Saturday, January 08, 2005

Is it time to trade in your TiVo? After all, the digital video recording pioneer's already long odds for survival as an independent company appeared to get longer on Jan. 6.

DirecTV, the satellite TV provider that has been aggressively marketing TiVo digital video recorders as a differentiator from cable operators, announced at the Consumer Electronics Show that it would begin selling DVRs from a sister outfit, NDS, later this year. While TiVo's contract with DirecTV runs through early 2007, the competition is sure to slow TiVo's recent explosive subscriber growth.

The move would appear to be the final blow for the creator of digital recording, which allows viewers to record shows to a hard drive so they can watch programs at their leisure. Cable concerns such as Comcast and Cox Communications are rolling out their own digital recorders that mimic TiVo's basic functions and cost less per month to the consumer -- about $6 per month compared to TiVo's $12.

However, TiVo Chief Executive Michael Ramsay hopes to keep his company one step ahead of the competition with a series of deals and initiatives that could give TiVo the shot in the arm it needs. One such move created the biggest buzz on the first day of CES, a three-day electronics confab in Las Vegas. Microsoft Chairman William Gates announced that the software giant is partnering with TiVo to let non-DirecTV TiVo subscribers download shows to Windows Mobile devices, including Pocket PC personal digital assistants and Portable Media Centers -- small hard-drive music and video players like those recently offered by Samsung, Creative, and iRiver.