InteractiveTV Today Interviews TiVo’s Tara Maitra

InteractiveTV Today (itvt) recently interviewed Tara Maitra, VP and General Manager of Content Services at TiVo. Tara is in charge of TiVo’s broadband strategy – TiVoCast, Unbox, YouTube, Rhapsody, etc. – so the interview is worth reading in its entirety. But there are some tidbits that caught my eye in particular:

Of the 1.7 million broadband-enabled TiVo boxes that have been deployed in consumers’ homes, approximately 800,000 are actually connected to a broadband pipe. Over a period of a little more than a year, those 800,000 boxes have generated over 20 million downloads.

So just under half of TiVo standalone boxes that are capable of being connected to broadband are. I believe that percentage has been steadily increasing over time. That 20 million downloads is an average of 25 per box per year. I easily average better than 25 *per week* with all of the TiVoCasts and TiVo Web Video downloads I subscribe to.

And this is some interesting info relating to the YouTube deployment on TiVo:

We’re working on developing the technology infrastructure for this now, and the feature should be available sometime this summer. From a technology perspective, implementing this feature requires us to enable streaming on TiVo devices–which is something that we have not supported previously. So this YouTube capability will be our first foray into enabling streaming through the TiVo service.

I think that one of the major payoffs for the YouTube addition will be the basic foundation for streaming on TiVo. Hopefully this ability will finally allow streaming between TiVos (hinted at by Tom Rogers recently) as well as support for other streaming services like Amazon’s planned Unbox streaming, and perhaps Netflix’s streaming.

If you have any interest in TiVo’s broadband content offerings, you should read the full interview.

About MegaZone

MegaZone is the Editor of Gizmo Lovers and the chief contributor. He's been online since 1989 and active in several generations of 'social media' - mailing lists, USENet groups, web forums, and since 2003, blogging.    MegaZone has a presence on several social platforms: Google+ / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / LiveJournal / Web.    You can also follow Gizmo Lovers on other sites: Blog / Google+ / Facebook / Twitter.
This entry was posted in Broadband, TiVo and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • Charles Blaquière

    Broadband usage by TiVo users seems to rise quite rapidly. A year and a half ago, Evan Young, director of broadband services for TiVo, had announced that 520,000 subscribers were using broadband services. (Source: http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2006-11/tivo-and-the-future-of-microcontent/)

  • http://www.gizmolovers.com/ MegaZone

    That’s logical, TiVo has been pushing broadband and introducing more and more broadband services which will encourage users to network their boxes. And the S2DT, S3, and TiVo HD all have built-in Ethernet ports.

  • Ivan Y

    For some reason, my S2DT’s Ethernet port doesn’t work very well. I just ended up sticking the USB Ethernet adapter from my S2 ST on there.

  • http://www.gizmolovers.com/ MegaZone

    Sounds like you may have an issue with your port. Normally the S2DT built-in port provides much better performance than a USB adapter or any sort.