With new services, TiVo's now 'not a video recorder'

By Ty Pendlebury on 03 December 2008

Do you want to put a central media hub under your Christmas tree?

For almost ten years, the name TiVo has been synonymous with digitally recording television the United States. Nonetheless, Australian TiVo representatives no longer want you to think of their product as a video recorder. With a variety of new TiVo services on the way, they would like you to think of it as a central media hub, thank you very much.

Despite its relatively short tenure in this country, Hybrid TV, the distributors of TiVo in Australia, relaunched the device at an event in Sydney today with a raft of new features including pizza ordering, online photo services and "catch-up" TV downloads.

"TiVo is a media device, not a DVR (Digital Video Recorder). DVRs as a category peaked in 2006, and it's now dying," said Hybrid TV CEO Robbee Minicola. "TiVo doesn't want to be thought of as a PVR or DVR."

She then proceeded to announce a raft of new services planned for 2009 to back up this claim including:

  • the ability to order Dominos pizzas through TiVo
  • a Home Networking Package, including TiVoToGo which will be available for "under AU$100"
  • streamed Nova and Vega radio content through an alliance with DMG Radio (from Q1)
  • PixelEyes, a service that allows users to view photos on their TV through TiVo after they have uploaded them online at either Picasa or Photobucket
  • daily updated horoscopes
  • a World Clock to set national and international time zones

Minicola also claimed success with several other recently launched features, such as the Sunrise Weather updates. Since launching on October 22, they are now used by 73 per cent of users every week. In addition, Minicola said the free Blockbuster Movie of the Week trial which started two days ago on December 1 had already been used by 25 per cent of users.

The company plans to expand the service next year with ad-supported "free" movies in addition to paid VOD downloads and is in talks with ISPs about including them in unmetered content.

Minicola said she saw TiVo as an inclusive device that brought the family together through new features such as games and the upcoming ability to catch up on programs they've missed.

"Our absolute goal in 2009 is television via broadband. Catch-up TV is a critical thing for us," Minicola said.

Luring away pay TV customers was the next step: "We need to assuage the thirty per cent of consumers mindlessly paying for channels they simply do not watch," she stated.

Minicola said though other vendors had tried bundling services together before, none of them have had the push of the TiVo brand. "We're not saying it's special, we're saying it's bloody convenient," she concluded.

Topics: dominos, dvr, pizza, pvr, radio, tivo, vod, tivotogo, service

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Comments (5)

  • star2b commented on 07/12/2008 20:39 Report abuse

    Stop your whining people... They are adding features every week, and I'm sure these will be added once the local issues are sorted out. Getting TiVO was seriously the best purchase I have ever made, and it only took a couple of months for me to ditch satellite, realising how much money I was wasting when there was so much content out there that I enjoy.

  • Tricky commented on 05/12/2008 00:18 Report abuse

    Still no mention of the expansion hard drive, or Software enabling transfer to computer,I can copy to DVD via video out but of course only in Standard definition. I would like to be able to store programs I'm interested in in High Definition. Bugger the Pitzza's do they want us to become a Nation of fat couch potato's. Downloaded movies are ok but have been able to do that for years on a computer. So its still just an overpriced PVR. Aldi's super market were selling similar PVR's for $299 last week!

  • Patrick commented on 04/12/2008 15:57 Report abuse

    Why did we get a stripped-down version, you ask rstocks? In the US they have what's called a "CableCARD", it's similar to the smart card that you insert into your set top box but it is similar in size to a PC card. What makes it useful compared to using the standard issue set top box is that instead of using the STB the pay TV providers give you, you could use your own DVR (TiVo for example) or if your TV had the correct slot you could simply insert it into your TV and forgo a STB. Because we do not use the CableCARD system in Australia it made sense to remove such features from the TiVo boxes. Here's the link to look up more info on it: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CableCARD".

  • Slam commented on 04/12/2008 11:30 Report abuse

    Should have been here 10 years ago then. I have about a dozen devices that already do this some of which are not tied to my living room! Who buys this crap?

  • rstocks commented on 04/12/2008 10:43 Report abuse

    Without the ability to work with pay TV services, it doesn't matter how many pizzas you can order. Why was this functionality removed from the Australian version?

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