Just shy of two weeks ago TiVo announced their new ad system, Program Placement. Well, it looks like it is live already. User greg_burns over at TiVoCommunity.com has posted photos of the screens.

As I said at the time of the announcement, it looks like TiVo has done it in a very unobtrusive manner. There are no extra button presses compared to the screens without an ad. You actually need to make more effort to view the promotion, button presses for keeping or deleting the program remain as before. So it doesn’t get in the way at all, which is TiVo’s way of doing things. I don’t have a problem with advertising when it is done well, like this.

Promo…
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I knew it wouldn’t take long before someone wrapped TiVo Decode in an easier to use interface. Or this one. Looks like this was first released a couple of days ago, I just picked up on it from PVRWire.

Discovery is airing a special Holiday Mythbusters episode tonight, and it is not part of the normal series so a Mythbusters Season Pass will NOT record it. I just caught my box not recording the 10PM airing, and manually set it to record at 2AM. If you miss it tonight, it is airing again on 12/9 at 9PM, and 12/10 at 1AM, and then again on 12/17 and 12/18. All times Eastern. Note that this is in *addition* to the regular episode that aired tonight. There were two hours of Mythbusters tonight - so don’t think you got the special because you got the normal episode.

Davis Freeberg found an old TiVo ad. He said it was rejected by the networks, but it seems familiar to me. I think I may have seen it a few years ago. It looks like an ad from TiVo’s early years.

I spotted it via PVRWire

They do things a bit different in Taiwan, you probably won’t see this kind of outfit at TiVo’s CES booth.

Picked up from Troy on TiVo.

TiVo’s latest newsletter…
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TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), today announced that it will present at the UBS 34th Annual Global Media & Communications Conference on December 7th. The webcast of the presentation will be available on the Investor Relations section of the TiVo website at http://investor.tivo.com under the events calendar tab.

Conference Details:
UBS 34th Annual Global Media & Communications Conference
New York, NY
Thursday, December 7, 2006
2:30 p.m. EST
Tom Rogers, CEO and President

Eastern Multimedia (EMC), a leading MSO (multi-system operator of cable TV services) in Taiwan, and TGC, the Asia marketing agent for TiVo DVRs (digital video recorders), on November 30 announced an agreement to offer combined cable modem Internet-access and TV recording services in Taiwan.

So, this sounds like a marketing bundle. You get a TGC TiVo box and a cable modem. But this is interesting:

For a fixed monthly rate of NT$899 (US$28), customers can use TiVo DVRs to surf the Internet at a bandwidth of 2Mbps and record TV programs, according to EMC.

The way that is phrased, it sounds like you ’surf the Internet’ using the TiVo - which would mean a browser built into the TiVo. But that seems unlikely. I think it is more likely that you use your PC to surf, and just pay one price for the cable modem and TiVo bundle.

I’d never heard of ‘One True Media’ until TiVo’s recent announcement of a partnership to allow access to OTM content via the TiVo. Well, I guess OTM is getting some industry attention:

PRNewswire release…
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