Seven Network is planning to make an announcement Monday regarding the launch of the TiVo service in Australia, according to Smarthouse. And apparently Seven is very unhappy with parent company Unwired for leaking their plans to sell TiVo sans subscription fees and stealing thing thunder, as it were.
According to Seven Media insiders, James Warburton the network’s sales director “blew his stack” with Unwired CEO David Spence after he revealed to the Sydney Morning Herald last month intimate details in the TiVo roll out.
Unwired will handle distribution, sales, and service for TiVo in Australia, with the majority of units sold at retail. This is also interesting:
It is expected that consumers who take up the service could end up getting over 100 channels of content for free however the only hitch will be that users will be unable to remove advertising totally with new software set to deliver a commercial as they try to fast forward.
That really just sounds like the ‘billboard’ ads we have in the US, where static image ads may be displayed while fast forwarding through recorded commercials. Which really isn’t such a big deal. It isn’t known if the 30-second skip back door will work in Australia as it does in the US. I’m not sure where the 100 channels of content will come from, since there aren’t that many OTA DVB-T channels. I’m guessing they mean some kind of downloaded content.
