Tivo series 3 + cable tv = failed business model

[markiwi]

I have owned various Replaytv DVR's for 7 years. I am now looking at switching over to TIVO as the replaytv is no longer made. What I cannot understand is why TIVO has decided their series 3 units only works with cable TV. Thousands of cable customers are switching to satellite TV mainly due to better HD selection with satellite TV, plus the current debacle involving the NFL network. There is a whole forum here full of stories of cable customers losing channels due to the SVD issue because they have a series 3 TIVO with a cablecard/s. It seems to me that TIVO needs to reevaluate it's future business thinking in relation to the compatibilty of their DVR with satellite TV. Right now I don't like cable TV and my replaytv, although still an awesome product, is obviously past its time (no HD recording), but I can see no reason to buy a TIVO when it doesn't allow me to use satellite TV.

[wmcbrine]

So, what's your suggestion?

Anyway, it wasn't really Tivo's choice; it was the satellite companies'. DirecTV decided to bring all their receiver business in-house; and Dish's always was, wasn't it?

Now, you could argue that they could make it work the way the Series 2 does, still requiring an STB from the provider, and using an analog input. There are two problems with this: it still requires an STB from the provider, and it uses an analog input.

The first problem is just ugly, and it's never been the norm for most Tivo users -- most DirecTV customers used integrated DirecTivos, and AFAIK, most cable users used a direct hookup to the cable line, so a box wasn't needed. That was fine for analog cable, but things were changing with the spread of digital cable; and that (and not just the advent of HD) was surely one of the prime motivations behind the design of the Series 3.

The second problem is a problem because it's a lot harder (i.e., requires more processing power, bandwidth, etc.) to digitize HD video than SD. Moreover, even for SD, it's a waste to redigitize material that's already available digitally, if you can just record the already-encoded stream directly instead -- because reencoding reduces the picture quality.

So, instead, they made a Tivo that works with digital cable in more or less the same way as the Series 2 did with analog cable: plug it into the wall. Due to the machinations of the cable cartel, there are complications (CableCard, DRM), but it's about as close as Tivo can come. They can't make a DVR for DirecTV because DirecTV won't let them, and DirecTV isn't forced to provide a quasi-open system (like CableCard) the way the cable companies are; same with Dish. And they can't hope to sell an analog-recording HD Tivo to DirecTV and Dish customers, because no one would buy such a thing -- it would be very expensive, provide only a single tuner, and still require renting an HD STB (or provide dual tuners, and require two STBs).

[classicsat]

TiVo made the Series 3 for cable because it was easy (with cablecard), can cable is a much larger customer base than satellite has.

TiVo could not make a satellite version of the S3, or incorporate direct digital source recording (the only way to cost effectively record HD), as there is no standard the satellite providers are taking part in, for TiVo to build to, like cable is. As said, a recorder that would take the HD video form an STB would be prohibitively expensive for a consumer product, so that was a no-go. If they were to include external STB inputs with affordable technology, it would be in SD anyhow.

SDV wasn't as big a concern when the S3 was developed.

A Series 2 TiVo is the current one for satellite TV, although in SD.