Monday, August 15, 2005

The long and short is that TiVo just hasn't been doing very well financially, but the big problem it faces is one that's similar to what Apple and the other music services are facing: There's a fundamental understanding that this is the real deal -- that time shifting is a real feature people want that won't go away -- but now that TiVo has created the market, and demand, there are few reasons for the cable and satellite TV companies not to cut them out of the chain...

With something like the iTMS Store, Apple and others have a leg up in getting companies to include a third party at their table because content is such a key component in the service. TiVo doesn't change the content, and doesn't add to it, it just chops it up and modifies it. If you're someone like DirectTV, you're basically a distributor with content creators at the top of the funnel.