Who wins in this deal? I think I do.
[ Posted by Dan on July 15, 2003 | 4 Comments ]

AOL and TiVo have a new service/feature available to those who are AOL subscribers and have a network enabled Series 2 TiVo. If you have that, then when you surf thru the TV listings at Keyword: Television, you can click on shows and have them be scheduled on your TiVo. In my opinion, that's pretty cool, but I can't figure out why AOL or TiVo thinks this is a great way to boost subscribers (or even if they do think that).

TiVo already has the Home Media Option which allows for remote scheduling and other media tom foolery. The remote scheduling is the only thing that makes me salivate, and they charge $100 for that privilege. If I'm an AOL subscriber, and I only want the remote scheduling, then this is a great deal, because I don't have to shell out an extra $100. If I wasn't already a subscriber, would this feature really lure me? And, since there are so few network enabled Series 2 TiVo's, how big can this market be? Why is TiVo willing to give away its best networking feature away to a potential audience of 30+ million people?

Business logic aside, I think this a great customer focused hack, even if it took me a while to find the feature (which, by the way, isn't vapor. It works right now). None of the news articles about this had any direction on where to use the feature, and I finally had the idea to read the original press release. It mentioned Keyword: Television, which when entered resulted in a search results page, which had a link to the actual Keyword: Television, which at the bottom of the page, said it was Keyword: TV.

After a few futile minutes of scanning that page, I finally thought of going thru the actual TV listings. I selected my provider and type of service and got a page with a listing of what's on TV right now. Since it's in a grid format, I assume AOL is paying royalties to Gemstar. Regardless, when you click on a specific show, you will see an item that says "Record on my TiVo DVR."

Doesn't that seem like a pretty convoluted process?

 

		--- If you have that, then when you surf thru the TV listings at Keyword: Television, you can click on shows and have them be scheduled on your TiVo. In my opinion, that's pretty cool, but I can't figure out why AOL or TiVo thinks this is a great way to boost subscribers (or even if they do think that). --- sometimes you gotta do something just 'cos it's cool, you got the time, and you can. j. -Posted by jon on July 15, 2003 02:35 PM

		so few network enabled series 2 machines? All it takes is a USB ethernet or wireless adapter and any series 2 is network enabled. Personally I won't buy the home media option until they allow me to move my shows off of the tivo and on to the computer where I have way more storage, but in this paranoid DMCA world that we live in I'm not expecting that any time soon. I should really just look into throwing a new 200gb drive in my tivo. -Posted by scH on July 15, 2003 04:22 PM

		Sure, it's easy to get one connected, but as far as anyone can tell, there aren't tons of Series 2 TiVos out there and of all the TiVo owners I know, I'm the only one with a Series 2. There certainly isn't any critical mass. -Posted by Dan on July 15, 2003 04:48 PM

		Tivo2 lacks critical mass because there is little incentive to upgrade. So I can pay a few hundred dollars for the privelege of paying another 100 dollars to hook my Tivo up to another Series 2 Tivo (yet another few hundred dollars)? -Posted by Eric on July 17, 2003 09:20 PM

Comment posting has been turned off because I don't have enough time and will to deal with the constant comment spamming. I'm very sorry and will fix this sometime soon (soon = before 2004 ends).