Thursday at around 5PM EST I had the opportunity to talk with the one of the creators of CozmoTV.com, Alex Rowland. Alex and I had a wonderful 50 minute conversation in which we covered a number of topics. Most of the time we talked about Alex’s new web application known as CozmoTV. Alex and his business partner, Jason Solinski, have gone ahead and created an amazing web application that allows you to manage your TV watching experience. CozmoTV is still in beta so there are a number of features and improvements that Alex would like to make. The current version of the site has only been available to the general public for about one and half weeks. In this short amount of time, Alex & Jason have received a lot of praise from both their users and the blogging community.

Currently, Cozmo is really kind of basic. Upon creating an account you will be asked for some simple information including the types of programming that you are interested, your zip code (so that it can figure out your cable provider) and your TiVo login information. Once your account is active (which literally takes 20 seconds), you will be presented with a wonderful looking web app which allows you to search, tag (this is sweet), rate, recommend and browse TV shows that are available via your cable or satellite provider.

The current version of CozmoTV is really cool however; I don’t consider it a replacement for TiVo Central Online (TCO) or Yahoo TV. This may change when version 2.0 of Cozmo is released. Alex and his buddy Jason have some wonderful near-term plans for the future of CozmoTV. In the near-term (before the end of the year), CozmoTV users will be able to record internet video content directly to their TiVo with a couple of mouse clicks. Alex and I both agree that the current method for getting internet video content onto a TiVo or MCE box is extremely difficult if not impossible. The average user doesn’t want to go through the hassle of downloading content and then converting it into the proper format so that their DVR can display the video. CozmoTV hopes to eliminate this problem by allowing the user to push content to their DVR with a couple clicks of the mouse. Version 2.0, is supposed to provide this capability. Along with this capability, CozmoTV 2.0 will also provide a number of other Web 2.0ish features including the ability to share which shows you’ve recorded and the ability to add channels of people who may have similar interests to you.

For anybody who would like to try out CozmoTV, you can head on over to their website and sign up now. As I said before, the sign up is extremely quick. Also, if you want to keep up to date on CozmoTV news, you might want to visit their blog.

Thanks Alex for taking the time out of your busy day to talk with me. CozmoTV is really a wonderful application! I look forward to CozmoTV 2.0 and the new features that you will provide.

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!

The official TiVo Blog has started up an inside TiVo series on their blog. Today’s interview is with Amir who manages the strategy and roadmap for TiVoToGo, Online Services, and the core DVR features. Check out the interview if you haven’t already. It’s worth your time……

As first reported on ZatzNotFunny, TiVo has updated TiVo Central Online (TCO) with a new user interface. From what I can tell, the update doesn’t contain any new features just a new interface (correct me if I am wrong) and improved functionality (I’m not trying to make the update sound minimal because it isn’t).

IMHO, TiVo really has outdone themselves with this update. The new interface makes it a lot easier for you to browse the TV guide. As a matter of fact, this update makes TCO one of the best web applications I’ve ever used. With this update, I really see no reason why you would use Yahoo’s remote scheduler. TiVo has a reputation for developing wonderful user interfaces and TCO fits this reputation. If you haven’t already created an account on TCO you really should. TCO makes the TiVo experience that much better! Nice job TiVo! Now give me a Series 3 TiVo and I will be happy :).

Unless you live in a box, you probably already know that TiVo and Yahoo announced a partnership back in November ‘05 that allows you to schedule recordings on your TiVo directly from Yahoo’s website. When I heard about this news, it made me wonder why anybody would want to use Yahoo’s website when TiVo already has TiVo Central Online. To try and come up with some type of answer to this question, I’ve decided to put together the following table which is suppose to compare the features of Yahoo! TV to TiVo Central Online.

Based on this unscientific comparison, I’ve concluded that there really is no reason why you should use Yahoo! TV as opposed to TCO. TCO has all the features that Yahoo! TV has plus some. Yahoo! TV is a nice website however; it just doesn’t have all the features that TiVo Central does. Also, TiVo central has a much better user interface.

Which remote scheduler do you use? Did I not compare a feature that I should have?