# Is there a new Tivo coming "soon"?



## burns.justin (Aug 3, 2017)

I assume at some point a new system to replace the Bolt with come, but that won't be happening within the next six months or so will it?

Only reason I ask is because my wife and I are leaving DirecTV and going to our local cable company and are planning on getting a Bolt+ and one mini in the next few months. If something new is coming by January or February I would rather wait.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

Highly unlikely any Bolt replacement will come within the next year, if ever. Several TiVo retail hardware projects have been cancelled. There is really not much they could add hardware wise to the Bolt anyway since CableCARDs only support 6 tuners. There have been rumors of a new 4k Mini for a long time, but it has yet to materialize.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

There is a good chance the Bolt+ will be the last CableCARD TiVo ever produced. 

We may see some OTA boxes in the future, but the writing is on the wall for CableCARD so I can't really see TiVo putting much R&D into it going forward.


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

doesn't Tivo still want out of the hardware business, so any future box would have to come from third party


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Even so, CableCARDs are on the way out. The big cable companies are likely to transition to IP in the next few years and 3rd parties are likely to get locked out of the cable market.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

Dan203 said:


> Even so, CableCARDs are on the way out. The big cable companies are likely to transition to IP in the next few years and 3rd parties are likely to get locked out of the cable market.


I think it's going to take a while for most cable companies to completely transition to IP. Some will move faster, like Comcast, while others will move much slower, like Charter. Charter won't even get rid of analog channels in all of its markets for probably another year or two, and haven't even started planning to deploy Docsis 3.1. And who knows when Charter will get around to h.264 compression, let alone IP delivery. CableCARDs will be around for at least another decade on Charter's network.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Perhaps, but once Comcast goes IP no one is going to make another CableCARD device. And Comcast is looking like they're going IP soon. Like in the next couple years.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

Dan203 said:


> Perhaps, but once Comcast goes IP no one is going to make another CableCARD device. And Comcast is looking like they're going IP soon. Like in the next couple years.


They can't just flip a switch. The process will take years. Even once they start delivering IP streams, they will likely continue to simulcast in QAM (at least for the most-watched channels) for years to continue to support their own legacy hardware, much the same way that analog and digital QAM streams were simulcast for over a decade on cable networks.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

But once it starts no company is going to invest R&D into CableCARD products.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

tarheelblue32 said:


> They can't just flip a switch. The process will take years. Even once they start delivering IP streams, they will likely continue to simulcast in QAM (at least for the most-watched channels) for years to continue to support their own legacy hardware, much the same way that analog and digital QAM streams were simulcast for over a decade on cable networks.


Maybe. I've gone round and round on this topic on another thread here. It all boils down to money, of course. For Comcast, is the cost of upgrading their remaining deployed non-IP/QAM-only STBs relatively soon (next couple of years) offset by the network efficiencies/advances they'll receive by doing away with QAM and going all-IP? I don't think anyone who isn't pretty high up at Comcast can answer that.

You say Comcast can't just "flip a switch" to change from QAM to IPTV -- you're right, but pretty much the only thing standing in their way at this point is that a decent chunk of their TV customers would need an upgraded STB. Somewhere around 55%, I think, are currently on X1, which is IP-capable. That figure has been growing by 15-20% per year. Meanwhile, Comcast already has a robust IPTV infrastructure in place that streams all their live linear channels to the Xfinity Stream app on various mobile devices, plus to computers via web browser. Cloud DVR and probably VOD are done as IPTV too, for both X1 STBs and mobile devices.

And here's the kicker: in the next couple of months, Comcast is supposed to rollout nationwide their Xfinity Instant TV service, which offers live linear, cloud DVR and VOD as streaming IPTV to their app on Roku STBs and Samsung smart TVs starting at $15/mo (locals + one premium). Upgrade tiers will offer additional cable channels like ESPN. This will mark the first time that Comcast is offering service to TVs as pure IPTV, no QAM involved. For broadband customers who have a rented Xfinity gateway (modem/router) in their home and subscribe to Instant TV, I think the linear channels will be served up as more efficient multicast streams, since the gateway can transform multicast streams into unicast streams accessible by Rokus, smart TVs, phones, tablets, etc. on the home network.

Think about all the redundancy in video traffic that will exist in the average neighborhood node once just a few percent of Comcast's TV customer base is on Xfinity Instant TV. At any given moment, there will be a lot of linear HD channels flowing through as both multicast IPTV (for Instant TV subs) and also as traditional QAM (for everyone else). That's wasted bandwidth that could be reclaimed if all their TV customers' STBs could receive multicast IP streams. It seems plausible that, a couple years from now, Comcast bites the bullet and forces the remaining 15% or so of their video customers to upgrade from their old-school worn-out QAM-only STBs to a new, small cheap IPTV-only STB.

That said, yeah, Charter is way behind the curve technologically among US cable operators. Charter customers using TiVo likely have nothing to worry about for quite a long time.


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## adessmith (Oct 5, 2007)

I believe in the near future Tivo is going to become nothing more than a sort of software OS for set top boxes. They will license their software to manufacturers like Motorola and Arris who sell their boxes to cable companies. There will probably also be other companies who build the tivo software into TVs and retail set top boxes. I can imagine they might sell off the retail manufacturing portion of their business to someone like element, philips, lg, etc... who will likely make some OTA boxes, but by that time the cablecard stuff will be going obsolete and not worth them making.
Element has teamed up with Amazon for the "Fire TV Edition", and I'm seeing a few TCL and insignia TVs running Roku software... this trend will likely continue... apple will probably make their own, and someone will buy the rights to use Tivo. I believe Philips and humax used to make some of the early tivos... they already have a relationship with tivo (the old tivo), so they could be contenders.


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## BigJimOutlaw (Mar 21, 2004)

burns.justin said:


> I assume at some point a new system to replace the Bolt with come, but that won't be happening within the next six months or so will it?
> 
> Only reason I ask is because my wife and I are leaving DirecTV and going to our local cable company and are planning on getting a Bolt+ and one mini in the next few months. If something new is coming by January or February I would rather wait.


There are indications that a Bolt with a voice remote is coming, as well as a new 4K Mini also with a voice remote.

The Bolt in question is most likely the same Bolt(s) we already have, just with the new remote. Current owners will probably be able to buy the remote on its own if they want.

The 4K Mini will be new hardware.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

Dan203 said:


> Even so, CableCARDs are on the way out. The big cable companies are likely to transition to IP in the next few years and 3rd parties are likely to get locked out of the cable market.


Can Tivo upgrade any of their existing DVRs to work with IP or will they all be bricked?


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

shwru980r said:


> Can Tivo upgrade any of their existing DVRs to work with IP or will they all be bricked?


Theoretically, it's possible, but it would take a lot of cooperation between TiVo and each individual cable system so that the software on the TiVo DVR could be updated to integrate with the back-end IPTV servers and security used by the cable company. There really isn't any kind of industrywide standard for how IPTV is deployed, so various companies use various solutions. And frankly, cable companies don't have much incentive to cooperate with TiVo in that way so in order to satisfy the very small percentage of their customers who use TiVo.

If a cable company wants to migrate to IPTV and also wishes to deploy STBs that use the TiVo UI, they can already do that. A company called Evolution Digital offers smaller "tier 2" cable companies a hybrid QAM/IPTV system with a STB called eBox that licenses the TiVo UI. To the extent that there are IPTV services going forward that are accessible with TiVo, it will be in a situation like that, where the TV provider is renting you the TiVo box. Current retail TiVos (Bolts, Roamios, etc.) will almost certainly never be able to access IPTV service (other than OTT apps like Netflix, Hulu, etc.) from any pay TV provider.


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## adessmith (Oct 5, 2007)

shwru980r said:


> Can Tivo upgrade any of their existing DVRs to work with IP or will they all be bricked?


I don't know if "bricked" is really the best term for what will happen. They will continue to function as they always have, however it is likely in the future your cable provider will no longer be sending you content via the medium and format the tivo requires. To say something is bricked usually implies that it will no longer boot up or is absolutely useless in every way. There is no reason a Tivo could not continue to utilize apps such as netflix and hulu, and it is possible your "cable" provider may even offer a compatible app... at this point it is too much to speculate about though... but I wouldn't worry about existing Tivo's being "bricked" any time soon.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

shwru980r said:


> Can Tivo upgrade any of their existing DVRs to work with IP or will they all be bricked?


It isn't a hardware issue or even really a software issue. What the problem is for TiVo and other third party STB/DVR providers is that so far the FCC has not forced IPTV providers (or satellite providers for that matter) to allow access to their services by third parties (think AT&T Uverse). What is expected is that if a Comcast switches to IPTV, then the FCC will allow them to not support third party STBs or DVRs. Which given history seems very very likely.


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## adessmith (Oct 5, 2007)

In my opinion, Tivo also needs to be concentrating on competing with roku and FireTV, AppleTV, etc... If they could come up with an effective way to make all those apps work together and make the streaming world less of a fragmented, disjointed experience, they might have a product with some relevance in the world of OTT streaming... unfortunately their first attempt at that (onepass) was an utter failure!
Their push into the MSO market is probably not a bad move, but if they couple this with a unique and competitive OTT streaming experience, they could become an industry leader again.
I think the first company with a viable solution to the content fragmentation issue will become the "Microsoft" of video content delivery.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

adessmith said:


> In my opinion, Tivo also needs to be concentrating on competing with roku and FireTV, AppleTV, etc... If they could come up with an effective way to make all those apps work together and make the streaming world less of a fragmented, disjointed experience, they might have a product with some relevance in the world of OTT streaming... unfortunately their first attempt at that (onepass) was an utter failure!
> Their push into the MSO market is probably not a bad move, but if they couple this with a unique and competitive OTT streaming experience, they could become an industry leader again.
> I think the first company with a viable solution to the content fragmentation issue will become the "Microsoft" of video content delivery.


Good thoughts, but TiVo as a streaming platform is pretty weak (not a lot of apps, some of them buggy). A FAR more likely scenario is that one or more of the big streaming platforms (Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV/iOS, Android TV) licenses metadata and patents for certain features from TiVo and then incorporates that into their platform to make it work better in terms of aggregating and presenting content from various sources, universally searching across those sources, etc. In fact, Chinese budget TV maker TCL, which uses the Roku OS for their smart TVs, recently announced they're doing just that:

TCL & Tivo Team Up to Improve Roku TVs - Cord Cutters News

At this point, even if TiVo could develop their own improved streaming OS platform using aspects of the TiVo UI, I couldn't see it succeeding. The market is already saturated with players. Even behemoth Google is making slow headway in gaining marketshare for their Android TV platform (although their more basic Chromecast platform is doing very well).


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## adessmith (Oct 5, 2007)

NashGuy said:


> A FAR more likely scenario is that one or more of the big streaming platforms (Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV/iOS, Android TV) licenses metadata and patents for certain features from TiVo and then incorporates that into their platform to make it work better in terms of *aggregating and presenting content from various sources, universally searching across those sources, etc*.


I may not have communicated my thoughts clearly, but this is precisely what I meant by "a unique and competitive OTT streaming experience", and solving the "content fragmentation issue". What I intended to imply was that THIS (exactly what they are doing with TCL, which I had not yet heard about) is what they should be pushing. If they can create an effective "bridge" between the different streaming services, and license that technology, I would be totally happy buying a "roku tv" with that sort of capability.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

adessmith said:


> I may not have communicated my thoughts clearly, but this is precisely what I meant by "a unique and competitive OTT streaming experience", and solving the "content fragmentation issue". What I intended to imply was that THIS (exactly what they are doing with TCL, which I had not yet heard about) is what they should be pushing. If they can create an effective "bridge" between the different streaming services, and license that technology, I would be totally happy buying a "roku tv" with that sort of capability.


Gotcha. Apple is working towards that too with their "TV" app for Apple TV and iOS. Don't know if they license anything from TiVo to make it work or not. Lots of apps support it, except for the biggie, Netflix, which only partially does. I think Apple has confirmed that Amazon will support it when the Amazon Video app joins Apple TV this fall. But if you end up only having to manage two queue, one in the Netflix app, and one in the TV app for all other sources, that's not bad.


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## cybergrimes (Jun 15, 2015)

adessmith said:


> I would be totally happy buying a "roku tv" with that sort of capability.


A lot of cool stuff for Roku TVs in the April OS update: Roku® OS 7.6 Release Notes - The Official Roku Blog

I particularly like the "More Ways to Watch" bit--


> *More Ways to Watch for Roku TVs* (U.S. only) - This feature provides an enhanced viewing experience based on what you watch on devices connected to your HD or Full HD Roku TV via HDMI inputs such as cable or satellite boxes, and/or connected over-the-air broadcast antennas. You'll be required to enable the feature via an opt-in prompt on your Roku TV once the feature is available or when setting up a new Roku TV. More Ways to Watch can recognize the show or movie you're watching on these boxes and antennas using Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology and suggest additional viewing options via streaming to enhance your experience. Additional viewing options may include the ability to watch from the beginning, watch more episodes of the same show and/or view suggestions for similar entertainment available to stream.


If they just had some kind of native DVR support...


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## cybergrimes (Jun 15, 2015)

adessmith said:


> I can imagine they might sell off the retail manufacturing portion of their business to someone like element, philips, lg, etc... who will likely make some OTA boxes


Yep -- Philips PVRs 'Powered By TiVo' Planned For Fall


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## BillyClyde (Mar 3, 2017)

NashGuy said:


> Theoretically, it's possible, but it would take a lot of cooperation between TiVo and each individual cable system so that the software on the TiVo DVR could be updated to integrate with the back-end IPTV servers and security used by the cable company. There really isn't any kind of industrywide standard for how IPTV is deployed, so various companies use various solutions. And frankly, cable companies don't have much incentive to cooperate with TiVo in that way so in order to satisfy the very small percentage of their customers who use TiVo.
> 
> If a cable company wants to migrate to IPTV and also wishes to deploy STBs that use the TiVo UI, they can already do that. A company called Evolution Digital offers smaller "tier 2" cable companies a hybrid QAM/IPTV system with a STB called eBox that licenses the TiVo UI. To the extent that there are IPTV services going forward that are accessible with TiVo, it will be in a situation like that, where the TV provider is renting you the TiVo box. Current retail TiVos (Bolts, Roamios, etc.) will almost certainly never be able to access IPTV service (other than OTT apps like Netflix, Hulu, etc.) from any pay TV provider.


I thought I read that the ebox stb can offer an IPTV solution from the same company called evue tv?


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## Sparky1234 (May 8, 2006)

I have a Philips TiVo circa 2003 still going strong however Cox does not support SD and TA and CC required.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

BillyClyde said:


> I thought I read that the ebox stb can offer an IPTV solution from the same company called evue tv?


The company is called Evolution Digital. Their overall IPTV platform is called eVUE-TV. The STB that works with that platform (and supports the TiVo UI) is called the eBOX. You can check out their website here. As far as I know, this is the only IPTV platform so far that has licensed the TiVo UI. No idea if it's an exclusive deal or not.


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

Sparky1234 said:


> I have a Philips TiVo circa 2003 still going strong however Cox does not support SD and TA and CC required.


what do you mean cox doesn't support SD? all the channels below 1000 are SD but encrypted


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## mattyro7878 (Nov 27, 2014)

If the OP is on one of those MSO's that is using Tivo software for thier boxes, he may get the "newest" Tivo available. Secondly, if a company does away with cablecards, does a customer need internet service to watch tv?


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

ajwees41 said:


> what do you mean cox doesn't support SD? all the channels below 1000 are SD but encrypted


I think that with "SD" here, he's referring to switched digital, not standard definition. Some cable companies use switched digital video, which requires TiVo owners to use a piece of hardware called a tuning adapter (TA).


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

mattyro7878 said:


> If the OP is on one of those MSO's that is using Tivo software for thier boxes, he may get the "newest" Tivo available. Secondly, if a company does away with cablecards, does a customer need internet service to watch tv?


If you are asking if a cable company switches from the current QAM cable delivery tech to using IPTV tech to deliver cable, then if you need Internet access depends on what type of service you end up subbing to. Over The Top IPTV cable services are delivered over the Internet so yes you need Internet access, however IPTV service like AT&T Uverse are delivered over the providers dedicated network and you do not need Internet access. It is expected some of the current cable providers will provide both types of IPTV cable services.


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## GatorBlues (Sep 8, 2007)

In 3 months or so, I'm moving into a new house we are building where Comcast will be the provider. We'll have a ton of TVs -- 3 for my inlaws who have a separate suite in the basement, 2 in my basement bar, 1 in the media room, 1 on the deck, 1 in the living room, and in two of the bedrooms -- 10 total. I don't currently own any Tivos. My thought as we embarked on building the house was to get a couple Bolts and lots of Minis. Now, I feel like the upfront investment won't be recouped with Comcast's transition to IPTV. So now I'm strongly leaning toward not purchasing any Tivos or Minis. Is there any reason I should reconsider and look at buying Tivos after all? It seems like there is substantial risk that, after a short while, they won't work with Comcast any longer.


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## PSU_Sudzi (Jun 4, 2015)

GatorBlues said:


> In 3 months or so, I'm moving into a new house we are building where Comcast will be the provider. We'll have a ton of TVs -- 3 for my inlaws who have a separate suite in the basement, 2 in my basement bar, 1 in the media room, 1 on the deck, 1 in the living room, and in two of the bedrooms -- 10 total. I don't currently own any Tivos. My thought as we embarked on building the house was to get a couple Bolts and lots of Minis. Now, I feel like the upfront investment won't be recouped with Comcast's transition to IPTV. So now I'm strongly leaning toward not purchasing any Tivos or Minis. Is there any reason I should reconsider and look at buying Tivos after all? It seems like there is substantial risk that, after a short while, they won't work with Comcast any longer.


Find out how much Comcast will charge you per month on all those outlets and do the math. Remember you can always sell your TiVo equipment after purchase.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

And if you decide to go with TiVo, you may want to look/wait for a deal.

-- At least last year, TiVo had a very nice White Sale on various TiVo boxes starting a week or 2 before Black Friday. I hate to say it but, that's only 3+ months away, now. Who knows if there will be a sale this year, and on what. But worth waiting a few months?

-- If you buy then or now, and if you have a large order, I would telephone TiVo and ask what it can do to help you--i.e., negotiate. It might throw some discounts your way--as a long-time (but not big) customer, I've gotten TiVo to throw in a free Slide Pro remote with an already discounted TiVo box purchase (multiple times, now).


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

streaming is here, and Tivo is out soon I'm sure.


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## ajwees41 (May 7, 2006)

NashGuy said:


> I think that with "SD" here, he's referring to switched digital, not standard definition. Some cable companies use switched digital video, which requires TiVo owners to use a piece of hardware called a tuning adapter (TA).


I don't think so since he says a TA is required which is the tuning adapter so yes cox supports SDV


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## GatorBlues (Sep 8, 2007)

PSU_Sudzi said:


> Find out how much Comcast will charge you per month on all those outlets and do the math. Remember you can always sell your TiVo equipment after purchase.


Ballpark, it's going to take about two years to recoup the upfront investment based on avoiding extra box fees with Comcast (less for the Minis, but more for the Bolts).


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## PSU_Sudzi (Jun 4, 2015)

GatorBlues said:


> Ballpark, it's going to take about two years to recoup the upfront investment based on avoiding extra box fees with Comcast (less for the Minis, but more for the Bolts).


It's probably a safe bet as it's only speculation now as to when Comcast will convert all customers to IPTV regardless of what is posted in this forum.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

PSU_Sudzi said:


> It's probably a safe bet as it's only speculation now as to when Comcast will convert all customers to IPTV regardless of what is posted in this forum.


Even if Comcast were to convert to IPTV and rendered TiVos useless on Comcast's network, they will still work on other cable TV networks that use QAM. So you can sell the TiVos on ebay and recover some of your initial costs.


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## PSU_Sudzi (Jun 4, 2015)

tarheelblue32 said:


> Even if Comcast were to convert to IPTV and rendered TiVos useless on Comcast's network, they will still work on other cable TV networks that use QAM. So you can sell the TiVos on ebay and recover some of your initial costs.


Yes. One of the things often talked about on hear is the "break even" point at which you would've spent the same amount on cable box rentals as you do on TiVo equipment. What's neglected in many cases is that you own the TiVo equipment and can sell it any time usually get some good cash back.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

PSU_Sudzi said:


> Yes. One of the things often talked about on hear is the "break even" point at which you would've spent the same amount on cable box rentals as you do on TiVo equipment. What's neglected in many cases is that you own the TiVo equipment and can sell it any time usually get some good cash back.


I think the value will drop somewhat once Tivo ceases to function on Comcast. Then you will have to make sure the customer knows that the Tivo won't work on Comcast. Many people won't read the listing and will want to return the Tivo when it doesn't work. I already see numerous series 2's and 3's on eBay and amazon being sold without service and no mention that they can never be activated by Tivo, but those are selling at a much lower cost than what will be asked for a bolt. I think the cable only Tivos will be hit the hardest.


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## randian (Jan 15, 2014)

It's too bad that none of the bandwidth Comcast will reclaim by using IPTV is likely to be used to restore its currently downrezed 1080 channels, or upgrade any channels to HD (like BeIN Sports). I was watching my recordings of the Track and Field World Championships marathon and faces were horribly smeared to the point of making runners unrecognizable.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

It's rather ironic that S2s are the only TiVos that might still function once Comcast goes IPTV.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

shwru980r said:


> I think the value will drop somewhat once Tivo ceases to function on Comcast. Then you will have to make sure the customer knows that the Tivo won't work on Comcast. Many people won't read the listing and will want to return the Tivo when it doesn't work. I already see numerous series 2's and 3's on eBay and amazon being sold without service and no mention that they can never be activated by Tivo, but those are selling at a much lower cost than what will be asked for a bolt. I think the cable only Tivos will be hit the hardest.


Resale prices have already dropped. Even for roamio with lifetime. The 2 year break even is really no longer valid.

And it ignores the speculative nature of TiVo period.


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## mattyro7878 (Nov 27, 2014)

If Comcast goes IPTV, technically couldnt another "cable" company enter thier footprint? Uverse and Frontier and the satellite companies overlap with cable companies. If no one is doing QAM, can that void be filled by another?


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Another cable company could enter now. It has nothing to do with qam. There is nothing but financial common sense preventing it now. So the bottom line is that it will not happen.


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

PSU_Sudzi said:


> Yes. One of the things often talked about on hear is the "break even" point at which you would've spent the same amount on cable box rentals as you do on TiVo equipment. What's neglected in many cases is that you own the TiVo equipment and can sell it any time usually get some good cash back.


not that much though. Tivos don't get what they used to. For instance my two lifetime premieres are probably worth $100 or less, each.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

b_scott said:


> not that much though. Tivos don't get what they used to. For instance my two lifetime premieres are probably worth $100 or less, each.


And the Premiere came out in 2010 and is 2 TiVo generations ago (a grandparent generation). And you might be surprised: my look at eBay seems to show more Premieres going for around $200 or more.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Nah, prices are down - and it will get worse. The buying proposition now is very very weak. If you want a Bolt+ (pretty much similar to my Roamio Pro) it's $750 up front to get lifetime. It's a worthless device as far as resale without lifetime. With sales of retail units down (not talking about OTA - that's a different animal and has no relevance in the discussion) the increase to $550 for lifetime is nothing but an obvious money grab based on a questionable lifespan. More and more are talking about the very high potential of Tivo finally getting out of retail. Obviously, some people are still OK with it - but it's a nit compared to the overwhelming number of people preferring to just rent a box. With streaming capabilities increasing every day, the in home DVR becomes less and less relevant for the masses. That makes an in home solution requiring significant up front investment, plus dependency on an outdated and certainly "to be eliminated at some point" technology (cablecard) just more reasons why nobody should bet that their device will be worth $10 in just a couple years. If it lasts longer, awesome - but it would be a poor judgement call to bet on it.


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## TeamPace (Oct 23, 2013)

Zatz not funny is reporting 4K mini on the way.
The TiVo Mini 4K Is Happening


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

Mikeguy said:


> And the Premiere came out in 2010 and is 2 TiVo generations ago (a grandparent generation). And you might be surprised: my look at eBay seems to show more Premieres going for around $200 or more.


trust me I've checked ebay on sold listings. I'm not getting that much.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

b_scott said:


> trust me I've checked ebay on sold listings. I'm not getting that much.


Perhaps yours are 2-tuners? I had just checked this morning--lots selling in the $200 neighborhood or more (although some under). Maybe you'll strike it rich.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Even analysts question the future viability of Tivo in the retail space...

TiVo Mavrik Is Dead (and all of retail is in jeopardy)

Truth is, the entire value proposition is being reduced by the market to begin with. With the increasing percentages of cord cutters, the increased availability of content via IP/Streaming, the obvious end of life of the cablecard (though it won't happen immediately), the obvious eventual transition to IP rather than QAM by the providers - it's all bad news for anybody in the market where their core retail product is a DVR. It's been coming for a while.

The unfortunate thing for Tivo is that they've compounded it by bad quality, bad service, and now the guide data stuff - which does nothing other than to accelerate the eventual end. They really really needed to become a much larger player in the MSO software market than they did - a while ago - in order to be financially sound. Retail has been less and less a viable market for them if it had to stand on its own. I used to absolutely rave about Tivo to friends and family. Then I was kind of lukewarm - if you wanted a premium product and were willing to spend the money, it was a good solution. Now I can't in good faith recommend an actual purchase. Obviously, the market feels the same way. That is part of the reason that the resale market is down IMHO. It's also possible that Rovi feels as though investing to increase the quality of guide data is simply not justified, and perhaps they feel there just isn't enough ROI over the long haul.

As Katz says, Tivo is "on life support". It truly looks as if they're just sucking as much revenue as possible out of it without investing anything. The 4K mini is IMHO pretty meaningless in terms of impacting the market.


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

Mikeguy said:


> Perhaps yours are 2-tuners? I had just checked this morning--lots selling in the $200 neighborhood or more (although some under). Maybe you'll strike it rich.


they are. both original. Premiere and Premiere XL


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

wmhjr said:


> Even analysts question the future viability of Tivo in the retail space...
> 
> TiVo Mavrik Is Dead (and all of retail is in jeopardy)
> 
> ...


I mean, that's from May. Though likely still news to most.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

b_scott said:


> I mean, that's from May. Though likely still news to most.


I realize it's from May - point is, many haven't seen it (or acknowledged it) but things certainly have not changed for the positive regarding the future outlook, have they? I don't think they've changed for the negative either. Just pretty much stayed the course.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

Mikeguy said:


> Perhaps yours are 2-tuners? I had just checked this morning--lots selling in the $200 neighborhood or more (although some under). Maybe you'll strike it rich.


2-tuner Premieres are *more* likely than 4-tuner Premieres to retain value as they are OTA capable.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> Even analysts question the future viability of Tivo in the retail space...
> 
> TiVo Mavrik Is Dead (and all of retail is in jeopardy)
> 
> ...





wmhjr said:


> I realize it's from May - point is, many haven't seen it (or acknowledged it) but things certainly have not changed for the positive regarding the future outlook, have they? I don't think they've changed for the negative either. Just pretty much stayed the course.


Yep, mentioned/discussed here previously. Mavrik is dead, Hydra delayed. And Dave Zatz (not Katz), author of the blog item and blog, is a heck of a guy, but not really a traditional industry analyst. 

There definitely are challenges. But I don't see TiVo as definitely negatively as you--although who knows what will happen, especially given the cable industry developments and the future impact on TiVo, and I never would presume to predict it. (I also see cord-cutting as providing some opportunity for TiVo, but, from what people say here, the percentage may be low, given other consumer preferences and, again, developments in the future.)

In the meanwhile, the continuing development and products always are nice, and at least some positive signs (assuming, they come)--certainly, better than not.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Katz was a typo.

Anyway, we will have to agree to completely disagree. Can you point to a single, solitary example of a positive trend that lends itself toward Tivo having a solid future? Anything? And people SHOULD presume to predict what may happen. It's called being a smart buyer. Nobody wants to spend $750 for a system that could end up effectively being a brick in 2 years. In terms of actual analysts, are there ANY analysts indicating a bright future for retail Tivo? Nope. Q1 hardware (retail) revenues fell from more than $23M a year ago to $7M this Q1.

TiVo's Future Retail Road Could Take Different Path | Multichannel

TiVo's Retail Fortunes Flag | Light Reading

http://fortune.com/2015/10/25/tivo/

https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/03/when-innovating-stops-making-sense/

Just a few. It's really too bad. There are a couple very lucrative patents that run out in 2018, so the overall financial picture gets pretty murky. Rovi has been very clear that they don't have any interest in being in the retail hardware business.

I'm not saying Tivo is going to fall off the planet next week. But when you're speaking of retail, I can't see any rational picture where they don't go end of life and get out of that business totally.


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

I have always been really bullish on TiVo and will keep my boxes as long as they work for me. But the future for TiVo is rather unclear at the moment.

FCC has redefined platform access in a way that allows them to migrate away from cable cards or some other future security protocol to package branded "apps" that can be hosted by streaming boxes. I am not sure everyone understands the impact of this! Forced commercials, platform silos.... The future is not bright!

We may have the ability to create our own content packages to some extent, but other aspects of user control are going to take a hit.

I am just not sure how TiVo fits into the future model outside of its OTA models. We saw TiVo abandon satellite TV and I expect we will see retail cable DVRs die out as well.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

bradleys said:


> I am just not sure how TiVo fits into the future model outside of its OTA models. We saw TiVo abandon satellite TV and I expect we will see retail cable DVRs die out as well.


Wasn't it more like satellite TV abandoned TiVo?

Same result, of course.

I've always felt that TiVo's long-term future depended on getting its software onto other people's boxes, and have always been a little nervous about TiVo's inability to do that in any lasting way. It would seem the future is starting to pass TiVo by...


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> I've always felt that TiVo's long-term future depended on getting its software onto other people's boxes, and have always been a little nervous about TiVo's inability to do that in any lasting way. It would seem the future is starting to pass TiVo by...


We have always agreed about this. The DVR is really only a smarter and more efficient VCR when you think about it. It really should be no surprise that the world is passing the core retail Tivo hardware proposition - it was just a matter of time.

The Tivo opportunity was to define the user experience, build enough of a following to leverage software partnerships with MSOs and other device manufacturers, and to be an early proponent of a platform that could access streaming and IP delivered content. Software and relevant patents. Cloud services have been obvious to consumers for a while - even if they didn't recognize that they were cloud. The problem is that like so many other companies accustomed to being in the hardware and/or embedded hardware business, Tivo was too caught up in their own world to recognize the coming massive changes in viewing habits, viewership, IP delivered content, cloud services - and frankly even the continuous improvement and development of competing products and services. They listened far too much to Tivo enthusiasts and far too little to the general public. It was fine to be a "premium" offering in a market if the market itself is relevant. It's not fine to be a premium product in a sunsetting market.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> Anyway, we will have to agree to completely disagree. Can you point to a single, solitary example of a positive trend that lends itself toward Tivo having a solid future?


I think you're creating more disagreement than exists--I would never predict "flowers and roses" for the company and I agree that it has challenges (including as to its future), it's just that I don't seem to see everything as dire as you might and I see at least _some_ positives as well (albeit, will that side win out in the end--that's what I can't presume to predict). As to TiVo having a "solid" future, I don't know that I felt that when I purchased a 1st TiVo 12 years ago--but I do agree, I feel less certainty now. Of course, I also seem to feel that more nowadays with life generally, with the speeds of change and causes-and-effects.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> We have always agreed about this. The DVR is really only a smarter and more efficient VCR when you think about it. It really should be no surprise that the world is passing the core retail Tivo hardware proposition - it was just a matter of time.


A smarter and more efficient VCR is a great tool, which I use everyday--but as you state, TiVo needs to assure that tool's relevancy as technology and the marketplace changes.


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

bradleys said:


> I have always been really bullish on TiVo and will keep my boxes as long as they work for me. But the future for TiVo is rather unclear at the moment.
> 
> FCC has redefined platform access in a way that allows them to migrate away from cable cards or some other future security protocol to package branded "apps" that can be hosted by streaming boxes. I am not sure everyone understands the impact of this! Forced commercials, platform silos.... The future is not bright!
> 
> ...


except it is bright, from what I've seen. In PS Vue, I can "DVR" in the cloud and have my current shows keep for a month, while FF/RWD to my heart's content. Plus On Demand (with commercials as usual) and all streaming apps.


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## alex_h (Feb 10, 2004)

I think that people overthink the "investment" aspect of these things. 12 years ago when I paid $1400 for a "early adopter" HD Tivo for DirecTV (which dropped to $400 a few months later) the "investment" angle made sense.

A number of years ago, I got sick of paying $140+/month to DirecTV, so I came back to Tivo. $200 bought me two premiers (refurbed) and it was $27/month for service... I figured I'd have them for a year and do something... 3 years later... I upgraded to the Roamio and bought two Tivo Minis from someone here. My "Breakeven" compared to my Tivo Service was 18 months, including the 3TB Hard Drive I bought and installed and never use more than 30% of.

If you are going to wire up 10 televisions, the breakeven point is probably ridiculously short. You could also buy a Roamio and Minis used and have a shorter breakeven (since we are talking the ebay market), the breakeven analysis overthinks the matter. Question is, do you care?

I mean, if you drop $1500 on Tivo gear today and they go out of business next month, that would suck. But outside of that, if you switch a few months shy of "breakeven" for a solution you like better, you're a winner, I promise.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Don't make promises you can't keep. All it takes is something like your Bolt dying right after the warranty period. Or, Tivo doing here what they did in Australia. Not likely, but... 

People willing to drop $1000 or so up front are absolutely not representative of the general viewing public (easy to hit too - Bolt+ with lifetime and two minis gets you there immediately). Most people also don't wire up 10 TVs. 

I don't think Tivo will go out of business next month. I do, however, believe we are only seeing the beginning of diminished service levels in the retail market. Rovi - the new Tivo - has very very little interest in the retail market. Not my opinion - fact, right out of their own mouth - many times. They have come right out and stated that. I can honestly say that there is zero possibility that I would buy Tivo equipment at this point were I starting from scratch. Not a chance. Given the fact that more and more I'm consuming streaming/IP content, and my lack of satisfaction with their data, I'd rather just go with the Fios solution and pay a little more every month, but never again have to worry about hardware failure on my dime. Or, having to think about the "cost of change". The Fios DVR I have has never ever failed. I've had multiple Tivos have hardware failures. If the Fios DVR fails, I just swap it out. If the Tivos fail and they're not within their warranty, I have to buy a new one. And screw with cablecards. No BSCs on my VZ unit. No Tivo hosted service outages. 

BTW, if you were paying monthly, your math isn't working for me..... Without lifetime, after paying for service from whoever plus your cablecards plus the Tivo monthly service, I'm failing to see your "break even" in 18 months.....


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> All it takes is something like your Bolt dying right after the warranty period. Or, Tivo doing here what they did in Australia. Not likely, but...


Absolutely, and that's always been an issue with lifetime. Having said that, one always could purchase a TiVo 3-year extended warranty as a hedge against a box issue (of course, that's another $40 or $50), and TiVo seemingly often has given breaks (at a cost) to replace a dead lifetimes box. But a real issue.


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## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

cybergrimes said:


> A lot of cool stuff for Roku TVs in the April OS update: Roku® OS 7.6 Release Notes - The Official Roku Blog
> 
> I particularly like the "More Ways to Watch" bit--
> 
> If they just had some kind of native DVR support...


This may interest you:

Cheap Roku TV with excellent picture one of the year's best

If TCL come out with an 80 inch, will replace my Vizio.


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## davezatz (Apr 18, 2002)

Mikeguy said:


> but not really a traditional industry analyst.


Just a guy with a blog.  The market is tough given consumer behavior, now changing, and former TiVo and former Rovi both earning a substantial percent of their monies via patent enforcement and licensing -- they get paid for everyone else's initiatives in the space and MSO partnerships are a safer bet, so they'll be dialing down the risk and expenditures in retail. However, voice remote and Mini 4K were already in pipeline and dovetail with MSO work, so it'll be a nice fall (?) for us. Whether or not there are future retail products remains a question for me.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## alex_h (Feb 10, 2004)

wmhjr said:


> Don't make promises you can't keep. All it takes is something like your Bolt dying right after the warranty period. Or, Tivo doing here what they did in Australia. Not likely, but...
> 
> People willing to drop $1000 or so up front are absolutely not representative of the general viewing public (easy to hit too - Bolt+ with lifetime and two minis gets you there immediately). Most people also don't wire up 10 TVs.
> 
> ...


I paid $300 for a Romario OTA all in. $80 for a 3TB drive. Bought two Minis used for $150 total? $530? Sorry 19.6 months, my bad.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

alex_h said:


> I paid $300 for a Romario OTA all in. $80 for a 3TB drive. Bought two Minis used for $150 total? $530? Sorry 19.6 months, my bad.


Ah, another ota comparison. Bs. You're comparing apples to pencils. Ota is a completely different proposition as well as effectively being irrelevant for the discussion.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> Ah, another ota comparison. Bs. You're comparing apples to pencils. Ota is a completely different proposition as well as effectively being irrelevant for the discussion.


But not irrelevant for those of us doing OTA.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> But not irrelevant for those of us doing OTA.


Yes it is irrelevant to the discussion. Ota is great for the small percentage of people who both can use it and who want it. Yet, in terms of TiVo overall and the future market, it is absolutely irrelevant.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> Yes it is irrelevant to the discussion. Ota is great for the small percentage of people who both can use it and who want it. Yet, in terms of TiVo overall and the future market, it is absolutely irrelevant.


Except not to the earlier poster, who was discussing when his break even point would be, lifetime as vs. monthly/yearly with an eye as to whether, as being discussed here, lifetime still bears "risking" vis-a-vs TiVo longevity--on point as to the discussion.

And perhaps TiVo differs a bit as to a presumed irrelevancy of OTA, having products (and one exclusively) for it.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> Except not to the earlier poster, who was discussing when his break even point would be, lifetime as vs. monthly/yearly with an eye as to whether, as being discussed here, lifetime still bears "risking" vis-a-vs TiVo longevity--on point as to the discussion.
> 
> And perhaps TiVo differs a bit as to a presumed irrelevancy of OTA, having products (and one exclusively) for it.


No. It's no more relevant than talking about how practical a car choice is. Ota is a niche that is totally unrepresentative of the market or the op. TiVo had a product only because it's effectively a slightly modified version of their core product allowing them to gain revenue at little increased cost. It is a completely impossible product is terms of being able to stand on its own. Period. If TiVo were out of the cablecard unit business they would be forced to shut down services for ota as it can't generate enough revenue to cover costs on its own.

There is a reason that nobody else is interested in an ota product.

And btw, your description of a product that is exclusively for ota is misleading. It implies they deliberately engineered a new reduction for ota. They did not. They took a standard product and simply removed the cablecard slot.

For the small minority that is suited for ota, it works. But again, it is totally irrelevant in terms of the discussion.


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## adessmith (Oct 5, 2007)

wmhjr said:


> For the small minority that is suited for ota, it works. But again, it is totally irrelevant in terms of the discussion.


From my very "non-scientific" observations, OTA is making a comeback in a big way, and most people I talk to don't even realize it is possible to have a DVR connected to an antenna.
I think if TiVo threw even an ounce of effort into marketing its OTA offerings, sales of OTA units could be a profitable venture.
I know a ton of people who ditched cable and went to just Hulu and Netflix, then bought an antenna just for things like news and sports on locals.
I think with cord cutting being on the rise due to the popularity of smart tvs, rokus, fire tvs, etc... more and more people are looking towards OTA to get local content and a large majority of them don't even know that having a DVR for their OTA signal is a possibility. At least that is my experience from discussions I have had with people.
When I tell them I have a TiVo DVR with an antenna, they look at me like I have 2 heads!


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

OTA is not even close to "making a comeback". There are SO SO SO many geographic areas across the country that OTA is purely and simply impossible to use. Read analysts reports. Look at the industry benchmarks and trend lines. Are there perhaps more people than a year ago interested in OTA? Sure. Is it in any possible scenario impactful to the overall discussion?

Nope. Not even close. It's an "add-on". Not a "Primary" solution. 

Anecdotal data about the "people you talk to" is worthless. All - and I mean ALL - of the content available via OTA either is - or soon will be - available via IP/Streaming in addition to traditional providers. Consider this. Sales of retail Tivo units are really not profitable, and they were by law "usable" across the entire country. So you think somehow that a very very very restricted capability (OTA Tivo) which has a potential market penetration MUCH smaller but has all the same costs to deliver and support would be profitable? Really?

I'd be more than willing to put money on this. Anybody want to actually wager on it? Real money? No analysts - PERIOD - show any optimism on OTA products. None. People here are largely Tivo centric, and frankly are far more likely to be optimistic and view their offerings through heavily rose tinted glasses. More to the point, where there has been a 2% increase in OTA households in the US, at the same time the FCC is more and more likely to sell spectrum used by OTA to wireless broadcasters. And on top of that, the broadcasters themselves are seeing less and less reason to continue with nationwide OTA. It's far more likely that the OTA content itself continues to decline. Networks know they have no choice but to provide content via traditional MSO delivery and more IP/Streaming delivery. They really could not care less about OTA in most areas.


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## NYHeel (Oct 7, 2003)

b_scott said:


> except it is bright, from what I've seen. In PS Vue, I can "DVR" in the cloud and have my current shows keep for a month, while FF/RWD to my heart's content. Plus On Demand (with commercials as usual) and all streaming apps.


Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. A DVR where you can keep shows for a month is a joke. The streaming world is in fact quite scary and it looks to be one that will be more expensive with less flexibility to watch on your own time without commercials.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

NYHeel said:


> Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. A DVR where you can keep shows for a month is a joke. The streaming world is in fact quite scary and it looks to be one that will be more expensive with less flexibility to watch on your own time without commercials.


Your opinion.

The streaming world to me has great potential, and has been beneficial even sooner than I expected. Clearly there are compromises and there is risk. But to suggest it's just "scary" is simply your opinion. One that you're entitled to, but not one shared by all to be sure. The only fact in your statement is that it's scary to you. Not for everyone. Actually, the millennial generation finds streaming to be the opposite of "scary". For them, a hardware solution is more "scary". For me, the elimination of the risk of losing my content because of a hardware failure means a lot. As does the REAL ability to watch anything from anywhere that you have a connection. I am also concerned and interested over things like commercials and cost, but to date I've found no reason to be overly concerned. Beyond that, it just doesn't matter - because the overwhelming majority of the public does not share your sentiment. The general public wants it "easy" and with tons of delivery means, at a low up front cost. NOBODY wants to spend hard cash up front.


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## adessmith (Oct 5, 2007)

wmhjr said:


> OTA is not even close to "making a comeback". There are SO SO SO many geographic areas across the country that OTA is purely and simply impossible to use. Read analysts reports. Look at the industry benchmarks and trend lines. Are there perhaps more people than a year ago interested in OTA? Sure. Is it in any possible scenario impactful to the overall discussion?
> 
> Nope. Not even close. It's an "add-on". Not a "Primary" solution.
> 
> ...


Yes, as I said... it is my "VERY UN-SCIENTIFIC" observation, and very well might be "worthless".
It is true that the OTA market is still quite small in comparison to CATV subscribers... but I don't think it is as small as a lot of people think. 17% of households receive OTA TV... that's about 1 in 6, or around 22 million households. To me, that says there is a fairly large "potential" market... I'm not saying its a sure thing, I'm just saying it "could" be profitable.... maybe... if TiVo tried to market to those 22 million OTA households. Surely some of those 22 million households might be interested in purchasing a DVR if they realized it was a possibility. If even 1/4 of a percent of those 22 million OTA users bought a $400 TiVo OTA... that would be 44 million in sales. To me, it seems a much easier sell ($399 one time, and you never have to pay again) than selling a Tivo to a CATV customer (who has to rent a cablecard, and can already easily add on a DVR to their cable package for a monthly fee and is supported by their cable company).
I did state that OTA was making a comeback "in a big way"... but who knows if that is "big enough"? I'm not saying it will ever be a viable solution for MOST people, all I am saying is it is definitely on the rise. I never pay attention to what analysts say... they don't always get things right. It's kinda like Election polls.
I do realize that there is not any local content that can't also be received via IP/Streaming from some bundle package... but cord cutting has always been about saving money.
Most of these full blown streaming services are nothing more than a cable TV package rolled up and delivered via a new technology. When you start looking at Playstation Vue, Hulu Live TV, SlingTV, etc... the prices start to look more and more like traditional cable TV packages, which makes it less of an attractive offer. If I have to pay between $40 and $75/month for the content I want, it defeats the purpose of dropping cable. OTA COULD definitely be a primary delivery method for a lot of people. FOX, CBS, NBC and ABC traditionally have the most watched programming, and those are available OTA pretty much everywhere. It is true that is giving way to streaming exclusives (Shows like House of Cards, OITNB, Stranger Things, Master of None, etc...) but it seems there are few "cable only" shows hitting the top spots these days.

Again, I made the statement that this was just what I have personally noticed... I'm sorry if it seemed like I was trying to imply this was anything beyond a casual observation... I tried to make that perfectly clear. This all could be true (or not) in my immediate geographical area, but not be representative of the landscape across the country.
I'm not trying to look at TiVo through "rose tinted glasses"... quite the contrary... their future looks very grimm... I'm just making conversation about some of the things they could/should do (but we all know they wont) if they wanted to try to keep the retail business going. I personally think they are leaving some money on the table with OTA products, and that would be the best bet to squeeze the last drop out of the retail market after cablecard goes belly-up.


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## UCLABB (May 29, 2012)

wmhjr said:


> Your opinion.
> 
> The streaming world to me has great potential, and has been beneficial even sooner than I expected. Clearly there are compromises and there is risk. But to suggest it's just "scary" is simply your opinion. One that you're entitled to, but not one shared by all to be sure. The only fact in your statement is that it's scary to you. Not for everyone. Actually, the millennial generation finds streaming to be the opposite of "scary". For them, a hardware solution is more "scary". For me, the elimination of the risk of losing my content because of a hardware failure means a lot. As does the REAL ability to watch anything from anywhere that you have a connection. I am also concerned and interested over things like commercials and cost, but to date I've found no reason to be overly concerned. Beyond that, it just doesn't matter - because the overwhelming majority of the public does not share your sentiment. The general public wants it "easy" and with tons of delivery means, at a low up front cost. NOBODY wants to spend hard cash up front.


You could have said the same thing in two sentences.

= verbose


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## NYHeel (Oct 7, 2003)

wmhjr said:


> OTA is not even close to "making a comeback". There are SO SO SO many geographic areas across the country that OTA is purely and simply impossible to use. Read analysts reports. Look at the industry benchmarks and trend lines. Are there perhaps more people than a year ago interested in OTA? Sure. Is it in any possible scenario impactful to the overall discussion?
> 
> Nope. Not even close. It's an "add-on". Not a "Primary" solution.
> 
> ...


OTA is certainly more than a niche and it's clearly been picking up lately. But I'd agree that most OTA users simply don't watch much TV and therefore aren't interested in expensive DVRs. Many of my friends have no TV in their house at all and certainly have no cable. But their issues aren't really a desire to be OTA but more a desire to keep TV out of their house.


wmhjr said:


> Your opinion.
> 
> The streaming world to me has great potential, and has been beneficial even sooner than I expected. Clearly there are compromises and there is risk. But to suggest it's just "scary" is simply your opinion. One that you're entitled to, but not one shared by all to be sure. The only fact in your statement is that it's scary to you. Not for everyone. Actually, the millennial generation finds streaming to be the opposite of "scary". For them, a hardware solution is more "scary". For me, the elimination of the risk of losing my content because of a hardware failure means a lot. As does the REAL ability to watch anything from anywhere that you have a connection. I am also concerned and interested over things like commercials and cost, but to date I've found no reason to be overly concerned. Beyond that, it just doesn't matter - because the overwhelming majority of the public does not share your sentiment. The general public wants it "easy" and with tons of delivery means, at a low up front cost. NOBODY wants to spend hard cash up front.


Of course it's my opinion. I wrote it. I didn't state any provable facts. Also, your constant and incessant negativity about all things TiVo on this forum is a bit over the top. Sure, the future for TiVo doesn't look great, especially for their retail business. But they continue to support their boxes and one can still get a cable card from their provider. TiVo still offers a significant cost savings over most cable providers without a very long payback time. If my Roamio were to break down now I wouldn't hesitate to replace it (though I'd probably try and buy a used one on ebay).

TiVo never has been for everyone. Like you said the general public wants easy and doesn't want big upfront costs. The cable company DVR mostly serves their purpose especially as they've improved in regards to mobile access. I'm 37 years old and I have 3 kids (ages 15, 11, and 9) so I generally have a decent idea what younger people are looking for. It's pretty clear that people (both young and old) are looking for more mobile access to TV. Streaming services help provide that.

But streaming services also have some pretty big issues. Segmentation is a major problem for the (non-linear) streaming services. The announcement from Disney yesterday just shows how clear that is. There are just so many subscription streaming providers offering different content in the same category. You had Netflix and Hulu. Now there's CBS holding back their content for their own service and soon Disney is doing the same. Does ABC content go with the rest of the Disney too? ESPN is going to start selling their own direct to consumer content and many of the premium channels have done the same with HBO and Showtime offering their own separate services. AMC recently announced a premium streaming service. Right now, at least I can get much of this content with a DVR and my Fios service. But that may not last. In 10 years I might need to separately subscribe to a whole host of these services just to get what I'm getting now. I'm pretty sure it's going to cost a whole lot more than what I'm paying right now to get even close to what I have now. And sure, it will be probably be available via mobile and on demand, but it will probably have a lot more restrictions and controls than we have now on a DVR recording. It's a trade-off and not one that I think will be very good.

Right now we have the best of both worlds. We have capable DVRs that offer our recorded shows for mobile use as well as Netflix/Hulu which allow us to watch content on demand without having to pre-record. Just heard of a show you want to catch up on, it's probably on Netflix. See an ad for a show that's coming out soon, set your DVR. But I don't love the direction things are going with all the segmentation around streaming. I fear it's going to be really expensive and offer less flexibility.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Again, it's pretty clear. 

1) OTA is limited by geography and available broadcasters. This means in large percentages of the country, OTA is simply not feasible. Sadly, that includes me - even after multiple Channelmaster antenna attempts. Furthermore, even in many areas that can in theory get OTA, it requires rotating the antenna - which means the Tivo OTA is (again) not relevant in any way. 

2) OTA broadcasters are likely to decline for various reasons. One is the congressional mandate executed by the FCC to buy back OTA spectrum and resell it to wireless. There is far more demand for wireless services than there is for OTA services. This means just to start over 400 broadcasters will likely cease broadcasting.

3) There is really no financial reason for continued broadcasting of OTA from a financial perspective. It's simply another cost for the content providers with no return on investment. 

4) Tivo has failed to make their DVR "hardware and service" profitable for the overwhelmingly larger population of potential customers that have demonstrated they are interested in DVRs to begin with. Their profitability (as shown on their financial reports) stem from intellectual property (patents) and MSO agreements. The hardware has simply been an "entry point" they claim drives "innovation" - not really a profit center. Therein lies the problem. And, with the ATSC 3.0, etc combined with the effective elimination of the integration ban (again due to technology changes via the virtual elimination of QAM) it becomes even more problematic.

5) People keep talking about OTA being "more than niche" - which is BS. It's niche in todays world. Furthermore, there is another problem. Of that relatively small percentage of households that are OTA, it is reasonable to conclude that at least some portion of them are so for pure cost perspectives - and would never consider paying for a Tivo - PLUS - they may not have broadband either! So, they are not even in the running for a potential Tivo OTA. 

6) Your comment about Tivo being a "significant cost savings over cable" is simply not accurate any longer. It is not. You MAY be able to recoup to the point that it's break even. You may not. It may be more expensive, less expensive, or the same. But make no mistake - you have to pay up front and then hope that it turns out positive. And, you have to commit to a lengthy time in order to get that savings. Todays buying public has voted with their wallet that this is NOT what they want. They do NOT want to pay a lot up front and hope to save later. They would rather rent, pay a little more, with the knowledge that they can turn it in any time they want and stop paying, or if it breaks, they just get a new one delivered at zero cost. 

Finally, I was not always negative about Tivo. I was very happy for quite a while, and then hopeful for a while. Years ago I publicly hoped that they would really make much stronger partnerships and inroads with the MSOs and other manufacturers, as I saw the retail business being problematic due to IP delivery and competition from improving MSO offerings having low entry cost points. But they missed the boat and it's too late. The core value of their product has declined now due to the poor quality of guide data - which their entire product relies on. Now, it's IMHO inevitable. The Tivo retail business will effectively disappear - with the only question in my mind being when.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

wmhjr said:


> No. It's no more relevant than talking about how practical a car choice is. Ota is a niche that is totally unrepresentative of the market or the op. TiVo had a product only because it's effectively a slightly modified version of their core product allowing them to gain revenue at little increased cost. It is a completely impossible product is terms of being able to stand on its own. Period. If TiVo were out of the cablecard unit business they would be forced to shut down services for ota as it can't generate enough revenue to cover costs on its own.
> 
> There is a reason that nobody else is interested in an ota product.


Nobody except for Tablo, whose entire business is OTA DVRs. Oh, and SiliconDust, who makes OTA network tuners. And Plex, who has built OTA DVR service into their subscription software for use with OTA tuners from SiliconDust and a few other companies. Oh, and Channel Master, which makes an OTA DVR and sells OTA antennas. And AirTV, a box that integrates Sling TV streaming service with OTA channels from your antenna.

But, sure, other than that, nobody.


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

NYHeel said:


> Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. A DVR where you can keep shows for a month is a joke. The streaming world is in fact quite scary and it looks to be one that will be more expensive with less flexibility to watch on your own time without commercials.


a joke? I have two Tivos and they are almost always empty or have at most 10 shows on them. And we have 85 shows in our One Passes. We record stuff, we watch it, we delete it.


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

wmhjr said:


> -snip-
> 
> Finally, I was not always negative about Tivo. I was very happy for quite a while, and then hopeful for a while. Years ago I publicly hoped that they would really make much stronger partnerships and inroads with the MSOs and other manufacturers, as I saw the retail business being problematic due to IP delivery and competition from improving MSO offerings having low entry cost points. But they missed the boat and it's too late. The core value of their product has declined now due to the poor quality of guide data - which their entire product relies on. Now, it's IMHO inevitable. The Tivo retail business will effectively disappear - with the only question in my mind being when.


Good post. I really have loved Tivo from 2005+. However, with my Premieres showing their age after 7 years (which I realize, I've recouped their initial investment a few times over) I realize that buying a brand new Tivo today for $1100+ and still being tied to Cable just isn't a good idea in 2017.

I'm very surprised Tivo never went the cloud DVR route and had tiny form factor boxes like Amazon Fire TV with access to live TV like PS Vue. They owned the entire market for awhile and yet they never innovated past a turning a dumb box into an HD dumb box with some apps on it.

Sadly it's too late now. Everyone else is already eating their lunch.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

NashGuy said:


> Nobody except for Tablo, whose entire business is OTA DVRs. Oh, and SiliconDust, who makes OTA network tuners. And Plex, who has built OTA DVR service into their subscription software for use with OTA tuners from SiliconDust and a few other companies. Oh, and Channel Master, which makes an OTA DVR and sells OTA antennas. And AirTV, a box that integrates Sling TV streaming service with OTA channels from your antenna.
> 
> But, sure, other than that, nobody.


OMG. Really? You really think those are in any way "competition"? Really? They are irrelevant. If you want, you can also buy rabbit ears.

https://www.amazon.com/Topzone-Univ...297618&sr=8-7&keywords=rabbit+ears+tv+antenna

May be you want to mention those as well. Wow.


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

wmhjr said:


> OMG. Really? You really think those are in any way "competition"? Really? They are irrelevant. If you want, you can also buy rabbit ears.
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/Topzone-Univ...297618&sr=8-7&keywords=rabbit+ears+tv+antenna
> 
> May be you want to mention those as well. Wow.


To be fair, some of those are good services with guide data and work well with networked devices. I've considered Plex DVR for a minute.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

I'm not in any way saying they are not good services. They are. It's just that in terms of in some way using them to reinforce the idea that OTA is "coming back in a big way" or could provide a realistic way for Tivo to survive, the argument is flawed at its core. The majority of them have those products as simply "additional" products in addition to their core products and services. 

More to the point - again - it's irrelevant as it pertains to the OP and most Tivo customers. Tivo has consistently failed at long term profitability of their actual boxes tied to service. Looking at their financials, it's very very clear. A great deal of their profits stem from patents and MSO partnerships (as well as virtually all their "growth" in terms of subscriptions - they are bleeding retail customers). It's like the joke about a baker who sells bread for 50 cents a loaf but it costs him 75 cents a loaf to make. When asked how his business works, he says "I deal in volume". Tivo owned the market, then led the market. Then they lost the market. To suggest that marketing OTA could somehow change everything is head scratching at best.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

wmhjr said:


> OMG. Really? You really think those are in any way "competition"? Really? They are irrelevant. If you want, you can also buy rabbit ears.
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/Topzone-Univ...297618&sr=8-7&keywords=rabbit+ears+tv+antenna
> 
> May be you want to mention those as well. Wow.


They're absolutely competition to the TiVo Roamio OTA and likely part of the reason why TiVo chose not to proceed with the Mavrik (an OTA network DVR that worked a lot like Tablo, which is already established and just struck a nationwide distribution deal with BestBuy for their new model DVR). Those companies' ongoing existence belies your assertion that "nobody" other than TiVo is competing in the OTA market.

That said, none of those companies are overall direct competitors to TiVo/Rovi as a whole, given that the newly merged company mainly is about licensing patents and data to various industry players, then secondarily is about partnering with MSOs to provide STB solutions, then thirdly is about retail DVRs, the majority of which are for use with CableCARDs. As a whole, I'm not sure there are any "direct" competitors to TiVo/Rovi.

I don't disagree with the idea that TiVo will likely get out of direct participation in the retail DVR business over time. Rovi has made it clear that they aren't that interested in playing there. And the sunsetting of CableCARD is a big factor too. (I've more than once said on this forum that the Bolt+ will be the last CableCARD retail DVR that TiVo ever ships.) But your arguments are somewhat exaggerated and saying that OTA DVRs are completely irrelevant is off base. A decent chunk of TiVos are used with OTA rather than cable. And the OTA market is growing a bit lately. The advent of ATSC 3.0 starting next year -- which will prompt at least some tuner upgrades among consumers -- could further expand the market for OTA DVRs.

The question, though, is whether the opportunity set from retail OTA DVRs is big enough to keep TiVo as a player in the retail market. Given the B2B/non-retail orientation of Rovi, and the fact that OTA DVR sales would likely need to be a fair amount bigger than they currently are to make a real impact on TiVo share prices, I doubt it. Instead, I expect to see TiVo license their UI/guide data/patents to third parties who will make OTA DVR solutions in various form-factors. The products will be "powered by TiVo" but not directly sold or supported by TiVo.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Can you please explain the most basic thing that would be necessary to found your argument about Tivo as an OTA solution? How do you suggest that with less volume (OTA only) Tivo could make the hardware/software retail market profitable? They've failed in this attempt for years on a per unit basis. So how, when providing virtually the same service requirements (minus cablecard) but with less volume, do they do that?

Beyond that, for OTA, you carefully omit the fact that at least a significant portion of OTA is likely to disappear due to the resale of spectrum, and the very likely scenario where some broadcasters who are already financially strapped simply don't make the ATSC 3.0 transition. And that the market continues to change and adapt, likely providing effectively OTA content via streaming services. OTA is - at best - highly speculative. If a company could provide very low cost high margin products that require very little investment and actual "service" (such as the service Tivo is forced to carry as overhead) then a short term profit might be had. This is why IMHO OTA DVRs are even more of a fringe, niche product than the Cablecard Tivo is today. And that goes beyond the technical limitations of the OTA DVRs, such as the lack of Dolby 5.1/6.1/Surround, integration challenges, and many other factors. You can't base a market on the exception unless you can be profitable under a low volume high margin scenario.


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## adessmith (Oct 5, 2007)

wmhjr said:


> technical limitations of the OTA DVRs, such as the lack of Dolby 5.1/6.1/Surround


Maybe I never paid close enough attention, but I believe my Roamio is receiving Dolby 5.1 via an OTA signal on all or most of the HD stations I receive... 
Now I'm gonna have to check that out tonight.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

wmhjr said:


> Can you please explain the most basic thing that would be necessary to found your argument about Tivo as an OTA solution? How do you suggest that with less volume (OTA only) Tivo could make the hardware/software retail market profitable? They've failed in this attempt for years on a per unit basis. So how, when providing virtually the same service requirements (minus cablecard) but with less volume, do they do that?
> 
> Beyond that, for OTA, you carefully omit the fact that at least a significant portion of OTA is likely to disappear due to the resale of spectrum, and the very likely scenario where some broadcasters who are already financially strapped simply don't make the ATSC 3.0 transition. And that the market continues to change and adapt, likely providing effectively OTA content via streaming services. OTA is - at best - highly speculative. If a company could provide very low cost high margin products that require very little investment and actual "service" (such as the service Tivo is forced to carry as overhead) then a short term profit might be had. This is why IMHO OTA DVRs are even more of a fringe, niche product than the Cablecard Tivo is today. And that goes beyond the technical limitations of the OTA DVRs, such as the lack of Dolby 5.1/6.1/Surround, integration challenges, and many other factors. You can't base a market on the exception unless you can be profitable under a low volume high margin scenario.


The idea that an OTA DVR can't be profitable is silly. Again, it's all that Tablo does and they've been in business for years now and continue to roll out new products like the Tablo Dual, the Tablo Tuner, and the Tablo Engine app. And I don't accept your original premise that TiVo is somehow losing money on the Roamio OTA units they sell for $300-400 with lifetime service. They don't need to license the Rovi program guide data they provide because they now OWN it and must generate it anyhow for a number of B2B partners. Other than a little per-unit ongoing technical support, there's almost no continuing additional costs that TiVo must bear to provide service to those OTA DVRs they've already sold. But again, I think the company would ultimately prefer not to bother with manufacturing, marketing and supporting OTA DVR retail units at all, given the relatively little profits that such efforts contribute to the bottom line. So ultimately they'll license that business out to other hardware manufacturers.

As for your take on the OTA market generally -- that "a significant portion of OTA is likely to disappear due to the resale of spectrum" -- clearly you don't spend much time reading industry news. Barely ANY stations are going dark during the upcoming repack. And whether or not all stations make the transition to ATSC 3.0 in the next few years doesn't really matter either. Some will, and all ATSC 3.0 tuners are actually 3.0/1.0 hybrid tuners, capable of tuning into all available OTA stations and, if part of a DVR, recording them. I'm not arguing that the market for OTA viewing and OTA DVRs is going to explode by any means, but I don't see it diminishing. OTA definitely has a brighter future in the next several years than does CableCARD, a technology that keeps losing users and will gradually stop being supported by cable MSOs (although that will happen over several years going foward). And what's this about "lack of Dolby 5.1" surround sound in OTA DVRs? It works just fine in my Roamio OTA.

But hey, never let ignorance about a topic stop you from voluminously posting about it, right?


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## NYHeel (Oct 7, 2003)

b_scott said:


> a joke? I have two Tivos and they are almost always empty or have at most 10 shows on them. And we have 85 shows in our One Passes. We record stuff, we watch it, we delete it.


And I have a 3 TB Tivo that is always between 80 - 98% full. Nearly all the TV I've been watching from the last 3 months is stuff that was recorded over 3 months ago.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

adessmith said:


> Maybe I never paid close enough attention, but I believe my Roamio is receiving Dolby 5.1 via an OTA signal on all or most of the HD stations I receive...
> Now I'm gonna have to check that out tonight.


Look at the other solutions such as Tablo.... I was not talking about the Tivo OTA


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

adessmith said:


> Maybe I never paid close enough attention, but I believe my Roamio is receiving Dolby 5.1 via an OTA signal on all or most of the HD stations I receive...
> Now I'm gonna have to check that out tonight.


You may find some that are just DD 2.0. You can verify the audio by checking Wiki for the station. I used to receive WHP, a CBS channel, and it was just stereo. All my HD channels are DD 5.1 now.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

b_scott said:


> except it is bright, from what I've seen. In PS Vue, I can "DVR" in the cloud and have my current shows keep for a month, while FF/RWD to my heart's content. Plus On Demand (with commercials as usual) and all streaming apps.


A whole month? That wouldn't fly for my GF and I. We are still watching shows from eight months ago.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

NashGuy said:


> The idea that an OTA DVR can't be profitable is silly. Again, it's all that Tablo does and they've been in business for years now and continue to roll out new products like the Tablo Dual, the Tablo Tuner, and the Tablo Engine app. And I don't accept your original premise that TiVo is somehow losing money on the Roamio OTA units they sell for $300-400 with lifetime service. They don't need to license the Rovi program guide data they provide because they now OWN it and must generate it anyhow for a number of B2B partners. Other than a little per-unit ongoing technical support, there's almost no continuing additional costs that TiVo must bear to provide service to those OTA DVRs they've already sold. But again, I think the company would ultimately prefer not to bother with manufacturing, marketing and supporting OTA DVR retail units at all, given the relatively little profits that such efforts contribute to the bottom line. So ultimately they'll license that business out to other hardware manufacturers.
> 
> As for your take on the OTA market generally -- that "a significant portion of OTA is likely to disappear due to the resale of spectrum" -- clearly you don't spend much time reading industry news. Barely ANY stations are going dark during the upcoming repack. And whether or not all stations make the transition to ATSC 3.0 in the next few years doesn't really matter either. Some will, and all ATSC 3.0 tuners are actually 3.0/1.0 hybrid tuners, capable of tuning into all available OTA stations and, if part of a DVR, recording them. I'm not arguing that the market for OTA viewing and OTA DVRs is going to explode by any means, but I don't see it diminishing. OTA definitely has a brighter future in the next several years than does CableCARD, a technology that keeps losing users and will gradually stop being supported by cable MSOs (although that will happen over several years going foward). And what's this about "lack of Dolby 5.1" surround sound in OTA DVRs? It works just fine in my Roamio OTA.
> 
> But hey, never let ignorance about a topic stop you from voluminously posting about it, right?


You ought to be careful about speaking of ignorance based on your above statements. I spend a great deal of time keeping up to date. You directly contradict yourself. In an early statement, you indicated that OTA was "making a comeback in a big way". Now in this statement you say the market is not going to "explode" but won't "diminish". Which is it? Clearly you inappropriately commented on one or the other of those posts. It is logically impossible that both could be correct by ANY interpretation. Your words. Not mine.

You also fail to acknowledge that the costs of maintaining the infrastructure and services to support Tivo OTA do not get reduced if it's the only product. They are the same. Only cablecard support at the time of setup are impacted. Period. So, profitability (or the lack of it) remains. You fail to elaborate on how a product that historically has lost money somehow becomes profitable with enough margin to support itself if the volume is reduced. It doesn't. Also - and for the record. Sure, Tivo no longer has to pay service fees for guide data (no matter how much it sucks now). However, the larger Tivo also doesn't get the license revenue of the former Tivo using it. So the picture isn't exactly as rosy as you make out there either.

Tablo is an niche product as well. And for the record, that is exactly what I was speaking of in terms of Dolby. Again - ignorance.

The market continues to change - and it's not changing in favor of mainstream adoption back to OTA - nor frankly in favor of Tivo.


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

NYHeel said:


> And I have a 3 TB Tivo that is always between 80 - 98% full. Nearly all the TV I've been watching from the last 3 months is stuff that was recorded over 3 months ago.


I guess we just keep up on TV more than you do. We use it to time shift programs that air at the same time, or pad out programs to cut commercials. But we are home almost every night, so we watch that night's shows - or maybe we delay a few days. But not too much. And definitely don't use it as long term storage. A good Tivo is a clean Tivo, I always say.

Gotta keep up to have watercooler conversations. Otherwise why even have a Tivo - just stream on demand later.


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

aaronwt said:


> A whole month? That wouldn't fly for my GF and I. We are still watching shows from eight months ago.


but Aaron you have like 8 Tivos don't you? We have two 2-tuner Tivos. We only have like 80 shows the entire year, and some of that is nightly shows that we only sometimes watch.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Don't forget two other points of interest.

Just like with differing levels of email quotas, photo storage, etc, it is HIGHLY likely that future cloud based DVR offerings would have different levels of storage limits in terms of time or size quotas along with different levels of cost. Based on the cost of storage and economies of scale for enterprise class storage, my experience is that it's extremely likely that this would happen, as it is yet another possible revenue stream.

Second, as opposed to local storage (since Tivo provides no RAID capability), any such storage would allow for much much higher reliability in terms of not losing content than what is currently available.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

One other point - cloud based services could be even more profitable using currently available de-duplication technology for a "store once" capability. We use this today in large corporate enterprises. There is no reason why it would/could not be employed here.

In point of fact, I actually see cloud DVRs evolving to where actual content isn't stored even in the cloud, but rather just GUIDS or pointers to content, effectively eliminating the cost of long term (larger than a month, etc) storage of personal cloud DVR offerings.


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## randian (Jan 15, 2014)

wmhjr said:


> Just like with differing levels of email quotas, photo storage, etc, it is HIGHLY likely that future cloud based DVR offerings would have different levels of storage limits in terms of time or size quotas along with different levels of cost. Based on the cost of storage and economies of scale for enterprise class storage, my experience is that it's extremely likely that this would happen, as it is yet another possible revenue stream.


If I thought I'd still get skippable commercials and lag-free fast-forward/rewind I'd have no problem with cloud storage. Sadly I think avoiding commercials is on its last legs, too much incentive to make DVRs work like on-demand i.e. unskippable commercials.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

randian said:


> If I thought I'd still get skippable commercials and lag-free fast-forward/rewind I'd have no problem with cloud storage. Sadly I think avoiding commercials is on its last legs, too much incentive to make DVRs work like on-demand i.e. unskippable commercials.


You might be right. Or it could be an "option" where you pay more for commercial free viewing. Hard to say. I do think it's likely that there will be at least an option to ff through commercials to some extent. Competition will breed innovation in that area. But you never know. That being said, I'd probably give up commercial skip if I could get true anywhere/anytime viewing on any platform.


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## randian (Jan 15, 2014)

wmhjr said:


> I do think it's likely that there will be at least an option to ff through commercials to some extent. Competition will breed innovation in that area.


I'd probably pay for it if offered, but nobody offers commercial-free on-demand now even for a fee so if they go this route with DVRs I'm not confident a commercial-free option will exist. As for competition I don't see that as being a factor. Only one cableco in most markets, satellite has other downsides (rain fade and disabling Moca; you still need Internet service, probably from your local cableco; satellite streaming on-demand is as commercial-ridden as the cableco offerings), and depending on what you watch streaming services end up both more expensive and less comprehensive than cable while being subject to bandwidth caps designed to keep you from jumping ship to streaming.


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## twhiting9275 (Nov 17, 2006)

Hulu has had commercial free viewing for a year or so now.its not 100% (some channels require a brief commercial), but overall, it's commercial free


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Remember, cloud DVr is a different item than streaming do for now it's just conjecture.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

wmhjr said:


> You ought to be careful about speaking of ignorance based on your above statements. I spend a great deal of time keeping up to date. You directly contradict yourself. In an early statement, you indicated that OTA was "making a comeback in a big way". Now in this statement you say the market is not going to "explode" but won't "diminish". Which is it? Clearly you inappropriately commented on one or the other of those posts. It is logically impossible that both could be correct by ANY interpretation. Your words. Not mine.


Please find an earlier post I made in this thread where I stated that OTA is "making a comeback in a big way" and then quote it here. I'll wait. And wait. Because you'll never find it. I didn't use those words, at least not recently. (Maybe you're confusing me with someone else? I haven't read this entire thread.) OTA use has increased modestly in recent years as cord-cutting has picked up but I don't think it's increased "in a big way". That said, an estimated 17% of US households watched only OTA TV as of one year ago, an increase from 15% the year before. Not all of them would be interested in a DVR, but some. Whether that's a "niche" market or not, I don't know. That's just semantics. But it's a market big enough to support one or two profitable retail DVR solutions, I'd say.

And what exactly is the overall point that you're trying to argue, anyhow? That TiVo Corp. is doomed and will soon go out of business? Not gonna happen. They have plenty of patents that will continue to be licensed for years and, even apart from that, are an important provider of guide data for many industry players, as well as a provider of turnkey tech solutions for small-to-midsize MSOs.

If you're saying that they'll eventually cease to directly sell their own retail DVRs, I'd agree, given that Rovi wants to concentrate on their core B2B business and also because CableCARD is dying and there's no good way to make next-gen retail cable-compatible DVRs without a successor standard, which likely isn't coming from the FCC/Congress. If they want, they could make small supplemental profits by continuing to sell their own OTA DVRs, but I think they'll opt to just license their IP out to third parties, such as Philips, who was showing a TiVo-powered Philips-branded retail OTA DVR back at CES this year, for potential release in Sept. The fact that TiVo recently scrapped the Mavrik OTA network DVR concept tells me that they probably won't ever bring another solely TiVo-branded DVR to market.

But I don't think there's a reason for current retail TiVo owners with lifetime service to panic any time soon. Yes, in the next few years, some of them may see their CableCARD-equipped TiVos cease to be supported by their cable company (e.g. Comcast). But as long as TiVo is around for several more years, which I have no doubt they will be, they'll be obligated to continue supporting their already-sold retail units with lifetime service.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

randian said:


> If I thought I'd still get skippable commercials and lag-free fast-forward/rewind I'd have no problem with cloud storage. Sadly I think avoiding commercials is on its last legs, too much incentive to make DVRs work like on-demand i.e. unskippable commercials.


It's a real possibility--but I fear that your conclusion could be correct.


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## NYHeel (Oct 7, 2003)

wmhjr said:


> Again, it's pretty clear.
> 
> 1) OTA is limited by geography and available broadcasters. This means in large percentages of the country, OTA is simply not feasible. Sadly, that includes me - even after multiple Channelmaster antenna attempts. Furthermore, even in many areas that can in theory get OTA, it requires rotating the antenna - which means the Tivo OTA is (again) not relevant in any way.
> 
> ...


Most houses near me have antennas on the roof. You're right, antennas on/near the TV don't work in my area and I'm 10-15 miles from the Empire State Building. Roof antennas do work though.

TiVo does have significant cost savings over cable (depending on cable company). And it doesn't take a super long payback period. With Verizon Fios if you want their Quantum DVR (a comparable product to Tivo) that offers 6 tuners and you're paying $34 for one room and $46 for two rooms. Certain markets have lower prices. For example, in the NYC metro area it's only $40 for a two room system and $48 for a 3 room system. Subtract the $5 fee for a cable card and you're still saving $35 a month for two rooms in NY and $43 a month for three rooms. Outside of NY the savings are $4-6 more. So that means after 2 years (the typical time for a contract with Fios) you've saved $840 for a two room system (and around $950 outside NYC area). That's more than enough to buy a Roamio plus/pro with lifetime and a Mini. Thus payback period is likely less than 2 years.

Say you'd rather go monthly. Then the savings on a two room system is about $20 a month in the NYC area (40-5-15). That $20 a month will pay for a Bolt plus a Mini in 17 months ((190+150)/20). That's a pretty short break even point.

Of course most people haven't figured it out because using a TiVo is more complicated and requires the use of the cable card. But that doesn't mean it's not a better option for someone just starting a two year contract with Fios. Sure the up front costs hurt, though they hurt a little less if you use the monthly payment option. Most of the country also pays credit card interest. I think we can all agree that's a terrible financial decision. People frequently make sub-optimal financial decisions.

I never said Tivo the product is great for the masses. It's not. People are too entrenched in just using the simple cable box DVR. But Tivo still provides good value. Lastly, I've read that the guide data issues have been bad for many people. Personally, it hasn't impacted my use of the product in any meaningful way. The only thing i've noticed is that new seasons added to Netflix take awhile to show up in the One Pass. I realize I may be lucky, but I can only speak to my experience with TiVo which has been excellent.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> No. It's no more relevant than talking about how practical a car choice is. Ota is a niche that is totally unrepresentative of the market or the op. TiVo had a product only because it's effectively a slightly modified version of their core product allowing them to gain revenue at little increased cost.


1. Unfortunately, your response is significantly unresponsive: you attacked the earlier poster because he pointed out how his lifetimed TiVo system was cost-effective, as he expected a break-even at less than 2 years over puchasing a monthly or yearly subscription, and there's a decent chance TiVo still will be around then. You questioning his calculation, and then he explained it. The fact that you don't like this doesn't make it irrelevant--perhaps you missed his point.

2. No one said that OTA is "representative" (a bit of word-twisting there). Rather, it's a factor. Enough that TiVo has it, which you have stated gives TiVo further revenue, what businesses try to do.


> There is a reason that nobody else is interested in an ota product.


You seem to be unknowledgeable here, as there are, as others have pointed out. 


> And btw, your description of a product that is exclusively for ota is misleading. It implies they deliberately engineered a new reduction for ota. They did not. They took a standard product and simply removed the cablecard slot.


Yep, you're right, rather than spending significant sums and starting from scratch, TiVo wisely took its existing product and modified it--and, as you have said, they're getting revenue for it.


> For the small minority that is suited for ota, it works. But again, it is totally irrelevant in terms of the discussion.


And so the revenue that you have stated TiVo gets from it is irrelevant, then. OK.

Look, no one says that OTA is the horse pulling the cart. But your attempt to almost demonize it simply defies logic--come on. 


wmhjr said:


> OTA is not even close to "making a comeback". There are SO SO SO many geographic areas across the country that OTA is purely and simply impossible to use.


And there are SO SO SO many geographic areas across the country where it works just fine--probably, the majority of large urban areas, which represents the majority of the population. 


> Are there perhaps more people than a year ago interested in OTA? Sure. Is it in any possible scenario impactful to the overall discussion?
> 
> Nope.


It makes revenue for TiVo--your words--but does not have an impact. Oh.


> Not a "Primary" solution.


1. Nobody said it was.

2. It depends on what the question is. As others have pointed out, other companies are producing OTA boxes--something certainly is there.


> So you think somehow that a very very very restricted capability (OTA Tivo) which has a potential market penetration MUCH smaller but has all the same costs to deliver and support would be profitable?


No one has said that TiVo OTA alone would survive and thrive. Although other companies are going there, aren't they, as others here have pointed out.

But hey, I don't even know if TiVo could have survived without its IP lawsuits, cable or OTA regardless. Could another company, without TiVo's business operation decisions? I don't know. Oh, and I always can make a very profitable business unsuccessful--just pay out more than bringing in. 


> People here are largely Tivo centric, and frankly are far more likely to be optimistic and view their offerings through heavily rose tinted glasses.


Perhaps that's right, at times; or perhaps they're actually being objective. As opposed to glomming on to negatives and casting other matters aside as irrelevant.


wmhjr said:


> The general public wants it "easy" and with tons of delivery means, at a low up front cost. NOBODY wants to spend hard cash up front.


Those silly lifetime people, who make up whatever percent of TiVo's customers. Along with those who buy cars upfront rather than leasing them. 


wmhjr said:


> 1) OTA is limited by geography and available broadcasters. This means in large percentages of the country, OTA is simply not feasible. Sadly, that includes me - even after multiple Channelmaster antenna attempts.


Yep, you're right--some people can't get OTA. But just because you can't get OTA doesn't mean you are representative or that this group is in the majority, as you constantly seem to try to argue, without stats. (Show me them and I'm more than willing to agree with what they show, of course.)


> 6) Your comment about Tivo being a "significant cost savings over cable" is simply not accurate any longer. It is not. You MAY be able to recoup to the point that it's break even. You may not. It may be more expensive, less expensive, or the same. But make no mistake - you have to pay up front and then hope that it turns out positive. And, you have to commit to a lengthy time in order to get that savings. Todays buying public has voted with their wallet that this is NOT what they want. They do NOT want to pay a lot up front and hope to save later. They would rather rent, pay a little more, with the knowledge that they can turn it in any time they want and stop paying, or if it breaks, they just get a new one delivered at zero cost.


It all depends on the individual. And, the "lengthy time" to get the savings? It all depends on one's purchase price--my "lengthy times" have been less than 3 years. And my original TiVo had lifetime on it for another 8 years beyond (and could have continued on beyond that, had I chosen to).

Ciao--


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

wmhjr said:


> You might be right. Or it could be an "option" where you pay more for commercial free viewing. Hard to say. I do think it's likely that there will be at least an option to ff through commercials to some extent. Competition will breed innovation in that area. But you never know. That being said, I'd probably give up commercial skip if I could get true anywhere/anytime viewing on any platform.


it already is. I'm pretty sure the new CBS app is $6, or $10 without commercials. And Hulu has had that option for awhile.


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

randian said:


> If I thought I'd still get skippable commercials and lag-free fast-forward/rewind I'd have no problem with cloud storage. Sadly I think avoiding commercials is on its last legs, too much incentive to make DVRs work like on-demand i.e. unskippable commercials.


PS Vue does this.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

b_scott said:


> but Aaron you have like 8 Tivos don't you? We have two 2-tuner Tivos. We only have like 80 shows the entire year, and some of that is nightly shows that we only sometimes watch.


MY GF only has two TiVos at her house. I more recently replaced her S3 boxes with a two tuner Premiere and a Roamio Basic. She has things on her TiVos from years ago. And she is OTA only and has tons of One Passes.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

wmhjr said:


> One other point - cloud based services could be even more profitable using currently available de-duplication technology for a "store once" capability. We use this today in large corporate enterprises. There is no reason why it would/could not be employed here.
> 
> In point of fact, I actually see cloud DVRs evolving to where actual content isn't stored even in the cloud, but rather just GUIDS or pointers to content, effectively eliminating the cost of long term (larger than a month, etc) storage of personal cloud DVR offerings.


Unless something changed recently, legally they still have to have an individual copy for each person. They can't have one copy for a million people. Well I guess they can but that is called Video On Demand.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

aaronwt said:


> Unless something changed recently, legally they still have to have an individual copy for each person. They can't have one copy for a million people. Well I guess they can but that is called Video On Demand.


I'm not certain that's true. Legally, deduplication for email as an example has been found to be acceptable - even for email under court order. Because the original content is exactly identical to individual content, courts have found it an acceptable practice. E-Discovery related to litigation dealt with this more than 10 years ago. That precedent would likely (if it has not already) suffice. Obviously it's a question, but I'm pretty confident that it's not an issue.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

NYHeel said:


> Most houses near me have antennas on the roof. You're right, antennas on/near the TV don't work in my area and I'm 10-15 miles from the Empire State Building. Roof antennas do work though.
> 
> TiVo does have significant cost savings over cable (depending on cable company). And it doesn't take a super long payback period. With Verizon Fios if you want their Quantum DVR (a comparable product to Tivo) that offers 6 tuners and you're paying $34 for one room and $46 for two rooms. Certain markets have lower prices. For example, in the NYC metro area it's only $40 for a two room system and $48 for a 3 room system. Subtract the $5 fee for a cable card and you're still saving $35 a month for two rooms in NY and $43 a month for three rooms. Outside of NY the savings are $4-6 more. So that means after 2 years (the typical time for a contract with Fios) you've saved $840 for a two room system (and around $950 outside NYC area). That's more than enough to buy a Roamio plus/pro with lifetime and a Mini. Thus payback period is likely less than 2 years.
> 
> ...


Antennas on roofs don't work near me. I still have one on my roof. It's a relatively new antenna (5 years old) only because I every once in a while continued to play around trying to find a way to get OTA. You can't. Here in my region we have these things called hills and mountains. Unless you live on a ridge, you're out of luck. Back in the analog days, and when I was a kid (before cable) in this area we used a root-antenna on the roof, but the picture would simply get "snowy" with signal loss. In the digital OTA age, there is no snow It's just loss of picture and massive pixelation. Of course, if you plug my exact address into Tablo, it says I should get 25 channels - all with 5 stars (maximum) of reception. BS. It's marketing propaganda designed to get more customers. The reality is that I can usually get two channels. This is identical for ALL of the residents in my area except those living on top of ridges. And, I don't live in some super rural area. That's this region. Hills, my friend.

You can rationalize all day long about how "Tivo has cost savings". That is a meaningless argument. Again, it "might" have cost savings. It "might" be more expensive. It "might" pay back. You "might" be able to sell your equipment down the road. You "might" not. What is absolutely certain, is that you have to pay a bunch of money up front. What is absolutely certain is that Cablecard is on its way out. What is absolutely certain is that providers are moving to IP. What is absolutely certain is that the former Rovi - now the owners and controllers of Tivo have publicly stated that they aren't interested in the hardware or retail market. What is absolutely certain is that Tivo still has not found a way to be profitable based on their hardware sales. What is absolutely certain is that if your Tivo fails out of warranty then it's on you rather than somebody else to pay again. What is absolutely certain is that the public has already spoken on the proposition of pay up front versus rent with no obligation. What is absolutely certain is that the ever increasing offerings by alternative delivery means will only continue to eat into what is already unhealthy Tivo retail situation. What is also certain is that regardless of the prices you mention, MANY people get discounts on their service. For example, I have a free (for life) FiOS DVR in my home. No cost. Zero. There are many many many such offers that people get which can make it less expensive. Tivo? Not so much. And what is absolutely certain is that the ONLY way to try and break even or save with Tivo is to commit to multiple years. People getting an alternative can stop service within 30 days. They pay no more. It's called the cost of cash. With Tivo, they're using your money up front. Oh - and I just wonder if it might be possible that companies will raise the monthly rental fee for cablecards as time passes? Hmmm..... Since they are no longer mandates, there is nothing from preventing that from happening.

So, what is NOT certain is whether the retail Tivo offering will even exist in a meaningful way in 2 years. Whether Tivo will ever offer another "new" retail device (the mini with 4K and VoX is not a new device). Whether, in the fact of absolutely obvious cost cutting at Tivo, service levels (already not good) will continue to decline.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

NashGuy said:


> Please find an earlier post I made in this thread where I stated that OTA is "making a comeback in a big way" and then quote it here. I'll wait. And wait. Because you'll never find it. I didn't use those words, at least not recently. (Maybe you're confusing me with someone else? I haven't read this entire thread.) OTA use has increased modestly in recent years as cord-cutting has picked up but I don't think it's increased "in a big way". That said, an estimated 17% of US households watched only OTA TV as of one year ago, an increase from 15% the year before. Not all of them would be interested in a DVR, but some. Whether that's a "niche" market or not, I don't know. That's just semantics. But it's a market big enough to support one or two profitable retail DVR solutions, I'd say.
> 
> And what exactly is the overall point that you're trying to argue, anyhow? That TiVo Corp. is doomed and will soon go out of business? Not gonna happen. They have plenty of patents that will continue to be licensed for years and, even apart from that, are an important provider of guide data for many industry players, as well as a provider of turnkey tech solutions for small-to-midsize MSOs.
> 
> ...


Sorry, you're right - it was another guy in this thread that stated that OTA was making a comeback "in a big way". Thought it was you - my mistake and my apologies.

However, we're both saying the same thing in the OTA sub increases. You're saying 15% for OTA in terms of growth from 15% to 17%. I'm saying 2% OF THE MARKET from 15% to 17%. But that is to me still a niche market. Why? Because a very sizable (sorry, don't have metrics) portion of that market is due to not wanting to pay anything whatsoever. A much higher percentage of the OTA market is from the under $30K income range. In other words, 26% of the OTA households have no money. Also, using your math, while OTA grew in a relatively small way, Internet Streaming only grew by more than 33% during the same period. What does this mean? Ok, so there is 17% that in theory TODAY use OTA as primary. But at least 26% of them have no money. How much does that leave in terms of what we'll call "market cap" for an OTA DVR? Oh, whoops! They need to have internet in order to use it! So, that 74% of the 17% that remains is degraded even more, as those rural areas that use OTA but don't have broadband (or can't afford it) is now some percentage of 12.5%. Looks like it's getting right into that "niche" definition to me.

Now, let's talk about Tivos future. We both agree that retail isn't their concentration - now or in the future. The former Rovi (now Tivo) has been very vocal about that. So let's put that off for a bit. Patents. A very lucrative portion of those patents expire in 2018. Next year. They're not really developing new patents, so they have diminishing revenues in that area. So, guide data. They aren't the only provider. And (this is just conjecture to be sure) based on the extraordinarily poor quality of their guide data, I would hate to bet on future viability in a market that frankly seems not very margin friendly to begin with. Retail licensing for OTA DVRs? OK, they might make a little there - but remember cablecards in TVs? I had one of those. Everybody thought it would be a HUGE seller. Not so much. I honestly don't see the margins or ROI in much of a way there. The licensing deal with Philips (who I used to work for, BTW) would not likely result in a ton of revenue.

That leaves the discussion about what might happen to the retail stuff. If they were getting out of the retail business, exactly what would be the negative repercussions of ending service to them? Ummm...... Nothing. They aren't legally obligated to continue service. They CERTAINLY aren't legally obligated to a specific service level. So, while I agree that those of us that have already purchased units with lifetime aren't in dire jeopardy of losing service anytime soon - I would never make the same promise to somebody considering purchase of a new unit today. It's IMHO entirely possible that before the debatable "break even" time hits, whether it be because cablecards are dead or because Tivo systems are down, the device may be a brick. Remember - it takes BOTH to be good for the device not to brick. The overwhelmingly ridiculous dependency on the Roamio and Bolt to Tivo hosted solutions for more than just guide data created that monstrosity. So what I'm saying is that people should not walk into purchase of a new Tivo with any expectation or assurance that the product will be more "cost effective". And we shouldn't be telling them that they will. That's all.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

wmhjr said:


> I'm not certain that's true. Legally, deduplication for email as an example has been found to be acceptable - even for email under court order. Because the original content is exactly identical to individual content, courts have found it an acceptable practice. E-Discovery related to litigation dealt with this more than 10 years ago. That precedent would likely (if it has not already) suffice. Obviously it's a question, but I'm pretty confident that it's not an issue.


It's the entire reason they do individual copies now. If it weren't an issue then they would have no need to keep a separate copy for each user like is being done right now from the TV providers..


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

aaronwt said:


> It's the entire reason they do individual copies now. If it weren't an issue then they would have no need to keep a separate copy for each user like is being done right now from the TV providers..


That simply isn't true. I'm not certain if you're talking about "they do individual copies" in terms of Tivo - which currently has no bearing on the discussion as the content is not stored in the cloud. Completely different proposition. Has absolutely no bearing and nothing to do with cloud based storage.

If you're talking about something else currently being done, I ask that you specify who.

That being said, a reason it isn't currently being done in any meaningful way is the same reason that for example it didn't exist for email and other both structured and instructured data 20 years ago. The technology didn't exist, because there wasn't enough known demand.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

wmhjr said:


> ..............
> 
> Now, let's talk about Tivos future. We both agree that retail isn't their concentration - now or in the future. The former Rovi (now Tivo) has been very vocal about that. So let's put that off for a bit. Patents. A very lucrative portion of those patents expire in 2018. Next year. They're not really developing new patents, so they have diminishing revenues in that area. So, guide data.......


??? TiVo has introduced 14 or 15 new Patents so far this year. Last year it was over three dozen. And over two dozen in 2015.

Here is what is listed for the most recent. (Assuming the info I read is correct)



> *07/27/17 Managing collections of episodic media content
> USPTO Applicaton #:* *#20170214975
> Inventors:* Margret Schmidt, Alex Liston, Nicholas Lovell, Richard Alcazar


MANAGING COLLECTIONS OF EPISODIC MEDIA CONTENT - TiVo Inc.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

aaronwt said:


> ??? TiVo has introduced 14 or 15 new Patents so far this year. Last year it was over three dozen. And over two dozen in 2015.


And? You do realize that many corporations introduce hundreds - if not thousands - of patents per year. And that a patent does not equal revenue, right?


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

BTW, that's why I made the comment "not REALLY developing new patents". Meaning that there isn't much volume, and that there doesn't seem to be much potential revenue coming from them. It's the earlier patents they have - some of which are expiring - that are the revenue. 

Honestly, it really looks (like frankly it has for years IMHO) that their future really depends on MSOs. I've been saying that for years.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

The 20.7.2 has a new copyright section. It takes a while to read, and I couldn't find any mention of the guide.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

wmhjr said:


> You might be right. Or it could be an "option" where you pay more for commercial free viewing. Hard to say. I do think it's likely that there will be at least an option to ff through commercials to some extent. Competition will breed innovation in that area. But you never know. That being said, I'd probably give up commercial skip if I could get true anywhere/anytime viewing on any platform.


I wouldn't. No freaking way am I wasting time watching commercials, don't care how it's streamed.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

wmhjr said:


> And? You do realize that many corporations introduce hundreds - if not thousands - of patents per year. And that a patent does not equal revenue, right?


YEs. Most of the future TiVo revenue is dependent on their MSO deals.

Although Comcast did lose a patent dispute with TiVo this year. With their X1 box. No idea what the outcome would be for TiVo though.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

aaronwt said:


> YEs. Most of the future TiVo revenue is dependent on their MSO deals.
> 
> Although Comcast did lose a patent dispute with TiVo this year. With their X1 box. No idea what the outcome would be for TiVo though.


Agreed. It's really MSO deals and revenue from Guide subscriptions. From that, it's really hard to envision how the non-retail Tivo is going to fare. My belief is that their best hope is to cut losses on retail by cutting costs to the bone, frankly stopping retail sales, and working their way out of that business. There is a fair amount of cost associated with supporting retail - much of it brought on by themselves for tying so much functionality into connectivity with Tivo hosted services by their hardware. They designed in a bunch of cost that could otherwise have autonomously been handled by the remote hardware units, with nothing other than streaming and guide being dependent on connectivity. None of us really know for sure, but based on the available data including their Q1 and Q2 financials, that would be my decision if I were Tivo. Figure out the quickest way to exit that business totally. They could use the pending loss of cablecard as their public reason. I wouldn't produce a single additional unit beyond what's already in the retail pipeline. The longer they continue to sell, the bigger their problem is IMHO.

But that's just opinion. I know that several years ago when I said I thought IP delivered/streaming content would accelerate cord cutting and that cablecard would go away without any replacement, people on this site said I was absolutely nuts. Turns out I was wrong. I didn't think it would start in a meaningful way until around 2018. It's happening even faster than I thought. Tivo needed to start their change at least 8 years ago in order to survive as a retail entity IMHO. Problem is that instead of changing, they doubled down on "traditional Tivo".


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

aaronwt said:


> ??? TiVo has introduced 14 or 15 new Patents so far this year. Last year it was over three dozen. And over two dozen in 2015.
> 
> Here is what is listed for the most recent. (Assuming the info I read is correct)
> 
> MANAGING COLLECTIONS OF EPISODIC MEDIA CONTENT - TiVo Inc.


Thanks for that info.--interesting (and positive). Would be fascinating to analyze them to see if they have a real commercial worth, as some of the company's have had in the past.


wmhjr said:


> And? You do realize that many corporations introduce hundreds - if not thousands - of patents per year. And that a patent does not equal revenue, right?





wmhjr said:


> BTW, that's why I made the comment "not REALLY developing new patents". Meaning that there isn't much volume, and that there doesn't seem to be much potential revenue coming from them. It's the earlier patents they have - some of which are expiring - that are the revenue.


Well, to be fair, aaron was responding to your earlier post which suggested nothing or little in the way of patents.

You're correct, some companies will go for many patents a year. But that doesn't mean that they are worthless, offensively or defensively or for other strategic reason. Absent someone having studied the patents here, we just don't know.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> Thanks for that info.--interesting (and positive). Would be fascinating to analyze them to see if they have a real commercial worth, as some of the company's have had in the past.
> 
> Well, to be fair, aaron was responding to your earlier post which suggested nothing or little in the way of patents.
> 
> You're correct, some companies will go for many patents a year. But that doesn't mean that they are worthless, offensively or defensively or for other strategic reason. Absent someone having studied the patents here, we just don't know.


Um, I know what aaron was responding to - and my response back clearly indicates this.

Patents are only worth something if there is true market based relevance - AND - if there is an ability to defend them. You choose to look at it in the best possible way - which apparently neither Aaron nor I do. That is, that since we don't know there must be some value there.

Typically there is zero revenue generated from patents unless there is a new product to market that is utilizing that patent. Assuming no new Tivo hardware/software of any significant, it really means something associated with either MSO, guide, or totally unrelated. That's all fair. And it changes nothing whatsoever as it pertains to the Tivo retail market. Like I said, we just don't know the financial viability and profitability of the "new Tivo" sans retail. However, most financial analysts will not assign revenue or even outlook based on "unknown value of indeterminate patents". You can if you choose. BTW, you also know that a patent application is not the same as a granted patent? And that before a penny can be generated as revenue, either a licensing deal has to be contracted, or a patent dispute suit has to be completed? Applying for a patent - PARTICULARLY a process patent, is a far cry from gaining revenue from it.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> There is a fair amount of cost associated with supporting retail - much of it brought on by themselves for tying so much functionality into connectivity with Tivo hosted services by their hardware. They designed in a bunch of cost that could otherwise have autonomously been handled by the remote hardware units, with nothing other than streaming and guide being dependent on connectivity.


What connectivity-associated costs could be avoided/could be handled autonomously by the hardware? You're right, such costs presumably would impact the bottom line.


> Problem is that instead of changing, they doubled down on "traditional Tivo".


To be fair to TiVo, it did add the 3rd party apps. But, too little (and sometimes deficient), too late?

I wonder, what should TiVo have done/be doing, in that regard? I've often wondered, should there be a Roku TiVo--would that help address matters? I've presumed that TiVo would have a hard time having more than a single (at lease major) streaming service, due to the competition between services, but perhaps that's wrong?


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> What connectivity-associated costs could be avoided/could be handled autonomously by the hardware? You're right, such costs presumably would impact the bottom line.


You're not being serious, are you? I mean really? Roamio and Bolt units are heavily tied to Tivo hosted services for things such as even creating a one pass. Have you not read through and been familiar with the BSC threads? Those are all directly resulting from tying the UI too closely to connectivity with Tivo hosted services. There is no real need that I can fathom other than trying to getting click through data from customer experiences that would drive an architecture so closely dependent on real-time connectivity to hosted services. Had they not done this, the only real thing a Roamio or Bolt would require for anything other than Streaming would be consumption of guide data. That is absolutely NOT what Tivo designed and engineered.



Mikeguy said:


> To be fair to TiVo, it did add the 3rd party apps. But, too little (and sometimes deficient), too late?
> 
> I wonder, what should TiVo have done/be doing, in that regard? I've often wondered, should there be a Roku TiVo--would that help address matters? I've presumed that TiVo would have a hard time having more than a single (at lease major) streaming service, due to the competition between services, but perhaps that's wrong?


You're still stuck in the Tivo-land traditional viewpoint. Retail was always dead from a future for Tivo. If you look back you'll see I predicted that many years ago. It would have been possible that they could have preserved it as "part" of their product line, but it never looked like a sustainable core product map starting more than 5 years ago. It was a matter of time. Tivo needed to become more "internet centric", cloud based, and most importantly - tied to other peoples devices. You know, IoT. Focus heavily on leveraging MSO relationships, and price their products in such a way that they could get in bed with them early, and stay sticky. Razor and razor blade concept. Hardware devices are the past. They can't compete in that arena. Plus, they continued to make their pricing model too difficult to scale. If the Roku cost $300 there wouldn't be a ton of them out there. Tivo failed to effectively execute SWOT analysis. They consistently underestimated their weaknesses and threats. Most critically, their threats. I frankly thought their best hope would be to get purchased from a major telecom or provider from a financial perspective. Next best would be a major consumer electronics company. Unfortunately, all of them saw the vulnerabilities and were not interested.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

wmhjr said:


> Sorry, you're right - it was another guy in this thread that stated that OTA was making a comeback "in a big way". Thought it was you - my mistake and my apologies.


Thank you, accepted, no worries.



wmhjr said:


> However, we're both saying the same thing in the OTA sub increases. You're saying 15% for OTA in terms of growth from 15% to 17%. I'm saying 2% OF THE MARKET from 15% to 17%. But that is to me still a niche market. Why? Because a very sizable (sorry, don't have metrics) portion of that market is due to not wanting to pay anything whatsoever. A much higher percentage of the OTA market is from the under $30K income range. In other words, 26% of the OTA households have no money. Also, using your math, while OTA grew in a relatively small way, Internet Streaming only grew by more than 33% during the same period. What does this mean? Ok, so there is 17% that in theory TODAY use OTA as primary. But at least 26% of them have no money. How much does that leave in terms of what we'll call "market cap" for an OTA DVR? Oh, whoops! They need to have internet in order to use it! So, that 74% of the 17% that remains is degraded even more, as those rural areas that use OTA but don't have broadband (or can't afford it) is now some percentage of 12.5%. Looks like it's getting right into that "niche" definition to me.


Eh, even relatively poor Americans find money to spend on stuff they want. (How'd they get those big flat screen TVs in the first place? And have you ever noticed the number of iPhones carried around by public transit riders in poor parts of cities?) At any rate, however TiVo chooses to participate (or not) in the OTA DVR market in the future, it likely isn't going to be a deciding factor in the company's survival. While that market can be profitable enough to fully support a small company like Tablo, it's not going to be what keeps a publicly traded company with a market cap of $2.25 billion afloat. OTA DVRs (whether direct retail or, more likely, via licensing) will continue to be just a supplemental profit center for TiVo.



wmhjr said:


> Now, let's talk about Tivos future. We both agree that retail isn't their concentration - now or in the future. The former Rovi (now Tivo) has been very vocal about that. So let's put that off for a bit. Patents. A very lucrative portion of those patents expire in 2018. Next year. They're not really developing new patents, so they have diminishing revenues in that area. So, guide data. They aren't the only provider. And (this is just conjecture to be sure) based on the extraordinarily poor quality of their guide data, I would hate to bet on future viability in a market that frankly seems not very margin friendly to begin with. Retail licensing for OTA DVRs? OK, they might make a little there - but remember cablecards in TVs? I had one of those. Everybody thought it would be a HUGE seller. Not so much. I honestly don't see the margins or ROI in much of a way there. The licensing deal with Philips (who I used to work for, BTW) would not likely result in a ton of revenue.


Yes, there are a couple key patents that will expire in the next year or two but the combined TiVo/Rovi still has lots of other valuable IP that they're licensing out to lots of major companies. Did you read recently that a ruling was finally handed down in the TiVo v. Comcast lawsuit? TiVo won. Comcast (as well as STB makers Arris and Technicolor) were found to have ripped off TiVo IP in implementing a number of features in Comcast's X1 platform. Now, as some of TiVo's key patents expire, I would expect their market cap to diminish, assuming they don't have new sources of profits (new patents or new services) to replace that lost income. But there's a big difference between a corporation slowly shrinking and suddenly ceasing to exist.

As for guide data and video program metadata, no, they don't have a monopoly on the market, but so what? They're one of two (I think) major guide data distributors (with Gracenote being the other). Given all of the pay TV providers and video service apps out there needing that kind of data, that's a major profit center. As a lot of us have learned, TiVo's (Rovi's) guide data isn't as good as Gracenote's but that's the kind of thing that nit-picky end-users notice. As long as the data is "good enough" and priced right, it won't stand in the way of a deal with a major MSO. And program guide data is just part of the menu of B2B services they offer, including universal search capabilities, TV viewership data, STB technology, etc. They just struck a new deal with TCL to improve content discovery services on their Roku smart TVs.

TiVo already had a fairly big presence in the B2B world on their own. And B2B was pretty much all Rovi did. And now they're combined. What will that business landscape -- and TiVo's profitability and market cap -- look like in ten years? Who knows? The TV industry is undergoing some major changes, to be sure. But I certainly don't see TiVo going out of business any time in the next *few* years, which would be long enough to recoup one's investment in new TiVo hardware with lifetime service.



wmhjr said:


> If they were getting out of the retail business, exactly what would be the negative repercussions of ending service to them? Ummm...... Nothing. They aren't legally obligated to continue service. They CERTAINLY aren't legally obligated to a specific service level. So, while I agree that those of us that have already purchased units with lifetime aren't in dire jeopardy of losing service anytime soon - I would never make the same promise to somebody considering purchase of a new unit today. It's IMHO entirely possible that before the debatable "break even" time hits, whether it be because cablecards are dead or because Tivo systems are down, the device may be a brick. Remember - it takes BOTH to be good for the device not to brick. The overwhelmingly ridiculous dependency on the Roamio and Bolt to Tivo hosted solutions for more than just guide data created that monstrosity. So what I'm saying is that people should not walk into purchase of a new Tivo with any expectation or assurance that the product will be more "cost effective". And we shouldn't be telling them that they will. That's all.


Um, the negative repercussions to TiVo choosing to end service to retail DVRs in the field with "lifetime" service would be a big fat class action lawsuit. Now, if the company were in bankruptcy reorganization (a scenario which doesn't seem remotely likely in the foreseeable future), maybe they could get out of having to keep their servers running to pump out the program guide data (which they OWN, not license) to TiVos in homes across the country. But otherwise, I don't think so.

I can't even imagine TiVo trying to do that. The closest relevant case I know of is the Moxi DVR. Initially owned by Digeo then acquired by Arris, Moxi DVRs were sold to both MSOs and also to retail consumers (starting in Dec. 2008) for CableCARD use. Arris completely ceased selling Moxi DVRs in Feb. 2012 and initially had posted a message on their site that support and guide data would cease at the end of 2013, prompting an outcry from some of their customers. But they quickly followed up by saying that info was incorrect and they had no plans to cease service to existing units in the field. And guess what? Retail Moxi DVRs are *still* getting guide data now in 2017, over five years after Arris axed that business line. (Of course, a lot of them have experienced hardware failures by now and they never got updated to handle MPEG-4 encoded cable channels from e.g. Comcast, but still...)

IMO, the thing to be concerned about with buying a TiVo with lifetime service is whether the hardware will become obsolete because of changes imposed by your cable provider, NOT because TiVo will stop supporting it. At this point, the only major US cable provider which looks like they MIGHT switch their cable TV channels either partially or completely over from CableCARD-compatible QAM to non-compatible IPTV within the next few years (before 2020) is Comcast. I personally would not spend $1,000 or more on TiVo hardware with lifetime service if I were a Comcast cable TV customer. And if you care about future 4K UHD channels from Comcast or Verizon FiOS, well, those are almost certainly never going to be provided in the QAM format accessible by your TiVo Bolt. (It's possible Comcast could make 4K on-demand shows available through their TiVo app but I wouldn't hold my breath.)

That said, word is that Verizon has no plans to stop traditional QAM TV service for existing HD or SD channels within the next few years. And I can't see Charter (a relative technological dinosaur) doing so either.

As for OTA, well, you have to ask yourself whether you care about better-quality ATSC 3.0 channels that may become available in your area in the next few years. If you do, you have to factor that into whether or not to pay $400 now for a TiVo Roamio OTA with lifetime service given that it will never be able to access and record ATSC 3.0 broadcasts.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> Um, I know what aaron was responding to - and my response back clearly indicates this.
> 
> Patents are only worth something if there is true market based relevance - AND - if there is an ability to defend them. You choose to look at it in the best possible way - which apparently neither Aaron nor I do. That is, that since we don't know there must be some value there.
> 
> Typically there is zero revenue generated from patents unless there is a new product to market that is utilizing that patent. Assuming no new Tivo hardware/software of any significant, it really means something associated with either MSO, guide, or totally unrelated. That's all fair. And it changes nothing whatsoever as it pertains to the Tivo retail market. Like I said, we just don't know the financial viability and profitability of the "new Tivo" sans retail. However, most financial analysts will not assign revenue or even outlook based on "unknown value of indeterminate patents". You can if you choose. BTW, you also know that a patent application is not the same as a granted patent? And that before a penny can be generated as revenue, either a licensing deal has to be contracted, or a patent dispute suit has to be completed? Applying for a patent - PARTICULARLY a process patent, is a far cry from gaining revenue from it.


Yep, I knew that you were responding to aaron, who was responding to/(correcting) your earlier comment as to TiVo and an absence of developments in the patent field.

But you're (incorrectly) presuming what I'm doing and thinking. In point of fact, I'm not presuming anything about TiVo's patent activity, value or otherwise, apart from the fact that it has it. In fact, I specifically noted that it would be interesting to analyze the activity to see its value, if any, which indeed can be opined on (as you seem to be doing negatively as a whole, without seemingly having looked at the patents). In contrast, you seem to be assuming, again, its total lack of worth.

And thanks for the lesson that a patent application is not the same as a patent--yes, I knew that, lol. And a patent application and the fact of it itself can have worth, including for investors and for offensive reasons relative to another company.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

We will have to just agree to disagree. Have you read the terms of service for Tivo service contracts? There are IMHO holes wide enough to drive a cruise ship through. Class action? Easy enough. I'd actually spin off the Tivo retail business first maybe. Then who cares no matter what. 

Perhaps you have not read my comments about OTA. It's a non starter in this region. Let me be more clear. Due to topography, it is simply not feasible. Period. But beyond that, comparing OTA DVRs as a market to the fact that low income people have iPhones is simply not even remotely relevant. If they want it that bad, they won't have OTA - they'll have streaming and/or cable DVR. If they don't have enough money to pay their bills AND they are responsible enough to make logical decisions resulting in not having cable, etc, then they won't pay extra for a third party DVR. 

But the larger issue for ongoing Tivo service support (retail) is what I've previously mentioned. Tivo made a huge blunder in tying MORE than just guide data updates to their hosted systems. Remember the BSCs. Creating a OnePass. Even your "My Shows" or "Now Playing" or whatever you want to call it. FAR FAR FAR too much integration of real-time execution into Tivo hosted solutions. FAR different than Moxi or anybody else. So, you and I differ on the possibility of Tivo not continuing ongoing service for their units - due to what I frankly believe is incredibly poor architectural decisions by Tivo. And I also believe that there is nothing stopping companies like Verizon and/or Comcast from raising the rental cost per Cablecard to $20. The integration ban is over. 

I also believe that there is far greater risk in continued degradation of core Tivo services as a result. Meaning, that even if they continued "hosting" - they also failed to effectively manage their resources (as frankly they have already demonstrated a poor capability to begin with) - with (again related to architecture) unacceptable performance. 

Bottom line - I wouldn't buy a new Bolt with lifetime - period. No possible way. Not right now. I'm still carefully watching the market in general. Resale values of Roamios with lifetime have dropped already, making my current decisions murky. If I thought I could still get that "top dollar" that Lifetime Tivos used to command, I might cut my losses now. I've looked at the financials a number of times. But given that the only thing I pay for is rental for two cablecards at this point, and given that my equipment is still working for the most part, it's tough.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> You're not being serious, are you? I mean really? Roamio and Bolt units are heavily tied to Tivo hosted services for things such as even creating a one pass. Have you not read through and been familiar with the BSC threads? Those are all directly resulting from tying the UI too closely to connectivity with Tivo hosted services. There is no real need that I can fathom other than trying to getting click through data from customer experiences that would drive an architecture so closely dependent on real-time connectivity to hosted services. Had they not done this, the only real thing a Roamio or Bolt would require for anything other than Streaming would be consumption of guide data. That is absolutely NOT what Tivo designed and engineered.
> 
> You're still stuck in the Tivo-land traditional viewpoint. Retail was always dead from a future for Tivo. If you look back you'll see I predicted that many years ago. It would have been possible that they could have preserved it as "part" of their product line, but it never looked like a sustainable core product map starting more than 5 years ago. It was a matter of time. Tivo needed to become more "internet centric", cloud based, and most importantly - tied to other peoples devices. You know, IoT. Focus heavily on leveraging MSO relationships, and price their products in such a way that they could get in bed with them early, and stay sticky. Razor and razor blade concept. Hardware devices are the past. They can't compete in that arena. Plus, they continued to make their pricing model too difficult to scale. If the Roku cost $300 there wouldn't be a ton of them out there. Tivo failed to effectively execute SWOT analysis. They consistently underestimated their weaknesses and threats. Most critically, their threats. I frankly thought their best hope would be to get purchased from a major telecom or provider from a financial perspective. Next best would be a major consumer electronics company. Unfortunately, all of them saw the vulnerabilities and were not interested.


Please stop attacking if anyone simply asks a question, it just gets in the way of trying to have a dialog. That's all I was trying to do--really.

Yes, I know that's there's TiVo connection back home, with the current architecture--I very well know it, from when one of my boxes loses its network connection and I lose the TiVo Central top banner of suggestions, or SkipMode. And when I compare to my S2 box, which only needs the connection for downloads. But I wonder how much there is and what the cost impact is (if any--I assume that there's some). Having said that, connectivity need not be bad, if the total value exceeds the cost.

You're right, the current box is not what TiVo originally designed--but the original box certainly still is there, and it's an evolution. Which is what we all want--of course, the question is, is it the right evolution, and fast enough.

And despite you final paragraph assumption, I'm not "stuck" anywhere. I'm simply trying to understand, not having all the facts and information (as versus assumptions that I see tossed all around this space). Also, I know what works for me (and others similarly situated), and am not discounting that (nor "over-counting" that as well).


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

I'm not attacking. You asked the question. I can't imagine why you asked the question if you already knew the answer....

And Aaron did not "correct" me. I clearly stated not "really" developing new patents. As opposed to just not developing "any" new patents. As in, not in sufficient volume to really have a likely impact. And, factually not having any data to suggest that any new patents had been "granted" which had likely high revenue attached. And that no analysts have indicated any confidence in revenue from any "new" patents. 

As for the connectivity value "exceeding the cost" for the current architecture, I can't fathom that either. Value to who? In what way? Can you demonstrate or explain any? Rather than simply denouncing any negative news as either unworthy or unlikely, how about reinforcing your position with facts? Designing in a dependency on connectivity for real-time user interaction, such as creating a one-pass is value in what way? Please elaborate? On listing your shows. On selecting play from your show list. Please elaborate. These are not opinions being "tossed around". These are facts. As are the Q1 and Q2 financials. As are the trend statistics and sub trend lines. As are the statements from Tivo corporate (formerly Rovi).


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> We will have to just agree to disagree. Have you read the terms of service for Tivo service contracts? There are IMHO holes wide enough to drive a cruise ship through.


But a pretty good starting point for the plaintiff: "An All-In Plan . . . lasts for the lifetime of your TiVo device . . . ."


> Perhaps you have not read my comments about OTA. It's a non starter in this region. Let me be more clear. Due to topography, it is simply not feasible. Period.


I understand your point here but, again, you and your region is not the majority of the country. The majority lives in larger urban areas, the majority of which, presumably, does not have your OTA issue. Does this "save" TiVo? No--nobody says it does. But does it "help" TiVo? Of course.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> But a pretty good starting point for the plaintiff: "An All-In Plan . . . lasts for the lifetime of your TiVo device . . . ."
> 
> I understand your point here but, again, you and your region is not the majority of the country. The majority lives in larger urban areas, the majority of which, presumably, does not have your OTA issue. Does this "save" TiVo? No--nobody says it does. But does it "help" TiVo? Of course.


Um, you missed the part that says "All features, functionality and offers are subject to change or withdrawal at any time without notice. See the TiVo User Agreement and TiVo Privacy Policy for additional terms and conditions that apply to your subscription to the TiVo service and use of a TiVo device."

I'm not going to continue to talk about OTA for you. You're an OTA user and are frankly just overly invested in trying to make it more relevant. Whatever floats your boat about OTA. But as for the "majority" - you have not the slightest idea what the majority of the country has in terms of OTA capability. Actually that's the problem. The OTA crowd constantly exaggerates it. I point you to the Tablo site describing available service by address as evidence.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> I'm not attacking. You asked the question. I can't imagine why you asked the question if you already knew the answer....


OK, you're not attacking. Lol. And no, I don't have the full info., and why I again asked about the associated costs--kind of important to know, if there are any.


> And Aaron did not "correct" me. I clearly stated not "really" developing new patents. As opposed to just not developing "any" new patents. As in, not in sufficient volume to really have a likely impact. And, factually not having any data to suggest that any new patents had been "granted" which had likely high revenue attached. And that no analysts have indicated any confidence in revenue from any "new" patents.


I guess it's just me--around 100 patents or patent applications in around 3 years seem kinda "real" to me, the reason I interpreted aaron's comment as a correction. And no one knows their value or not (at least, stated here)--in the absence of that, I'm not sure how anyone can assume no "real" development. In fact, simply applying for a patent can have value.


> As for the connectivity value "exceeding the cost" for the current architecture, I can't fathom that either. Value to who? In what way? Can you demonstrate or explain any? Rather than simply denouncing any negative news as either unworthy or unlikely, how about reinforcing your position with facts? Designing in a dependency on connectivity for real-time user interaction, such as creating a one-pass is value in what way? Please elaborate? On listing your shows. On selecting play from your show list. Please elaborate. These are not opinions being "tossed around". These are facts. As are the Q1 and Q2 financials. As are the trend statistics and sub trend lines. As are the statements from Tivo corporate (formerly Rovi).


Yep, I don't know the connectivity/cost answer--which is why I asked about it here. (And asking is not denouncing.) From what I'm seeing here, we just don't know that answer, and the value or not.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> Um, you missed the part that says "All features, functionality and offers are subject to change or withdrawal at any time without notice. See the TiVo User Agreement and TiVo Privacy Policy for additional terms and conditions that apply to your subscription to the TiVo service and use of a TiVo device."


Yep, you're right, that further term is there. And I imagine that the plaintiff would attack it as being unconscionable, as it basically says, in this context, "We can take away what you purchased at any time for any reason, even though we told you before that it's yours for the lifetime of your box." Imagine the face on the jury . . . . 


> I'm not going to continue to talk about OTA for you. You're an OTA user and are frankly just overly invested in trying to make it more relevant. Whatever floats your boat about OTA. But as for the "majority" - you have not the slightest idea what the majority of the country has in terms of OTA capability. Actually that's the problem. The OTA crowd constantly exaggerates it. I point you to the Tablo site describing available service by address as evidence.


Come on, dude--I'm not "overly invested," I'm just trying, like so many here, to understand the actual facts, as vs. speculation (although I realize that speculation may be all that we have to go on, lol!), and getting through the unsupported jazz.

And as to OTA capability, you're right, I'm assuming something: that the majority of larger urban areas, which I understand represents the majority of the U.S. population, have OTA capability. Perhaps that's an incorrect assumption--I've just not heard anything otherwise, and I seem to see and hear corroborating facts. As vs. your attempt to generalize OTA impossibility in your hilly and mountainous area to the rest of the country, the point which I've tried to make.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

OK, so some non-attacking answers clarifications  Seriously.

Nobody has the full info (other than Tivo) regarding the level of real-time integration with Tivo hosted services and Roamio/Bolt boxes. However we do know that there is real-time dependency and impact on doing things including (but not limited to) creating a onepass, simply playing back recorded content in your "my shows", modifying any onepass, search, and who knows what else. In other words, to my knowledge you cannot create or edit a onepass without your Tivo having internet connectivity and interaction realtime with Tivo hosted services. That simply going to "My shows", selecting content, and playing it has realtime interaction via Tivo hosted services. We know this as fact. What does this mean? It means that direct connectivity with low latency must be available 24x7. It means that you can't just depend on effectively "batch" or "non-realtime" integration - which carries far lower reliability and cost impact for hosted solutions. It means approaching four "9's" of availability as opposed to two. It means hosting in at least Tier 3 datacenters as opposed to Tier 2. In general, it means much higher operational costs. It means even from a development perspective, at least a maintenance development organization in order to test and modify those hosted solutions to meet the impact of necessary patching, OS, DB, etc changes. It means increased redundancy in connectivity from those datacenters, as instead of having to just push scheduled guide data (which has little realtime impact in general if you disregard the crap Rovi data requiring changes) you have to be always connected - all the time. These are just a very very very short list of some of the impacts of the architecture decisions

As for the number of patents - the number of applications Tivo has generated in 3 years are less than what many consumer electronics and other corporations apply for in a month.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> Yep, you're right, that further term is there. And I imagine that the plaintiff would attack it as being unconscionable, as it basically says, in this context, "We can take away what you purchased at any time for any reason, even though we told you before that it's yours for the lifetime of your box." Imagine the face on the jury . . . .
> 
> Come on, dude--I'm not "overly invested," I'm just trying, like so many here, to understand the actual facts, as vs. speculation (although I realize that speculation may be all that we have to go on, lol!), and getting through the unsupported jazz.
> 
> And as to OTA capability, you're right, I'm assuming something: that the majority of larger urban areas, which I understand represents the majority of the U.S. population, have OTA capability. Perhaps that's an incorrect assumption--I've just not heard anything otherwise, and I seem to see and hear corroborating facts. As vs. your attempt to generalize OTA impossibility in your hilly and mountainous area to the rest of the country, the point which I've tried to make.


Again, we have to agree to disagree. I could care less what you or I may think about the face on a jury. The language is the language. *The statement that service could be changed, features changed, or withdrawn, at any time without notice was there at the exact same item as the statements about "lifetime of the product". Caveat Emptor. *There is no real protection there. Like I said, Tivo could spin off the retail unit, retaining only the MSO/licensing component. Then the retail unit could file bankruptcy. Think about this - the more "lifetime" OTA subs there are as a percentage of total retail subs, the less reason there is for Tivo to continue service. They carry all the cost - with no revenue! So, let's even say that the entire planet could get OTA - with the current offering it just creates even more incentive for Tivo to cut and run.

As I said, you misrepresent my position regarding OTA. I've simply said it's irrelevant. Not that it's impossible everywhere. That as a percentage of market cap, it's meaningless. And more to the point - it's a cost center - not a profit center for Tivo.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

wmhjr said:


> Bottom line - I wouldn't buy a new Bolt with lifetime - period.


Since you seem to have such a firm grasp on the financial and operational prospects for TiVo, why don't you bottom line it for us by predicting a future date at which point current retail TiVos with lifetime/all-in service will cease to work due to actions on TiVo's part (not due to the cable operator ceasing to transmit channels in QAM)?

If one spends about $1,000 on a 1TB Bolt with all-in service, plus a Mini, that would save you the cost of HD DVR service for 2 TVs. Not sure how much that would be -- it differs by cable company -- but maybe $30? If that's the math, your break-even point is 34 months out. If at that point TiVo Corp. fell off the face of the earth and all you could do is throw your TiVo hardware in the garbage, you would still have had the satisfaction of using TiVo rather than the cable co. DVRs for that amount of time and not spent any more money for it.

So go ahead, give us a firm date.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

I'm not saying I have a firm grasp, and I can't predict the date. I don't know. But I'm not confident enough that I'd bet with my money up front.

I'm not willing to pay up front for 2 or 3 years as a bet - given that it also means I'm locked into current capabilities of Tivo (at best), current reliability (at best) and giving up the ability to change at any time to better/newer technology offered elsewhere. And given that I'm also responsible for the replacement of hardware failure at my own expense. I really don't care if it's Tivo or anything else. So long as it reliably records and I have enough space/tuners (today) I really don't care about anything else. I don't care about search (which really I think is unreliable anyway). If I have a winter home for example, I'm not paying for service that I don't need for months. I may get PPV interactively (which I can't get now. 

I'm not saying Tivo is terrible at all. I used to love and swear by Tivo. Now, I think they're convenient, I'm used to them, and mine are paid for. I honestly thought Tivo had a few more years before it got to this point. I also honestly don't know how long Tivo retail will remain "viable".


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> Again, we have to agree to disagree. I could care less what you or I may think about the face on a jury. The language is the language.


The court and law differ from what you think as to how to approach a contract, and do care:


> [Uniform Commercial Code] § 2-302. Unconscionable contract or Clause.
> (1) If the court as a matter of law finds the contract or any clause of the contract to have been unconscionable at the time it was made the court may refuse to enforce the contract, or it may enforce the remainder of the contract without the unconscionable clause, or it may so limit the application of any unconscionable clause as to avoid any unconscionable result.
> 
> (2) When it is claimed or appears to the court that the contract or any clause thereof may be unconscionable the parties shall be afforded a reasonable opportunity to present evidence as to its commercial setting, purpose and effect to aid the court in making the determination.


My point. The language of a contract is _always_ subject to interpretation and construction.


> As I said, you misrepresent my position regarding OTA. I've simply said it's irrelevant. Not that it's impossible everywhere. That as a percentage of market cap, it's meaningless. And more to the point - it's a cost center - not a profit center for Tivo.


1. You've suggested repeatedly that OTA significantly does not work, seemingly building on your own experience. (E.g. "OTA is limited by geography and available broadcasters. This means in large percentages of the country, OTA is simply not feasible. Sadly, that includes me -"; "There are SO SO SO many geographic areas across the country that OTA is purely and simply impossible to use"; "Ota is great for the small percentage of people who both can use it and who want it.") But perhaps I misconstrued your intent.

2. Yes, you've also said it's irrelevant (while also stating that TiVo gets revenue from it). And that's what some of us suggest seems wrong (while also not even suggesting that this is the horse to drive the TiVo cart--quite to the contrary)--if there's revenue, there's relevancy.

3. And as to your statements on profits: OTA is not a further source of profit for TiVo (even though you've said that TiVo gets revenue from it)? And yet TiVo still keeps OTA going even though, as you explain, it only costs TiVo $? OK.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> The court and law differ from what you think as to how to approach a contract, and do care:
> 
> My point. The language of a contract is _always_ subject to interpretation and construction.
> 
> ...


Um, so you again misrepresent. As far as the contract - the law is the law. You don't get to decide what the court and the law dictate - regardless of your bias. The terms of service are the terms of service. You yourself misrepresented the terms of service by either deliberately or simply due to ignorance failing to acknowledge the limitations explicitly stated by Tivo up front. Whether or not somebody could successfully get some sort of remedy from Tivo is at the very least questionable. You also fail to acknowledge that if the larger Tivo corporation simply spins off the retail portion, then the retail portion can declare bankruptcy, and it doesn't matter anyway. As stated several times before.

You also somehow fail to comprehend somehow that MANY MANY companies get REVENUE but operate at a LOSS. If you can't understand the difference, nobody here is going to be able to make you comprehend it. If you haven't yet comprehended the nature of Tivo revenues and how they're made up (especially given that it's a public company and their financials reports are on public record) I don't know why you're casting accusations about others simply throwing about things other than facts. They are facts. Maybe you should read them.

Again with the dead horse, you also fail to comprehend the difference between discussing limitations of a service and simply stating that it can't work. I have never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever (get it?) said that OTA isn't a solution for some people. I have simply stated that it's irrelevant in terms of the viability of Tivo as a retail business. That it makes up such a small market that Tivo with all its overhead, given it's architecture, cannot be profitable with. In fact, the statement "OTA is great for the small percentage of people can use it and want it" is accurate. Factual statistics. 17%. Small percentage. That's not the percentage of Tivo OTA users. That's not the percentage of people that would consider Tivo OTA. That's the total percentage of OTA - period. Including a large percentage of THAT number being households that can't even get broadband. Small percentage. I can define "small" if you like.

You know, what's really funny is if you look back a few years, and people just like you pushed back and said I was crazy just for thinking Tivo might have a questionable future if they didn't make a hard push for MSO partnerships, and that IP delivered content/streaming was a real threat to conventional TV. That retail just might not be the end game for Tivo. That they might get bought. Gee - what has happened since then? I've got WAY more invested in Tivo than you do. I have more of a reason than you to want things not to change in a bad way. But, I look at actual data. Not what I want to see - but what is actually there to see. Nobody knows everything. But logical, reasonable people analyze the data that is available to come to the best conclusions that they can - not just stick their head in the sand and deny because they don't "really know everything".


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

wmhjr said:


> I'm not certain that's true. Legally, deduplication for email as an example has been found to be acceptable - even for email under court order. Because the original content is exactly identical to individual content, courts have found it an acceptable practice. E-Discovery related to litigation dealt with this more than 10 years ago. That precedent would likely (if it has not already) suffice. Obviously it's a question, but I'm pretty confident that it's not an issue.


It is true. Current case law requires that the end user control the recording. Otherwise, the provider is guilty of copyright infringement.

*Lawsuit over TV recordings yields a limited win for viewers' rights*


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

lpwcomp said:


> It is true. Current case law requires that the end user control the recording. Otherwise, the provider is guilty of copyright infringement.
> 
> *Lawsuit over TV recordings yields a limited win for viewers' rights*


Actually, it's not true. What I'm discussing is de-duplication. It still allows the end user to control the recording. It is legally accepted technology. Again - what you're talking about is different than what I'm talking about. I'm explicitly talking about technology that abstracts the actual bits behind the scenes. I'm aware that you're probably unfamiliar with the technology. However, Enterprise architects and anyone really familiar with running large enterprises know the concepts. In this case, it's not even a function where you don't see an actual "recording" in the user store. It still "appears". It still "exists". But the actual storage requirement is diminished. Microsoft Exchange was a relatively early adopter of this type of technology to be honest, although since then it's been incorporated into the functional capability of enterprise storage in SAN technology.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> Um, so you again misrepresent. As far as the contract - the law is the law. You don't get to decide what the court and the law dictate - regardless of your bias. The terms of service are the terms of service. You yourself misrepresented the terms of service by either deliberately or simply due to ignorance failing to acknowledge the limitations explicitly stated by Tivo up front. Whether or not somebody could successfully get some sort of remedy from Tivo is at the very least questionable. You also fail to acknowledge that if the larger Tivo corporation simply spins off the retail portion, then the retail portion can declare bankruptcy, and it doesn't matter anyway. As stated several times before.
> 
> You also somehow fail to comprehend somehow that MANY MANY companies get REVENUE but operate at a LOSS. If you can't understand the difference, nobody here is going to be able to make you comprehend it. If you haven't yet comprehended the nature of Tivo revenues and how they're made up (especially given that it's a public company and their financials reports are on public record) I don't know why you're casting accusations about others simply throwing about things other than facts. They are facts. Maybe you should read them.
> 
> ...


Sorry, but you seemingly didn't read the UCC Unconscionability provision quoted above, or perhaps don't quite understand how a contract is construed. As the _law_ states (for this is part of it, which you state controls), an unconscionable contract clause will not be enforced. And my guess is, a later attempted clause that says, "I don't have to do anything I don't want to even though you paid for it," will fall in that category.

Your bankruptcy idea, though, is more intriguing. Query if Rovi would try pulling that, or if it would be set aside as a fraudulent scheme. But that's all angels on the head of a pin.

As to revenue: and so, TiVo continues going forward with OTA even though it loses from it and simply could stop that service instead? OK, anything is possible--and I doubt that anyone here knows. Perhaps there are other benefits to it as well.

And thanks for clarifying your OTA reception position--your many comments quoted above have suggested to many, I think, your seeming attempt to leap from your OTA issues to the rest of the country, which you now have clarified is not the case. You just think that OTA is too small as a solution unto itself. I don't know that anyone here absolutely has disputed that (although people have raised the other OTA DVR companies).

By the way, your posts are getting insulting again. And please don't presume that you understand what "people just like [me]" think or do or have--because you often have gotten that wrong.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> Sorry, but you seemingly didn't read the UCC Unconscionability provision quoted above, or perhaps don't quite understand how a contract is construed. As the _law_ states (for this is part of it, which you state controls), an unconscionable contract clause will not be enforced. And my guess is, a later attempted clause that says, "I don't have to do anything I don't want to even though you paid for it," will fall in that category.
> 
> Your bankruptcy idea, though, is more intriguing. Query if Rovi would try pulling that, or if it would be set aside as a fraudulent scheme. But that's all angels on the head of a pin.
> 
> ...


And yet more disagreement. Your statement in your first paragraph is inaccurate and misrepresentative of the facts. The terms of service are NOT a "later attempted clause". It is a clause that existed from the beginning of "lifetime service". So, again - you seem to insinuate that it's a done deal that a class action would be successful. That is so far from the truth that it's insulting. It "may" or "may not" be successful. There is legal ground for Tivo to stand on. Furthermore, I stated from the beginning that if retail were spun off, even if the Tivo retail business lost a class action, who cares? Under bankruptcy, they'd have no potential assets to attach. I'm very familiar with how this stuff works. Perhaps the information I provided in the hosting costs might have indicated as such......

My comments about OTA have been consistent. It is a niche market. Yes, there are (small) companies that are servicing it. Even they (Tablo) are overly positive about their offerings - frankly fringing on unethical. However my point was about profitability, market cap, and viability to run the architecture Tivo has created.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> And yet more disagreement. Your statement in your first paragraph is inaccurate and misrepresentative of the facts. The terms of service are NOT a "later attempted clause". It is a clause that existed from the beginning of "lifetime service". So, again - you seem to insinuate that it's a done deal that a class action would be successful. That is so far from the truth that it's insulting. It "may" or "may not" be successful. There is legal ground for Tivo to stand on. Furthermore, I stated from the beginning that if retail were spun off, even if the Tivo retail business lost a class action, who cares? Under bankruptcy, they'd have no potential assets to attach. I'm very familiar with how this stuff works. Perhaps the information I provided in the hosting costs might have indicated as such......


Sorry, but you just don't seem to be following the contract issue (and seem to want to fight and insult, sigh). Adding/amending a clause later to say, "We can terminate your lifetime if we want to right now," is something the court would look at in a later lawsuit by a lifetime subscriber, if/when the subscriber claims unconscionability. It doesn't make a difference if that term was there originally or amended in later pursuant to a contract term allowing amendments to be made (although I think that it would look worse, adding it in later). And I never said that it's a "done deal" (your words)--nothing in law ever is. But do I think that a judge could just stare at this and say, "You've got to be kidding"? Yep--it goes to a fundamental term of the original contract.

And could someone later challenge a transfer of TiVo's OTA business arguing that this was done simply to defraud consumers? Yep.

Have a good day--


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

A difference which makes no difference is no difference. The end result of de-duplication is exactly the same as making only a single recording in the first place - the provider ends up distributing it to multiple users. The only way a cloud DVR is legal is if the provider is only duplicating the functionality of a local DVR. The end user must control the recording, not just what is recorded , the actual physical recording.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

wmhjr said:


> In other words, to my knowledge you cannot create or edit a onepass without your Tivo having internet connectivity and interaction realtime with Tivo hosted services


Yes, you can do both without an Internet connection. Just created one for Wynona Earp from the guide which showed upcoming recordings in the ToDo list, edited it and then deleted it all without an Internet connection.

Scott


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

wmhjr said:


> I'm not certain that's true. Legally, deduplication for email as an example has been found to be acceptable - even for email under court order. Because the original content is exactly identical to individual content, courts have found it an acceptable practice. E-Discovery related to litigation dealt with this more than 10 years ago. That precedent would likely (if it has not already) suffice. Obviously it's a question, but I'm pretty confident that it's not an issue.


yup. I'm in that industry.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

lpwcomp said:


> A difference which makes no difference is no difference. The end result of de-duplication is exactly the same as making only a single recording in the first place - the provider ends up distributing it to multiple users. The only way a cloud DVR is legal is if the provider is only duplicating the functionality of a local DVR. The end user must control the recording, not just what is recorded , the actual physical recording.


This was discussed at length in at least one other thread, with opinions all over (quelle surprise, lol). The "original" way that copyright law sometimes went was your way, and that could still be the result. But an argument could be made that copyright "fair use" law should not force multiple identical copies, 1 for each user, to be stored in the cloud, if it all comes out in the wash. TiVo's Mavrik presumably was predicated on some of this, unless TiVo was going to store each and every copy of a show, as individually uploaded, by each and every user, which didn't seem to be the case that people were suggesting. Perhaps it will take another Sony Betamax-like decision from the U.S. Supreme Court before this issue is settled, if the industry goes in that tech. direction.

Exciting and fast-changing times--enough to give you an ulcer.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

lpwcomp said:


> A difference which makes no difference is no difference. The end result of de-duplication is exactly the same as making only a single recording in the first place - the provider ends up distributing it to multiple users. The only way a cloud DVR is legal is if the provider is only duplicating the functionality of a local DVR. The end user must control the recording, not just what is recorded , the actual physical recording.


I'm sorry but you're totally incorrect. I don't blame you. You simply don't understand the technology. It is being used everywhere, by every single major hosting provider on the planet, and by ever enterprise having purchased SAN technology over the past 5 years. Everywhere. For Everything. In such technology, it happens behind the scenes, with no human being even know what is being de-duplicated and what is not. It's not apparent that it's being done. It's largely being done at the storage controller/GRID level. You have zero idea or visibility that "file A" or "file B" or whatever is being deduped. You only know what percentage of efficiency the feature/function is providing and how much storage you have recovered.

This is an example of a fallacy where people who aren't familiar or experienced with a technology or process can be for good reason totally convinced that something is certain - when in fact they are totally incorrect.

From the user and administrator perspective, it appears as though the user is controlling the recording. There is zero way for anybody to even know behind the scenes. Vendors such as EMC, HP, Hitachi, Oracle (Exa), have each spent millions upon millions of dollars to develop this in ALL of their enterprise SANs, and it is active by default.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> Sorry, but you just don't seem to be following the contract issue (and seem to want to fight and insult, sigh). *Adding/amending a clause later to say, "We can terminate your lifetime if we want to right now*," is something the court would look at in a later lawsuit by a lifetime subscriber, if/when the subscriber claims unconscionability. It doesn't make a difference if that term was there originally or amended in later pursuant to a contract term allowing amendments to be made (although I think that it would look worse, adding it in later). And I never said that it's a "done deal" (your words)--nothing in law ever is. But do I think that a judge could just stare at this and say, "You've got to be kidding"? Yep--it goes to a fundamental term of the original contract.
> 
> And could someone later challenge a transfer of TiVo's OTA business arguing that this was done simply to defraud consumers? Yep.
> 
> Have a good day--


I'm sorry, but you're not comprehending the contract issue at all. You continue to misrepresent the facts. You state (as highlighted above) that a clause was added LATER. You are making a false statement. You are directly and deliberately continuing to misrepresent the facts. The case was part of the ORIGINAL terms of service. Not later. It DOES matter if the clause existed to begin with. If you don't believe that, you've missed a heck of a lot of contract law! And more to the point, you have every right to your opinion about what a judge might do. It means no more than anybody elses opinion.

What is more interesting is that you seem to consistently deny anything bad by taking a position that you don't have an opinion about anything that might happen - but still just trying to refute any other position. In other words, you claim you don't know enough to make an analysis to what is likely yourself, but feel free to criticize anybody who does. Have fun with that. The only thing I'll fall back on is that I've been pretty well spot on regarding Tivo so far - with only the timeline being a bit off - I thought things would progress a bit slower than they have thus far. Seems like looking at actual data, having an understanding of how the market works, and using logic just might have some merit, eh? And that's not just idle statements. You can go back and look at my posts years ago which predicted pretty much exactly what is going on. And I do mean exactly. Not the only one - however this forum tends to treat anything not entirely warm and fuzzy toward Tivo as an infection and tries VERY hard to deny and reject it.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> This was discussed at length in at least one other thread, with opinions all over (quelle surprise, lol). The "original" way that copyright law sometimes went was your way, and that could still be the result. But an argument could be made that copyright "fair use" law should not force multiple identical copies, 1 for each user, to be stored in the cloud, if it all comes out in the wash. TiVo's Mavrik presumably was predicated on some of this, unless TiVo was going to store each and every copy of a show, as individually uploaded, by each and every user, which didn't seem to be the case that people were suggesting. Perhaps it will take another Sony Betamax-like decision from the U.S. Supreme Court before this issue is settled, if the industry goes in that tech. direction.
> 
> Exciting and fast-changing times--enough to give you an ulcer.


And again, people simply don't understand the technology whatsoever, but are weighing in on how the law would approach it. Guess what? The law already did. As mentioned before, deduplication technology isn't just "creating a single copy". That's not how it works. It's not like there is a "master" copy that is used by all the people trying to store it. It's done at the storage controller/GRID level - transparently. If you log into the SAN (Storage Area Network) or frankly, now even on Enterprise NAS (Network Attached Storage), including engineered systems such as Oracle Exadata/Exalogic or IBM Pure, (and tons of other systems that are too numerous to name) and you look at the storage nodes, you still see totally independent instances of each and every file (for file based and structured data) and whatever form it takes for unstructured data. However, behind the scenes, at what is effectively a bit/byte level, the super efficient storage controllers/GRID controllers see small segments of identical data, and THEY deduplicate. The storage manager only sees the efficiency of the technology and the amount of "saved storage" - NOT the specific "files" or "blobs" that are affected. This technology abstracts the deduplication and is used everywhere INCLUDING even for storage where duplication/modification of ANY type is prohibited directly by law (such as SIPRNet).

People here (and on the other thread) keep focusing on the functional language used regarding the storage and management of the entertainment content - having no understanding that it is immaterial as how this technology works is completely abstracted and has nothing to do with functional control. For the purposes of what the Supreme Court has already said, the technology firmly complies with their statement and intent. And has been proven to do so by law.


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

someone explain to me how many copies of every On Demand title Comcast has. If it's less than the number of people who watch it, then there's your answer.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

I understand the "technology" quite well. The result is exactly the same when only one copy has been made in the first place. The only court rulings that are applicable to this specific situation say nothing of the kind.

It's not the de-duplication and storage that are at issue. it's the distribution. 

Typical arrogant denizen of the TCF. If someone disagrees with you, then they are too stupid or ignorant to understand.

What the courts have ruled in regards to e-mail are not applicable.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

lpwcomp said:


> I understand the "technology" quite well. The result is exactly the same when only one copy has been made in the first place. The only court rulings that are applicable to this specific situation say nothing of the kind.
> 
> It's not the de-duplication and storage that are at issue. it's the distribution.
> 
> Typical arrogant denizen of the TCF. If someone disagrees with you, then they are too stupid or ignorant to understand.


Actually, you clearly do not understand the technology, nor are you familiar with its adoption including legal acceptance. The result is NOT exactly the same. Not even close. As courts have found. It has nothing to do with distribution. THAT is the point.

Typical arrogant denizen of the TCF. Not "wanting" to accept facts.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

b_scott said:


> someone explain to me how many copies of every On Demand title Comcast has. If it's less than the number of people who watch it, then there's your answer.


No it isn't. Comcast has explicit permission from the source to provide this service. The applicable sitituation is Aereo.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> You can go back and look at my posts years ago which predicted pretty much exactly what is going on. And I do mean exactly.


And exactly what has changed in the world of TiVO? TiVo still makes OTA & Cable DVRs, all the same cable companies still support them, OTA still works for the same people it has worked for, TiVo is still releasing software and hardware updates, and TiVo cable & OTA DVRs are still niche products.

NOTHING HAS CHANGED (yet). Unless your predictions were that nothing was going to change then *YOU WERE WRONG.*

You are still just saying something is going to change - you may be wright some day, just like the person who says the world is going to end tomorrow may be wright some day. The fact is your opinions are just that, get over yourself.

None of us know what is going to happen tomorrow other than it is likely things will change. The way we are going TiVo may be out of business because NK nukes them.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

wmhjr said:


> Actually, you clearly do not understand the technology, nor are you familiar with its adoption including legal acceptance. The result is NOT exactly the same. Not even close. As courts have found. It has nothing to do with distribution. THAT is the point.
> 
> Typical arrogant denizen of the TCF. Not "wanting" to accept facts.


What "facts"? That Aereo was shut down?


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

atmuscarella said:


> And exactly what has changed in the world of TiVO? TiVo still makes OTA & Cable DVRs, all the same cable companies still support them, OTA still works for the same people it has worked for, TiVo is still releasing software and hardware updates, and TiVo cable & OTA DVRs are still niche products.
> 
> NOTHING HAS CHANGED (yet). Unless your predictions were that nothing was going to change then *YOU WERE WRONG.*
> 
> ...


Nope. *YOU SHOULD BE CAREFUL OF YOUR CLAIMS - YOU ARE WRONG.
*
Lots have changed. People pushed back that the idea that streaming would get over 5%. That cord cutting would be of any impact before 2020. How's that going? How about the fact that Tivo was bought? Hmmm.... Spot in, eh?

If you're dumb enough to believe nothing has changed, then more power to you. Ostrich - meet sand.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

lpwcomp said:


> What "facts"? That Aereo was shut down?


Aereo being shut down was due to a far more fundamental problem with their business model that Breyer in particular shut down (SCOTUS). They were effectively taking copyrighted content via tons of antennas and trying to get around the issue by (in theory) assigning "one antenna per subscriber" (even though it wouldn't be in the same geography.

The facts are that the deduplication has ALREADY been found to "not changing or modifying content" or "reducing copies" - which is EXACTLY why it is acceptable for even heavily heavily heavily litigated cases across the US, for SIPRNet, for ALL E-Discovery, and why the technology has been implemented on every single Enterprise class SAN for a number of years now.

In point of fact, NOT permitting its use would make ANY sort of cloud DVR illegal by your flawed assumptions. You CLEARLY do not comprehend how it works. You CLEARLY are not familiar with the level of complete abstraction. In fact, I'm challenging you right now - show me how much you understand it. Walk me through how it works - exactly. I've been implementing it for years, so I should be able to follow along.....


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

lpwcomp said:


> No it isn't. Comcast has explicit permission from the source to provide this service. The applicable sitituation is Aereo.


you think PS Vue doesn't have contracts with the stations it carries?


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> Nope. *YOU SHOULD BE CAREFUL OF YOUR CLAIMS - YOU ARE WRONG.
> *
> Lots have changed. People pushed back that the idea that streaming would get over 5%. That cord cutting would be of any impact before 2020. How's that going? How about the fact that Tivo was bought? Hmmm.... Spot in, eh?
> 
> If you're dumb enough to believe nothing has changed, then more power to you. Ostrich - meet sand.


Yeb lots have things change, and I am a day older than I was yesterday so what? We are talking about what is going on with TiVo stand alone DVRs at this moment in time. About which I said:

"TiVo still makes OTA & Cable DVRs, all the same cable companies still support them, OTA still works for the same people it has worked for, TiVo is still releasing software and hardware updates, and TiVo cable & OTA DVRs are still niche products."​Which part of that is not accurate?

You are still just making predictions based on your opinions on what is going to happen some day. You sound like those rip off artists who taught how they can predict what the stock market is going to do because some of there predictions where right in the past.

I will say it again GET OVER YOURSELF, you do not know what is going to happen in the future, all you can do is the same as the rest of us, make a prediction based on your opinions.

Things change, there is a high probability that TiVo will stop making stand alone DVRs and will stop supporting existing DVRs some day. When that some day is, is nothing more than a guess and all those who guessed it would have happen by now were wrong. You are free to guess when just as the rest of us are. Regardless of what you say it is still a guess.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

atmuscarella said:


> Yeb lots have things change, and I am a day older than I was yesterday so what? We are talking about what is going on with TiVo stand alone DVRs at this moment in time. About which I said:
> 
> "TiVo still makes OTA & Cable DVRs, all the same cable companies still support them, OTA still works for the same people it has worked for, TiVo is still releasing software and hardware updates, and TiVo cable & OTA DVRs are still niche products."​Which part of that is not accurate?
> 
> ...


Yeah, LOL. Nothing has changed. You're hilarious. And hypocritical. Do you often say "Get off my yard"?


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

b_scott said:


> you think PS Vue doesn't have contracts with the stations it carries?


What does that have to do with it?


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> Yeah, LOL. Nothing has changed. You're hilarious. And hypocritical. Do you often say "Get off my yard"?


No but I often tell people who think their Sh** don't stink, that it does.

Many of your post in this thread boll down to nothing more than telling other people how wrong their opinions are because your opinions are correct. The operative word there is opinions, not facts, and yes predictions are opinions not facts.

Notice that my responses to your posts in this thread don't say what my opinion on TiVo's future as it pertains to stand alone cable & OTA DVRs is. I stated:

"TiVo still makes OTA & Cable DVRs, all the same cable companies still support them, OTA still works for the same people it has worked for, TiVo is still releasing software and hardware updates, and TiVo cable & OTA DVRs are still niche products."​Which I consider to be a factual statement about the current status of TiVo stand alone DVRs at this moment in time, that statement would have been true and the same if I said it 5 years ago or 10 years ago. So no the current status of TiVo stand alone DVRs has change very little over the last 10 years. If you think what I said was incorrect please expand on that, if you think the current status of TiVo stand alone DVRs was significantly different 5 or 10 years ago please explain.


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

lpwcomp said:


> What does that have to do with it?


They have Cloud DVR. I guarantee they serve up one file to multiple people. You can FFD/RWD and it's just like Tivo.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

b_scott said:


> They have Cloud DVR. I guarantee they serve up one file to multiple people. You can FFD/RWD and it's just like Tivo.


This would only be relevant if they *didn't* have deals in place.


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

lpwcomp said:


> This would only be relevant if they *didn't* have deals in place.


except the conversation above has been about legality of having to have one copy of media per person, not whether a company has deals in place. Obviously you don't need to have that by law. The "deal" part is a secondary piece to this, with the "one copy per person" superseding it, if that was a legal problem. It seems it's not.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> Actually, you clearly do not understand the technology, nor are you familiar with its adoption including legal acceptance. The result is NOT exactly the same. Not even close. As courts have found. It has nothing to do with distribution. THAT is the point.
> 
> Typical arrogant denizen of the TCF. Not "wanting" to accept facts.





wmhjr said:


> And again, people simply don't understand the technology whatsoever, but are weighing in on how the law would approach it. Guess what? The law already did. As mentioned before, deduplication technology isn't just "creating a single copy". That's not how it works. It's not like there is a "master" copy that is used by all the people trying to store it. It's done at the storage controller/GRID level - transparently. If you log into the SAN (Storage Area Network) or frankly, now even on Enterprise NAS (Network Attached Storage), including engineered systems such as Oracle Exadata/Exalogic or IBM Pure, (and tons of other systems that are too numerous to name) and you look at the storage nodes, you still see totally independent instances of each and every file (for file based and structured data) and whatever form it takes for unstructured data. However, behind the scenes, at what is effectively a bit/byte level, the super efficient storage controllers/GRID controllers see small segments of identical data, and THEY deduplicate. The storage manager only sees the efficiency of the technology and the amount of "saved storage" - NOT the specific "files" or "blobs" that are affected. This technology abstracts the deduplication and is used everywhere INCLUDING even for storage where duplication/modification of ANY type is prohibited directly by law (such as SIPRNet).
> 
> People here (and on the other thread) keep focusing on the functional language used regarding the storage and management of the entertainment content - having no understanding that it is immaterial as how this technology works is completely abstracted and has nothing to do with functional control. For the purposes of what the Supreme Court has already said, the technology firmly complies with their statement and intent. And has been proven to do so by law.


Then, perhaps _explain_ the tech. in a few concise, English-language sentences so that a non-tech. expert can understand--think, a jury. And _explain and show _the "legal acceptance" of it that you state, demonstrating how the tech. doesn't violate the U.S. Copyright law's general proscription of anyone making a copy of a covered work apart from the copyright owner and licensee. And _explain and show _what the courts have found, as you state. And _explain_ the relevance to this discussion.

Thanks in advance.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

And it really still doesn't matter, as the "de-duplication" technology does not (as already proven by law) affect the "number of copies" from a functional perspective. That said, the point is valid about PPV, etc using yet a "different" approach, where they actually DO have only "one copy" (although it's my guess that they're multicasting and do have a number of copies - it still isn't one to one) and serve it to multiple subscribers.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

atmuscarella said:


> So no the current status of TiVo stand alone DVRs has change very little over the last 10 years. If you think what I said was incorrect please expand on that, if you think the current status of TiVo stand alone DVRs was significantly different 5 or 10 years ago please explain.


Well, actually, the current status indeed has changed: the boxes have evolved and gotten much better.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

There were people on this forum who just a few years ago said that copyright infringement and the complexity of dealing with protected property would be a huge barrier for cord cutting and IP delivered and/or streaming content. Not long ago, people on this site were convinced that Congress and the FCC would NEVER eliminate a requirement for Cablecard, without providing another mechanism to separate encryption and authentication in at least a similar manner. They were clearly wrong. Aaereo was really at heart a very different case, as they were actually "reselling content" - which is a completely different proposition from cloud DVR to begin with. Aaereo was in effect insinuating that content was being delivered via OTA somewhere anywhere, so it could "package" and "deliver" that same content via a different channel - at a profit - anywhere. Their rationalization was that if they put up (somewhere) one antenna per subscriber (which also begs the question about scalability to begin with) then content picked up from a different antenna was fair game too - again, without any contract or revenue with the source, and collecting revenue from the subscriber. Very very different. The SCOTUS opinion related to it and "original file" was really related to the concept of how PPV deals with the content - NOT how a true cloud DVR solution might. Technology innovations combined with consumer demand drive changes to the landscape that "traditionalists" can't really swallow up front. Is it possible that such a cloud service could be challenged in court? Sure. Anything is possible in a country where a consumer can sue for damages because they didn't realize a fresh cup of coffee could actually burn them if spilled. However, it is incredibly significant to note that technology innovation and capability has virtually always managed to find its way, and that in areas far more constrained and regulated than what we're talking about here, such technology that we're discussing has already been accepted. For yet another point, it's easy to see why broadcasters and networks would push to attack Aaereo, as they were actually competition earning revenue from their service. However, cloud DVR is almost the opposite - because the consumer of the content is already paying and subscribed to GET the content - and the network is already getting paid for it. If you're talking about commercial skip, then that's a different topic altogether. But in terms of even taking this to the court, it's hard to see exactly who can establish standing as being "harmed" to begin with. And, it's likely that the networks, the MSOs and aggregators would all want to do this - so they would all have reason to WANT this to be accepted.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

Explain how functionally (and more importantly *legally*) the end result is any different from making only one copy in the first place.

The case you cite - did it involve what an ISP may do with its customers eMail or was it only about what a *company* may do with the data on its own servers with regards to eMails sent to its employees?


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

lpwcomp said:


> Explain how functionally and more importantly *legally*) the end result is any different from making only one copy in the first place.
> 
> The case you cite - did it involve what an ISP may do with its customers eMail or was it only about what a *company* may do with the data on its own servers with regards to eMails sent to its employees?


First of all, it is completely different, and if you don't understand it now, I'm not going to be able to make you understand it. My recommendation is that you go take some classes and get familiar with the technology, since you'll only believe yourself anyway. EMC was a thought leader and probably one of the earliest vendors shipping. That was way more than 10 years ago. It has simply become far more effective and efficient since then.

The second issue you bring up - this is not a "single case". It's been for ISP delivered content, for highly secure classified networks and storage (including the DoD and Dept of State), for litigation of electronic discovery for ALL email sent TO and FROM corporations, their customers, vendors, partners, AND internal mail. It is everything. Period. Everything. Everything. I don't know how to be more specific.

That's the part you're not getting. Let me be more clear.

Every. Single. Enterprise. Storage. Platform. Implemented. In. The. Past. 5. Years.

Period. Everyone uses it for mass storage in large Enterprises. For Everything.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Here is a very broad and general laymans description of one capability.

Enterprises use (among other things) SAN - Storage Area Networks - to store data. They also use NAS, and a bunch of other stuff and there are tons of vendors. But......

Generically, let's just say that without getting into HBAa, WWNs, etc, that a SAN is attached let's say via Fiber via the SAN switch - which back in the day was pretty much Brocade Silkworms and a couple other common switches (proprietary in other stuff like Digital/Compaq MA8000/12000 series). For lack of a better way to describe it further, let's just say there are SAN controller(s) (fully redundant), which are then communicating to perhaps a memory GRID, and then mass storage, which may be zoned between SATA/FiberChannel/SSD/etc storage groups. The controller does all kinds of stuff, including RAID, compression, deduplication, read/write buffering, etc. Without ANY intervention at all, the controller allocates storage (obviously once the SAN is zoned, etc, LUNs allocated, etc) and is incredibly capable to see where there appear to be identical blocks. It also in some cases does replication between SANs for business continuity/disaster recovery purposes when setup. When enterprises implement SAN choices, really they're choosing based on the capabilities of the controllers and GRID. That's where the secret sauce is. So, what we're talking about here is what those SAN controllers are doing in saving storage space by using both compression and deduplication. This is a HUGE issue, and is one of the main driving forces behind innovation in Enterprise Infrastructure for years, due to the exponential expansion in storage requirements. It's also lightning fast - because the increasing integration with IoT requires huge speed for realtime transactions tied to large -and often unstructured - data sets. 

This is exactly why the idea that deduplication not only could not be used, but would even be questioned, is frankly ridiculous.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

If it is illegal for me to be somewhere my method of travel is irrelevant.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

So, as I suspected, you don't understand the technology but just want to stick with your opinion regardless of fact. You ask questions, when factual information is provided that contradicts your opinion you just discard it with some sort of meaningless and irrelevant analogy with no basis.

Ok. Have fun with that. Maybe you should make up an analogy about your flip phone related to this. It will be equally (ir)relevant.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

wmhjr said:


> So, as I suspected, you don't understand the technology but just want to stick with your opinion regardless of fact. You ask questions, when factual information is provided that contradicts your opinion you just discard it with some sort of meaningless and irrelevant analogy with no basis.
> 
> Ok. Have fun with that. Maybe you should make up an analogy about your flip phone related to this. It will be equally (ir)relevant.


As I suspected, you cannot answer my questions.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

I did answer. And the hilarious part is that you're actually very likely on a board where the entire site is using deduplication. However, you're just too stubborn to acknowledge it. Nobody can answer your questions to your satisfaction, because you will not accept any answer that doesn't fit within your own preconceived notion. There are definitions for that kind of thing.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> I'm sorry, but you're not comprehending the contract issue at all. You continue to misrepresent the facts. You state (as highlighted above) that a clause was added LATER. You are making a false statement. You are directly and deliberately continuing to misrepresent the facts. The case was part of the ORIGINAL terms of service. Not later. It DOES matter if the clause existed to begin with. If you don't believe that, you've missed a heck of a lot of contract law! And more to the point, you have every right to your opinion about what a judge might do. It means no more than anybody elses opinion.
> 
> What is more interesting is that you seem to consistently deny anything bad by taking a position that you don't have an opinion about anything that might happen - but still just trying to refute any other position. In other words, you claim you don't know enough to make an analysis to what is likely yourself, but feel free to criticize anybody who does. Have fun with that. The only thing I'll fall back on is that I've been pretty well spot on regarding Tivo so far - with only the timeline being a bit off - I thought things would progress a bit slower than they have thus far. Seems like looking at actual data, having an understanding of how the market works, and using logic just might have some merit, eh? And that's not just idle statements. You can go back and look at my posts years ago which predicted pretty much exactly what is going on. And I do mean exactly. Not the only one - however this forum tends to treat anything not entirely warm and fuzzy toward Tivo as an infection and tries VERY hard to deny and reject it.


Sorry, but you seem to have difficulty in understanding what I've written, or deliberately are misconstruing it (and then defaming).

We were discussing if TiVo unilaterally could, within its legal rights and its written contract with lifetime subscribers, simply terminate everyone's lifetime, if and when it wanted to. Your position, as I understand it, is that it may. And my position is that it would/could have a real issue there. There is nothing currently in the lifetime contract which says, "We, TiVo, may terminate your lifetime service if and anytime we want to, at our sole discretion" (despite your seemingly inaccurate and somewhat confusing statement, "The case was part of the ORIGINAL terms of service."). And so, _for purposes of this discussion and necessary to it_, I simply posited what would happen _if_ TiVo added that term, under a right to amend the lifetime contract, and then terminated already-purchased lifetime subscriptions. I did _not_ say that "a clause was added LATER." Rather, I simply stated that "adding/amending a clause later" (that is, "if TiVo were to add a clause later") to state that TiVo could terminate lifetime whenever it wanted to, at its sole discretion, and then did so, would/could create a real legal issue for TiVo, unconscionability under the law, which I then quoted (I actually quoted the adopted "model" version of that law, which states have adopted variously).

Which unconscionability determining factor you continually ignore, substantively. Apart from your pithy response, "And more to the point, you have every right to your opinion about what a judge might do. It means no more than anybody elses opinion." Yes, I'm not the judge--and, in fact, each judge could him/herself be different. But I am versed in this area. And the fact remains, unconscionability would be an issue if raised.

Which any person could see. Judge: "And so, TiVo, let me get this straight: a consumer pays you $549 for 'lifetime/all-in' subscription service for a TiVo box, which service lasts, as you state in the contract that you, yourself wrote, for the 'lifetime' of that box; and then you state that despite those express and clear terms, you still may terminate that 'lifetime' service anytime you want, for any reason, because the contract states that you may amend its terms, and you now are amending that done-deal contract to provide that 'lifetime' service now is over, regardless of the state of a box and the earlier purchase and its express terms. OK. And so, may you now also amend that done-deal contract to provide that each lifetime subscriber must pay you another $549? Or send you his or her first-born child? Or must mow you lawn?"

I hope that this helps you understand.

As to your comment's final paragraph aspersion: I don't "consistently deny anything bad" here. For heaven's sake, I've sometime (gasp) agreed with you on some points (but then you still manage to argue and belittle, sigh). Rather, I'm trying to be objective. But I simply take issue with unsupported statements and vast overgeneralizations (witness, the above), as well as the focus on all negative and the ignorance/denial/minimalization of the positive. Sorry if you've misconstrued that.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

wmhjr said:


> I did answer. And the hilarious part is that you're actually very likely on a board where the entire site is using deduplication. However, you're just too stubborn to acknowledge it. Nobody can answer your questions to your satisfaction, because you will not accept any answer that doesn't fit within your own preconceived notion. There are definitions for that kind of thing.


You never even came close to answering my question. What the hell does what this site does have to do with the matter at hand? I have never question the capability. I have merely questioned the legality. What an enterprise can do within its own confines is irrelevant. Are there any ISPs doing this with user data?

In a prior post, you said "who is harmed?". Tell me, oh so wise one, who is harmed by a cable company carrying OTA channels?


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> Sorry, but you seem to have difficulty in understanding what I've written, or deliberately are misconstruing it (and then defaming).
> 
> We were discussing if TiVo unilaterally could, within its legal rights and its written contract with lifetime subscribers, simply terminate everyone's lifetime, if and when it wanted to. Your position, as I understand it, is that it may. And my position is that it would/could have a real issue there. There is nothing currently in the lifetime contract which says, "We, TiVo, may terminate your lifetime service if and anytime we want to, at our sole discretion" (despite your seemingly inaccurate and somewhat confusing statement, "The case was part of the ORIGINAL terms of service."). And so, _for purposes of this discussion and necessary to it_, I simply posited what would happen _if_ TiVo added that term, under a right to amend the lifetime contract, and then terminated already purchased lifetime subscriptions. I did _not_ say that "a clause was added LATER." Rather, I simply stated that "adding/amending a clause later" (that is, "if TiVo were to add a clause later") to state that TiVo could terminate lifetime whenever it wanted to, at its sole discretion, and then did so, would/could create a real legal issue for TiVo, unconscionability under the law, which I quoted (I actually quoted the adopted "model" version of that law, which states have adopted variously).
> 
> ...


No, I'm sorry but with all your attempts to rationalize here, it's this simple.

When Tivo had lifetime - both at the very beginning when it stayed with the subscriber, and later when it was tied to a particular machine, the TERMS OF SERVICE AT THAT TIME EXPLICITLY HAD THE STATEMENT THAT I QUOTED. You continue to make false statements about how there is "nothing currently in the lifetime contract". It is. Where in the heck do you think I copied and pasted it from? Geez.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

lpwcomp said:


> You never even came close to answering my question. What the hell does what this site does have to do with the matter at hand? I have never question the capability. I have merely questioned the legality. What an enterprise can do within its own confines is irrelevant. Are there any ISPs doing this with user data?
> 
> In a prior post, you said "who is harmed?". Tell me, oh so wise one, who is harmed by a cable company carrying OTA channels?


Um, I mentioned this site only because you're probably too uneducated to understand it and simply don't want to. Can I be more clear than this... EVERY SINGLE ISP IS DOING THIS WITH USER DATA. PERIOD. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Should I use crayons?


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Actually, since I don't want to be accused of being arbitrary about this, let me be more clear. Every single MAJOR ISP is using this. I frankly can't speak for some mom and pop providers, or municipal Co-ops. But, Verizon, ATT, Comcast, AOL, Google Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft.... Yes. Absofrigginlutely.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> No, I'm sorry but with all your attempts to rationalize here, it's this simple.
> 
> When Tivo had lifetime - both at the very beginning when it stayed with the subscriber, and later when it was tied to a particular machine, the TERMS OF SERVICE AT THAT TIME EXPLICITLY HAD THE STATEMENT THAT I QUOTED. You continue to make false statements about how there is "nothing currently in the lifetime contract". It is. Where in the heck do you think I copied and pasted it from? Geez.


You again are misconstruing and missing what I've said, to the point of defaming. What I _actually_ said was, there is nothing currently in the lifetime contract _itself stating that TiVo unilaterally may terminate lifetime service whenever it wants, for whatever reason_. If there is such a term, please point it out for us.

Yes, as you've pointed out and as I've stated, the lifetime contract has a term saying that TiVo may amend the lifetime contract's terms. And my point was, if TiVo were to do so and to terminate all the existing lifetime contracts, a plaintiff could attack that revision as being unconscionable, and could have a very good chance, logically, with that.

I hope that this helps you understand. It's not somehow "rationalizing," as you call it--it's the facts.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

wmhjr said:


> Um, I mentioned this site only because you're probably too uneducated to understand it and simply don't want to. Can I be more clear than this... EVERY SINGLE ISP IS DOING THIS WITH USER DATA. PERIOD. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Should I use crayons?


I have decided not to stoop to your level by either shouting or exchanging ad hominems. Do have a new question though. How do you know what "every single is doing"?

Still waiting for an explanation of how the end result is functionally or legally different from making only one copy in the first place.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> You again are misconstruing and missing what I've said, to the point of defaming. What I _actually_ said was, there is nothing currently in the lifetime contract _itself stating that TiVo unilaterally may terminate lifetime service whenever it wants, for whatever reason_. If there is such a term, please point it out for us.
> 
> Yes, as you've pointed out and as I've stated, the lifetime contract has a term saying that TiVo may amend the lifetime contract's terms. And my point was, if TiVo were to do so and to terminate all the existing lifetime contracts, a plaintiff could attack that revision as being unconscionable, and could have a very good chance, logically, with that.
> 
> I hope that this helps you understand. It's not somehow "rationalizing," as you call it--it's the facts.


Um, no, that's incorrect. I'll quote it again for your benefit (again).

""All features, functionality and offers are subject to change or withdrawal at any time without notice. See the TiVo User Agreement and TiVo Privacy Policy for additional terms and conditions that apply to your subscription to the TiVo service and use of a TiVo device."

Furthermore, you did NOT say what was in the Lifetime Contract "itself". You said what was in the Lifetime Contract, which is inclusive of and refers to the Tivo User Agreement, The Tivo Terms of Service, and the Tivo Privacy Policy. See post 185.

You are not to my knowledge a contract attorney, and to my knowledge have never run or dealt with service contracts. Your opinion
is your opinion


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

lpwcomp said:


> I have decided not to stoop to your level by either shouting or exchanging ad hominems. Do have a new question though. How do you know what "every single is doing"?
> 
> Still waiting for an explanation of how the end result is functionally or legally different from making only one copy in the first place.


Um, because of working with those providers and the vendors because that's the industry I am currently in..... Because I've run large global service Enterprises and have spent time with those organizations.... Though it doesn't take that level of experience. To be honest, any individual contributor SAN Engineer or somebody running large Engineered systems could tell you the same thing. Or, any technology guy specializing in E-Discovery. Or in HIPAA, FDA CFR Part 250, Financial tech guys dealing with the FFIEC and BASEL..... Or frankly, anybody who's attended the Gartner IT Symposium over the last 10 years. The list could go on for days. This is basic stuff. It's not new. Not


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> First of all, it is completely different, and if you don't understand it now, I'm not going to be able to make you understand it.


Wow.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> Wow.


I agree. Wow. When something technical has been explained to the point of nausea and the only way to get more detailed is to start breaking down the engineering aspects of the technology which clearly would be even less understood, there is no place else to go. It's impossible for me or anybody I've ever met to get more clear or concise about how deduplication works. The only thing I can say is that it's NOT just "copying" or "deleting" a file, it's not done by a human, and it's not even really visible. As I've said before (many times) it still appears to users and managers that there are multiple "files", "blobs", or whatever the structured and/or unstructured data is. It simply compresses and dedupes in the background, saving storage and bandwidth - therefore saving cost. I was not the one trying to compare it to "just keeping one copy". You may as well ask the difference between it and a four cycle engine.

So, Wow.


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## adessmith (Oct 5, 2007)

wmhjr said:


> Why? Because a very sizable (sorry, don't have metrics) portion of that market is due to not wanting to pay anything whatsoever. A much higher percentage of the OTA market is from the under $30K income range. In other words, 26% of the OTA households have no money. Also, using your math, while OTA grew in a relatively small way, Internet Streaming only grew by more than 33% during the same period. What does this mean? Ok, so there is 17% that in theory TODAY use OTA as primary. But at least 26% of them have no money. How much does that leave in terms of what we'll call "market cap" for an OTA DVR? Oh, whoops! They need to have internet in order to use it! So, that 74% of the 17% that remains is degraded even more, as those rural areas that use OTA but don't have broadband (or can't afford it) is now some percentage of 12.5%.


You are making an assumption here, and you even admit it by stating you don't have metrics.
Its probably a fairly safe assumption, but an assumption nonetheless.
HOWEVER, there ARE a portion of these antenna users who DO make money... This is not an assumption, this is FACT... I know, because I am one of them, and I know a few people with similar setups. I'm not saying I am wealthy by any stretch, but I have a decent paying full time job as a system administrator with benefits. My wife has a Masters degree with a state job. We also own a small business. If I wanted cable tv, I could afford to subscribe to it... and I have in the past, until I realized we were throwing money away. For me, it was stupid to spend the extra money when mostly all I am concerned about is ABC, FOX, NBC, and CBS and I can slap an antenna on my roof and pick them all up (as well as several others) for $0 per month, and all I had to pay was the one-time price of an antenna and tivo (well, I didn't have to have the tivo, but I wanted to be able to record my locals). I do pay for Hulu (commercial free) and Netflix as well. Between my locals and streaming options, I still have much more content than I care to watch for a small fraction of the price of cable or something like PS vue or Sling TV. For me it was not a matter of "can't afford cable", it was that I prefer to blow what money I have on something else. I may be in the minority, but I have a hard time believing with so many popular shows coming on the major networks, its a very small minority.
The truth of the matter is you don't really know what percentage of OTA viewers are like me (could afford it but don't see the value), and what percentage are simply too poor to buy a $400 DVR and internet service (yet not too poor to buy TV and an antenna). It is also very difficult, I would imagine, to determine how many people are actually using OTA antennas, other than possibly looking at the sale of antennas. (that might be something interesting to look into)

For the record... I was the one who made the statement "OTA is making a comeback in a big way", which has been quoted somewhat out of context multiple times now.
I preceded that statement with something like "it has been my very unscientific observation that..." In no way was I trying to imply that OTA would ever be the prefered delivery mechanism for the majority. Although I now kinda wish I worded it differently, I still stand by my statement. "Big" is a very subjective adjective. In terms of percentage, its true 2% doesn't sound like a big number. In terms of raw numbers 2% of the estimated 118 million TV households is a little over 2 million additional households added. If you are correct, and the bulk of those 2 million households are concentrated in specific geographical areas, then I still argue it COULD look like OTA is making a "comeback" in some areas. In my area antennas are not uncommon at all, however 10 years ago they were very rare to see. In fact, according to research by Parks Associates, prior to 2013 there were 9% or less of households using antennas. IF that is correct, the number of antenna users has nearly doubled in nearly 4 years. People in my region have become very dissatisfied with their cable tv options over the last few years. We are about 30 minutes from two average sized cities, and reception is not an issue for most people in my area... a lot of people have jumped to streaming TV and an antenna for locals. Unfortunately, these days you can usually find statistics and metrics to support whatever position you like, so I don't put too much weight on them, so all of this is really an unknown, but it is no secret the number of antenna users is growing rather than shrinking at the moment.
Furthermore I believe the 2% growth figure is probably a miscalculation (I don't remember if I made that calculation, or if it was someone else here, or if it was a stat pulled from some research company). To say something went from 15% of the population to 17% of the population in a years time is an additional 2% of the population, but that doesn't equate to 2% growth. (Its actually a little over 13% "growth")
Additionally, streaming services are relatively new to the market. They just recently started gaining traction. You don't have to look back very far to find a time where the user base was 0%. I know this is an extreme example, but lets say there were 1 million households using streaming and that number grows to 1.33 million... That's a growth rate of 33% derived from an additional 330,000 users.
Let's say there were 3 million homes using OTA antennas, and that number grows to 3.39 million... That's only a growth rate of 13 percent (vs 33 percent for streaming), yet it is almost the same number of new households... (remember, these are "made up" numbers just to demonstrate the math) All that to say, percentages do not tell the entire story. I'm not saying antenna users outnumber streaming users today (I'd be very surprised if that were true) , I'm just trying to point out that this entire conversation can get increasingly complex, and with all the different studies and varying estimates, its really difficult to say that something definitely is or is not trending upwards in a meaningful way.

I still believe if TiVo could (and wanted to) find some way to get in front more of those 20 million families that rely on OTA antennas and say "hey did you know you CAN have a DVR with your antenna", it could be at least as profitable as the way they reached existing cable subscribers and said "hey, did you know you can have a BETTER DVR than what your cable company offers and it MIGHT not cost you more". Most of the antenna users I've talked with have no clue that DVR for OTA broadcast TV is even a thing, so I think it's mostly an untapped market. Again, it's all just my thoughts... I'm sure TiVo has some very intelligent people who have hashed all this out and determined that it is not a worthwhile venture, otherwise they would be pushing the OTA harder and not trying to get completely out of the retail market... but it just makes me wonder if their OTA business could have the potential to be bigger than marketing to cable tv users. I have used TiVo with cable, and I have used it with OTA. To me, the OTA Roamio was MUCH easier to justify than when I used TiVo with cable.

I'm sure my math is all wrong, my numbers are all incorrect, and you probably didn't say something I assumed you did... so go ahead and tear apart my post. I will still believe there are a lot of people out there like me who see the value in free TV while it lasts, and do not have a problem dropping a little cash on equipment to record this content.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> I agree. Wow. When something technical has been explained to the point of nausea and the only way to get more detailed is to start breaking down the engineering aspects of the technology which clearly would be even less understood, there is no place else to go. It's impossible for me or anybody I've ever met to get more clear or concise about how deduplication works. The only thing I can say is that it's NOT just "copying" or "deleting" a file, it's not done by a human, and it's not even really visible. As I've said before (many times) it still appears to users and managers that there are multiple "files", "blobs", or whatever the structured and/or unstructured data is. It simply compresses and dedupes in the background, saving storage and bandwidth - therefore saving cost. I was not the one trying to compare it to "just keeping one copy". You may as well ask the difference between it and a four cycle engine.
> 
> So, Wow.


But then it seems that a potential problem/issue still remains as to subsequent distribution and the U.S. Copyright law, as was asked about earlier.


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## adessmith (Oct 5, 2007)

wmhjr said:


> Because I've run large global service Enterprises and have spent time with those organizations.... Though it doesn't take that level of experience.


True, I'm just a lowly sysadmin for a small business and I totally follow you. We use virtualized servers and our backups software uses deduplication.... we have backups for each virtual machine but it is deduplicated in a way that the bits that are exactly the same from one VM to the next are not stored multiple times. From a file structure standpoint, everything is the same, each of my windows server or linux VMs have a backup... but it takes considerably less storage with deduplication.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

I never said all OTA users had no money. Just that certainly a percentage of them fall into that. As do a percentage fall into a category where they have no broadband. And a percentage that have plenty of money and broadband. The 2% was me - it's up from 15% to 17%. I didn't say that OTA INCREASED 2%. I said that the percentage of OTA compared to the rest of the market was up by 2%. From 15% to 17%. Similar to how I didn't then say Streaming was up 33% - because it's not 33% of the market even though year over year they've seen not only 33% increases, but actually significantly larger percent increases every year on an annual basis.

My point is that Tivo has not been profitable in terms of retail subscriptions to begin with. To limit those subscriptions just to OTA simply could not make them "more profitable". They have to carry all the same costs EXCEPT for configuring cablecard. Had Tivo chosen a different architecture, my opinion might be different, similarly had Rovi not publicly indicated a lack of interest in retail (OTA or otherwise). 

I'm not discounting your points at all - as a matter of fact, I agree with a lot of it - almost all of it. But to me, the market is just changing increasingly fast. It's tough to predict a lot, but it's pretty easy to predict Tivo getting out of the retail business for everything. I completely agree that for those that can use it, the Tivo OTA isn't bad. It's price is more or less reasonable all things considered, and depending on what content you can get, so long as you have broadband, it's not a bad solution. But as mentioned before, Tivo designed in a bunch of dependency on connected solutions, so....


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## cybergrimes (Jun 15, 2015)

Does anyone feel like they've said anything new in the last 5 pages or convinced anyone they are wrong?  This forum really needs a "beating a dead horse" emoji...


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

adessmith said:


> I will still believe there are a lot of people out there like me who see the value in free TV while it lasts, and do not have a problem dropping a little cash on equipment to record this content.


Of course you're right. Part of the issue TiVo has had is in having many people not even know that it is there and what it's good for, as you note. For heaven's sake, a recent study showed that a sizable group does not even know that free OTA TV is available, via antenna. Imagine if a significant portion of that group could be captured.

Does a TiVo provide content, like cable? Of course, nope; no "Game of Thrones" for you (get it from the public library or buy an HBO subscription). It's a hyper-VCR plus. But it can capture more content to watch. And especially in areas with many channels (in mine, there's been a channel explosion in the past few years), that can be very valuable. And even for others, time-shifting alone is valuable.

Could TiVo exist without cable? Many dire predictions; although other companies do, and perhaps TiVo could attempt to scale itself for such as well.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> Um, no, that's incorrect. I'll quote it again for your benefit (again).
> 
> ""All features, functionality and offers are subject to change or withdrawal at any time without notice. See the TiVo User Agreement and TiVo Privacy Policy for additional terms and conditions that apply to your subscription to the TiVo service and use of a TiVo device."
> 
> ...


Actually, you don't know what I am and should not presume (again). And the facts are the facts.

And the fact remains: a contract, written by an experienced and savvy service provider for ordinary consumers, says a service will be provided, expressly for the "lifetime" of the hardware, and money is paid for that. And then the service is terminated, for no just cause (e.g. non-payment). And you don't think that this action is subject to attack as being "unconscionable"?

OK.

And "All features, functionality and offers are subject to change or withdrawal . . .": query whether the provision of lifetime service (not mentioned here) even falls within this, as a feature, functionality or offer, none of which is defined.

Again, subject to attack; including as being unconscionable, and as creating an "illusory" contract (that's the legal term--e.g. you pay me lots of money and I provide you with a service, all required under a contract, but then the contract says that I don't have to provide that service to you). The point all along.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

cybergrimes said:


> Does anyone feel like they've said anything new in the last 5 pages or convinced anyone they are wrong?  This forum really needs a "beating a dead horse" emoji...


Ya while I am also guilty of getting into opinion debates it is pretty much a waist of time. Just posting ones opinion and moving on makes more sense in most cases. One could list most all the points on both sides of the various discussions in a single short post for each. After all nothing can be proven until the future plays out and for some of the discussions (think legal what ifs) the situation may never play out.

Of course if you think someone is posting nearly pure BS, it is hard not to call them on it.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

cybergrimes said:


> Does anyone feel like they've said anything new in the last 5 pages or convinced anyone they are wrong?  This forum really needs a "beating a dead horse" emoji...


(I was going to attach a gif of a person beating a dead horse here, but even the cartoon versions are too violent and distressing.)


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

atmuscarella said:


> Ya while I am also guilty of getting into opinion debates it is pretty much a waist of time. Just posting ones opinion and moving on makes more sense in most cases. One could list most all the points on both sides of the various discussions in a single short post for each. After all nothing can be proven until the future plays out and for some of the discussions (think legal what ifs) the situation may never play out.


But in the meanwhile, mis-statements, overgeneralizations, mischaracterizations, half-pictures, and personal attacks bug me (yes, I should not be watching the evening news).


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> Actually, you don't know what I am and should not presume (again). And the facts are the facts.
> 
> And the fact remains: a contract, written by an experienced and savvy service provider for ordinary consumers, says a service will be provided, expressly for the "lifetime" of the hardware, and money is paid for that. And then the service is terminated, for no just cause (e.g. non-payment). And you don't think that this action is subject to attack as being "unconscionable"?
> 
> ...


Sorry, but the dead horse applies here. We will never ever agree. You continue to misrepresent the situation IMHO. Deliberately, again IMHO. The contract is written with AT THE TIME OF THE CONTRACT limitations listed in the terms of service. There is no formal definition of "lifetime" for hardware. In general, it's considered "end of useful life" - and NOT absolutely until it dies (See Series 2 support as evidence). It's not a catch all in any possible way.

Tivo can do whatever they want. Somebody can sue. You haven't demonstrated to me any possible experience that suggests you know more than anybody else what might happen. Products with "lifetime support" are eliminated every single day. Current examples include GPS units with "Lifetime Support" which have been End of life'd. Who knows. What is certain is that regardless of an opinion as to the outcome, it's absolutely a possibility.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

atmuscarella said:


> Ya while I am also guilty of getting into opinion debates it is pretty much a waist of time. Just posting ones opinion and moving on makes more sense in most cases. One could list most all the points on both sides of the various discussions in a single short post for each. After all nothing can be proven until the future plays out and for some of the discussions (think legal what ifs) the situation may never play out.
> 
> Of course if you think someone is posting nearly pure BS, it is hard not to call them on it.


I do agree with this. The problem is when "some" people insist on saying that some of the points are just "impossible" or "not real". That's when the fun, and the dead horse beating commences.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

b_scott said:


> They have Cloud DVR. I guarantee they serve up one file to multiple people. You can FFD/RWD and it's just like Tivo.


Are you talking about Comcast? If so then they are doing a terrible job. Because they must be using my Parents DVR as the source. Since their area of the Comcast cable system is 20 to 30 seconds behind actual time. So if they record something, the recording played back is always missing that portion of the show. And then when we intentionally introduced interference in the signal, when the cloud recording was viewed, that bad signal showed up in the same spot that it was recorded.

When their X1 was swapped out. Their recordings were accessible with the new box. Cloud recordings have been active in their area for awhile now. And then the intentionally bad recording, when the same thing was recorded from my brothers house, and stored in the cloud. It was not there in the recording. So at least in this case, one recording is most definitely not being used. If it were then the entire show would be shown when playing back, and the intentional interference introduced would not show up when playing it back.


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## adessmith (Oct 5, 2007)

Ok, so back to the main topic:

Nope... probably not...
It is possible though.

Glad I could clear that up!


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Aaron, You're still not getting it. Not at all. The situation you described would still happen if they were doing deduplication and compression via SAN and other technology. That's because it's NOT just "sharing a file".


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

wmhjr said:


> Aaron, You're still not getting it. Not at all. The situation you described would still happen if they were doing deduplication and compression via SAN and other technology. That's because it's NOT just "sharing a file".


That's the important thing. If it's not just sharing a file and the end result is the same as if it was your own individual recording. Then as long as the end result simulates an individual recording, then it would be just like having an individual recording. Which I see should be acceptable legally.


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## adessmith (Oct 5, 2007)

If you think about deduplication at the actual "file system" level, it might actually be easier to understand. You can store a million copies of the same file... there are in fact a million files... however the file system deduplicates the raw data. Its actually more similar to a form of compression than it is to "store one copy and share it with multiple users".


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

aaronwt said:


> That's the important thing. If it's not just sharing a file and the end result is the same as if it was your own individual recording. Then as long as the end result simulates an individual recording, then it would be just like having an individual recording. Which I see should be acceptable legally.


That is correct. Putting aside for a moment the idea of whether yet even a different solution might also be legally viable, the technology I've been speaking of is essentially exactly that. If you recorded 27 minutes - you'd have 27 minutes. If your "copy" was flawed in some way, it stayed flawed.

EDIT - ADDED:

Yet, if that 27 minutes in native format based on it's recorded bitrate was (just for kicks) 3.6GB, it might only consume .4 GB in actual presented storage, because only the deltas in raw data were actually stored. Yet, in terms of let's call it "listed files", it would appear separately, with a size of 3.6GB.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

adessmith said:


> If you think about deduplication at the actual "file system" level, it might actually be easier to understand. You can store a million copies of the same file... there are in fact a million files... however the file system deduplicates the raw data. Its actually more similar to a form of compression than it is to "store one copy and share it with multiple users".


That's a good way to think of it. I tried not to go down the path of counting files because it gets even more confusing. But it's the raw data - INCLUDING - the deviations in raw data. And you're also right in that depending on the vendor, some of them even do call it compression rather than deduplication. It gets really complicated as you start to scale in trying to put it in laymans terms.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Well now perhaps we have stumbled upon something interesting. 

So with control of the Internet pipe and by still maintaining some level of local storage Comcast is able to make Cloud DVR storage work and is likely using the tech wmhjr is talking about in their storage centers.

TiVo tried to do the same thing without direct control of the Internet pipe and without using local storage and could not make it work, but likely would also have been using the tech that wmhjr is talking about in their storage centers. Perhaps if TiVo had tried local storage it could have worked if they had a smart enough system. Does seem like it would be very hard to deal with all the different broadcast areas and different reception issues each person might have.

To bad we will likely never now.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

atmuscarella said:


> Well now perhaps we have stumbled upon something interesting.
> 
> So with control of the Internet pipe and by still maintaining some level of local storage Comcast is able to make Cloud DVR storage work and is likely using the tech wmhjr is talking about in their storage centers.
> 
> ...


No so fast - you're jumping to technology here......

Right now, the issues Tivo has experienced have nothing to do with "having control of the Internet Pipe" to ANYBODIES knowledge. So much of this is based on architecture - and by that I mean both hardware, but more importantly SOFTWARE architecture - "System Architecture" that jumping to a conclusion about what might or might not have worked is pretty tough to do.

The truth is that Tivo earned their bones in the area of the User Interface. Not with software design, or software development capability - and certainly not with effective architecture. I am hugely critical of how Tivo implemented their solutions over the past few years. Not the features and functions, but the integration, dependencies and fundamental architecture they chose to implement. Tivo has never ever ever been a "leader" in terms of network integration, or frankly just good network performance.

Certainly cloud based storage and/or DVR service relies far more heavily on good internet performance - both from a throughput and a latency perspective - than does a standalone DVR. One big question would be whether or not the actual "tuners" were local or also "cloud based". Lots of questions just on that one topic. But there is no current reason why Tivo could not have been successful with Mavrik in terms of performance - again, given "normal" or "generally acceptable" broadband performance for the last mile.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Also, one other thing just to clarify in terms of internet pipes. The days of standalone "T1s" "T3's" "OC48s" etc, are gone. Even very large multinational corporations with incredibly huge and fast connectivity needs "don't control their own pipe". MPLS clouds, most of them managed services, are the norm today. Most of them for global entities being multiple MPLS Clouds, all carrying QoS (of some type), and often packet management, etc. So, the bottom line is that it's actually more likely that Tivo could compete at the cloud level than compete with local storage IMHO. The more you get to the cloud, the less the "last mile" matters - except for final consumption. And in that case, it's all a relatively level playing field with Netflix, Amazon, etc all having the same issue.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> Sorry, but the dead horse applies here. We will never ever agree. You continue to misrepresent the situation IMHO. Deliberately, again IMHO. The contract is written with AT THE TIME OF THE CONTRACT limitations listed in the terms of service. There is no formal definition of "lifetime" for hardware. In general, it's considered "end of useful life" - and NOT absolutely until it dies (See Series 2 support as evidence). It's not a catch all in any possible way.


Yep, we will disagree: you refuse to acknowledge _all_ the facts, as well as the law (including as to unconscionability, which you simply generally seem to ignore, even as a possibility); and you refuse to stop misrepresenting me, to the point of defamation, sadly.

Now we have your most recent comment here on the definition of "lifetime"--stating what it somehow "generally" means, despite TiVo's own reference to the lifetime of the box (not "useful lifetime of the box") and as opposed to an individual's lifetime. You are right, it could be an issue, and I guess that could be TiVo's argument at court: that it meant something that it didn't say and which contradicts the ordinary words and explanation it used, even though dealing with ordinary consumers who are not versed in the "buzzwords" and instead simply look at them as English language. By the way, it is a general precept of contract law that ambiguities in a contract are interpreted against the drafter--here, TiVo. And even moreso when dealing with ordinary consumers. 


> Products with "lifetime support" are eliminated every single day. Current examples include GPS units with "Lifetime Support" which have been End of life'd. Who knows. What is certain is that regardless of an opinion as to the outcome, it's absolutely a possibility.


Yep, other products are EOL'ed--but is there a contract provision that they are lifetime products, as TiVo has made here, and is support denied even though the next generation of product has come out? (If so, and if "lifetime" support was guaranteed, that could be seen as a breach as well.) That's the difference--TiVo made a representation, that its legal people probably cautioned against (or should have) as a legal matter, as creating a virtually unqualified legal obligation. That's its issue, not the consumer's.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> Yep, we will disagree: you refuse to acknowledge _all_ the facts, as well as the law (including as to unconscionability, which you simply generally seem to ignore, even as a possibility); and you refuse to stop misrepresenting me, to the point of defamation, sadly.
> 
> Now we have your most recent comment here on the definition of "lifetime"--stating what it somehow "generally" means, despite TiVo's own reference to the lifetime of the box (not "useful lifetime of the box") and as opposed to an individual's lifetime. You are right, it could be an issue, and I guess that could be TiVo's argument at court: that it meant something that it didn't say and which contradicts the ordinary words and explanation it used, even though dealing with ordinary consumers who are not versed in the "buzzwords" and instead simply look at them as English language. By the way, it is a general precept of contract law that ambiguities in a contract are interpreted against the drafter--here, TiVo. And even moreso when dealing with ordinary consumers.
> 
> Yep, other products are EOL'ed--but is there a contract provision that they are lifetime products, as TiVo has made here, and is support denied even though the next generation of product has come out? (If so, and if "lifetime" support was guaranteed, that could be seen as a breach as well.) That's the difference--TiVo made a representation, that its legal people probably cautioned against (or should have) as a legal matter, as creating a virtually unqualified legal obligation. That's its issue, not the consumer's.


OMG. You're impossible. Just tattoo Tivo on your forehead and be done with it.

I actually quoted you. You attempted to modify what you said - inserting a key word. Sorry, but that's what you did. As opposed to you, I've never said that Tivo couldn't, or wouldn't, get sued. Or that a lawsuit would, or would not be successful. I simply said that it's FAR from certain that such a suit would be successful. That's not good enough for you. Friggin ridiculous.

Yes, there are other products, explicitly listed as "lifetime" products, that are EOLd. ALL OF THE TIME. It happens every year. I even in a previous quote gave you an example.

And no, there is NOT an accepted "legal definition" of "lifetime of the hardware". Sorry, but you can make up whatever BS you think you like - but any statement where you're conclusively coming to such a statement is a big, steaming pile of doggy doo doo.

It's clear to me that you've no experience whatsoever in this area. None. I don't think you even slept in a Holiday Inn Express.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

Most every Tivo that has been sold has OTA capability. I think Tivo got a waiver to sell the last two models of Series 2's as cable only. Since then, only the 4 tuner premiers and 6 tuner roamios and bolts are cable only. Plus Tivo has an OTA only Roamio and other companies are selling OTA only DVRs. OTA capability must increase sales or else Tivo would remove it completely and certainly other companies would not enter the market with an OTA only DVR. Most of the highest rated TV shows are on the major broadcast networks which are OTA.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

shwru980r said:


> Most every Tivo that has been sold has OTA capability. I think Tivo got a waiver to sell the last two models of Series 2's as cable only. Since then, only the 4 tuner premiers and 6 tuner roamios and bolts are cable only. Plus Tivo as an OTA only Roamio and other companies are selling OTA only DVRs. OTA capability must increase sales or else Tivo would remove it completely and certainly other companies would not enter the market with an OTA only DVR. Most of the highest rated TV shows are on the major broadcast networks which are OTA.


So, I wouldn't go that far either. But even saying we don't disagree about some of that, the point is - is it profitable? Increasing sales does not mean generating profit. Furthermore, the parent company has already been clear about their lack of future retail interest - OTA or otherwise.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> No so fast - you're jumping to technology here......
> 
> Right now, the issues Tivo has experienced have nothing to do with "having control of the Internet Pipe" to ANYBODIES knowledge. So much of this is based on architecture - and by that I mean both hardware, but more importantly SOFTWARE architecture - "System Architecture" that jumping to a conclusion about what might or might not have worked is pretty tough to do.
> 
> ...


Well the court has already determined that "cloud based" OTA tuners are not acceptable without paying each broadcaster (not just the networks each broadcaster) and Dave Zatz had a unit in hand for pictures and said: "Tivo Mavrik will ultimately be revealed as an OTA network tuner, somewhat akin to the HDHomeRun or Tablo, with cloud DVR capabilities and, at the very least, streaming video output to Amazon Fire TV". So I don't think there is too much to speculate over what it was intended to be and where the tuners where.

The difference I know between TiVo and Comcast, were what I said, Comcast controls the upload pipe, TiVo does not, Comcast has local storage and Tivo was not going to use local storage.

If you think neither of those differences make a differences fine just say so or perhaps say what you do think made the difference in Comcast making cloud DVR storage work and TiVo failing at it.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

atmuscarella said:


> Well the court has already determined that "cloud based" OTA tuners are not acceptable without paying each broadcaster (not just the networks each broadcaster) and Dave Zatz had a unit in hand for pictures and said: "Tivo Mavrik will ultimately be revealed as an OTA network tuner, somewhat akin to the HDHomeRun or Tablo, with cloud DVR capabilities and, at the very least, streaming video output to Amazon Fire TV". So I don't think there is too much to speculate over what it was intended to be and where the tuners where.
> 
> The difference I know between TiVo and Comcast, were what I said, Comcast controls the upload pipe, TiVo does not, Comcast has local storage and Tivo was not going to use local storage.
> 
> If you think neither of those differences make a differences fine just say so or perhaps say what you do think made the difference in Comcast making cloud DVR storage work and TiVo failing at it.


Actually, no - the court has NOT already determined that "cloud based OTA tuners are not acceptable without paying each broadcaster". Geez. Talk about over-generalizing the case law! I think I was pretty clear that there are a bunch of factors involved. And I alluded to them.

I wasn't getting into designing a "practical" system architecture from scratch. Just pointing out that you can't leap directly from A to Z, picking out one or two factors and then assuming the entire success or failure depended on those two factors.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> Actually, no - the court has NOT already determined that "cloud based OTA tuners are not acceptable without paying each broadcaster". Geez. Talk about over-generalizing the case law! I think I was pretty clear that there are a bunch of factors involved. And I alluded to them.


You can mince worlds all you want the Aero case came down to one thing - Aero couldn't provide "network OTA Tuners" without paying the broadcasters. Yes there was more too it than that but that is the bottom line.



wmhjr said:


> I wasn't getting into designing a "practical" system architecture from scratch. Just pointing out that you can't leap directly from A to Z, picking out one or two factors and then assuming the entire success or failure depended on those two factors.


And neither am I, just outlining the actual physical differences I new about to see how important people thought they may have been.

Like I said at the end of my post we will likely never know what if any technical issues TiVo was having and what the actual reason(s) the Mavrik was canceled. Just like we don't know why the Bolt OTA was not released etc. etc.. But we (the forum in general) certainly like to speculate about all of it.


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

remember when this thread about about a new tivo coming soon?


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

b_scott said:


> remember when this thread about about a new tivo coming soon?


Understood. But also to be fair, many of these other issues affect that issue in a mega sort of way (sigh, if only they were being approached more civilly and openly).


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> OMG. You're impossible. Just tattoo Tivo on your forehead and be done with it.
> 
> I actually quoted you. You attempted to modify what you said - inserting a key word. Sorry, but that's what you did. As opposed to you, I've never said that Tivo couldn't, or wouldn't, get sued. Or that a lawsuit would, or would not be successful. I simply said that it's FAR from certain that such a suit would be successful. That's not good enough for you. Friggin ridiculous.
> 
> ...


This is what you're resorting to. Once again, bullying attempts, side-stepping, and revisionist history. And there is a difference between someone trying to address the various issues, and someone being partisan (and yet somehow, I'm a TiVo partisan and should tattoo that on my forehead (thanks for that image) when I've _disagreed_ that TiVo absolutely has a right to amend the terms of its lifetime contract with its consumers; apparently, disagreeing with you makes one a partisan). But at least you now admit that a lawsuit against TiVo trying to change terms _could_ be successful, lol.

Moving on--but you have a good day there! (And my apologies to the TCF community.)

(And I have no idea what your off-the-wall Holiday Inn Express reference means. So be it. And your jibe at my experience here, where I've cited and quoted the law to you? LOL.)


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> This is what you're resorting to. Once again, bullying attempts, side-stepping, and revisionist history. And there is a difference between someone trying to address the various issues, and someone being partisan (and yet somehow, I'm a TiVo partisan and should tattoo that on my forehead (thanks for that image) when I've _disagreed_ that *TiVo absolutely has a right to amend the terms *of its lifetime contract with its consumers; apparently, disagreeing with you makes one a partisan). But at least you now admit that a lawsuit against TiVo trying to change terms _could_ be successful, lol.
> 
> Moving on--but you have a good day there! (And my apologies to the TCF community.)
> 
> (And I have no idea what your off-the-wall Holiday Inn Express reference means. So be it. And your jibe at my experience here, where I've cited and quoted the law to you? LOL.)


Yes, I am in fact telling you you're a partisan because you continue to misrepresent (which is another word for lie) an issue. I'm highlighting YOUR words above.

You continue to try and change facts. Tivo is not and would not be trying to "amend the terms". At this point, I think you realize you were wrong, and simply refuse to acknowledge the truth. Tivo is not "amending" anything. THESE WERE THE ORIGINAL TERMS, GENIUS. ORIGINAL. AS FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. THE START. NEVER CHANGED.

So please take the dishonesty elsewhere.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

atmuscarella said:


> You can mince worlds all you want the Aero case came down to one thing - Aero couldn't provide "network OTA Tuners" without paying the broadcasters. Yes there was more too it than that but that is the bottom line.
> 
> And neither am I, just outlining the actual physical differences I new about to see how important people thought they may have been.
> 
> Like I said at the end of my post we will likely never know what if any technical issues TiVo was having and what the actual reason(s) the Mavrik was canceled. Just like we don't know why the Bolt OTA was not released etc. etc.. But we (the forum in general) certainly like to speculate about all of it.


No, first of all, it's not Aero. It's Aaereo. The fact that you're using the wrong name kind of insinuates that you never really read the case, and don't know the facts. Aareo was very very different, and it was NOT about "network OTA tuners". It was about them being effectively a "public performer" without paying. So, just to inform you effectively, Aaereo tried to say that all the content being broadcast over the air (OTA) that could be picked up by ANYBODY, was fair game to "collect" and then sell themselves - without paying the broadcasters. Had Aaereo done this by IP, by traditional cablecard, or by magic pixie dust, it would not have mattered. It was not about "network tuners". And where Aaereo really went off the deep end and got in trouble is because they were providing content to people in one area content from OTHER areas. That's what started the mess.

This is SO very different from just "cloud DVR" that it isn't even funny. Let's say Tivo wanted to release a cloud DVR, but just like in the past, required you to have a cable/telco subscription like Fios, etc. Whoops! Guess what? Now, you're covered, because so long as the channel lineup you get is the same as what the MSO delivers in your zip, you HAVE paid for the content. You know, just like how you can get HBO content via streaming through Verizon so long as you already subscribe to HBO with Verizon. It doesn't matter in the least whether or not the "tuner" (whatever that means in the non-QAM future) is in the cloud, or in your bathroom. As a matter of fact, it's not even an issue about the DVR portion, but really just content access if you really get right down to it. So, there are a ton of ways to implement cloud DVR. It's why VZ and Comcast can do it today. Right now. Yesterday.

Now, let's talk about the differences between Mavrik and the Comcast Cloud or any other solution. Right now, what we know is that Tivo engineered their own cablecard powered system to offload some amount of functionality to their hosted services. This is exactly why we see the BSCs from time to time - even though we're doing things that logically seem to be only "internal" on our devices. I can understand why the banner on the top might have issues, but the "My Shows" portion should never ever be impacted by network connectivity to Tivo hosted (at their location) services. But it does. We also know that Tivo S3s/HDs had pretty pathetic network performance. And that prior to newer versions of software, the Roamio and Bolt line, when you and to "transfer" shows from one device to another, network performance was, let's just say "not stellar" and lagging behind expectations for network devices on a fast internal network. We know that Tivo has had more than a small amount of difficulty in their streaming capability - both in terms of performance, and reliability. Tivo simply has never demonstrated practical experience and capability in this area. It's not their strong suit. Designing the UI is their strong suit. So, to jump from there to who controls the pipe(s) (it's not just one pipe, and frankly nobody including Comcast owns ALL the pipes from point of data origination to consumption) as a discriminating factor doesn't pass the smell test.


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## Sparky1234 (May 8, 2006)

NashGuy said:


> I think that with "SD" here, he's referring to switched digital, not standard definition. Some cable companies use switched digital video, which requires TiVo owners to use a piece of hardware called a tuning adapter (TA).


yep, Cox encryption and digital OTA made this 14 year old fully functioning unit obsolete.


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## HerronScott (Jan 1, 2002)

wmhjr said:


> We also know that Tivo S3s/HDs had pretty pathetic network performance. And that prior to newer versions of software, the Roamio and Bolt line, when you and to "transfer" shows from one device to another, network performance was, let's just say "not stellar" and lagging behind expectations for network devices on a fast internal network. We know that Tivo has had more than a small amount of difficulty in their streaming capability - both in terms of performance, and reliability. Tivo simply has never demonstrated practical experience and capability in this area. It's not their strong suit.


You really cannot bring up slow show transfer performance on S3/HD models (11 years old technology now for the S3 OLED) in relation to current TiVo's and their streaming/cloud functionality and capabilities or TiVo's expertise in this area. Those models were limited by the integrated CPU that was available at the time (note that the earlier S3 was faster than the HD but it had a more expensive chipset) and it was low priority compared to the recording of shows and user interaction.

I've not heard of any issues with the Roamio or Bolt lines for network performance on show transfers with their newer/faster hardware and have not heard of any newer software versions that change or improved it?

Scott


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

HerronScott said:


> You really cannot bring up slow show transfer performance on S3/HD models (11 years old technology now for the S3 OLED) in relation to current TiVo's and their streaming/cloud functionality and capabilities or TiVo's expertise in this area. Those models were limited by the integrated CPU that was available at the time (note that the earlier S3 was faster than the HD but it had a more expensive chipset) and it was low priority compared to the recording of shows and user interaction.
> 
> I've not heard of any issues with the Roamio or Bolt lines for network performance on show transfers with their newer/faster hardware and have not heard of any newer software versions that change or improved it?
> 
> Scott


Scott, yes I can. I was comparing transfer performance of those S3/HD units to the capabilities of other consumer networked devices at that time. Not to today. Yes, part of the limitation was due to the selection of the CPU. However, there are multiple ways to skin that cat - which is exactly my point to begin with. Tivo prioritized that functionality very low.

As for current Tivo streaming/cloud capability, I can again point to the BSCs (which should never, ever EVER happen), the relative sketchy (IMHO) performance of their streaming services overall (out of home). And for "network performance" in general, yes - I'm still not satisfied. These units (and the minis) are way too sensitive to what Tivo calls "network issues" - even to the point of not supporting WiFi for Mini connectivity to their host Roamio/Bolt. Other vendors have no issue using 802.xx for such connectivity. Yes, you can "force it" but it's not supported. Of course, as we have all discussed so many times, neither are "network switches" - Tivo officially is so backward from a network perspective that they fail to even comprehend that the four ports on the back of an MSO router are SWITCH ports. And they fail to acknowledge that customers with more than a couple devices are then forced to either use MOCA and distribute Coax everywhere (welcome to the 80s), or essentially violate their stated "support" model.

This is simply not an area of strength for Tivo. Tivo is very good at designing the user interface - that has been their strength for a long time. Really, going back to the beginning. That is what differentiated their products - well, that and the guide.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> Yes, I am in fact telling you you're a partisan because you continue to misrepresent (which is another word for lie) an issue. I'm highlighting YOUR words above.
> 
> You continue to try and change facts. Tivo is not and would not be trying to "amend the terms". At this point, I think you realize you were wrong, and simply refuse to acknowledge the truth. Tivo is not "amending" anything. THESE WERE THE ORIGINAL TERMS, GENIUS. ORIGINAL. AS FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. THE START. NEVER CHANGED.
> 
> So please take the dishonesty elsewhere.


I guess you missed the inconsistency: I'm somehow a TiVo partisan and should brand its name on my forehead, where I've _disagreed_ with a position favoring TiVo? 

As I've said and which you again ignore here, the bottom line is that TiVo could/would be subject to a claim of unconscionability and/or an illusory contract under the law ("here's a contract between us but we can change all of its terms anytime, including those going to the core of the contract, so that we don't have to do anything at all and if we don't want to"). And very well could lose. _Regardless_ of whether TiVo's claim to a right to terminate lifetime willy-nilly is added in by TiVo or somehow expressly falls within existing language, a matter which is questionable and which I addressed earlier ("And 'All features, functionality and offers are subject to change or withdrawal . . .': query whether the provision of lifetime service (not mentioned here) even falls within this, as a feature, functionality or offer, none of which is defined.") but you again ignored.

Regardless, you've most recently agreed that there could be an issue with a TiVo unilateral termination of lifetime, and that TiVo could lose on this ("I've never said that Tivo couldn't, or wouldn't, get sued. Or that a lawsuit would, or would not be successful. I simply said that it's FAR from certain that such a suit would be successful.")--my point all along.

Again, moving on (and simply ignoring your invective).


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> No, first of all, it's not Aero. It's Aaereo. The fact that you're using the wrong name kind of insinuates that you never really read the case, and don't know the facts. Aareo was very very different, and it was NOT about "network OTA tuners". It was about them being effectively a "public performer" without paying. So, just to inform you effectively, Aaereo tried to say that all the content being broadcast over the air (OTA) that could be picked up by ANYBODY, was fair game to "collect" and then sell themselves - without paying the broadcasters. Had Aaereo done this by IP, by traditional cablecard, or by magic pixie dust, it would not have mattered. It was not about "network tuners". And where Aaereo really went off the deep end and got in trouble is because they were providing content to people in one area content from OTHER areas. That's what started the mess. .


My response about Aaereo (yes I was too lazy to look up how it was spelled)was to when you said: 

"One big question would be whether or not the actual "tuners" were local or also "cloud based"."​
Sorry you can ramble on all you want about other none related topics but if TiVo used cloud based tuners and did the recording themselves they would be in exactly the same boat that Aaereo was.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

atmuscarella said:


> My response about Aaereo (yes I was too lazy to look up how it was spelled)was to when you said:
> 
> "One big question would be whether or not the actual "tuners" were local or also "cloud based"."​
> Sorry you can ramble on all you want about other none related topics but if TiVo used cloud based tuners and did the recording themselves they would be in exactly the same boat that Aaereo was.


You are so wrong it's impossible to even show the extent. And if you were too lazy to look up Aaereo, how exactly do you claim to have even the slightest knowledge of the legal case?

If you're trying to suggest that Tivo do EXACTLY what Aaereo did, then they would be in the same boat, well then, Duh.

However, NOBODY is trying to do or suggesting that they do exactly what Aaerio did. If you want to try and just generally classify anything using a tuner in the cloud as being identical to Aaereo, you're just exposing ignorance. Do you even understand what the cloud is? I'm serious about that question. It doesn't seem like you are.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> I guess you missed the inconsistency: I'm somehow a TiVo partisan and should brand its name on my forehead, where I've _disagreed_ with a position favoring TiVo?
> 
> As I've said and which you again ignore here, the bottom line is that TiVo could/would be subject to a claim of unconscionability and/or an illusory contract under the law ("here's a contract between us but we can change all of its terms anytime, including those going to the core of the contract, so that we don't have to do anything at all and if we don't want to"). And very well could lose. _Regardless_ of whether TiVo's claim to a right to terminate lifetime willy-nilly is added in by TiVo or somehow expressly falls within existing language, a matter which is questionable and which I addressed earlier ("And 'All features, functionality and offers are subject to change or withdrawal . . .': query whether the provision of lifetime service (not mentioned here) even falls within this, as a feature, functionality or offer, none of which is defined.") but you again ignored.
> 
> ...


No invective. You were dishonest in your statement. And frankly, very very mis-representative in your illustration. You can try and say whatever you want - have at it. I've said from the beginning that anything is possible, but that it's far from a sure thing. I didn't say it "most recently". I said it from the beginning. You don't seem willing to accept that, but want to keep deliberately misrepresenting the contract, the terms of service, and the statement. I mean "ALL FEATURES, FUNCTIONALITY" sure seems broad enough to me. And you can use the categorization of "willy-nilly" or whatever cute phrase you like. Doesn't matter. Clearly you're not a contract lawyer nor a technologist. You have an opinion, which is fine. I'm sure that people on a potential jury would have an opinion too, so they'd be your peers. Who knows what might happen.

But let's put it this way. You and I probably both don't like it, but corporations make risk based decisions every single day. Like decisions as to whether to recall a product, or a vehicle - OR if the risk and associated penalty for NOT doing so is less than the cost of fixing the issue. Or in this case, if the cost of getting sued and possibly losing is less than the cost of ongoing support. The cost of support will be carefully analyzed and known to the best extent possible - and will be to some extent a certainty. The cost of litigation is an unknown, uncertain, may not happen, and may not go against them. So there are several options here, of which really only one of them ends up costing them more over the long haul. It's the dirty world of corporate business. Don't believe me? Take a look at a current issue with corroding fuel lines for 2009+ GM vehicles..... Just as one example. I'm kind of thinking that a jury would be WAY more concerned about fuel lines leaking gasoline onto hot exhaust in a vehicle carrying families than whether a $300 device with "lifetime service" went end of life within 2 years.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

wmhjr said:


> So, I wouldn't go that far either. But even saying we don't disagree about some of that, the point is - is it profitable? Increasing sales does not mean generating profit. Furthermore, the parent company has already been clear about their lack of future retail interest - OTA or otherwise.


The margin on selling the hardware has always been slim to non-existent. The profit center has always been selling the service, monthly, yearly or lifetime. Sales of the hardware drive sales of the service. There would be a significant manufacturing cost reduction if Tivo did not include OTA capabilities in their DVRs. Couple this fact with the fact that all other retail DVRs are OTA only shows that OTA is a significant driving force for sales and profit for retail DVRs.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> You are so wrong it's impossible to even show the extent. And if you were too lazy to look up Aaereo, how exactly do you claim to have even the slightest knowledge of the legal case?
> 
> If you're trying to suggest that Tivo do EXACTLY what Aaereo did, then they would be in the same boat, well then, Duh.
> 
> However, NOBODY is trying to do or suggesting that they do exactly what Aaerio did. If you want to try and just generally classify anything using a tuner in the cloud as being identical to Aaereo, you're just exposing ignorance. Do you even understand what the cloud is? I'm serious about that question. It doesn't seem like you are.


My whole response about Aaerio that you are responding too is about the fact you indicated you didn't know where the OTA tuners where located (locally in the Mavrik or remotely in the "cloud"). My comments about Aaerio are part of the reasons I thought remote or "cloud" OTA tuners would not be possible, it has nothing to do with the cloud storage part of the setup. Again I will remind you of your statement:

"One big question would be whether or not the actual "tuners" were local or also "cloud based".​
An OTA tuner has to be connected to an antenna for reception Aaereo setup a bunch of micro antenna's and claimed they were renting you an antenna sent that signal to an OTA tuner then either recorded the show you wanted recorded or sent you a live stream.

Again Your statement that I quoted indicated you didn't know if TiVo intended to have the OTA tuner in the Mavrik or in the Cloud. I don't care what you think "Cloud" means if the OTA tuner isn't in the Mavrik it is someplace else controlled by TiVo not the home owner. So yes if TiVo had OTA tuners in the "cloud" and recorded the show or streamed it to the home owner they would be doing exactly what Azereo was doing. Which again is why I said the OTA tuners could not be in the cloud and had to be in the Mavrik.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> No invective. You were dishonest in your statement. And frankly, very very mis-representative in your illustration. You can try and say whatever you want - have at it. I've said from the beginning that anything is possible, but that it's far from a sure thing. I didn't say it "most recently". I said it from the beginning. You don't seem willing to accept that, but want to keep deliberately misrepresenting the contract, the terms of service, and the statement. I mean "ALL FEATURES, FUNCTIONALITY" sure seems broad enough to me. And you can use the categorization of "willy-nilly" or whatever cute phrase you like. Doesn't matter. Clearly you're not a contract lawyer nor a technologist.


LOL, same old (and you don't know who I am--and coming from someone who repeatedly simply has ignored the cited law); and, in the comment's long, full form, argument for argument's sake. Moving on; no response needed to such.


> You have an opinion, which is fine.


Thank you. And you as well (apart from the continuing invective).


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

shwru980r said:


> The margin on selling the hardware has always been slim to non-existent. The profit center has always been selling the service, monthly, yearly or lifetime. Sales of the hardware drive sales of the service. There would be a significant manufacturing cost reduction if Tivo did not include OTA capabilities in their DVRs. Couple this fact with the fact that all other retail DVRs are OTA only shows that OTA is a significant driving force for sales and profit for retail DVRs.


Actually, not so. The fact that all other "retail DVRs" are OTA only shows the barriers to entry in the non-OTA market. Not that OTA is a significant driving force for sales and profit for retail DVRs (in general). It is the ONLY driving force for the DVRs themselves for those companies trying to compete in that market.

The previously questionable, and now pending death of the Cablecard and the lack of knowledge of what "comes next" prevents anybody from developing a new product other than OTA. The knowledge that when considering both the subscription service AND the hardware, Tivo has struggled in the retail market has been a big red flag for entry - particularly given the fact that the MSOs have their own solution which requires no up front investment.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

Mikeguy said:


> LOL, same old (and you don't know who I am--and coming from someone who repeatedly simply has ignored the cited law); and, in the comment's long, full form, argument for argument's sake. Moving on; no response needed to such.
> 
> Thank you. And you as well (apart from the continuing invective).


You're right. I don't know who you are. However your comments clearly show that you don't work in this industry, have no experience in it, are not a contract attorney, and have never run a technology service delivery organization - or more to the point - have no technology experience. I have not ignored cited law at all. I'm simply not arrogant enough to try and be judge and jury and insist that the law will result in a specific action - much less to dishonestly try to misrepresent repeatedly exactly what the law will have to address. That's what you've consistently been doing.

I don't know the ins and outs of the actual ATSC 3.0 implications, the technical aspects of the QAM situation, etc. Not in my wheelhouse. There are guys here on this forum that know that stuff way better than I ever will, so you won't see me with any strong opinions about what may happen in that regard. I have no relevant experience or material knowledge to apply to known facts. That is simply not the case when it comes to global hosted service delivery, software product development and release, enterprise architecture and enterprise infrastructure. Those are areas for which I have direct relevant experience to draw on. That includes defending technology patents, and dealing with contractual disputes related to contracted services.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

wmhjr said:


> No, first of all, it's not Aero. It's Aaereo. The fact that you're using the wrong name kind of insinuates that you never really read the case, and don't know the facts.


Hey GENIUS. It's Aereo, not Aaereo.


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## wmhjr (Dec 2, 2007)

lpwcomp said:


> Hey GENIUS. It's Aereo, not Aaereo.


Thanks, Genius.


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## Nickipedia (Jul 18, 2015)

*Aereo: retransmission consent is the next intriguing question*

Before Aereo went under I remember reading this. It brings up interesting arguments on how Aereo could have continued. It seemed like after Aereo's troubles they just decided to cut their losses and avoid the battles. Of course the outcome wasn't entirely lost, I like my Roamio OTAs'


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## mattyro7878 (Nov 27, 2014)

I need to ask: Will the cable companies still supply a box for this ip delivered content? Whatever that box may be, can't TiVo create a similar device?I know they would have to design it for each gigantic cable company so the smaller MSO's are out of luck. Isn't that how TiVo started? By building a better mousetrap? I will admit some of you folks are truly on top of this so I guess I am just hoping for something very unlikely to happen.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

wmhjr said:


> You're right. I don't know who you are. However your comments clearly show that you don't work in this industry, have no experience in it, are not a contract attorney, and have never run a technology service delivery organization - or more to the point - have no technology experience. I have not ignored cited law at all. I'm simply not arrogant enough to try and be judge and jury and insist that the law will result in a specific action - much less to dishonestly try to misrepresent repeatedly exactly what the law will have to address. That's what you've consistently been doing.
> 
> I don't know the ins and outs of the actual ATSC 3.0 implications, the technical aspects of the QAM situation, etc. Not in my wheelhouse. There are guys here on this forum that know that stuff way better than I ever will, so you won't see me with any strong opinions about what may happen in that regard. I have no relevant experience or material knowledge to apply to known facts. That is simply not the case when it comes to global hosted service delivery, software product development and release, enterprise architecture and enterprise infrastructure. Those are areas for which I have direct relevant experience to draw on. That includes defending technology patents, and dealing with contractual disputes related to contracted services.


Thank you, as always, for your once-again repeated comments, which have been given their due consideration.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

mattyro7878 said:


> I need to ask: Will the cable companies still supply a box for this ip delivered content? Whatever that box may be, can't TiVo create a similar device?I know they would have to design it for each gigantic cable company so the smaller MSO's are out of luck. Isn't that how TiVo started? By building a better mousetrap? I will admit some of you folks are truly on top of this so I guess I am just hoping for something very unlikely to happen.


As things stand now, yes, TiVo absolutely could design and sell retail IPTV boxes tailored to work with each MSO's individual IPTV system *but only if* each MSO agreed to that arrangement and actively cooperated with TiVo to allow that to happen. And frankly, it's not really in a cable company's interests to expend resources to help TiVo make retail boxes that take away hardware rental fees from them while making a profit for TiVo. If an IPTV cable company really liked TiVo and wanted to work out some kind of cooperative deal with them, well, the end result wouldn't be a new retail TiVo box designed for their service, it would simply be a new rental TiVo box that the cable company would offer their subscribers.

Because of the existing CableCARD standard, TiVo has never had to get the agreement and cooperation of individual cable companies to make their retail DVRs -- the FCC forced cable companies to adhere to a certain type of technology and, so long as an outside company's retail products also adhered to that technological standard, their products would work with any traditional QAM-based cable TV system in the country. But over the next several years, it's widely expected that cable companies will migrate away from QAM to IPTV and there is no industry-wide standard for IPTV devices like CableCARD is for QAM devices.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

wmhjr said:


> Actually, not so. The fact that all other "retail DVRs" are OTA only shows the barriers to entry in the non-OTA market. Not that OTA is a significant driving force for sales and profit for retail DVRs (in general). It is the ONLY driving force for the DVRs themselves for those companies trying to compete in that market.
> 
> The previously questionable, and now pending death of the Cablecard and the lack of knowledge of what "comes next" prevents anybody from developing a new product other than OTA. The knowledge that when considering both the subscription service AND the hardware, Tivo has struggled in the retail market has been a big red flag for entry - particularly given the fact that the MSOs have their own solution which requires no up front investment.


Then why do most Tivo DVRs have OTA capability? Is Tivo making a poor business decision by manufacturing DVRs with OTA capability? It's a simple and inexpensive task to turn a Roamio OTA into a Cable/OTA DVR. I don't see the high cost of entry into the cable market.


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## Jrr6415sun (Mar 31, 2006)

my cable company literally switched over from some analog to all digital last week and now I have to worry about that switching to something else again?


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Jrr6415sun said:


> my cable company literally switched over from some analog to all digital last week and now I have to worry about that switching to something else again?


If your cable company just got around to converting to all digital,  I would say worrying about the end of the world would be about as productive as worrying about when they may switch to some new delivery technology.


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## delgadobb (Mar 6, 2004)

NYHeel said:


> And I have a 3 TB Tivo that is always between 80 - 98% full. Nearly all the TV I've been watching from the last 3 months is stuff that was recorded over 3 months ago.


Add me to this group times 10. I've got a ton of storage on my Tivos & most run at 90%+. Some of it is archival stuff I wanna keep (i.e. Cubs WS last year, WSOP last few years, Federer/Nadal Australian open match, that kinda stuff.) A lot of it is tons of movies recorded from HBO/Cinemax/Showtime/TMC/Starz/Encore when I had them, along with series related to those networks. I *like* that I can go back whenever I want to watch Homeland, Dexter, Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, Shameless, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Walking Dead, etc. (Even though I've barely started on a number of them.) You get the idea. I'm not subject to the whims or commercials of Netflix/Hulu/etc. Stuff like Columbo, Stargate SG-1 & Brockmire is sticking around for multiple viewings. It's been YEARS since I've laughed as hard as I did with Brockmire. My guess is I could binge-watch TV for several months & still not get through all my content. I watch almost no live TV & get to stuff when I can. That works for me. Might be different for others.

As for the rest of the discussion going on here, I've chosen not to participate as it seems more like talking to a brick wall rather than a give-and-take dialog where we can grow by exchanging ideas & learning from one another. SO much ego & hubris. Here's a quick-and-dirty take on it:


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

shwru980r said:


> I don't see the high cost of entry into the cable market.


Um, CableLabs. And no cableCo is going to work with you on an IP replacement.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

slowbiscuit said:


> Um, CableLabs. And no cableCo is going to work with you on an IP replacement.


I meant for the existing cable cards It doesn't seem to cost very much to add a cable card bracket to a roamio OTA, but other companies are entering the retail DVR market with OTA only DVRs.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

delgadobb said:


> As for the rest of the discussion going on here, I've chosen not to participate as it seems more like talking to a brick wall rather than a give-and-take dialog where we can grow by exchanging ideas & learning from one another.


It's been calm this week. 'Nuff said.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

shwru980r said:


> I meant for the existing cable cards It doesn't seem to cost very much to add a cable card bracket to a roamio OTA, but other companies are entering the retail DVR market with OTA only DVRs.


An OTA Roamio has h/w and s/w support for CableCARD , including CableLabs certification, and is only lacking the bracket. Not true for newly developed DVRs.


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

mattyro7878 said:


> I need to ask: Will the cable companies still supply a box for this ip delivered content? Whatever that box may be, can't TiVo create a similar device?I know they would have to design it for each gigantic cable company so the smaller MSO's are out of luck. Isn't that how TiVo started? By building a better mousetrap? I will admit some of you folks are truly on top of this so I guess I am just hoping for something very unlikely to happen.


Yes, it stands to reason that cable companies will still supply their own set tops. One, they will want to have the ability to control top to bottom the customer experience for those who still want "the best" (in the eyes of the cable company) experience. Also, folks who are not technologically savvy will just want to be able to buy TV service, get a cable box, and be done with it. Not everyone is up to buying and installing a third party box like a Roku, dealing with apps, dealing with authentication, etc. However, they will absolutely provide apps and allow people to 'self-install' and basically have zero physical infrastructure belonging to the cable company. If you want to watch on your Roku, Comcast is going to be happy to oblige.

The kicker, though, and why TiVo's strength will get wiped out in this transition, is that you'll have to use Comcast's app to watch Comcast provided content. TiVo's entire strength in the '00s was that cable company UIs *sucked* hard. CableCard, QAM, and the overall TV infrastructure was setup such that TiVo could consume the video without having to deal with the provider's UI. This was a big sticking point when they were designing CableCard and possible successors. Cable companies have wanted to control the user experience, and hate that TiVo is able to weasel in there. They don't mind Roku because when you launch Spectrum or Xfinity app on Roku or Apple TV, the cable company still gets to control 99.9% of the experience. TiVo building a box for the IP world will basically relegate them to being the same thing as Roku, just an app platform, and that is where TiVo has always been the weakest


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## adessmith (Oct 5, 2007)

JosephB said:


> The kicker, though, and why TiVo's strength will get wiped out in this transition, is that you'll have to use Comcast's app to watch Comcast provided content. TiVo's entire strength in the '00s was that cable company UIs *sucked* hard. CableCard, QAM, and the overall TV infrastructure was setup such that TiVo could consume the video without having to deal with the provider's UI. This was a big sticking point when they were designing CableCard and possible successors. Cable companies have wanted to control the user experience, and hate that TiVo is able to weasel in there. They don't mind Roku because when you launch Spectrum or Xfinity app on Roku or Apple TV, the cable company still gets to control 99.9% of the experience. TiVo building a box for the IP world will basically relegate them to being the same thing as Roku, just an app platform, and that is where TiVo has always been the weakest


True. At that point, I'd rather just use their app on some streamlined streaming platform such as FireTV or Roku... or just use my cable companies DVR as it will probably be the same interface but more responsive than the app running on a different device. But then again, I'm not a cable subscriber anymore. As long as OTA broadcasts are around (which is another debate all together) my TiVo will still operate 100% as it does today.


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## dadrepus (Jan 4, 2012)

delgadobb said:


> Add me to this group times 10. I've got a ton of storage on my Tivos & most run at 90%+. Some of it is archival stuff I wanna keep (i.e. Cubs WS last year, WSOP last few years, Federer/Nadal Australian open match, that kinda stuff.) A lot of it is tons of movies recorded from HBO/Cinemax/Showtime/TMC/Starz/Encore when I had them, along with series related to those networks. I *like* that I can go back whenever I want to watch Homeland, Dexter, Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, Shameless, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Walking Dead, etc. (Even though I've barely started on a number of them.) You get the idea. I'm not subject to the whims or commercials of Netflix/Hulu/etc. Stuff like Columbo, Stargate SG-1 & Brockmire is sticking around for multiple viewings. It's been YEARS since I've laughed as hard as I did with Brockmire. My guess is I could binge-watch TV for several months & still not get through all my content. I watch almost no live TV & get to stuff when I can. That works for me. Might be different for others.
> 
> As for the rest of the discussion going on here, I've chosen not to participate as it seems more like talking to a brick wall rather than a give-and-take dialog where we can grow by exchanging ideas & learning from one another. SO much ego & hubris. Here's a quick-and-dirty take on it:


Wow, why are you keeping all that stuff on your Tivos when you could use the very excellently made kmttg or cTivo (mac only) to offload, remove commercials, delete recording off the Tivo.....automatically. Then you could play it back with the Plex app.


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## lpwcomp (May 6, 2002)

dadrepus said:


> Wow, why are you keeping all that stuff on your Tivos when you could use the very excellently made kmttg or cTivo (mac only) to offload, remove commercials, delete recording off the Tivo.....automatically. Then you could play it back with the Plex app.


Or transfer it back with pyTivo.


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## rlcarr (Jan 18, 2003)

b_scott said:


> except the conversation above has been about legality of having to have one copy of media per person, not whether a company has deals in place. Obviously you don't need to have that by law. The "deal" part is a secondary piece to this, with the "one copy per person" superseding it, if that was a legal problem. It seems it's not.


You have that backwards. "One copy per person" is along the lines of what the law says has to be allowed if there's no deal in a place. The law doesn't prevent a rightsholder from negotiating a license that allows the middleman to only have to have one copy per 10 people or per 1000 people or per 1000000 people.


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

rlcarr said:


> You have that backwards. "One copy per person" is along the lines of what the law says has to be allowed if there's no deal in a place. The law doesn't prevent a rightsholder from negotiating a license that allows the middleman to only have to have one copy per 10 people or per 1000 people or per 1000000 people.


you just said what I said back to me in a different way.


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## mike-d (Dec 12, 2013)

I recently received a discounted offer to transfer the lifetime service from my Premiere to a Bolt or Bolt+. The offer said "while supplies last". Does this imply new hardware s coming? Soon?


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

mike-d said:


> I recently received a discounted offer to transfer the lifetime service from my Premiere to a Bolt or Bolt+. The offer said "while supplies last". Does this imply new hardware s coming? Soon?


Link back to your same inquiry elsewhere, followed by responses:

New $99 lifetime transfer deal


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## idksmy (Jul 16, 2016)

mike-d said:


> The offer said "while supplies last". Does this imply new hardware s coming? Soon?


No..


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## mike-d (Dec 12, 2013)

When you go to Tivo.com and click on Roamio Pro, you get the Outlet page and you can't buy anything. Are the Roamio Pros gone and done? Is the Bolt+ as good or better. Why would they leave the page up, when you can't buy anything? Opinions?


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## adessmith (Oct 5, 2007)

Personally I think they want to blow out ALL their inventory... they don’t want to have any waste. The sooner they can get rid of them all the sooner they can start the countdown to the end of retail units.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

adessmith said:


> Personally I think they want to blow out ALL their inventory... they don't want to have any waste. The sooner they can get rid of them all the sooner they can start the countdown to the end of retail units.


I guess that could be said every time TiVo has a sale.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

mike-d said:


> When you go to Tivo.com and click on Roamio Pro, you get the Outlet page and you can't buy anything. Are the Roamio Pros gone and done? Is the Bolt+ as good or better. Why would they leave the page up, when you can't buy anything? Opinions?


It's a little faster, but otherwise it's basically the same. Not really worth an upgrade if you already have a Roamio Pro.


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## idksmy (Jul 16, 2016)

adessmith said:


> The sooner they can get rid of them all the sooner they can start the countdown to the end of retail units.


Proof?

I didn't think so.


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## denhearn (Mar 6, 2010)

I would love to buy a Bolt+ with a lifetime subscription to programming info. But I'm worried that the lifetime could be less than a year. If we stop getting the Program information would the TiVo box be nearly useless? I would like 4K signal but wonder if I would just be throwing money away. Thoughts?


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

I just can't see TiVo going away in a year. And boy, think of the lawsuits!  Having said that, famous last words . . . .


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## denhearn (Mar 6, 2010)

Mikeguy said:


> I just can't see TiVo going away in a year. And boy, think of the lawsuits!  Having said that, famous last words . . . .


1 year is not a prediction, but merely worry. If I put $1K into a new box, I would expect to use it for several years. I've been wanting a Bolt since they were released. But with the Rovi transition, the direction of the company is a concern. I've been waiting for a good sign. Still waiting.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

denhearn said:


> I would love to buy a Bolt+ with a lifetime subscription to programming info. But I'm worried that the lifetime could be less than a year. If we stop getting the Program information would the TiVo box be nearly useless? I would like 4K signal but wonder if I would just be throwing money away. Thoughts?


Yeah, I'd agree with Mikeguy that TiVo service isn't going away anytime soon. I wouldn't worry about that. However, as I explained at length on another thread recently, it's questionable whether any current model Bolt will be able to receive and record 4K content from cable. If your cable company does so in the same QAM format that they offer current HD channels on, it should be able to. But both Comcast and Verizon FiOS have indicated that they will only offer 4K content in IP format, not QAM, meaning that they would have to go out of their way to work with TiVo to make Bolts compatible with their 4K and that seems very unlikely to me. As for any other cable operators (e.g. Charter, Cox, Altice, etc.), I haven't heard them say yet what their 4K plans are.

Bottom line: Expect a Bolt to only support whatever 4K content it already can (which is limited to Netflix, YouTube and Plex). Anything else (such as cable, Amazon, etc.) would be a nice surprise.


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## BigJimOutlaw (Mar 21, 2004)

denhearn said:


> 1 year is not a prediction, but merely worry. If I put $1K into a new box, I would expect to use it for several years. I've been wanting a Bolt since they were released. But with the Rovi transition, the direction of the company is a concern. I've been waiting for a good sign. Still waiting.


The new ownership's primary product is metadata, so that's the last thing anybody needs to worry about. These boxes will have a plentiful life as far as that goes. There's absolutely no reason to cut off service.

I'm more concerned about the technological side, with cablecards eventually sun-setting.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

BigJimOutlaw said:


> *The new ownership's primary product is metadata, so that's the last thing anybody needs to worry about. These boxes will have a plentiful life as far as that goes. There's absolutely no reason to cut off service.*
> 
> I'm more concerned about the technological side, with cablecards eventually sun-setting.


(Finally, a good side to Rovi!  )


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

If only they could deliver that data with the same quality we used to get from TMS...


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