One of the features that remains absent from the standalone CableCARD TiVo units has been support for cable provider VOD/PPV services. These services are only available on the Comcast and Cox provided TiVo DVRs. Now TiVo is teaming with SeaChange, the leading providers of cable VOD head-end systems, to integrate cable VOD services into the CableCARD TiVo units. The language of the press release makes it sound like this may be aimed at providing an offering directly to cable MSOs, so that they can offer the TiVo units to customers in lieu of a standard cable DVR. Especially small cable MSOs who aren’t deploying tru2way, and therefore would be unable to use the software TiVo solution being deployed by Comcast and Cox.

“By teaming with SeaChange we are enabling cable operators without OCAP/tru2way deployment plans to increase the breadth and depth of their offering by quickly deploying TiVo set-top boxes that seamlessly integrate VOD in a single, intuitive TiVo interface,” said Tom Rogers, TiVo’s president and chief executive officer. “This solution also enables participating MSOs to take their on-demand offering to a whole new level by highlighting VOD titles within TiVo universal search results. And the beauty of this is that it can be achieved faster and at a lower cost than most solutions that have been available to cable operators to date.”

However, comments made by Tom Rogers at the Deutsche Bank Securities Media and Telecommunications Conference it sounds like this may be included in the retail products as well. Though I’d presume that it would only work with cable MSOs that are using a SeaChange VOD head-end. He also indicated that this would be a relatively short term development, though that’s relative in relation to other major development efforts.

The release explicitly mentions the TiVo HD, and doesn’t mention the original TiVo Series3, but that could just be marketing. The TiVo HD is the current product, and what everyone is focused on - and certainly what any cable MSO would be provided at this time. If it this feature is added to the retail products, and I hope it will, it could show up on the S3. I’m presuming that this implementation will use the Tuning Adapter, currently used for SDV support, to handle the upstream communication required for VOD/PPV as well.

No matter how it is implemented, this is a good thing. Once a working implementation exists, it tends to get a foot in the door, and hopefully more cable MSOs will sign on to support VOD on TiVo. After all, it is revenue for them.

TiVo Alticast last month announced that they will work together to make it easier to bring TiVo’s software and services to set top boxes. Alticast is a vendor if middleware for Java-based DVB-MHP, OCAP/tru2way technology and Blu-ray Disc Java (BD-J). They’re all ways to implement software independent of the host hardware - both tru2way and BD-J evolved out of MHP (Multimedia Home Platform). While all Blu-ray players support BD-J, and in the US OCAP/tru2way is deploying on cable systems (and the similar ACAP is intended for ATSC broadcast receivers), in most of the world MHP dominates.

Why is this significant? Well, based on the press release I think this signals a coming push by TiVo to leverage the work done for the Comcast & Cox deployments in the US to bring the TiVo interface to an assortment of set-top boxes worldwide:

“Teaming with Alticast allows global video providers to offer the unique combination of TiVo’s award winning user interface, advertising solutions, and broadband television functionality on set top boxes running Alticast’s industry standard embedded software for ITV applications,” said Joshua Danovitz, Vice President and GM of International at TiVo. “We hear from cable, satellite and IPTV operators around the world that they want better middleware solutions capable of quickly bringing TiVo applications to market and Alticast is in the pole position to fulfill this need. We look forward to their cooperation in making the TiVo experience available on a broad range of platforms, both in the United States and around the world, similar to the way that we have developed platforms for Comcast and Cox.”

I’ve been saying this for a while, that having the OCAP/tru2way version of the TiVo system could have an impact far beyond the US cable market. Having a portable implementation will allow TiVo to partner with hardware vendors and service providers worldwide. Working with Alticast should help get TiVo in the door, as well as smoothing the implementation issues. As TiVo has said that all tru2way cable DVRs in the US are potential TiVo systems, now, in theory, any DVR running MHP, or combo Blu-ray/DVR units, are potential TiVo systems.

Another announcement made during my hiatus from blogging, TiVo has expanded their Stop||Watch ratings service. The addition of 17 more cable networks pushes the total to 93 cable and broadcast networks covered by the service, including 16 cable networks not currently covered by the industry. The ratings are tracked from 05:00 until 23:30 each day. See the full release for more details.

On February 19, 2009, TiVo announced that William Cella had been elected to their board of directors, increasing the board from eight to nine members.

Mr. Cella, age 58, currently serves as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Cella Group LLC, a firm he founded in 2008 which provides media sales representation, consultations in media, as well as sport and entertainment representation, to leading companies. Prior to that, he was the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of MAGNA Global Worldwide, a media negotiation, research and programming unit of the Interpublic Group of Companies. Prior to that, Mr. Cella held the position at of Executive Vice President, Director of Broadcast and Programming for Universal McCann North America, where he was responsible for over $2 billion of national broadcast time on network, cable and syndicated television. He began his career at ABC where he worked for 15 years, first as an account executive for WXYZ-TV in Detroit later rising to the position of Vice President of Sports Sales for ABC Television Network. Mr. Cella was inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame in 2007.

TiVo’s latest newsletter:

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Following up on their initial Superbowl ad results TiVo used Stop||Watch to look at the past success of this year’s advertisers - and issued a press release with their analysis, of course. For example, Superbowl top-place advertiser GoDaddy.com had 35% of their primetime ads skipped during 2008. While perennial Superbowl advertiser Coke had 46% of their broadcast primetime spots skipped. I don’t want to recreate the press release here, so check it out if you’re interested in how DVRs impact advertising.

Following the Superbowl, TiVo released their usual summary of ad viewership. The graph to the right (click for larger version) uses TiVo Stop||Watch data to track viewership on a second-by-second basis. When viewers rewind a section and repeat it this is additive and increases the total viewership. Note that most of the spikes during the first half came during advertisements, while in the second half most of the spikes came during the game itself.

TiVo, of course, put out a full press release with all of the details. Former top ad the E-Trade talking baby was dethroned, not even placing in the top ten this year, while GoDaddy.com jumped to the top spot for the first time.

The top ten rated commercials of this year’s game were:

1. GoDaddy.com: “Enhanced?”
2. Bud Light: “Summer to Winter”
3. Careerbuilder.com: “It May Be Time”
4. Doritos: “Crystal Ball”
5. Transformers: “Revenge of the Fallen”
6. Monster.com: “Moose Head”
7. Bud Light: “Man Thrown out the Window”
8. Pepsi: “MacGruber/Pepsuber”
9. Dennys: “Thugs”
10. Coke Zero: “Mr Polamalu”

See the full release for more.

I’ll be catching up on at least some of the press releases and such that came out in the past three months or so while I was on my little hiatus. I thought about just skipping them, but decided I’d rather have a record of them for coverage in the long run.

Back on 1/21/09 TiVo dropped a press release about their Stop||Watch service for the end of 2008. I didn’t find it very surprising - people do a lot of tiemshifting for primetime programs, and even more during sweeps. The latter makes total sense to me - channels cram popular shows into sweeps periods, which creates more conflicts, which makes people even more likely to timeshift content to be able to watch programs that aired simultaneously. During the sweeps weeks in May and October, 54% of primetime content was timeshifted. During the summer months (June-August), timeshifting dropped to 40% - likely due to the dearth of new content.

See the full press release for more data and analysis.

If you haven’t jumped into the world of placeshifting yet, with a Slingbox or HAVA, here is a chance to win one. Zatz Not Funny is giving away a HAVA Gold, and all you have to do is leave a comment and be the lucky winner of the drawing.

HAVA, from Monsoon Multimedia, is the primary competition to Sling Media’s Slingbox. HAVA has some features not found on Slingboxes - such as supporting multicast on a LAN (multiple, simultaneous clients), officially supporting recording on PCs, working as a tuner within Windows Media Center, learning new IR codes, and more. Additionally, all HAVA Mobile clients are free, unlike SlingPlayer Mobile. However, the HAVA products tend to be less polished than Sling, and little rougher around the edges. While Sling has clients for Windows and Mac OS, and mobile clients for Windows Mobile Standard & Professional, Symbian S60 & UIQ, Palm OS, and BlackBerry, HAVA Player is available only for Windows, Windows Mobile Standard & Professional, Symbian S60, and Maemo (the Linux flavor on Nokia N810 Internet tablets).

Sling has submitted their iPhone client to Apple, while HAVA demo’d an early version of their iPhone client at CES, so they’ll hopefully be submitting that soon. HAVA is also apparently developing a client for Mac OS. So as long as you have a supported platform, it could work fine for you.

Good luck!

You know, if HAVA really wants to compete with Sling, they should probably go after markets where Sling isn’t yet - like Android and Linux desktops. And since all HAVA boxes stream in MPEG-2 and MPEG-4/H.264, while Slingboxes stream in WMV/VC-1 (except the PRO-HD which also supports MPEG-2 and MPEG-4/H.264), and Flash video supports H.264, they might be able to put out a Flash-based client. A Flash client would be a killer app. Release a reference implementation and open-source it - widespread client availability would sell hardware.

Also, since they give away their clients for free, unlike Sling, they’d have nothing to lose by getting HAVA Player built into things like Boxee, VLC, the Roku Digital video Player, etc. Maybe even TiVo - since Sling Media parent EchoStar and TiVo are still slugging it out in court, and EchoStar is adding placeshifting to DISH DVRs and cable boxes, TiVo could use HAVA to respond.

But that’s a tangent and maybe I should just do a whole post on my thoughts on the placeshifting market.

Unrelated, sorry I haven’t been posting. I thought I’d be jumping back in when I posted a few weeks ago, but I underestimated just how draining the job hunting process can be. The good news is I’ve accepted an offer and should be back to work soon. The only downside is that the job is in Somerville, MA, and I live in Worcester, MA, so I’ll have a commute of about an hour each way. But I’ll be working 3rd shift, so traffic shouldn’t be bad, and I’m happy about the job itself.

First of all, thank you to everyone who is actually still reading this. The blogosphere is a ‘what have you done for me lately’ world, and I’ve certainly seen the hit count graph trending rapidly downward since I stopped posting. I appreciate those who have stuck around through the drought.

So, you may have noticed that things have been pretty quiet around here for the past couple of months. I’ve received a few inquiries about just what’s going on and if I’d ever resume posting, etc. The short answer is yes, and I’m going to be trying to get back into the swing of things now, though it may take a little while to get back to speed.

What happened? Well, as I posted back in January, I’m having some problems with my left hand. Since that post I have had an EMG, and it confirmed what my doctor suspected all along - something is wrong with the ulnar nerve. My left pinky and ring finger, and part of the hand, are still numb. But it has been a few months and I’m adapting to it, so typing isn’t the struggle it was at first. I’m waiting for a neurology appointment and I’m still hopeful the issue can be fixed in the end.

But that was just the first in a chain of events. I posted that on January 20th, and my blogging was a bit lighter in the days that followed as I was still struggling with typing and most of what I could manage was devoted to work. However, that soon changed - I lost my job with Sling Media on February 2nd. The short version is that I was participating in discussions at SlingCommunity.com and I posted something I didn’t think was an issue in the context of the thread, and it probably would’ve been nothing - just a small post in a discussion forum. Except it got picked up by a popular blog (which I won’t name since I don’t really blame them, as a blogger I’ve done similar things in the past) and excerpted out of context, and from there a bunch of other blogs picked it up, and before I knew it it was a major issue for management - and as a result I lost my job. I was completely blindsided by this, and I’m still out of work and trying to find a new position. I hope I can do so soon, I really can’t remain unemployed for long financially. (BTW, my resume is here.)

This was a pretty big punch in the gut, and, honestly, it put me into a pretty bad depression. Believe it or not, this is the first time I’ve lost a job. I’ve been laid off a couple of times, but in those cases it was a company-wide thing and there were huge signs that it was coming, so it was expected and I was ready. In this case I was completely unprepared for it. I really loved working for Sling, loved the people there, and believed in the products, so it was very hard to have that end. My job with Sling was my favorite job, ever, and it will be very hard to find anything like it again. I really saw myself working there for a long time. I’m also the kind of person who really puts my all into my job, and I invest a lot of myself in my work. A good deal of my self-identity tends to stem from my work and my accomplishments therein. So my emotional reaction to losing the job was as if someone I cared for had died - it hit me pretty hard. And with the economy as it is, it is not a good time to be looking, so that’s amped up the stress a bit.

The timing was also bad because I had a previously planned trip to visit my family from 2/14 to 3/1. I would’ve been blogging less, if at all, during that trip anyway as it was a vacation and time to visit my folks. But it also meant I couldn’t really start looking for a new position right away as I would not be able to interview, let alone start, until after the trip. And, honestly, the depressed mood I was in was not conducive to constructive job hunting anyway. I just didn’t have it in me to keep blogging during that time, my head was elsewhere. And I was still angry and frustrated over losing my job, so I didn’t really trust myself to post about it in that state. I tried to keep participating in Sling Community for a short time, but I realized it was like salting the wound at the time and it was better to walk away, at least for now. I still care about the user community, so I may jump back in once things are more settled.

The upside was that I forced myself to pretty much ignore everything in my life for a couple of weeks and enjoy the time with my folks in Florida. We also took a few days to go up to Walt Disney World, and if you want a place to ignore life, you could do worse than Disney. So the trip gave me some time and distance from everything else, which is also why I deliberately didn’t do anything related to tech, blogging, or work. (Well, except for my usual annual IT service for my folk’s PCs, but that’s family. And I could do that in my sleep.) After returning home on 3/2 of course I had a number of things to deal with - doctors, unemployment paperwork, COBRA, starting to look for a new position in earnest, and just generally pick up my life. I’m pretty much back on top of things now and my mood is a lot better, though not quite fully recovered, so I’m picking up the blogging reigns as well.

I’ve been largely out of the loop - I completely stopped reading blogs as well as posting. I needed a break from things to deal with everything - but I’ve been saving emails and the like to work my way through. Right now finding a new job is my first priority, but I miss blogging and I figure it’ll probably be good for me to keep my brain in shape anyway.

Oh, and I’m not too proud to beg - since I’m unemployed even a little bit helps, so if you’re planning to make any purchases using the site’s affiliate links will provide a little something.

Thanks again for sticking with me through the drought, and I hope to be back to my old post volume soon. I wish I could make a living doing this, but that’s not going to happen real soon. I’m the meantime, wish me luck.