Call me what you want, but I think that TiVo’s future looks promising. Often times we (meaning the community) get caught up in the media’s hype about TiVo going under. This post is meant to point out some promising items in TiVo’s future. I put a similar post together back in March ‘05 when everybody was “digging” TiVo’s grave.
- Comcast Deal: TiVo has repeatedly said that the Comcast deal is going strong. Comcast is the largest cable company in the country so once this deal goes through you are going to see a lot more TiVo subscribers.
- Series 3 TiVo: The Series 3 TiVo looks really promising. I know that we’ve been waiting for a long time however, the specs are pretty amazing. We’ll have to wait and see how much it goes for but I know that if it is cheap enough I’ll pick one up.
- Financial Situation: TiVo’s financial situation continues to improve. The most recent press release (PDF) shows that TiVo is improving financially and that the company is on the way to a sound financial future.
TiVo achieved its first positive cash flow from operations in fiscal 2006. For the year, TiVo reported a net loss of ($34.4) million and net loss per share of ($0.41), a 57% and 59% improvement respectively, compared to a net loss of ($79.8) million, or ($0.99) per share in fiscal 2005. For the fourth quarter, TiVo reported a net loss of ($19.5) million and net loss per share of ($0.23), a 42% and 45% improvement respectively, compared to a net loss of ($33.7) million, or ($0.42) per share, for the fourth quarter of last year.
- Features: What other company do you know that continues to provide new features at almost no cost to the customer. For example, look at the following new features that TiVo has rolled out of the past year (or so): TiVoToGo, TiVo Desktop (HMO) updates, HME, Yahoo & TiVo partnership, Overlap protection, TiVo Central Online update. These are just a few of the features that have been released or updated recently. The list goes on and on.
- Growth: Even with everybody digging TiVo’s grave, the subscriber base has grown by 45% over the past year! Not to bad!
I hope that these 5 points make you realize that TiVo’s future isn’t all that bad. In my opinion, the company is stronger now then ever!
What excites me most is the new pricing. If they do something with the new pricing on the Series 3 TIVOs – there won’t be a need to lay out $500 for a dual tuner Cable Card compatible TIVO box – we can just get a free box and pay for a monthly service plan. TIVO has gotten smart – they are a service provider and people who want the best PVR service know they can turn to TIVO for the most functionality, and won’t have to rely on getting a lame cable company box with a less than desirable PVR. Their hookup with Verizon, their web functionality – it all adds up to a better user experience. Now if they can add in some kind of Slingbox functionality – that would be the ultimate service. But I’ll take a Series 3 with everything else it’s going to have 0- and I will be happy to not shell out a ton of cash for it!
–*Rob
–*rob
I am less optomistic… TiVo needs to win this case against EchoStar to survive as an independent entity. Otherwise, I see them being acquired in the next 18 months.
Don’t be fooled by the spin of a mere “press release”. Let the numbers actually speak for themselves. Take a look at their 8-K filing and you will see that TiVo added 356,000 new subscriptions in the last quarter but 173,000 of them were attributed to DirecTV. That’s almost 50%! Think those subscribers are going to stick around when DirecTV ends their relationship with TiVo?
TiVo-owned gross subscriptions DROPPED from 276,000 in the 4th quarter of last year to 221,000 this past quarter….a drop of 20%. TiVo-owned subscription net additions were 183,000 this quarter compared to 251,000 in the fourth quarter of last year…a drop of 27%.
The numbers don’t lie….or mislead like a press release can.
-Vas
I have to wonder if the writer(s) of this blog get TiVo stock, or are angling for a job with TiVo.
The actual subscriber numbers for TiVo are not promising, as Mark V already pointed out.
TiVo has already managed, through sheer apathy, to gut the HME community.
The Yahoo partnership is meaningless — the apps delivered are far less interesting than what developers who used to try and code for HME developed.
Overlap protection is a minor feature upgrade that we’ve been begging for, for over five plus years!
Most importantly to me, the degradation in picture quality provided by TiVo hardware over time is depressing.
As I’ve pointed out, TiVo is just not something I can recommend to people anymore.
[...] In my opinion, this is a win-win for all parties involved. TiVo wins because the agreement removes the threat of TiVo losing 3 million customers. DirecTV wins because they no longer have to worry about potential patent lawsuits. DirecTV users win because they can continue to use their TiVo and take advantage of future software/hardware updates. This news is yet another reason why TiVo’s future looks promising! [...]