I don’t think Tivo will necessarily vanish from the face of the earth, at least not in a huge instant implosion, but I can see them fading away into non-existance. There are other factors that he didn’t even mention.

1) More home PCs with the ability to do as much as Tivo or more without being more difficult. You have Media Center PCs which already have the ability to do a lot of the “extra” stuff Tivo can do (mp3 playing, picture viewing and from some information I have read, dumping shows off to DVD). They are also much easier to expand on and I don’t think they have a subscription service (even if you go lifetime you are looking at $400/min. for a Tivo (add Home Media and a network adapter and you’re up to $500-550), a Media Center PC can do more and isn’t THAT much more expensive, Dell makes one for $800 that will also play DVDs.

2) Network time shifting – ie the more networks are moving more shows around to random time periods off by a few minutes. Currently Tivo doesn’t handle this very well at all. This isn’t to say they can’t upgrade the software to make it work, but right now it doesn’t which leads to my next point

3) As HDTV becomes more prevalent, more people will want to upgrade their DVR to HDTV compatible units. Even if Tivo has them on the market, people will still look at other manufacturers and products. I don’t need HDTV equipment yet, but I definitely will be looking for something that I can stuff extra storage space in without too much hassle. I can fill an 80 hour standard Tivo without even batting an eye, so if I need HDTV storage we’re talking a lot of drive space.

I am not all doom and gloom though, as I said, the points you make could very well be enough to keep Tivo going as well. I’d say if things keep going the way they are going, then I would give Tivo a 50/50 shot. But it wouldn’t take a whole lot to tip the scales against survival, at least in my mind.

Keep that in mind when deciding how much weight to give his views about the future of technology…