TiVo Blog uncovered a 30-second TV spot for TiVo that Harvey Norman is airing in Australia:

Australian tabloid TV program “Today Tonight” ran a segment on TiVo last Friday.

It looks like the Australian press have been getting their TiVo review units, and the reviews are starting to appear - so far, so good. One example is the review from PC Authority which gives it five out of six stars. They also put together a quick FAQ.

CNET Australia also has a review up.

iTWire has a great post about the blog coverage of the TiVo and iPhone launches down under. It is a bit of meta-blogging, blogging about blogging. And I couldn’t agree more with that they have to say. A pitfall a lot of tech blogs fall into is forgetting the target market of the products they’re covering and making the mistake of reviewing them from the perspective of a tech geek and not a normal end user. This tends to lead to negative reviews as geeks are looking for loads of features. I know I’ve fallen into that myself. We tend to want all the bells and whistles and can be disappointed when something isn’t there, losing sight of the features that are there that will appeal to the target market (which is rarely the geek market). More succinctly:

Members of the digerati seem to be so immersed in the digital lifestyle that they often forget they’re not the average user. Just because something doesn’t meet the needs of the digital elite doesn’t automatically make it crap.

That’s been happening with some of the coverage for the launch of TiVo in Australia. Since some of the networking features won’t be rolled out until a future software update a few of the tech blogs have been fairly negative about the Australian TiVo. But they’re ignoring the features the TiVo will have as a DVR, well above and beyond other DVRs in the market. And even without all of the additional features, it will have some of them which is another advantage. As iTWire nicely put it:

I agree that waiting for extra features is frustrating but, purely as a Personal Video Recorder (which is its primary purpose), Australia’s TiVo will be very impressive straight out of the box. Much of the criticism seemed to come from fanboys of other high-end PVRs, plus Seven and Nine-haters who were venting their spleens.

Yes the lack of ad-skipping is annoying and just reinforces the fact that Australians get screwed by the local networks. Yes the networks are bastards for withholding EPG data and dragging IceTV through the courts. That doesn’t change the fact that the Australian TiVo is a great solution for the average man on the street, if not power users. Some media centre owners believe the world is conspiring against them, but they have to accept the fact that media centres aren’t for everyone and the average person doesn’t want a computer in their lounge room.

The same article also talks about similar negative blog coverage regarding the Australian launch of the iPhone. Local cell carrier Optus is offering 100MB to 1GB of data per month on its Australian iPhone plans, which a lot of geeks feel is too little. But for many users that’s plenty for checking email via IMAP, a little web browsing, etc. You’re really a heavy user to need more than 1GB/month - lots of video streaming, etc.

There’s been quite a lot of coverage of the TiVo launch down-under in the Australian press, which is good to see. All of that coverage should certainly help with consumer awareness. And the coverage has exposed few more tidbits of data.

Australian IT reports that Seven Network has imported “at least 20,000″ units for the launch later this month. There is one thing that isn’t clear from the coverage - if broadband is required or not. Some of the coverage implies broadband is required, period. But others make more since to me, such as Australian IT “consumers who buy TiVos must connect it to their broadband internet connection to be able to access the full array of services.” That sounds very much like the US where you can use the TiVo with a modem, but you miss out on all of the network-related features. An Amazon Unbox-like movie download service is also coming for Australia:

At this week’s TiVo launch, [TiVo Australia general manager Mark] Hughes said Seven would soon announce a similar arrangement to the Amazon movie service offered by TiVo in the US. “Before that we’ll be pushing some short-form video of maybe five to 10 minutes to the boxes.

‘But within six months, possibly a little longer, I would expect to be providing a movie download service as well.”

We also learned, through The Sydney Morning Herald, that Harvey Norman’s exclusivity period, earlier widely reported as three months (and as one month by a few sources) is actually six weeks. This was confirmed by Harvey Norman executive director, David Ackery. Harvey Norman is predicting that TiVo will expand the Australian DVR market by 50% within a year.

And they may be on to something. When the competition says TiVo has a good chance at selling at least 50,000 units in the next twelve months, that’s good news. Especially when the break-even point for Seven Network is below 50,000 units sold.

The Digital Products Group, which sells a number of different DVR models under the Beyonwiz brand, has seen its business with Harvey Norman crash in recent weeks because of its exclusive deal with TiVo, but its general manager, Jai Kemp, says he will still sell about 25,000 $800-plus DVRs in the next 12 months. He says a target of 50,000 for TiVo in a year is achievable, although 100,000 is not. Seven’s break-even point on TiVo is below 50,000 units.

“Fifty thousand is quite possible,” says Kemp. “They’ve got a lot of marketing dollars behind them and they can run TV commercials all night.”

And then there is an article from The Courier-Mail, which bucks the trend by being fairly negative on TiVo’s prospects. It is also interesting that the article also cites reports that JB Hi-Fi will not be stocking TiVo, even after Harvey Norman’s exclusivity period ends. That’s interesting because those reports were countermanded by additional comments from JB Hi-Fi before this article came out. And the article compares TiVo’s pricing to Foxtel’s iQ2, but leaves out the cost of the Foxtel subscription. But on closer inspection that isn’t too strange, since they’re owned by News Corp. News Corp. also happens to be part owner of Foxtel, the Australian pay TV service who’s iQ2 DVR will be TiVo’s primary competition. iTWire has done a great job of covering, and rebutting, the points raised in The Courier-Mail article, as well as adding some additional coverage.

While TiVo may not be available to Australian consumers until July 29th, Australian tech site iTWire got some hands-on time with one today and liked what they saw. The author saying “it lives up to my high expectations.” As he put it:

The Australian TiVo offers the four vital features that almost every other PVR on the Australian market lack - a proper Electronic Program Guide, a “Season Pass” feature, intelligent storage management and a generous margin for error when it comes to scheduling recordings.

He seems to have laid to rest the unsubstantiated rumor that the Australian TiVo would somehow block ad skipping by saying it has fast-forward, but not a 30-second skip. However, he doesn’t clarify if he tried the SPS30S 30-second skip backdoor that US TiVo units have, or was just referring to the fact it isn’t a standard feature. I suspect the latter. He also answers a question I had about the eSATA port by saying it is not currently active and will be activated in a future firmware update.

Australian TV networks are worse than US networks when it comes to sticking with a published schedule. They regularly start early and run late, which will make TiVo’s padding abilities useful. But it sounds like TiVo has a special trick up its sleeve for Australia. According to iTWire it will automatically pad recordings by 10 minutes during prime time - ending recording 10 minutes after the scheduled program end (the time is adjustable). And recordings of live programs are automatically extended by an hour, which sounds like a nice improvement on the reminder message US units received in a recent update. This sounds just like the ’soft padding’ that has been oft requested in the US, and I hope we see this development re-imported back to the states. I do kind of presume it only auto-pads recordings when the tuner is free and nothing else is scheduled to record, of course.

All in all it was a very positive review, good news for TiVo’s prospects down under.

I was checking for this repeatedly yesterday, since Australia is across the date line, but the news hadn’t popped before I crashed for the night. Well, it hit while I was asleep and we finally have product, pricing, and availability details for TiVo in Australia.

While July 1st was the launch day, units will be available for retail purchase starting July 29th. The units will be sold at retail in Harvey Norman and Domayne stores (both owned by Harvey Norman) for AUD$699 with no monthly fee, as expected. It was previously reported that Harvey Normal will have a three month exclusive on the sale of TiVo in Australia. While consumers will not be able to purchase a unit in stores until July 29th, beginning July 17th Harvey Norman will be conducting in-store demos to prep the market for the retail launch. The TiVo will also feature in the next Harvey Norman catalog which will be landing in Australian mailboxes during the next week.

ISP Unwired, a Seven subsidiary, will provide distribution and support for both retail and online TiVo purchases. TiVo will launch with all of the standard DVR features found in the US - Season Passes, WishLists, KidZone, TiVo Suggestions, etc. The TiVo USB WiFi adapter will also be available for AUD$59 for customers who cannot use the built-in wired Ethernet connection.

What TiVo will not have in Australia, at least at launch, are most of TiVo’s networking features. Photo viewing, music playback, TiVoToGo (including transfers to PMPs like the iPod, etc), and others will be added later. As there is no monthly fee, it looks like Seven Network will be using these features as a revenue source, charging for the upgrade similar to how TiVo first introduced them as the ‘Home Media Option’. Pricing for the update has not been announced, but it has been referred to as ‘tens of dollars’, so it doesn’t sound like it will be that expensive. I think it could be possible that the costs would include TiVo Desktop Plus capabilities, which runs USD$24.95. It does sound like broadband downloads will not come at an additional fee, but since that’s a competitive advantage and a revenue stream in its own right it isn’t too surprising.

According to Seven’s press releases, they’ll begin rolling out the additional features soon after launch, to continue over the next year. Seven will reportedly be spending ‘millions’ during the Olympics, for which they hold the Australian broadcast rights, to promote the new TiVo service. The TiVo sold in Australia is based on the platform used by the TiVo HD in the US, and it supports analog and digital broadcasts. So it is ready for the growing number of digital (DVB-T) broadcasts in Australia. Like the TiVo HD, the Australian TiVo has dual tuners, which handle both standard- and high-definition, and a 160GB hard drive. It also has an eSATA port and Seven will reportedly begin selling a drive to expand the TiVo early next year. We’ll have to see if the port is actually enabled or not once consumers get their hands on the box, perhaps they’ll work with the 500GB Western Digital My DVR Expander drive used in the US.

According to Smarthouse:

“We are currently in discussions with several content providers and we have already built the backend structure that is needed to deliver content such as movies and content from third party providers. Our initial plan is to give consumers a significantly better recording and management experience of free to air TV and then follow this up with addition services”.
James Warburton said “While the service will be advertising free initially, we do plan to run banner advertising inside content going forward. For the consumer they only pay a one off fee of $699 and no ongoing subscription fees”.

Seven’s major competitor is the pay-TV service Foxtel, which offers their Foxtel iQ2 DVR. While the iQ2 is only AUD$200, AUD$500 less than TiVo, there is a monthly fee. The iQ2 costs AUD$10-15 on top of the standard Foxtel subscription (Foxtel is a Pay TV service), which runs AUD$37.95 up to AUD$105.95 a month, depending on the level of service. Since the TiVo records free-to-air broadcasts and has no monthly fee, it rapidly becomes the less expensive option.

Seven took the opportunity at launch to take a swipe at Foxtel. As reported via Smarthouse:

A senior Seven executive said “We will have no churn like Foxtel and we anticipate that from September onwards Foxtel will see massive churn as consumers switch to the free TiVo service”.

They took a number of other shots at Foxtel, getting some early jabs in at what will be their main competitor. Seven called attention to the 70% of the Australian TV marker which has “turned their back on Foxtel” and opted for free-to-air TV. And claiming that the 30% that have opted for Foxtel still spend half of their time watching FTA TV.

Seven Network Press Releases:
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Australian retailer Harvey Norman has confirmed a July 1st launch for TiVo in Australia, according to Current. It looks like Harvey Norman will have a three month exclusive on TiVo distribution, starting July 1st. The exclusivity arrangement was first broken by The Australian Financial Review, which reported that the release would be ‘mid-July’. However, Harvey Norman executive director, David Ackery, told Current that the launch date would be July 1. The exclusivity agreement will make them the only Australian source of TiVo for the Olympics, for which Seven Network has the Australian broadcast. The price is rumored to be AUD$700, though Ackery declined to confirm the rumors, saying that details will be released with the July 1st launch. The AFR also had some details on the deal between Seven Network and TiVo:

The original agreement required Seven to pay TiVo a fee for each subscriber it signed. Under the new deal, which was finalised in April, TiVo will be paid a royalty based on how many recorders are sold here.

TiVo’s main competition in Australia will be the Foxtel iQ2 DVR, which retails for AUD$200 and carries a monthly AUD$10 subscription fee. If the AUD$700 price and no monthly fee rumors for the TiVo are true, that would mean a 50 month break-even compared to the iQ2. Which the TiVo is being pitched as a premium product it remains to be seen how it will fare in the Australian market. AFR says Foxtel has a subscriber base of 1.4 million, 350,000 of which have picked up the original iQ DVR, and 15,000 which have picked up the newer iQ2.

I guess we’ll see in a week what all of the details are with regard to pricing and features.

EDIT: The Sydney Morning Herald has also picked up the story, and they have a few more details. One thing the AFR didn’t mention, the iQ2 costs AUD$10-15 on top of the standard Foxtel subscription (Foxtel is a Pay TV service), which runs AUD$37.95 up to AUD$105.95 a month, depending on the level of service. TiVo, on the other hand, will work with the free-to-air programs so there is no additional cost. That does make quite a big different in the break-even point between the two products.