Is TiVo in trouble?

Advertisements

My point exactly. They will go to Amazon and Netflix, and HBO won't be left with much of anything. I guess we'll just follow them there, and still be stuck with HBO for Last Week Tonight.

I subscribe to services for a month at a time, binge a bunch of stuff, and then cancel it for a while, so the savings would be minimal at best even if I had a pay TV provider to do that through.

All the major MSOs except Charter have modern DVR boxes, in her case Altice ONE. Charter has something, but I'm not sure exactly what it is or how it compares to anything else. They're not great, and certainly TiVo is better than any of them, but they aren't outdated like whatever she has. Further, the pay TV market is a dying market anyway.

 

That's possible but it's not the gist I have gotten from everything we've learned so far. If they gave this top-level tier (with Turner stuff, WB library stuff, some fresh exclusive original stuff, etc.) its own brand -- let's call it WarnerStream -- and also used that same brand name on the app, it would be very weird if you opened the WarnerStream app with the intention of signing up and was told that you needed an HBO subscription as a pre-condition for signing up for WarnerStream and using that app. And yet everything we've learned so far -- and, sure, this could change -- indicates that this new top-level tier will only be available if you also subscribe to the tier below it, the premium" tier that basically just sounds like regular ol' HBO. So if HBO is the main thing that you MUST subscribe to first, it's hard to see how HBO won't be in the overall brand name on the app.

Now, again, perhaps the main pay tier in this new service will only include some, but not all, HBO stuff, along with some new original non-HBO stuff. Maybe it just has some of HBO's movies and, I dunno, only their half-hour original series but none of the hour-longs. But that would be pretty stupid. I really can't imagine anything that makes sense, from a marketing perspective, of how that middle "premium" tier includes some, but not all, HBO content. So I keep coming back to the idea that the middle tier is just regular HBO, all of it. And the bottom tier is either free, ad-supported stuff, or (less likely) a cheap pay tier that gives you some of the older movies on HBO but nothing else.

 

If you pay for it and watch on your TV, it's pay TV. Pay TV is not another name for cable. The only free stuff is OTA, everything else has costs and hidden costs.

 

Who says you have to subscribe to HBO to get the Warner service? Why not just a separate Warner service and then if you wanted HBO, you could get it in the same UI? CBS has its own service and yet they also own Showtime and its sold as a separate service. But they are 2 different UIs. This couldn't be the same thing except with the ability to access and cross-sell the other service through the same UI?

From the sound of what you said, I don't see why the upcoming Warner service couldn't be all the movies they show on Turner and TBS etc for the first tier. The 2nd tier would be all the original content they show. Possibly the sports content as well. And then the 3rd tier is the back catalog.

And then HBO is separate from all that but can be accessed in the same UI if you subscribe to both.

To suddenly make HBO a dumping ground for all things Turner and Warner would...dilute the brand in my mind.

I also recall a Warner exec saying Netflix has no brand and that made headlines recently. That doesn't mean necessarily mean anything. Sometimes people vent loudly at the same time they realize they gotta do something different.

But it would be weird for a company to suddenly offer its product (HBO) for a few dollars less. Companies don't do that without a good need to do that. I don't sense they need to do that. HBO is a great brand afaik. Be weird too for them to suddenly say hey for $1 more than your current $15/mo price, you get all our HBO content plus Turner content and all other Warner content and all the back catalogs of all these services.

 

Advertisements

Everything you're saying, in terms of how you would expect this new offering to be structured, makes sense to me and, TBH, it's what I was originally expecting too: have this new Warner service essentially be like their own CBS All Access or mini-Hulu that stands as its own service separate from HBO, although the two could be bundled together (maybe at a discount) and accessed within the same app/UI.

But then in late Nov. 2018, AT&T revealed the outlines for how the service would be structured. Here are the key descriptors, straight from the horse's mouth:

AT&T said WarnerMedia’s SVOD service will offer consumers three options to subscribe, starting with “entry-level movie-focused package.” It will also feature “a premium service with original programming and blockbuster movies” and a third option “that bundles content from the first two plus an extensive library of WarnerMedia and licensed content.”
​

This quote (and multiple other media reports) clearly indicates that the top tier is not a standalone option but rather part of an overall bundle that includes the two tiers below it. Everything seems to build: You get the entry-level tier for cheap (or, if my hunch is right, free with ads). If you upgrade to the middle "premium" tier, then your bundle will also include the entry-level content. If you upgrade to the third tier, then your bundle will include content from all three tiers. (Of course, it's also possible that the structure of this thing has evolved since last Nov. and all this speculation is for naught.)

Maybe I'm wrong about the middle "premium" tier simply being HBO, despite the fact that multiple stories say that HBO content will be the centerpiece of this new service. Maybe they're planning, in effect, to create an all-new third premium ad-free service offered separately from HBO and Cinemax, and that's what this new middle tier of the upcoming SVOD will be, and the only way it incorporates HBO is because it offers some older seasons of HBO series (i.e. the stuff they now have on Prime Video) to supplement a whole new range of original series, films and docs that won't be on HBO or any of their cable channels. Or maybe it will be a more family-friendly premium service that contains all the stuff you find on their HBO Family linear channel, plus some additional new non-HBO original premium content rated TV-G/PG/14. This would be like spinning HBO Family out as its own separate service with a new name.

But those ideas are just wild speculation. They aren't based on any available info. Based on Warner's public statements so far, and applying Occam's razor, the likeliest scenario is that the middle "premium" tier is just HBO.

And it's also possible that they give this top tier it's own brand name to avoid tainting the HBO brand -- WarnerStream, or whatever -- and that it doesn't have its own app but just exists inside a new redesigned HBO app, since the only way to get WarnerStream would be to first subscribe to HBO.

As for the pricing I suggested -- the whole thing for just $16 to match Netflix's premium plan -- that's simply my hope but it's not based on anything I've read. I admit it's unlikely to be that cheap. Maybe HBO stays at $15 and the Warner add-on is an extra $6 and includes ads (matching CBS All Access pricing). But frankly, if the Warner segment were robust enough to command $6 with ads, I don't know why they wouldn't offer it as a standalone service, the same way that CBS AA is available separately from Showtime. Also, if we imagine a total price of $21 for the overall package, I'm not sure how well that competes against Netflix at $16 (or just $13 for the standard HD plan), especially given that Disney+, reportedly to be priced at $7-8, will be launching this fall too, competing for those same subscriber dollars.

 

Yup, thought the same thing in recent years when I was using the VMS 1100 and/or TiVo Bolt. Was a very big critic of the PQ in other forums. Now, however, I'm using the new FiOS TV One 4100 and it's like having a new TV. Which I don't. Same 80-inch 4K LG I've been using since 2015. FiOS looks better than YTTV, but not better than DTVNow. (Haven't tried Philo.) Very happy with the switch. So happy that I decided to dump both those services following their recent price increases.

 

Pay tv is widely understood to mean MVPDs and vMVPDs, and to not include OTT SVOD.

 

But why is it looking better? The only way it could possibly look better is if it is using IP delivery for the channels. And then they would have to be using less compression for the IP delivery to look better. Otherwise if it's still QAM, it will be the same.

I just know over QAM, all the detail in the picture is gone. People have waxy faces etc. It's only a step up from DVD quality. And DVDs really have no detail to the picture with it's very low resolution.

 

Quite happy at the moment. Signed up for HBO Now and was quite disappointed to know I couldn't get the dolby digital feed unless I had a specific device. Wasn't about to go get a CC Ultra or other 4k based stick just to get SD for HBO. I swapped my subscription to Prime and went through my old Tivo Mini, and bam, Dolby Digital. Wasn't listed on their list of devices to support it.

+1 for Tivo streaming app.

Sent from my SM-N960U1 using Tapatalk

 

Don't know what to tell you. All I can say is that it looks much better than it did on the Quantum DVR. Whatever they're putting in the magic sauce, it's working. Maybe it's the FiOS One 4K boxes, maybe they're not compressing as much, I don't know and I don't care. (And I previously jettisoned all FiOS hardware because of how crappy the picture looked with the Quantum DVRs.)