In addition to focusing on small- and medium-size U.S. operators, TiVo will seek to expand distribution in Western Europe, Rogers said. But TiVo has parted with one potential partner in Telenor’s Canal Digital direct-to-home satellite service in Scandinavia, Rogers said. TiVo signed an agreement with Canal Digital in late 2010, but the company has undergone a management shakeup, including the departure of CEO Tone Krohn Clausen, and is said to have been up for sale.

“They had a big strategic process they were going through in selling the company and we decided pouring resources into a company that might be selling itself near term might not be the smartest thing,” Rogers said. “It’s not clear what they are doing and for the kind of shoulder that it takes roll out what we do, we knew that it would not be the best circumstances.”

So we finally have an explanation of what happened with that deal. It’s dead, Jim. Well, at least for now. It sounds like the door is still open if Canal Digital sorts their issues out and is still interested, but TiVo doesn’t want to get involved for now.

You might have noticed the first sentence in the quoted material, about small- and medium-sized US operators. That’s actually the main gist of the CED article. TiVo is seeing most of their traction in the US come from those operators, and not the big boys. So they aren’t putting a lot of energy into pursuing ‘Comcast-size’ deals. While TiVo’s deal with Comcast is significant, it is clear that Comcast’s focus is on their own in-house developed service, X1. While it seems that Comcast will fulfill their end of the agreement and continue to expand coverage of TiVo support for XFINITY VOD, TiVo is really a secondary offering for them. Their primary push is going to be X1, and understandably so.

Five of the largest MVPDs in TiVo-served territories – Comcast, British Sky Broadcasting, DirecTV, Dish Network and Time Warner Cable – are working on DVR strategies in-house and are unlikely to ever adopt TiVo’s software as their primary platform. I’d also add Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-Verse to that list. While TiVo may be able to collect licensing revenue for their patents from these providers, there’s little chance they’ll contribute directly to subscriber numbers. But the small- and medium-size MSOs don’t have the resources to develop their own DVRs, so they need third party vendors to fill the need – which is where TiVo comes in. They’ve already had success in the US with MSOs such as RCN, Suddenlink, Grande Communications, and more.

Of course, they have landed one major MSO as well – Charter Communications. But the deal seems to be stuck in neutral. Charter began deploying TiVo in Fort Worth, TX last November and at the time planned a“full production launch enterprise wide in the first half of 2012.” However, in February of this year they announced they they were pushing the schedule out, without providing any new time frame.

Since then we haven’t really heard much, and Charter’s TiVo deployment remains limited to Dallas & Ft. Worth, TX. Rogers stated that TiVo is “working closely” with Charter to expand their deployment into new territories. There has been some speculation, which I also heard going around The Cable Show, that Charter might be one of the early customers for the new Pace XG1 running the TiVo software. And that could account for the hold up, waiting for the XG1 to be available, but that’s just a rumor and I don’t know that I’d put much stock in it.

Check out the Consumer Electronics Daily article for yourself.

There are other tidbits, such as the statement that side-loading is up to 4x speed, so an hour-long program and be loaded in as little as 15 minutes. But I don’t really agree with the comments about side-loading vs. out-of-home streaming (ala Slingbox). While I acknowledge side-loading is useful for environments where streaming isn’t viable, such as on an aircraft, I really have no interest in side-loading. I prefer to stream my content real-time from my TiVo when I’m on the road. The comments about broadband speeds just don’t ring true anymore. Back in the day I used to stream from my Slingbox to my Palm Treo over a 200kbps EDGE connection, and it was perfectly usable.

These days almost every phone has a 3G connection many times faster, if not a 4G LTE connection. WiFi is nigh-ubiquitous, and upload speeds from the home are more than capable of streaming content at a solid quality. My Slingbox PRO-HD can stream 720p video starting at around 1.5Mbps, which is not at all uncommon these days. So the excuse that out-of-the-home streaming isn’t supported due to available broadband capacity just doesn’t hold water. I hope TiVo gets it together and adds it to the TiVo Stream quickly. Especially for those of us with providers who copy-protect nearly everything, making side-loading impossible in the first place.

Watch the video for yourself, of course.

“TiVo Premiere has always offered the best of XFINITY TV channels with the most popular web services, and we are excited to now integrate the XFINITY On Demand library for Boston subscribers, delivering a true one-stop shop for at-home entertainment,” said Doug Bieter, Vice President of Retail Sales for TiVo, Inc. “We are pleased that TiVo Premiere users in the Boston area will have an opportunity to experience this great XFINITY On Demand content and we look forward to additional markets in the near future.”

TiVo states it is available in the ‘greater Boston area’, so it should cover a fairly large geographic area. The TiVo website has a zip code look up to determine if your area has service. I just checked my old Waltham, MA zip code, 02453, and the site reports that service is available. (These days I’m in Worcester, MA, 01606, which is Charter territory. So no XFINITY On Demand for me.)

There is a little bit of bad news though. If you’re one of the few users still clinging to the old ‘soft-TiVo’ (Comcast DVR with TiVo) that Comcast offered way back in 2008 in the area, it is time to give it up and buy a real TiVo. For those who don’t remember, this was a special software image for Comcast’s standard Motorola DVR hardware that gave it the TiVo UI. But it never worked very well as the hardware is under powered and you had the HW running the base OS, with a Java interpreter on top of that, which then ran the TiVo software. It was a great idea in concept, but it never worked well in reality. So I don’t think this is a big loss, and the retail TiVo Premiere unit is far more powerful and feature-rich than those old units.

Now that they’re launching On Demand support for retail TiVo Premiere units, Comcast is discontinuing support for the soft-TiVo units on or around August 1, 2012. So you have until then to pick up a TiVo Premiere unit if you want to continue to have TiVo in your home. Before you run out and buy one at retail – TiVo is offering you one for free! See tivo.com/bostonoffer for details. They’re offering a 320GB TiVo Premiere for free with a monthly rate discounted to $12.95 from the usual $14.99, with a one year commitment. Or product lifetime service is $499.99. This offer is only for users who still have the Comcast DVR with TiVo.

If you’d rather have the 500GB TiVo Premiere, the 1TB TiVo Premiere XL, or the 2TB, four tuner TiVo Premiere XL4 they’re offering $100 off on those. And if you want multiple units they’re offering factory refurbished units for $49.99. (Personally I’d just get the XL4 and wait for the IP STB due later this year for multi-room functionality.) Again, these deals are only for customers who currently have the old Comcast DVR with TiVo and who are looking to switch before their service is turned off on or around August 1st.

If you’re not a Comcast DVR with TiVo users, and you don’t yet have a TiVo Premiere with which to take advantage of this new support, there is a sale on the TiVo Premiere XL and TiVo Premiere Elite on – but it ends today. $50 off a factory-renewed Premiere XL or a new Premiere Elite – $149.99 and $349.99, respectively. And yes, Premiere Elite, not Premiere XL4 – they’re getting rid of the remaining pre-name-change stock, I asked. Same hardware, different badge on the front. Amazon has the 320GB Premiere for $89.99, the 500GB Premiere for $109.75, the Premiere XL for $203.24 (did they miss the memo about list dropping to $199.99?), and the Premiere XL4 for $342.10.

TiVo Premiere subscribers in additional markets across the country are expected to have access to the XFINITY On Demand library in the coming months. Visit www.tivo.com/comcast to learn more or to sign up for notifications when XFINITY On Demand becomes available on TiVo Premiere in additional areas. Boston is the second Comcast service area to receive XFINITY On Demand support, following the SF Bay Area.

Which area will be third? I think Chicago may have a shot. Why? Back in 2008 Chicago looked set to be the next market for the soft-TiVo, after Boston, but the roll out stopped before it launched there. And Chicago is one of two cities where Comcast launched tru2way support as a trial with TV manufacturers, before that effort fizzled as well. (The other city was Denver.) This means they’ve probably already done a lot of work upgrading their head ends there, and they are likely in a good position to take the upgrade for the new service. Plus Chicago is a large market, apparently 2.3 million cable households, so it would have a potential for a large return.

But that’s all speculation of course. Only Comcast knows where they’ll launch the service next.

Yeah Boston! MT @ stevegarfield Breaking: Available next week for Boston area Comcast @TiVo customers, XFINITY VOD bit.ly/JEaxLz

— Steve Wymer (@stevewymer) May 24, 2012

For those who don’t know, Steve is TiVo’s Head of Corporate Communications. So this is an ‘official’ source who would know. I suspect Comcast didn’t announce this during The Cable Show because they wanted to keep the attention focused on their X1 product announcements.

Thanks to Brennok for the tip.

EDIT: I originally said ‘Monday’ since Brennok had used that in his comment and it wedged in my brain and when I read Steve’s ‘next week’ I think I mentally filled in ‘next Monday’. I replaced ‘Monday’ with ‘next week’ throughout the post to better reflect what Steve actually said.

So far I’ve really only posted what I learned from TiVo, since I know that’s the leading interest for my readers, but they’re hardly the only vendor I talked to. I had some great conversations with vendors such as Pace, Arris, Humax, SiliconDust, Comcast, and others. I just need to recover from the show and find some time to do some additional research and compose some more posts. For some hints about what I’ll be covering you can check out the photos I took. Bear with me, I also need to pick up my day job in the morning.

If you want a glimpse of what the show floor was like The Cable Show posted a short video tour. Walking the floor is sped up, which makes me want to mash up the video with Yakety Sax. (Some of you get it, I’m sure.) I found that if you play it back at .25x it is more like a fast walk and you can catch more detail.

The HDHomeRun Prime is a remote tuner, you connect it to your cable and your network and the tuners are then available for Windows 7 Windows Media Center PCs on the network to use for watching live TV or recording. You can get the full product details from the SiliconDust website. Today the HDHomeRun Prime officially requires a Windows 7 Windows Media Center PC, but I did just talk to SiliconDust at The Cable Show this week. They’re working on adding DLNA/DTCP-IP support which would allow any DLNA/DTCP-IP-enabled device to access the tuners over the network. I’ll get around to writing a post on that.

It is a simple device. There is a coax connection for the cable, a slot for the M-Card CableCARD, Ethernet for the network, USB to support a Tuning Adapter if required, and a power connection. The $129.99 price is lower than Amazon’s $149.99 new price, and nearly half off the full $249.99 MSRP.

And that was before the Collections service bundle promotions were offered, which kicked off with the current quarter. Virgin Media really seems to be the ideal TiVo would hope all of their MSO deals could be.

Here’s the new ad:

They also put out a shorter version of the previously released ‘Jellyfish’ ad, so I may as well share that while I’m at it:

There were familial obligations – Mother’s Day, our nephew’s birthday, stuff that needed to get done around our house, etc. And my day job has kept me pretty busy lately, including a trip down to New Jersey this past week. Just a storm of time sucks and catching up from being laid up took up the rest.

So I have a bit of catching up to do here on recent events, such as TiVo’s latest software update, and a bunch of other stuff. But I think I’m healthy again and feeling as well as I can expect given the pollen levels. So I’m going to try to knock out some posts to catch up. Sorry I’ve been absent, it bugs me when that happens too.

The timing is good since The Cable Show hits Boston this week – Monday through Wednesday. Well, actually, there is a press reception Sunday night at Fenway Park that I’ll be attending as well. This is my first time attending The Cable Show, so I’m not quite sure what to expect. I’ve attended may other trade shows and conferences over the years, both as an exhibitor and as an attendee/blogger, so I know the generalities. But each show is different, so it will be interesting to see what this one is like.

I have a meeting scheduled with TiVo on Monday morning, just after the show floor opens. So if there is anything you really want to know about, leave a comment. Oh, but don’t suggest asking about obvious stuff like the forthcoming transcoder box and IP STB, or the new SDK, as those are already on my list to follow up on, along with the rest of the road map info they previously shared. Being that this is The Cable Show I expect a lot of what TiVo will have to say will relate to their progress in the MSO market with less focus on retail products. This is their show blurb:

Only the TiVo® service brings together the best of TV, VOD and web entertainment together in a single user interface, with one remote and one simple search across everything. And in this environment of increasing over-the-top competition and shifting consumer loyalties, TiVo is uniquely suited to combine over a decade of consumer experience with the ability to integrate with existing infrastructures and the know-how to execute with speed. New this year, TiVo is showcasing its whole-home and TV-everywhere solutions, which offer the same award-winning TiVo experience on every screen, big or small. Come see why more and more cable operators are choosing TiVo for their advanced-television solutions.

Still, let me know what you want to learn.

And if there is anyone else on the exhibitor list you think I really must visit, or anything specific I should ask about, feel free to suggest it. I can’t make any promises, there is only so much time in the day, but I’m always interested in checking out interesting stuff. And if you’re an exhibitor and you think I really need to meet with you, feel free to contact me.

Speaking of contacting me, I’m always interested in meeting up with my fellow bloggers, especially since I haven’t made it to CES in a few years. So if you’re going to be there and want to get together contact me directly if you have my info, or just go through the site. And if you’ve done The Cable Show before and have any pointers, I’m open to suggestions.

Hopefully next week I’ll have some interesting info to share.

This actually isn’t a surprise, as I’ve posted a couple of times, a while back Comcast made the comment that New England was high on their list of territories to follow the SF Bay. Why? Well, to quote myself:

New England is where Comcast launched the old ‘soft-TiVo’ project. The software-only Java-based TiVo interface that was downloaded to run on their standard Motorola DVR hardware. Despite several years of effort it just never worked well. The HW was under-powered, and with the TiVo interface running in Java on a virtual machine running on top of the native OS, it wasn’t a great performer. And Comcast never seemed to iron out the issues with the head end that was supposed to allow them to dynamically push the TiVo software to units in the field. While the effort was abandoned when Comcast switched focus to XFINITY support for retail units, the existing deployment of soft-TiVo units are still supported. Comcast is looking to finally phase them out by getting the users to migrate to a TiVo Premiere once they can do so without losing their On Demand. So they have an incentive to prioritize New England.

So they still have a number of those old units in the field that they’d love to stop supporting, and I bet many of the customers would love the added benefits of having a real TiVo to boot. And perhaps Comcast will be able to recycle some of the work they did on the head end for that project to support the new roll out. In any case, TiVo confirmed today via email that Boston is the next market that will see this roll out. They didn’t provide a specific time frame, saying only that Boston would see this ‘soon’.

As always, you can sign up to be notified when this is available in your area at tivo.com/comcast

Remember, Comcast controls when this is rolled out to a new area, not TiVo. TiVo has delivered their part, the software integration on the unit. The other piece is the head end upgrades to support the service, and that’s what Comcast needs to do for each service area where this is deployed. That’s why it wasn’t flipped on for everyone at once, and why it is getting a region by region roll out. So don’t bother TiVo with questions about when it will come to your area. Odds are they don’t know, and even if they do know they can’t speak for Comcast until Comcast is willing to announce their plans. If you need to pester anyone, pester Comcast.

I’d love to see this integrated into the US units. As in the UK, keep the back-dated guide data going back a week or so. While we don’t have the dedicated catch up services like they have in the UK, we do have Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, and MSO On Demand services where supported. So the guide could link directly to the available service(s).

With the change, the company said in a statement provided to Multichannel News, it will shift resources to support “EchoStar’s unique intellectual property and advanced content-delivery technologies.” The company owns Sling Media, developer of the Slingbox device, and acquired the adaptive bit-rate technology of Move Technologies last year for $45 million.

However, EchoStar said it “remains firmly committed to supplying advanced hardware, software, and system solutions to its global cable, satellite, and telecom customers outside of the U.S. cable set top box market.”

“EchoStar recognizes that the highly demanding and competitive nature of the U.S. set-top market is very cost-competitive,” the company said. “After considerable review of the market and EchoStar’s sales/product development efforts, EchoStar has concluded the U.S. cable market offers insufficient revenue return opportunities to the company and our investors.”

That’s good news for TiVo, as Aria had the potential to be a serious competitor, especially with small-to-medium MSOs, if EchoStar was able to execute. EchoStar certainly knows how to make DVRs; something like a CableCARD version of DISH Network’s Hopper could’ve been quite a strong whole-home product. The death of Aria removes a potential competitor from the field, and really effectively leaves only ARRIS’s Moxi lineup to compete with TiVo for the small-to-medium market. The larger MSO market is dominated by traditional players like Motorola and Cisco, though TiVo has made inroads there with the likes of Charter.

It has been a long time coming, but TiVo Premiere using Comcast customers in the San Francisco Bay Area now have access to XFINITY On Demand content. Well, at least some of them. It started rolling out on April 9th and should be rolled out across Comcast’s SF Bay service area by the end of the month. So if you’re a Comcast customer in the SF Bay Area and you don’t have XFINITY On Demand on your TiVo Premiere yet – give it some more time. You can check for current availability in your zip code, and sign up for notification of future availability, at tivo.com/comcast.

As for Comcast customers outside of the SF Bay Area – you’ll just have to keep waiting. Comcast hasn’t announced any definite plans or schedules for expansion of XFINITY On Demand support for TiVo to other service areas. And this is 100% in their hands. TiVo has delivered their end, but Comcast needs to update their head-end systems in each service area before they can enable this. The only indication we’ve had is that New England is high up on the list to get this after the SF Bay roll out is complete.

New England is where Comcast launched the old ‘soft-TiVo’ project. The software-only Java-based TiVo interface that was downloaded to run on their standard Motorola DVR hardware. Despite several years of effort it just never worked well. The HW was under-powered, and with the TiVo interface running in Java on a virtual machine running on top of the native OS, it wasn’t a great performer. And Comcast never seemed to iron out the issues with the head end that was supposed to allow them to dynamically push the TiVo software to units in the field. While the effort was abandoned when Comcast switched focus to XFINITY support for retail units, the existing deployment of soft-TiVo units are still supported. Comcast is looking to finally phase them out by getting the users to migrate to a TiVo Premiere once they can do so without losing their On Demand. So they have an incentive to prioritize New England.

Beyond that all we’ve heard is that other service areas will see support “in the coming months”. You’d have to ask Comcast for more details – not that they’re talking just yet.

We’re very happy to announce that BBC Red Button is now available to Virgin Media TiVo customers. The features available include video news, full length text articles from the BBC News website and coverage of F1 season that is always up to date and available whenever you want to watch. Later this year the BBC Sport Red button services will be extended to cover other major events e.g. Euro 2012, Wimbledon and Olympics.

If you’re watching any BBC channel, just press the red button on your TiVo remote. Then arrow up or down to choose iPlayer or the News or Sports app, then select OK. Or you can select the BBC News or Sports app from the ‘Apps & Games’ section of your TiVo menu.

The new service is being rolled out to everyone over the next 24 hours, so don’t worry if you can’t see it yet.

Thanks
Mark Wilkin
Help & Support Forum Manager

Actually they started deploying it a week ago, on April 11th, I’m just a little behind on my reporting.

Via The Virgin Media TiVo Blog

Virgin Media is offering three different Collections featuring TiVo:

Essential Collection:

• 500GB TiVo
• TV: M+ 75 channels including six HD
• 30Mbps broadband
• 3000 hours of TV on demand
• NO additional HD box included
• Talk Weekends unlimited phone calls (Unlimited weekend calls to landlines starting 01, 02 03, plus 0870 numbers and Virgin Mobile phones.)
• £25 per month

Premiere Collection:

• 500GB TiVo
• TV: XL 175 channels including 23 HD
• 60Mbps broadband
• 7000 hours of TV on demand
• Free additional V HD box included for another room
• Talk Weekends unlimited phone calls (Unlimited weekend calls to landlines starting 01, 02 03, plus 0870 numbers and Virgin Mobile phones.)
• Included Extras: 3 months of Spotify, access to ESPN/ESPN HD
• £45 per month

VIP Collection:

• 1TB TiVo
• TV: XL 175 channels including 36 HD (counting 13 HD channels for Sky Premiums) as well as Sky Sports 1-4, Sky Sports F1 and Sky Movies
• 100Mbps broadband (increasing to 120Mbps soon)
• 7000 hours of TV on demand
• Free additional V HD box included for another room
• Talk Anytime unlimited phone calls (unlimited evening and weekend calls. Cheaper mobile and international calls)
• Included Extras: 3 months of Spotify, access to ESPN/ESPN HD, Sky Sports & Movies collection, HD fee for Sky Premiums, Talk Plan extras (Mobile/ International/08)
• £90 per month

Of course, there is fine print:

All prices are when taken with a Virgin Home Phone line at £13.90 per month, e-billing and with payment via Direct Debit. All Virgin Home Phone services include unlimited calls to UK voice landlines, 0870 numbers and Virgin Mobiles during inclusive talk periods. All Virgin Broadband services come complete with SuperHub dual-band wireless ‘n’ router and a free security suite featuring Parental Controls for the lifetime of a customer’s broadband subscription. All Virgin TV services come with access to Catch Up TV (featuring BBC iPlayer, ITV Net Player, 4OD, Demand Five and Sky Anytime on Virgin Media), Virgin TV on Demand, and basic HD at no extra cost (£7 fee payable for Sky Premiums in HD). Installation fee of £49.95 applies. Standard contract terms 12m for new or existing customers. 6m Half Price offer only available to new customers taking a Collection on an 18m contract. Subject to change.

To promote these new Collections Virgin Media is creating new ads featuring VM CEO, and Bond-villain-in-waiting, Richard Branson and star of stage and screen David Tennant. David is best known as the Tenth Doctor, the 10th regeneration of the titular character in the BBC’s Doctor Who. That actually caused a bit of a spat in the UK between the BBC and Virgin Media. See, the BBC has some strict rules about any of their properties, such as Doctor Who, being used in marketing from any outside vendors. And the first ad created for Virgin Media featuring David Tennant had a time travel joke and a direct reference to David’s star turn in Doctor Who. That video was posted, then yanked, re-posted in an edited form, and has now apparently been yanked from Virgin’s YouTube Channels again. However, the Internet being the Internet, there are numerous copies of the original version of the video posted by other users – such as this one:

Two additional ads have since been released:

There is also a behind the scenes ‘making of’ video:

There is a video embedding in the Virgin Media Collections page, but for some reason they’ve decided to region restrict it so it isn’t playing for me here in the US. I don’t get that, it is a promotional video for their own products, why lock it down? But, of course, it has been ripped and uploaded to YouTube multiple times:

Note that TiVo’s major MSO partners in Europe, Virgin Media and ONO, handle their own advertising sales and thus will not count toward that ten million subscriber target. Nor does it include the “TiVo Design” Insignia Connected TV’s sold by Best Buy, at least not at this time. Maitra did point out, however, that TiVo’s recent deal to bring their platform to Pace hardware does include an advertising component. So that deal may open up new MSO markets for TiVo.

In the meantime TiVo does still sell advertising, of course. It seems it must be somewhat successful for customers as Maitra stated that over 50% of TiVo’s ad buyers are repeat customers. TiVo users are probably familiar with these ads. They may be seen on the screen that pops up at the end of a recording, at the bottom of a program group in the Now Playing List, or on the main ‘TiVo Central’ menu screen. TiVo also has had other ad options, such as static ‘billboard’ ads that overlay a commercial for the same product if the commercial is being fast forwarded. TiVo seems to have a working formula for advertisers, now they just need to bring the numbers up to create a more attractive market.

“We used to hear all kinds of things from advertisers and agencies about pricing,” Maitra said. “I feel that we have gotten it all right except that they just want more homes. Now we have at least satisfied the trajectory and growth requirements. We have priced the advertising for the number of homes that TiVo is in and it’s working, but none wanted to invest in something that they didn’t have confidence would be a growth platform.”

CED also spoke with Thomas McMillin, Chief Operating Office for Suddenlink, one of the MSOs currently distributing TiVo DVRs directly to their customers. McMillin had some good news, and some bad news. First, the good news; Suddenlink serves 1.37 million homes and TiVo is available to customers in 70% of their markets, and it should be in 90% of their markets by year end. But he bad news is they currently have only 20,000 TiVo units deployed, in 10,000 homes. Yes, clearly some homes have multiple units.

Suddenlink is taking a “conversative” approach to marketing TiVo to their customers, positioning it as a premium upgrade from their standard HD DVR. Suddenlink charges a $15 monthly fee for TiVo and requires that customers have broadband with a minimum speed of 10Mbps. All told they have HD DVRs, TiVo included, in 47.7% of their customers’ homes. Doing some back-of-the-envelope math that means 653,490 homes with HD DVRs, 643,490 of which are not TiVo households.

The main reason for the soft sell on TiVo seems to be their existing stock of non-TiVo HD DVRs. They don’t want to be “stuck with” them if they were to more aggressively push TiVo. That does leave a ray of sunshine though. Hardware has a finite usable life, and that stock of non-TiVo HD DVRs will eventually be exhausted and begin to wear out and need replacing. If TiVo can position themselves as that replacement they’d have a slow but steady market by attrition.

Via Consumer Electronics Daily.

So TiVo sued Verizon. Then Motorola sued TiVo in apparent retaliation (much like Microsoft sued TiVo after TiVo sued AT&T). Now TiVo is filing a counter suit against Motorola (as they did against Microsoft), and to top it off they’ve included Motorola customer Time Warner Cable in the new suit. There’s some high stakes legal poker going on here.

Tongue out of cheek, the timing is primarily due to the stay on the Motorola suit, which was in place while the AT&T & Microsoft cases proceeded as they involved the same patents, being lifted. As long as the case was stayed TiVo was under no pressure to file a counter suit, but not things are moving forward. TiVo announced the suit in a simple SEC filing:

On March 26, 2012, the Company filed an answer and amended counterclaims in response to a patent infringement suit that Motorola initiated against the Company in the Eastern District of Texas in 2011 that was stayed until earlier this year. In its response, the Company alleged counterclaims against Motorola and Time Warner Cable, one of Motorola’s customers, for infringing U.S. Patent Nos. 6,233,389, 7,529,465, and 6,792,195 owned by TiVo.

The full court filing has been posted on Scribd (thanks to Sam Biller):
TiVo files answers and amended counterclaims against Motorola & Time Warner Cable

The patents involved are the same core patents behind the EchoStar/DISH Network and AT&T settlements, as well as the ongoing case against FiOS. TiVo’s been successful so far, 2 for 2, so that’s a good sign. Time Warner Cable is the only remaining top five MVPD in the US that TiVo doesn’t have a business agreement or a legal settlement from. TiVo has business agreements with the top two, Comcast and DirecTV, and fifth place Cox Communications. Third place DISH Network settled with TiVo. That leaves TWC in fourth place, and many investors have wondered when TiVo would take some form of action against TWC if they didn’t come to an agreement.

These legal fights tend to drag on for years, so I’m not going to hold my breath waiting on any outcome just yet.

In addition to the ARRIS Whole Home Solution, Buckeye is deploying the next generation ConvergeMedia video on demand (VOD) platform, and ServAssure Advanced network monitoring solution. So they’re bringing ARRIS in throughout their organization. That’s an area ARRIS has an advantage over TiVo. They can offer an end-to-end solution for small MSOs from a single vendor. This is the kind of small operator that TiVo pursues via their partnership with Evolution Digital and Clearleap. But a multi-vendor solution is rarely as clean.

See the press release for more details.

There are no real revelations here, but I find it interesting how TiVo positions the products for the MSO market.

It is interesting that the Premiere and Q mention Amazon On Demand as one of the features. That would seem to indicate it is something MSOs could provide, yet they generally do not. I think they need someone to review these though, as the Premiere’s one-sheet states “Record four shows at once”, which is a Q feature only. So who knows, maybe the Amazon mention isn’t so meaningful?

The TiVo Preview sheet mentions YouTube only once, in the overview at the top. But I note that Charter’s recently published feature matrix for their Preview deployment indicates that YouTube is not supported on the Preview. A goof on TiVo’s document? I wouldn’t expect Charter to disable YouTube on the Preview if it is supported, since they enable it on the Premiere.

Between this one-sheet and Charter’s document it seems the Preview doesn’t support any OTT video streaming services – no YouTube or Hulu Plus. I wouldn’t expect Amazon or Blockbuster, since those are download services and the Preview doesn’t have any storage. And Netflix we know isn’t available for contractual reasons. I wonder if the Preview has an issue with Internet video streaming services, not enough memory for buffering? It just seems curious. I need to remember to ask about that at The Cable Show in May.

The Premiere and Q sheets also say “connected to the home network through Broadband”, which doesn’t make any sense, even in context. What they really meant, from context, seems to be “connected to the home network through Ethernet”. But that’s a minor, geeky nit to pick, I admit.

Oh, while I’m at it, another area of interest is the Partner & Affiliates resources page. There’s some really interesting stuff there, like the TiVo Sales & Install Guide, Brochures and Spec Sheets, screenshots, messaging for retailers to use in pitching TiVo’s products, etc. TiVo has a lot of interesting stuff squirreled away on their site, including documentation on their Network Remote Control Protocol.

Now, I’ve seen some reports that he said they will bring Netflix and/or Lovefilm to their TiVo platform, but that’s not quite what he actually said. This is:

DTVE: Do you think platforms like TiVo are the best defense for cable against the so-called OTT players like Netflix?

Neil Berkett: We embrace over-the-top quite frankly. We’re somewhat unique in the the way in which our revenue is structured. So we will bring the likes of a Netflix or a Lovefilm onto our TiVo platform.

Note “the likes of”. That leaves wiggle room for them to use Netflix or Lovefilm, or some other, similar service entirely. Now, I think Netflix and Lovefilm are the best potential services for Virgin, but I wouldn’t treat this like an official announcement of any actual plans. Still, it is encouraging. Watch the video for more:

Neil Berkett: Virgin Media will bring OTT players like Netflix to TiVo from Digital TV Europe on Vimeo.

From Digital TV Europe via The Virgin Media TiVo Blog.

Joshua covers a lot of interesting territory, with the primary focus being on TiVo’s app support. TiVo is focused on providing a consistent app environment across their platforms, be it retail or provider units. Today the focus on on the Adobe Air/Flash environment which is used on the retail and MSO Premiere units in the US, and the Virgin Media and ONO boxes in Europe. There is still support for the Java environment used on earlier platforms, as in HME, and TiVo is looking at other environments.

For developers seeking to get their app onto TiVo they work directly with TiVo for the retail market, but need to work with the providers for their TiVo units. TiVo can help facilitate those conversations for developers seeking to get their apps on multiple platforms, but it is up to the individual operators to approve an app for their customers.

He also talked a bit about working with different size operators, from giants like Comcast and Charter with millions of users, down to small MSOs with 150,000 subscribers. Definitely worth watching, IMHO. Now if we could just have the SDK released and actually start seeing more apps!

Via Broadband TV News

But now their support page for TiVo has been updated with a link to a PDF for Multi-Room Experience. The PDF details both the TiVo Premiere and TiVo Preview (no mention of the 4-tuner TiVo Premire Q/Elite though), with a table of features for each. (Click for a larger view.)

I’m a little surprised by no YouTube on the Preview, I would’ve taken that for granted as a standard feature. I’m nearly as surprised by the lack of web video support. It seems like there is no broadband streaming video support at all, only local streaming from a TiVo Premiere. There is some OTT content; music services like Rhapsody, Pandora, and Live365 are supported. It is nice to see that scheduling recordings and setting up Wish Lists are ‘Coming Soon’. We’d heard as much earlier from RCN, but confirmation is nice.

While Charter’s deployment timeline has stretched, it is good news that they’re introducing the TiVo Preview to the mix. I am still a bit surprised by the lack of the Premiere Q. The quad-tuner box was tailor made for MSOs. Unless Charter still has too many hybrid service areas and the all-digital Q wouldn’t work for them. In my area I expected to lose some channels on my Premiere Elite, since I’m on Charter, but it turns out the analog channels I used seem to have digital simulcast and I didn’t notice any losses.

Now, I think someone jumped the gun in posting this. If you look closely you’ll notice the pages are marked diagonally with “Draft For Internal Review – Do Not Distribute”. So either someone forgot to save out a new copy of the document without the watermark, or this wasn’t supposed to go live yet. Just in case, here are the two pages of the document – it’s a bit more compact than the 6MB PDF.

Thanks to reader Sam Biller for the tip.

Adjusting for Comcast’s new numbers the top five MSOs, Cablevision, Charter Communications, Comcast Corporation, Cox Communications, and Time Warner Cable, collectively deployed 557,296 CableCARDs. Extending that to the top ten MSOs gives a small bump to 595,296, which shows how many customers are concentrated into the largest MSOs. By way of comparison, these same ten MSOs have installed more thsn 32,000,000 CableCARDs in MSO provided STBs. And that is the best evidence of just how badly CableCARD has flopped in the retail market.

At this point TiVo is effectively the only retail CableCARD vendor left! There are a handful of PC CableCARD tuner products, but the total sales are negligible. CableCARD enabled TVs are all but gone from the market. And now that Moxi is gone I think TiVo is the last retail CableCARD DVR. Personally I think this demonstrates why we need AllVid to create a truly competitive open market.

Cablevision reports 27,472 CableCARD subscribers, an increase of 8% over the previous report. But before you get too excited, the new numbers include subscribers from Optimum West, which was integrated into Cablevision during the quarter. These 27,472 subscribers account for 39,462 CableCARDs, so there are a number of multi-card households. During the reporting period they actually had 5,288 new CableCARD installs, 57% of which were self-installs. The rest opted for professional installs, which cost an average of $34.95. The good news is they average 1.0 truck rolls per install, so they get it right the first time. And they charge $2/month per card.

Charter reported a total of 31,884 CableCARDs in service. And they still average 1.5 truck rolls per professional installation, the worst of the lot. I can believe it, I’m a Charter customer. The techs I’ve worked with have all been great, but many have expressed a desire for more training on CableCARD and TiVo. I’ve heard from a number of them that they’re really not being trained, and it seems like there are a couple of ‘experts’ in the area that they always end up calling. (I’ve had to have Charter out a couple of times for CableCARD and/or Tuning Adapter issues. Invariably it ends up being a back end problem, but the phone techs give up and insist on sending truck. Then the tech ends up calling around until he finds the right person to fix the issue.) Charter also charges $2/month per card, and an average of $35.00 for professional installs.

Comcast, from their corrected 2/23/12 numbers, has 370,407 CableCARDs in customer homes. Since the last report they installed 25,789 new cards, with only 29% being self-installs. It seems like Comcast customers opt for professional installs 71% of the time, which I find surprising, though it might be explained by the pricing. While they charge an average of $26.00 if it is a separate trip, it drops to $7.15 if it is part of a larger installation. And it takes an average of 1.04 truck rolls, so odds are good they’ll get it right the first time. Comcast’s first card is generally free, and additional cards in the same device average $1.50. (It isn’t in the report, but I believe additional cards in other devices are normally $2/month.)

Cox has 52,479 CableCARDs in service, at an average cost of $1.99/month. Customers who opt for a professional install pay an average of $24.00, though it takes an average of 1.1 visits. So your more likely to get to have the chance to get to know your installer better than with Cablevision or Comcast.

TWC has 75,542 CableCARDs in use with 54,575 subscribers, so again we know there are a number of multi-card households. TWC’s cards are the most expensive, at an average of $2.37 (I’ve heard that they charge quite a bit in some areas, which would explain the elevated average). Surprisingly their install numbers are even most skewed than Comcast’s, with 83% electing professional installs, which cost an average of $28.16. Why do so many people opt for professional installation? I’d love to know the motivation there.

All in all, not much has changed since the last report. I wish the different MSOs would normalize their reporting – some report self-install vs. professional installs. Some report costs with more granularity. Subscribers vs. number of cards. It’d be nice if they’d all report the same things in the same way. I can dream.

Clearleap’s Stream On Demand solution enables operators to tap into Clearleap’s robust search, intuitive browse, and improved discovery of advanced video services through a white label application branded with operator’s own look and feel. Clearleap’s end?to?end, cloud?based platform allows operators to deliver a complete video service over existing broadband networks without dependencies on legacy video infrastructure.

Now Clearleap has announced four small MSOs have adopted their ClearPlay Streaming Services for VOD.

enTouch Systems, Inc. and its cable group, ETS Cablevision, serve a growing number of communities throughout the Greater Houston Area with fiber-to-the-home services. The company has offered on demand services to its subscribers for some time and recently decided to offer TiVo boxes to its subscribers. The ClearPlay streaming option complements the TiVo set top deployment with easily scalable, economical on-demand content.

Greenlight is Wilson, North Carolina’s community network. Like enTouch Systems, the organization was interested in offering its subscribers TiVo boxes for their cable and on demand services. ClearPlay answered the need for a turnkey IP-based streaming service that can scale as more subscribers sign on.

ImOn Communications, headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, plans to offer new on demand services using ClearPlay streaming services to its subscribers on Roku boxes.

Jackson Energy Authority, based in Jackson, Tenn. is launching new on demand services with the ClearPlay streaming service to its subscribers.

I believe this is the first we’ve learned of ETS Cablevision and Greenlight adopting TiVo. I don’t see it on their sites yet, but since this deal was just announced I’m not surprised. They probably haven’t implemented it yet, let alone launched it to consumers. But we may be seeing these MSOs on TiVo’s page soon.

It is interesting to see an MSO offering services through Roku boxes. Until I saw the Clearleap news last year, and checked out their site, I hadn’t heard of Roku being used by MSOs.

Clearleap will be at The Cable Show in Boston in May, as will I, so I’ll make sure to track them down and check out their solution.

Being a Yank I’m not very familiar with Red Button myself, but from what I’ve seen I’m a bit jealous, we don’t really have services like it in the US. Basically it is the future of interactive television that we’ve been promised for years, but we never seen to get. Red Button services can provide interactive features on television, such as calling up scores and stats during sporting events. Or more advanced features such as alternate camera angles or feeds of an event.

Red Button services first became available to subscribers of Sky Sports and Sky Sports HD on Friday. The next roll out will be for subscribers of the Sky Sports F1 channel, which is coming soon to Virgin Media. And Red Button services for the BBC are planned for an April roll out.

The Virgin Media TiVo Blog provided a link to a post from Virgin’s Help & Support Forum detailing their offerings:

Great news! The wait is nearly over for our TiVo customers who’ve been waiting for Premier League Red Button coverage.

What are we launching?

Starting with Background Events so that our Sky Sports customers on TiVo can follow over-running, clashing and extra live Sports that won’t fit on Sky Sports 1-4. And then shortly followed by Football First for extended highlights of every Premier League match played on the day.

When are we launching?

MBE (Multiple Background Events) will launch on March 2nd and Football First on March 3rd. After that we’ll be launching Formula 1, Tennis will be coming later in the summer and both Champions League and Heineken Cup will be there for the start of the next season.

Please note: events are subject to change without notice

What channels will Sky Sports interactive be available on?

The interactive Red Button application will be available, for TiVo customers on the following Sky Sports Channels.

Sky Sports 1 511 & Sky Sports 1HD 517
Sky Sports 2 512 & Sky Sports 2 HD 518
Sky Sports 3 513
Sky Sports 4 514
Sky Sports F1 (when it launches)

I don’t subscribe to Sky Sports, how can I do this to take advantage of the Red Button services that will be available on selected events?

All you need to do is arrange an upgrade to Sky Sports, the Red Button service (available on selected events only) will be available at no extra charge.

When will BBC red button interactive services launch?

More good news! We’ve been working with the BBC to launch Red Button services on TiVo and we’re hoping to start the roll out in April. This service will launch a menu over BBC channels.

We’ll be communicating further interactive service launches as and when they happen – so watch this space!

Mark Wilkin
Help & Support Forum Manager

I know the lack of Red Button support has been a major, perhaps the major, gripe about Virgin’s TiVo offering in the UK. It may be hard to understand for those of us who have never had access to the service, but Red Button users are very passionate about it. So the introduction of Red Button services to TiVo should go a long way towards making those users happy, especially as Virgin expands support to additional content sources and channels.

Now, if we could only get a system like this in the states. I mean widespread, not just limited trials.