TiVo’s Boxed Energy

Company’s ‘Neutron’ Set-Tops to Hit RCN Markets in Q2

By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 3/8/2010 9:43:00 AM

New York — TiVo, angling to reverse its customer losses, unleashed two new Web-connected digital video recorders and a graphics-rich guide designed for HDTVs that the company bragged will make other cable set-tops seem clunky and outdated.

RCN plans to begin offering the TiVo Premiere boxes as its primary DVR starting in the second quarter of 2010 across all its markets. Meanwhile, Comcast is discussing the possibility of porting TiVo’s Premiere user interface to a Tru2way-based platform.

The new Premiere and Premiere XL boxes — code-named Neutron — feature an interface with a 16:9 aspect ratio based on Adobe Systems’ Flash platform. Th e guide includes a new video window that shows what’s currently playing while a user is navigating menus and provides search across TV listings, DVR recordings, Internet video like YouTube clips, and premium broadbanddelivered content from Amazon. com, Blockbuster and Netflix.

It’s the only box you need to have connected to your TV, TiVo president and CEO Tom Rogers said at the company’s launch event here March 2. “At the heart of it, we’re demonstrating how cable, broadcast and broadband content can come together in an integrated fashion,” he said.

TiVo desperately needs to punch up its sex appeal to convince new customers to pay upward of $500 for one of its settops, plus a $12.95 monthly subscription fee.

The company, which pioneered the DVR market 10 years ago, has been losing ground to operatorsupplied DVRs. To reverse the tide, TiVo has inked distribution deals with Comcast, DirecTV, Cox Communications and others, but so far none have paid off in any significant way.

RCN is TiVo’s key strategic customer for Premiere, and RCN president and CEO Peter Aquino said the new set-tops were far superior to anything available from vendors like Motorola or Cisco Systems. “TiVo will bring a whole new way for our subscribers to experience television with TiVo’s DVR and broadband television offerings,” he said.

Comcast originally announced its distribution deal with TiVo in March 2005, and the project was beset with delays as the companies struggled to migrate the TiVo interface to a Java-based platform running on Motorola set-tops. Comcast finally launched TiVo service commercially in January 2008 and has said it plans to make TiVo the “primary” DVR option for customers in at least one Tru2wayenabled market, which it hasn’t identified yet.

The nation’s biggest MSO is intrigued by Premiere: “We think the new interface is innovative, and while there are no immediate plans, we are talking with TiVo about how we might use it with our Tru2way software platform,” Comcast senior director of corporate communications Jenni Moyer said.

On the retail front, TiVo will start taking pre-orders for the Premiere boxes on Wednesday, March 3, on its Web site.

Premiere’s HD interface provides more real estate for twoand three-column layouts that are faster to navigate, Rogers said. A “discovery bar” at the top of the screen provides recommendations based on other content a TiVo user has selected.

“This is about getting people what they want when they have millions of options,” Rogers said.

Other enhancements with the Premiere release: an on-screen disk-space meter that shows how much recording space is left and a built-in 30-second fast-forward button to zap commercials.