[LINK] Will Google?s Deal with TiVo Push More Video to the Web?

[Scott Howard]

On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 4:35 PM, Ivan Trundle <ivan at itrundle.com> wrote:

> I note with interest that Tivo's subscriber base is diminishing. Current
> subscriber rate is equal to where it was in 2004. They lost 314, 000
> subscribers in the last quarter alone (according to their own filing).
> People appear to be tiring of the yearly subscription.
>

I think it's far more than just the yearly subscription.

Many US cable/satellite providers are now providing boxes which do pretty
much what the Tivo does. Although these generally don't have quite the same
"intelligence" as the Tivo, they are normally cheaper per month and without
the up-front/purchase charges like the Tivo has.  With Tivo's stagnation in
feature set over the past few years even these cable/satellite-company
provided boxes are now often providing equal or greater functionality than
Tivo.

For those that don't want to pay extra for such a box, most cable providers
have used the move to Digitial to also add "On-demand" TV.  For many
programs, if you miss it one night, it'll be available on-demand the next
day - giving basically the same functionality as a Tivo - including pause
and rewind, although often without the ability to fast-forward through ads.

But the big change that is occurring at the moment is the Internet connected
TV/Bluray/black box/etc.  For less than the monthly cost of Tivo you can
subscribe to Netflix ($8.95/month) and stream a reasonable (and growing)
range of movie and TV shows directly to your TV - and in a few cases now I
mean _directly_ to your TV - models such as Sony's new Bravia TV's directly
connect to your home network and will play from Netflix without any
additional hardware.

More and more models of Blu-ray players are supporting Netflix and often
similar services (including Youtube, and I believe a few will shortly
support Hulu - NBC's TV over the Internet service) this trend is only going
to increase - especially given that this Friday ("Black Friday") will
undoubtedly see the highest number of Internet-connected Blu-Ray players
ever sold on a single day.

  Scott.