I know that I’ve been a little slow to react to this news however; I have a couple of reasons.
- My wife and I have been getting the Baby’s room together. Believe it or not, the baby takes precedence over TiVo.
- TiVo’s kind of like my favorite pet. How many people foreshadow the death of their pet. This would kind of be sick and twisted.
That being the case, I am going to put my 2 cents into this discussion. Many sites (TVHarmony, PVRBlog) are talking about the death of TiVo. There sure has been a lot of negative TiVo news as of late. The news about DirectTV seemed to overshadow the release of TiVoToGo. Along with the DirectTV news there has also been the criticism that the rollout procedure for TiVoToGo wasn’t acceptable and that the lack of a Mac version was disappointing. As if that wasn’t enough negative news, we recently found out that TiVo declined a deal with Comcast because they weren’t given enough money per user.
Ok, enough about the bad stuff, lets get on with the point of this post. People have been writing about the death of TiVo since the company was born. On almost a daily basis, I read an article that talks about the death of TiVo and why the company will go under next month. Isn’t this the same thing that people have been doing with Apple for years? You may be surprised to know that I don’t think all of this recent news is all that negative. Yes, it’s true that losing DirecTV customers isn’t a positive thing however; lets not forget the fact that recently TiVo acknowledge the fact that they were trying to break free of their dependence on the cable company. Hence the up coming release of the cable card… What I’m trying to say is that maybe saying no to Comcast fits into TiVo’s strategic plan. After all, why should they accept an offer that isn’t satisfactory to them. Would that be a good business decision?
In order to prevent myself from sounding hypocritical, I’d like to point out one thing. If you’ve followed this blog for some time now, you’ll know that I’ve said on a number of occasions that TiVo needs to establish a partnership with a cable company. My opinion on this has recently changed. I think TiVo is smart to try and establish a company that is not dependant on the cable industry. The only major problem I see is that TiVo needs to act quickly. If TiVo doesn’t act quickly then more then likely the competition will get to large and they will be unable to overcome it.
To sum it up, I’d like everybody to step back and stop talking about the death of TiVo. Maybe I’m in denial however; I’m pretty confident that the company has a plan for success. Besides, the news about a new CEO is a good thing. Fresh minds bring fresh ideas. Let’s wait and see what the new CEO (whomever it might be) has to offer.
About Author
