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.

Back in October Comcast started rolling out Tuning Adapters, and Time Warner was offering pre-orders, but it looks like it is spreading.

Yesterday Hank, a reader from Spencer, MA, contacted me to let me know that he’d received a notice in the mail from Charter that they will be switching to SDV on February 2, 2008 and that, as a TiVo user, he could claim a free Tuning Adapter on or after January 5th. Spencer is very close to my home in Worcester, MA, where I also have Charter. I haven’t received the notice yet, but it may well be waiting for me when I return from CES next week. I’m kind of hoping it is, I’d like to get some hands-on experience with the Tuning Adapter to see if it works as well as promised.

And today TVBarn.com is reporting that Time Warner has begun deploying Tuning Adapters in Austin, TX.

It is about time, but it is nice to see this finally getting into the hands of TiVo users to allow them to tune SDV content.

Welll, in just under 10 hours I should be on a plane to Las Vegas, NV for CES. The show properly is Thursday-Sunday, but there are press events Tuesday and Wednesday which I’ll be attending. During the show itself I’ll be splitting my time between working Sling Media’s booth and trying to visit other vendors as a blogger. As is usual for me, my first victim, er, target of the show will probably be TiVo. Since I’ll be working half the show my time for seeing the rest is cut in half, but I’ll try to do what I can.

Going into this CES I’m not sure what the big deal is going to be this year, if there is one. The economy is down and I haven’t really felt any particular buzz about any given area of the market. HDTVs get bigger while getting thinner and faster (refresh rates). We may see some interesting 3D technologies which will start to enter homes in the next few years. Palm is expected to announce Nova and new hardware, but I’m not excited. I was a die-hard Palm OS user for many years, since 1998, and still carry a Treo 680. But after five or more years of waiting for Palm OS 6 Cobalt Nova I just don’t feel that inspired. I’m already focused on Android as my next likely platform, and it would take a lot for Palm to sway me. Even if they produce an incredible OS, they have an uphill battle ahead to win over developers. I don’t think they have a real chance at this point to gain significant market share. And without that the developers won’t come – and the apps really make the platform.

Going forward I think the mobile market will effectively be, in no particular order, Windows Mobile Professional, BlackBerry, Symbian S60, iPhone, and Android. The original Palm OS is the walking dead, and I don’t see Nova/Palm OS II carving out enough market share to be viable. Symbian UIQ is effectively dead as SonyEricsson and Motorola have pulled out and the Symbian world is focused on the S60-based open source effort. Windows Mobile Standard (aka Smartphone) is rapidly dying as Professional-based touch screen devices move into the lower end of the market where Standard used to focus. I expect Android, which is basically just coming into the market, to post the biggest gains as more devices land. I think the LiMo/LIPS effort will falter and expect to see some of the vendors who have been working on it switch to Android. I think those five platforms will provide the bulk of the smartphone market, anything else will be a small niche.

We’ll probably see more tru2way devices on display from a number of vendors this year, but I don’t know that we’ll see anything revolutionary in that market. I’m hoping TiVo may be showing off their ‘Series4′ tru2way-enabled model, which they’re believed to have been working on for a while. And they may be showing their new DirecTV software, which I expect will be running on the HR20/21/22 DirecTV DVR Plus hardware. I’m not expecting anything else major, maybe some new content partnership announcements and perhaps plans to bring TiVo to more countries. (I’m surprised they haven’t re-launched in the UK yet with the DVB-T model actually.)

The past couple of years the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD fight provided some interest. But that was effectively over with CES2008, and officially ended when Toshiba threw in the towel in February. There aren’t likely to be any big announcements in the Blu-ray world, aside from more content partnerships like LG adding CinemaNow and YouTube to Netflix on their players. Maybe someone will be showing off higher density disc or 3D content concepts.

I’m hoping to be surprised by something at the show, something just unexpected. If you know of something I should be on the look out for, do let me know. And if you’re going to CES drop by the Sling Media booth and say hello. I believe I’m on the afternoons of Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, and on Friday morning. I’m also scheduled to present for Sling Media at CntrStg on Saturday. Frankly I’m nervous as hell about that. It has been years since I’ve done a presentation or talk at a tradeshow and never at anything as big as CES.

OK, off to finish packing.

One of the most useful self-support tools on TiVo’s website has gone missing. TiVo used to have an online form to correct problems with your channel lineup, which was at that link or conveniently at http://www.tivo.com/lineup. I’ve used that form a number of times, and I’ve referred users there too many times to recall. A Google search on TiVo lineup problems will find countless posts online referring people to that form, and I’ve found references from people reporting using it as recently as late October, possibly later. But I went to use it a week ago and it was gone, and it is still down.

Searching TiVo’s support site I can’t find any references to it anymore, and pages like this one just walk the user through checking their setup and don’t offer any help to reporting actual problems. I try to avoid calling technical support since I’m generally capable of being self-sufficient, and it saves time for both myself and the support reps. But this time I was stymied and ended up calling support as Charter added 14 new channels in my area and I wasn’t getting guide data. Working with the rep it sounds like the very same form that used to be public is still used internally, since he asked me for exactly the same info I used to enter myself.

I don’t know why TiVo pulled this form down, it was very useful. Now users with lineup issues will need to call in. Perhaps they were getting too many false lineup issue requests or something.

Oh – Charter added these channels in the Worcester/Central MA area:
175 OVATN Ovation
298 FBNWK Fox Business
346 MLBN MLB Network
725 WTRHD The Weather Channel HD
726 FNWHD Fox News HD
730 ANPHD Animal Planet HD
731 TLCHD The Learning Channel HD
732 FOODH Food Network HD
733 HGTHD HGTV HD
736 NGEHD National Geographic HD
767 VRSHD Versus HD
768 GLFHD Golf HD
776 DSCHD Discovery Channel HD
794 FXHD FX HD

Charter says their new policy is that if you get a channel in SD you’ll automatically get it in HD as they add them, no additional charge. If they can add HD versions of The CW, USA, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, and Sci-Fi I think I’d be about covered – on top of the HD channels they had and just added.

Backchannelmedia recently announced their TV-to-Internet technology was being trialed by LIN TV Corp. in New England, and now The Advertising Council will adopt the technology for use with their public service campaigns. The Ad Council’s use will coincide with the New England trials with LIN TV and will involve campaigns for Obesity Prevention, Inspiring Invention, Adoption, and Autism Awareness.

Backchannelmedia’s system allows viewers to respond to ‘bugs’ on the screen during viewing. The remote click sends a signal through the cable system to the back end to ‘bookmark’ content online for the user to review later. So if you see a PSA for adoption and you’re interested in more information you can click your remote, then later when you go online you’re reminded and given the chance to review more information.

I think this is a neat idea – one I’ve suggested TiVo do in the past. TiVo’s interactive ads and on-box content are great, but the reality is some interactions are better via the computer interface. I wouldn’t want to read in depth information about autism on my TV, but I’m curious enough that I might on my PC. TiVo has XMPP in place to handle real time messaging. They could send clicks to a user page on TiVo.com, or, better, to widgets on social sites like Facebook and MySpace, or right to TiVo Desktop – where they could pop open the users browser when desired.

Anyway, in general I like the idea of linking the TV and the computer, each does what it does very well and leveraging the capabilities of the other platform makes a lot of sense.

Press release:

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In the past couple of days I’ve had a couple of press releases cross my (virtual) desk relating to some new interactive TV technologies tied to advertising, which sound like they’re targeting the same market as TiVo’s interactive ad platform. The first to land was Backchannelmedia’s TV-to-Internet technology which is being tested by LIN TV Corp., a local television and digital media company, on the Hartford-New Haven stations WTNH-TV ABC 8 and WCTX-TV MyTV 9 starting in November.

The technology works by allowing viewers to press a button on their remote when a small icon appears on the bottom of the screen. This ‘bookmarks’ the content, or offer, which is then forwarded to a personal website which is incorporated into WTNH.com. I think this is an interesting approach, one I’ve suggested TiVo use for advanced content in the past. Some content is simply better presented on a computer. And this could allow less sophisticated platforms, like a non-DVR cable box, to provide a level of interactive content by offloading it to the website.

Generically, being able to bookmark things on a website would be useful in other ways. For example, a number of Discovery channel shows will say things like “Visit our website for more content/behind the scenes/etc”, and it would be great to be able to push a button on the remote at that point and have a link to the content waiting for you on the PC.

The second press release announced that Time Warner Cable has licensed elements of an Enhanced TV (ETV) platform from Broadband Interactive Applications (BIAP). BAIP’s ETV User Agent will be incorporated into Time Warner Cable’s advanced advertising platform. It will allow TWC’s STB’s to run Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF) applications, both created by TWC and third parties, such as the TV networks.

EBIF is a multimedia content format standard developed by the OpenCable project within CableLabs, which also developed OCAP/tru2way. EBIF is a core element of Canoe, a cable industry effort to develop an advanced advertising platform for all MSOs. Both the cable and broadcast industries will use EBIF to deliver advanced features to cable STBs.

The press releases are below:
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Despite some ongoing issues, it looks like the Comcast TiVo software is heading to Chicago. Dave Zatz over at Zatz Not Funny caught this in Comcast’s earnings call today:

We are rolling out TiVo beyond the Boston market test, where things are going quite well and we are going to be introducing other cities, probably starting with Chicago in the first quarter next year

This isn’t too surprising as Chicago is one of two cities where Comcast has rolled out tru2way support (the other being Denver – maybe they’ll be next?), and, as Light Reading’s Cable Digital News points out, it is another territory where Comcast uses Motorola hardware. Still no word on when Comcast and TiVo will complete the work to being the software to Cisco/Scientific Atlanta DVRs.

Comcast is also running a new TV spot to advertise the TiVo software:

In what can’t be a good sign for the progress of the TiVo software for Comcast, CNET’s Matthew Elliott has posted in their Crave blog that he’s finally given up in frustration and returned to using the standard non-TiVo Comcast DVR. He first starting using the TiVo software May, and while his initial impression was favorable overall, he had some issues with it as well – especially performance.

He followed up in July, and by then the bloom was already off the rose. His patience was low with the performance issues by then and he was experiencing frozen screens and missed recordings. He was already considering returning to the standard Comcast DVR.

Things apparently improved for a while starting last month. The number of glitches dropped and the performance seemed to improve. But then, last week, he was locked out of On Demand and lost the ability to record anything – and that was the last straw. As he sums it up:

My two biggest gripes with the Comcast + TiVo service were its speed and reliability. Setting a recording took anywhere from 20 seconds to over a minute. With Comcast DVR, a recording is set almost instantaneously. Service reliability was the bigger issue; TiVo would regularly freeze up and required to be reset–a process that required me to pull the cable box out, unplug it, plug it back in, and wait 10 to 15 minutes for the service to return–and then re-enter the 30-second skip code for the remote. Other than encouraging me to read more, the only advantages I found with TiVo were its suggested recordings, its ad-free channel guide, and a better organized list of recorded shows, which grouped multiple recordings of a show and all HD recordings into folders.

I’d really like to see TiVo succeed in bringing their software to cable DVRs, but the road so far has been long and rocky. At this point it seems that there is still a lot of work to be done, and some of the troubles may be due to the lack of power in the fielded hardware. The TiVo software is running on top of a middleware layer (currently a precursor to tru2way, and it should be tru2way in time) which runs on top of a base OS, and that means it will be hard to match the performance of a native OS. A solution for this could be newer generations of cable DVR hardware which are bring designed from the start to support tru2way applications, instead of existing hardware that has been updated with software.

There are so many variables involved it is hard to say if the troubles are with TiVo’s software, the middleware layers, the base OS, the hardware, the head-end servers, or something else. So the issues may be out of TiVo’s hands. But in the end it doesn’t matter to the end user, they just want the software to work and don’t care who’s problem it is. So I hope that TiVo and their partners can sort things out and make it ‘just work’, or it will continue to struggle to gain traction.

I’ve been pretty busy, so I didn’t have time to cover this when the news broke last week via Multichannel News, but the FCC has fined Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications over their implementation of SDV. Well, more specifically, because their implementation of Switched Digital Video denied users of CableCARD access to content. The FCC’s rule requires providers to make all video programming available to third-party consumer electronics devices, like TiVo, which use CableCARD. As SDV has not been compatible with CableCARD, until the recent initial deployment of the Tuning Adapter, the FCC found that moving channels to SDV was a willful violation of the rules.

As a result Time Warner Cable Oceanic of Oahu and Kauai, HI and Cox in Fairfax County, VA were fined $40,000 and $20,000, respectively. I don’t think this is really going to change anything in the big picture. Cable MSOs aren’t going to back away from SDV, they’re not going to stop deploying it, let alone roll back existing deployments. Perhaps it may spur a quicker pace to Tuning Adapter deployments, but as those deployments, or plans for deployment, are already underway I suspect there won’t be any real world impact.

So the end result is maybe a little karmic payback for MSOs who rushed out SDV without consideration for the FCCs rules or their CableCARD users, and perhaps next time around they’ll give it more consideration. But even that would depend on the FCC levying fines in more territories, in my opinion. The current fines are just too small to have any real impact on the MSOs, the FCC needs to slap the MSOs for all the territories in which they deployed SDV before making Tuning Adapters available.

It does make me wonder, since Tuning Adapters don’t work with all CableCARD UDCP devices (either because they lack a USB port or the firmware to support a TA), is simply offering the TA enough to be compliant with the requirement to provide video to CableCARD devices? Personally I think the effort is there and it should be, it is up to CableCARD device makers to support the TA. Yes, it does mean some early adopters are out of luck, but with CableCARD in use in a very small number of 3rd party devices overall, and many of them capable of supporting a TA (like TiVo), it isn’t going to be a large number of users who are affected.

So, in the end, I don’t think these fines will really change anything, certainly not for end users today.

According to TWICE, Digeo has signed an agreement with BendBroadband to distribute the Moxi 3012 HD DVR to their digital cable customers in central Oregon. BendBroadband is a small cable MSO serving the Bend, Redmond, Sisters, Black Butte, Tumalo, and Terrebonne areas of Oregon. Digeo claims this is the second order and deployment for the 3012, I’m presuming the first is the previously reported deal with Charter. However, I still have not been able to find any indication that Charter has actually deployed the Moxi 3012 to anyone who isn’t an employee of Charter. It doesn’t seem to be available to consumers yet.

The Moxi 3012 will provide two-way communication with the BendBroadband head-end, however it does not use tru2way but rather the legacy communication channels. A Multi-Stream CableCARD enables dual-tuner support. Deployment is targeted for sometime this quarter (4Q08), we’ll see.