Seven Network has renegotiated its distribution deal with TiVo and will launch the American digital video recorder before its coverage of the Beijing Olympics starts on August 8.

$10-$12 monthly fee "slashed"

Link to AFR article.

Cheers
Ron

Tivo's features seem pretty good to me compared to the standard PVR, but I can't tell specs from the website, incl. whether it will be a twin tuner, whether it will be HD, what outputs it will have, etc. Therefore hard to judge pros and cons over current crop of PVRs.

What I also want to know about Tivo and FreeView is whether you can rely on the data coming from the program guides to set your timers/reservations. Using the current EPG, it is always advisable to pad 5 minutes before the start and 15 (or more) minutes on the end of a program's published times to ensure you record the entire program and aren't at the mercy of the networks' broadcast delays.

Will this be the case with FreeView, that is, will all the FTA networks play nice with it and run to the schedule or update the schedule on the fly if there are delayed program start times?

Mick

My gut feeling is that they wont be able to adjust schedules on the fly.
The bigger question is how accurately will they publish the schedules as most of these "overruns" arent in live shows, its simply by having an epg schedule that doesnt match the on-air schedule to start with!

So its going to be less than $10 a month? I assume initial box costs must be several hundred though. Good to see its going ahead though.

Regards

Peter Gillespie

The article states it will cost $500 to buy the box and free software upgrades for 3 years.

Previous articles about the TiVo that Seven will launch were based on the Series 3 HD version as in the US which has twin tuners, eSata, HDMI, ~250GB HDD, ethernet etc. But since initial announcements, TiVo have released a cheaper HD model still with two tuners but missing other features. Which one we get, only the beta testers and 7 know I suppose.

Tivo Finally Coming To Oz, With channel seven?

TiVo PVRs

Interesting when a hardware press release comes out.

This suggest that we are going to get it a lot cheaper than in the U.S.

The Series 3 TiVo is US$799 (though it is on special at the moment for US$599).

The cheapest plan is $US8.31 per month if you prepay for 3 years. If you pay monthly, it is US$12.95.

Then tax has to be added in most U.S. states. Some states it is on the box only, other states it is also on the monthly fee. I experimented, and for California residents it is an extra 7.9%

Talk about cutting it fine.... They haven't even started an advertising campaign yet. Shouldn't they be whipping up public interest by now? I thought the Olympics was going to be their big carrot?

Still kind of difficult to see the value too, when twin tuner HD PVRs like the Homecast can be had as low as $500. Sure having a unit that will auto-add programs based on certain criteria is nice, but it's not a feature Mums and dads will care all much about. If it was they'd all have been building HTPCs for the past few years. The lack of take-up of Pay TV in Oz tells you how much the average punter cares about value-adds to broadcast media. Neither can you compare us to the States, for many reasons, one of the biggest being their analogue network goes night-night next year (plus their FTA set top boxes tend to be more expensive and less feature rich than ours, for some reason).

That's why I suggest we may get the cheaper HD model which is US$299

However, it is not Series 3 as previous announcements had said that we would get.

What would be great is if we had the same legal requirement in the U.S. for Cable TV providers to supply a card that can be used in devices like TiVos and PVRs. Then we could use the one box for TV and Cable.

Tivo won't have to worry much about competitors' pricing. The only PVR that most of the market knows about is the foxtel iQ. Provided tivo seems good value against the iQ (and note value does not mean cheaper) then it will get sales.

Tivo will have an avalanche of PR, marketing activity and advertising behind it - Homecast, beyonwiz, Topfield won't be able to match it - but they will get benefit from Tivo growing the size of the cake.

People will only compare Tivo to iQ if it can record foxtel as well as FTA. Will it be able to? Or can foxtel prevent that?

Mick

Unless it has analogue inputs it won't be able to record Foxtel.

Can't see foxtel allowing a cablecard type of system for the TiVo to record Foxtel content

That's not what I posted. May I suggest you go back and read my post and the few before it for context.

Another poster suggested people may view the Tivo as expensive when compared to the Homecast. IMO that won't occur as outside a small coterie of PVR afficiandos people will not know what a PVR is. If an average consumer has any idea about the price of a PVR it will be price of the iQ, and on that basis the mooted price for Tivo doesn't look too bad.

I doubt the Tivo will be able to record foxtel.

Thats good, with the lack of PayTV recording crippling it (as well as other features), it would have been hard to get people to sign up to a 15$ or so service.

I don't disagree with you on this.....and think that there are a couple of factors at work here with regard to folks finding out about other devices:

The term "PVR" itself is a problem....and Tivo/iQ etc. are marketing themselves on the "catchy" name alone....
I don't know if they actually even use a generic phrase like "digital TV recorder" - until you get into the FAQ's/tech info on their respective websites.

The Homecast/BW/Topfield etc. devices / websites are "geeky"...and obviously none of these are household names. The fact that most of the CE giants have ditched their PVR's hasn't helped to "spread the gospel" about their benefits - so "average consumers" aren't exposed to them, and opt for DVDRs or (ironically) Tivos or iQ's. The latter, primarily because they are promoted in a non-confrontational/non-technical way.

Having said this....there's a pervasive attitude here (DTV forums) that the "average consumer" is either unaware (true) and/or stupid (not quite as true as some folks here make out). While there are a lot of technical users here, there are also a heap of "average consumers" who managed to find the DTV forum...and have been swayed to purchase a PVR rather than a DVDR, as it was a better match for their needs.
Still, there's probably a far greater number who didn't find the forums, and ended up with a DVDR, iQ (or will end up with a Tivo - in the future).

It's a weird thing....where $500-700 spent on a bit of kit doesn't involve much (or any) research....but this amount of money is viewed as pretty trivial by today's standards....so folks make "impulse purchases" of gear that isn't ideal for them.

Look, I agree with all you say, subject to one caveat. People think in paradigms - that is, they think about new things in the same manner as they have been thinking about existing stuff until something happens to shake them out of the tree (this tree shaking event is called a paradigm shift).

So people have been thinking about "taping" tv programs for years - when the VCR dies they think, hey - VCR is old tech I should be taping onto DVD (because DVD is the current paradigm). The wander into HN or Bing Lee and find a shelf full of shiny new DVD recorders. This substantiates their thought process - they get confirmation that everyone is recording onto DVD. They don't think that their might be a better way - perhaps a salesman tells them that this model has a HDD as well - but when that happens they understand that the HDD holds the same data as a DVD has.

It is very hard to get through to people who aren't interested in the technical details why a PVR differs from a DVD recorder. In most cases the difference in functionality just aren't that significant- both can do timeshifting, chaseplay, ad skipping etc etc etc.

Some people twig to the fact that FTA is now in HD and that DVD recorders do not record in HD. But if they are still stuck in the paradigm that causes them to think they need a recording medium for each recording instance (ie a tape or a DVD) they think - I need a HD form of DVD. Hence we've recently had people coming on here asking for blu-ray recorders to tape HD FTA content.

TiVio and the iQ don't have to explain in technical terms how they are different to DVD recorders - they have both have unique selling propositions that go beyond DVD recording. They both offer appealing functionality that DVD recorders can't match. TiVo apparently has this great user interface, internet content and the ability for the box to suggest things you might like to watch. iQ has the ability to record foxtel as well as FTA.

Those selling propositions are going to be easily understood by the average consumer and the large marketing budget 7 and foxtel will devote to their respective boxes will put the proposition in front of many customers.

How will beyonwiz, topfield and homecast compete?

In my opinion they can't compete. All they can hope for is that they benefit from this increased awareness of "recording" technology, because their advertising budgets are small.

Yes I think Beyonwiz Topfield and Homecast will benefit from this as the (general) mum and dad's start to see what is available to them apart from dodgey analogue DVD recorders etc. And start to be educated to what HD TV and a PVR can do for them. Not to mention the extra channels HD provide and what is quite possibly due in the future as well. HD is the only way to go.

Tivo may well Blitz everyones expectations when (they finally) get a marketing campaign going. I think it may well be an eye catcher. Also if they keep the initial cost down and ongoings to a minimum, People wont be able to help themselves when it comes to the cool features that Tivo is offering. Beyonwiz is the only thing close to tivo at the moment as long as the ICE TV Remote features are implemented in the next May FW update.


Joffa

Ooooopps Double post

I agree here Joffa, but the beauty of the TiVo over what the BW may possibly offer is that it ia all in one package....no need to sign up with a third party (IceTV) to enable some of the features.

Cool. Personally I may be happy with Both!!

Beyonwiz is a wonderful device. Media streaming from the PC is just simply Fraking Fantastic. Not to mention the HD twin tuner features it boasts.

And so is TiVo (when Beta is Finalized) and it finally ships to the Masses.

Tivo appear to have a lot of the Initial feature ideas and hardware from the US version, so therefore (technically) less R & D to iron out for the Australian release.

Personally it can only add to the choices that people here will have when it comes to DTV. AND ABOUT BLOODY TIME


Lets hope all FTA channels come to the party regarding EP guides, unlike channel NINE with the Court Battle they made ICE TV go through just recently.
ICE TV won BTW.


Cheers

Joffa

Well the only ones not doing the full 7 days for EPG is ABC and SBS. Once they lift their game, services like IceTV really need to value add with features like Ice Remote to continue as a business proposition. Otherwise, most users would be just as happy with the FTA EPG.

The thing is, with VERY rare exceptions, these program over-runs are deliberate and tightly scheduled. The networks could easily put the real program start times in their EPG right now if they wanted to. But that would expose their ruse.



Interestingly, I noticed last night that ABC2 had EPG data for the next 7 days. Only ABC2, though, not ABC1.

ABC2 is 100% preprogrammed. ie no news breaks or anything 'live'. Its scheduled weeks in advance. So it doesn't surprise me that ABC2 canput together a 7 day EPG.

Regards

Peter Gillespie

Thanks neon kitten. I am still using IceTV EPG that's been cached in my P1's memory so I haven't usd FTA EPG for the last 3 months. I would say by mid next week I'm back using the FTA EPG again.

I'm sure they could do it for ABC1 as well if they tried; it's not like they make it up as they go along after all

The reason given by ABC-connected people in these forums for the short-duration EPG has always been that all the EPG data is entered by hand. Perhaps that's changed now, and at least in the case of ABC2 they've managed to figure out how to port the listings data from scheduling computer to EPG generating thingy.

Hopefully they'll get it happening on ABC1 soon, too. Then all we need is for SBS to wake up and provide one.