Steve Sordello left his position as TiVo’s CFO last week to join an unnamed ‘late stage venture funded company. Well, it looks like that company is LinkedIn.
If you’re not familiar with LinkedIn, think of it as MySpace or Facebook for professionals – a networking site. It is a good site for keeping track of professional contacts – my profile.
TiVo Greater China is the separate company founded to market TiVo products in Taiwan, China, and other countries in the region. TiVo is a significant minority share holder in TGC. TGC also works with TiVo on new hardware designs. They’ve been offering TiVo in Taiwan for a while, and the first venture in China started last fall in Shanghai.
It looks like they’re going to greatly expand their efforts in China, marketing to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other major cities. China is a major emerging market, and there isn’t an established DVR player, so this could be a major market for TGC.
TGC has two sites for Taiwan and China.
The press release:
Continue reading
As recently as November, 2006 Intel was opposed to the licensing terms for OCAP (the OpenCable Application Platform) and they opposed requiring consumer electronics (CE) vendors to support OCAP in general for two-way cable services. Well, things change, and apparently Intel is more comfortable with it now as they’ve signed a licensing agreement with Cable Television Laboratories (aka CableLabs). The license will allow Intel to incorporate OCAP support into their system-on-a-chip processors aimed at the CE market.
Kircos added that Intel’s agreement with CableLabs on OpenCable concerns only the chip family for CE devices it plans to introduce in 2008, “not a PC play per se, nor for our Core or Pentium processors at this point.â€
I actually think this is more an issue of Intel being a large corporation with their fingers in several pies than a real reversal. Intel would still like to see a two-way standard that allows CE devices to access two-way cable services (SDV, VOD, etc) without the hefty overhead of supporting OCAP. However, at the same time, there is a market for chips that are going into the new generation of cable set top box and other devices which *will* support OCAP, and Intel wasn’t willing to cede the market to the competition over OCAP.
In another development, Microsoft and CableLabs have extended their partnership with a formal collaborative effort to develop ways for two-way cable services to function on PCs. It isn’t clear if this means embedding OCAP in Windows or developing an alternative system. I’d be a bit shocked if it is the former. OCAP is Java-based – and MS has a deep hatred for Java. The primary reason MS backs HD DVD over Blu-ray is that HD DVD uses iHD (developed my Microsoft and Toshiba) for interactive features while Blu-ray uses BD-Java – which is itself derived from the same MHP/GEM standards that OCAP was derived from, and hence related in a way. I just don’t see Microsoft grinning and paying for a Java license to embed Java in every copy of Windows MCE, not after the past acrimony over their JVM, etc. But I suppose stranger things have happened.
OCAP is running far behind schedule. It was originally anticipated to be widely deployed by the end of 2006, now the cable industry is claiming it will be widely deployed by the end of 2008. Delays in getting the OCAP infrastructure in place had cascaded to a number of delays, including delays in getting TiVo’s new OCAP-based software out for Comcast and Cox.
The majority of the CE industry has shunned OpenCable mainly due to the OCAP requirement. Adding support for OCAP increases the costs and complexity of their products and, at the same time, impacts their software design as features utilizing OCAP will run cable software and not the CE vendor’s own UI. This doesn’t sit well with the industry.
There have been some notable exceptions. Panasonic, LG, and Samsung have all licensed OCAP and are producing OCAP-compliant devices. It isn’t too surprising, as these companies product cable products for other countries. Until now, the US market was dominated by Motorola and Scientific Atlanta, and it was nearly impossible for a 3rd party to break in. Cable companies used Motorola head-end systems with Motorola STBs, or SA with SA. Now with CableCARD and OCAP, it is easier for 3rd parties to enter the market. Panasonic and Samsung are already making cable boxes for US Cable MSOs, utilizing CableCARD. Samsung is testing OCAP televisions with Time Warner.
If you’re making a cable STB, then OCAP isn’t a big issue. That’s the way the industry is going and Motorola and SA are supporting OCAP on their products, so competitors will do the same. OCAP is based on the MHP/GEM standards used in STBs around the world, so supporting OCAP isn’t a big leap for vendors already making STBs in other countries.
If you’re making high-end TVs it isn’t so bad either. The cost can be absorbed, and since the TV didn’t really have much in the way of interactivity and advanced features, there isn’t a conflict between OCAP and the CE vendors own software and UI. So LG and Samsung testing the waters for OCAP TVs isn’t a big surprise.
However, if you produce more advanced products, like TiVo or Digeo, then yielding control to OCAP is a big deal. And cost is an issue for most CE products, with the cost of supporting OCAP being non-negligible – both in the added hardware and in the required licenses. Which is why CE vendors really want a simple, basic way to handle two-way features without all of the baggage of OCAP. OCAP is pretty hefty, and a lot more than is needed to handle simple tasks like SDV or ordering VOD.
There could possibly be some progress on this front this week, as the FCC is holding an open meeting in Portland, ME to discuss the issue, amongst other agenda items.
So, yeah, the iPhone streets this Friday, June 29th. Every tech blog under the sun has covered it to hell and back, so I thought I should join the chorus… Only I really don’t care. I’m a classic early adopter – I got my old Treo 650 the day they hit stores. Heck, I got my old, old, old digital StarTac the day they hit Verizon stores too. I picked up my Pioneer DVR-810H DVD-RW TiVo early on, and snapped up the Series3 right away. I’m a geek and I like gadgets, no question. But the iPhone doesn’t do it for me.
It is pretty and all, and I like shiny things, but I just don’t think it looks like a good device overall. My Treo 680 looks better for email, documents, etc. And my 60GB iPod can actually hold my music collection – unlike the iPhone. I started with a 20GB iPod, and that was too frustrating to deal with – juggling my music and never having the song I wanted loaded, so I got the 60GB to carry my entire collection all the time. No way in hell will I go down to 4/8GB. I’d love to see them release an iPod with that interface, and a 60-80GB drive – I’d buy that immediately.
I do too much email on my phone and typing on the screen is a turn off. Reports that have been leaking out seem to confirm that it isn’t great for a lot of text input, and it doesn’t even have haptics for feedback. I don’t know how well it does IMAPS with folder support for my corporate email – it’d have to be at least as good as Chatter Email. I couldn’t care less about YouTube on my phone – but no SlingPlayer Mobile is a big issue for me. My most used application is AvantGo – and it doesn’t look like iPhone has something like that. My Treo has the same data connection, so there is no advantage there – and the Treo has SD expansion.
In short, the iPhone costs too much and does too little for me to be at all interested in it. I’m sure it will sell like gangbusters because of all of the inescapable hype. I feel like something is wrong with me for not drooling over the iPhone like everyone else, but there it is.
And that’s probably going to be the extent of my iPhone coverage. 
OK, maybe ‘ravages’ is a bit strong. ‘Mildly inconveniences’ is probably more like it. Variety has an article on the format war in Europe. Things are a bit different there than in the US. In the US, approximately 33% of households have an HDTV. Western Europe averages 6%, and the leading marking, the UK, is just 10%. So there has, understandably, been less drive to move to HD content.
Right now Blu-ray and HD DVD seem to be fairly evenly matched – which is damning with faint praise, since neither has been a major seller as of yet. Blu-ray has pulled ahead of HD DVD a few times, and it is starting to look like it is pulling ahead for good as more Blu-ray titles are introduced, and the PS3 increases its market penetration. But it is still too early to call, neither side has really hit a critical mass like Blu-ray has in the US.
