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back to article TiVo: Yes we've axed staff, but we're NOT packing in hardware biz

TiVo is shuffling its playing cards as it prepares to shift its strategy somewhat towards the cloud - however the set-top maker has flatly denied claims that it is retreating from the hardware business. The company's chief flack, Steve Wymer, told The Verge that it was wrong to suggest that a number of recent layoffs at TiVo, …

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  1. Timo

    They might be able to refocus on cord-cutters

    We had a tivo box in 2007 or so and loved it, then when the hardware died a couple of years ago we dumped them. Now we've suffered with the archaic cable box for too long and the introductory offer for the free box is over, so I picked up a refurbed one this week for $49 plus service.

    I'm going to spend the next year trying to get the wife off of cable. Its all complete and total crap except for maybe one or two shows.

    I am well aware that I could build my own HTPC that would also have DVR capabilities, but I have other hobbies that are more rewarding for me. It is continually on my wish list of things to do.

    The Tivo boxes that can capture over the air signals can offer a pretty good value for a lot of people. I did that a year ago for my parents, and they love it. They get something like 25 channels OTA, and can stream netflix, etc. For them it has been perfect (they're too cheap to go for cable.)

    The one thing that seems really retarded in this day and age is that they expect you to buy a separate streaming box AND separate service fees in order to stream out of the box to mobiles, etc in the home or on the internet. So many people go pick up slingboxes that don't need monthly fees. I think they're starting to roll those into their higher-end boxes.

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    1. JEDIDIAH
      Reply Icon
      Linux

      Re: They might be able to refocus on cord-cutters

      > I am well aware that I could build my own HTPC that would also have DVR capabilities, but I have other hobbies that are more rewarding for me.

      The idea of an HTPC is not for it to be a pet. The idea of an HTPC is for it to be a custom appliance. You set it up and pretty much forget about it.

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  2. Nate Amsden

    my tivos get lots of use

    I retired my first series 1 tivo back in October, gave it to my sister - it had been running since summer of 2001. I bought a Series 3 back in 2007 I think it was, and it still gets used every day (60+ season passes/wish lists). Series 1 tivo had one set of HDs go bad (I replaced em). Series 3 so far has had two sets of HDs go bad(most recently December). None of my Tivos have ever NOT been connected to a good UPS(same goes for all of my electronics at home).

    Bought a series 4 on sale in September and it gets lighter use(replaced Series 1) but still used every day.

    Ran into a NASTY bug on series 4 a couple weeks ago where it thinks all of the space is consumed and it deletes all of the recordings (including those set to "don't delete until I tell you so"). At the worst it was recording and deleting that recording 7 minutes into the recording because it thought it was out of space. Then it decided to get stuck on reboot every time. After working with support they decided I needed to RMA. I decided to try to use some of those kickstart tivo codes and managed to repair the system by doing an emergency re-install and a wipe of all data. Not sure if the problem will recur or not... that is the biggest issue I've had with tivo in the past 14 years.

    A side effect of using tivo for so long is I'm always out of the loop as to what new shows are coming out or what new movies are coming out etc, sometimes don't find out till long after the show is canceled.

    All of the podcasts I get all come through tivo. I watch NFL football, lots of CNBC(entertainment purposes only), and quite a bit of other stuff, so I don't see myself cutting the cord anytime soon. I cut off Netflix when they jacked up their prices after looking back and seeing how little I used them over the preceding year(hours viewing was literally single digits for the year, though the year before that I used it a lot, until I ran out of things that interested me to watch). Never used any of the other premium streaming services, content selection is just not good enough. I'd be happy to pay $150/mo for a service that had everything, but such a thing doesn't appear to exist (that and peak times for bandwidth use is still often problematic for HD content streaming).

    I bought a WD TV Live over the weekend, but only for streaming my own media files via DLNA from my linux server. So far it works well.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not much hardware design required for a DVR in 2014

    There's no much hardware innovation left. New features come in the form of software, and next generation hardware is the same as the last, except for "more". More tuners, more CPU speed, more RAM, more disk. None of which is designed by Tivo. Maybe the next generation will swap the MPEG2/MPEG4 decoder for a MPEG2/MPEG4/HEVC decoder, but Tivo will buy that from someone like Broadcom, not design it themselves.

    A lot of their new business is coming in terms of partnering with cable companies. Mine for instance has a new 'home server' product that's a Tivo. Tivo may not have been responsible for designing that hardware, just provided specs and the cable company had someone like Pace build it for them.

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  4. John Tserkezis

    If their idea of "cloud" is anything like what optus did here in australia, that is have their servers take care of your slipstream programming and storage, instead of local storage, they'll be dead before their cloud, er, vaporises.

    Turns out, storing programs on the cloud leaves them open to copyright abuse (by the whining owners), on the owner's hard drives, it's ok.

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