarkable.

In regards to Amazon Unbox on TiVo, I don’t see the service going anywhere anytime soon (despite the recent CinemaNow and Disney announcement) - though, I suppose it’s possible video could be served in the newly supported H.264 format. I’m all for that if it gets us to HD quality sooner. Proof positive Amazon won’t be shuttering the video download service:

The video store will [also] be accessible through the Sony Bravia Internet Video link, a $300 tower-shaped device that funnels Web video directly to Sony’s high-definition televisions. Mr. Carr said Amazon would pursue similar deals with other makers of TVs and Internet devices. “We can support both streaming and downloading,” he said.