DirecTV Officially Dumps TiVo

[BJ_M]

Digital Satellite TV provider DirectTV is stopping marketing TiVo powered PVRs. The company will replace their digital video recorders with technology from NDS Group.

DirecTV and the NDS Group (site) have News Corp. as common share-holder.
The switch also is supposed to lead to a new video-on-demand service that DirecTV is supposed to launch next year. Because Satellite broadcasting is one-way, the system will pre-download movies and shows that the customer is most likely to watch.

http://today.reuters.com/stocks/QuoteCompanyNewsArticle.aspx?view=CN&symbol=DTV.N&stor...Aug-2005+RTRS;

[lumis]

wow, this is really going to hurt tivo.. latching on to a huge company like directv was huge for them.. dish network already has their own dvr line, so they probably dont need to do business with them.. and most of the big cable companies already have their own dvr's..

being able to get a tivo at $59 or $99 with your television subscription service was huge for tivo.. now they're going to be relegated to a 3rd party device with quite a price tag.. this could spell doom.. even if their hardcore advocates wont admit it.

[yoda313]

This is kind of like what happened to IBM. Up until the clones came out they were big in the desktop pc market. As soon as the clones marched on they got clobbered. Same situation for tivo.

[painkiller]

Even so, didn't Tivo just sign up with Comcast?

They aren't such a small outfit, you know.