But what if you’re an ANZ TiVo user already and you don’t want to have to buy a new box? Well, there have been do-it-yourself drive upgrades for a while, just as in the US. But that’s more than many users feel comfortable with – pulling the drive, copying the software to the new drive, etc. Well, now there is an easier way. Long time TiVo upgrade vendor WeaKnees.com today announced that they’re now selling drop-in replacement drive upgrade kits up to 2TB in capacity. The 320GB drive is $199.99, 500GB $249.99, 1TB $299.99, and 2TB $399.99 – all prices in US dollars. They also sell replacement remotes and network adapters for ANZ units.

So there you go, two ways ANZ users can record more.

Now, Hybrid TV Services has had a bit of a rough time. After their primary backer, Seven Network, declined to invest more in the company, and sales didn’t meet initial expectations (despite being the top selling DVR platform in ANZ), Hybrid was forced to lay off a large portion of their staff. But they remain the best selling DVR platform in ANZ and seem to be making slow but steady progress in building their customer base. I don’t think a change in CEOs is any kind of bad omen, especially as Minicola isn’t jumping ship, she’s still involved via the BoD.

We don’t know what triggered the move, but seeing as she’s not just leaving the CEO position but is leaving a country she’s lived in for nearly three decades to return to the US, I suspect there are reasons outside of anything to do with Hybrid TV Services and TiVo. She’s originally from the US, it could be personal reasons such as a family issue that led her to decide to return to the US, and that move necessitated stepping down. Who knows? The point is that it could be any one of a number of reasons and we shouldn’t read too much into it.

However, techAU seems to feel it is a terrible sign, as they covered the change with an article entitled“Head of TiVo Australia leaves for the US, future looks grim“. It includes statements such as“As an owner and fan of TiVo, its incredibly frustrating that TiVo is being left to die like this. There has now been multiple models and updates released internationally that have not made it to Australia.”, which I think is just a tad melodramatic. Left to die? Really?

Yes, TiVo in ANZ is based on the TiVo HD Series3 platform, as is the software, but so what? The hardware is unique to ANZ, designed to support only DVB-T. The services it supports are unique to ANZ as well, such as CASPA. The TiVo Premiere Series4 platform wouldn’t offer all that much of an advantage in that unique service environment. Broadband costs are high so there aren’t many OTT options, and unless you’re using a pay TV service you’re basically limited to OTA DVB-T aka Freeview, as TiVo uses. It would be a major investment to design a new ANZ box based on the Series4 platform and to put it into production and I’m not sure Hybrid could justify the expense when the return is questionable and funds are already tight. The current platform is already a leader in the local market, and that’s really what is important. You design a product based on what is appropriate for the target market, not based on what is done for other, very different markets.

Rumors of Hybrid’s imminent demise have been running since last year, so I find it hard to put too much weight on them without new evidence. Robbee Minicola is no longer the CEO, yes that’s a major change, but it isn’t a sign of the end times. Stay calm. I wish Robbee the best in whatever she has planned next, and I wish the best for Hybrid TiVo Services and the TiVo customers in ANZ. I hope the service continues to grow and becomes successful and sustainable.

EDIT: As some of you know, I cross-post TiVo-related entries from this blog to the TiVoLovers LiveJournal Community, including this one. It seems the cross post tripped one of Robbee’s alerts and she (or someone claiming to be her at any rate) posted the following comment:

Hey zonereyrie

Thanks so much for your kind words and correctly assuming all is good with Hybrid and I simply wanted to head back to the US. Yes the reasons are mostly family, but I am looking forward to being at the pointy end of things in Silicon Valley, LA and NYC.

It was an honor to be asked to go on the Board – and it is a great feeling to remain linked to the business and the customers.

I actually stuffed up on the tweet – meant to send it only to my linkedin connections but the darn twitter box was ticked and it went out to everyone!

Take care
Robbee Minicola

hey zonereyrie

coupla things to note … you can buy a TiVo and activate it just not during certain daytime hours. so you can certainly activate at night – which 80% of our new customers do which is why we are carrying out the maintenance in the daytime and on weekdays

also – you are right, it’s a heck of a lot of time to bolster the service for our increased customer base – but the other thing we are doing is switching our network provider which caused a load of IP changes across TiVo and CASPA – so we opted to do the lot in one hit seeing as we brought people from TiVo in the US and people from Ericsson overseas to do the upgrade work

my sincere apologies for the hassle – but it does mean we are solid going forward.

cheers
Robbee Minicola
CEO
hybrid tv

The comment was left by someone not logged into LJ, so I only have the IP address, no email, etc. Now, it does seem a bit unusual for a CEO to be commenting on an LJ post, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen such a thing. Especially with smaller companies, and Hybrid is fairly small. Same goes for the fairly informal language, I’ve had past exchanges with other C-level execs that were equally informal. And the information provided makes sense. I could certainly see Robbee, or someone at Hybrid, having an automated search running looking for any mentions of Hybrid and/or TiVo, and/or monitoring known TiVo user communities. (I have several such automated searches setup to help alert me to news for the site, as well as flag mentions of the site elsewhere.) And I’m not surprised that the LJ post would come up before this site did – given the hiatus I lost a bit of Page Rank. And the comment does echo an update I found on an iGadget Report article about the outage:

Update: Minicola says the times chosen for the maintenance were selected because they will have the “least impact” on the majority of customers.

We chose those dates/times because we knew they would have the least impact as the majority of our new customers install and activate their new TiVo at night or on weekends and they will not suffer from this maintenance work.

As for our existing customers, their TiVo will function perfectly as per usual during our maintenance – just CASPA goes offline and again that is only during the daytime which has proven to be the lowest usage period.

So we chose these days/times specifically with our customers needs and habits in mind.

So while I wouldn’t swear to it without confirmation, I think this probably is the real Robbee Minicola, CEO of Hybrid TV Services. And, if so, I think it is pretty darn cool that she responded to a post out in the community.

(And yes, I’m ‘zonereyrie’ on LJ. I just barely missed snagging ‘megazone’ for my username, it having been grabbed for a community – ironically, given the subject of this post, out of Australia. Said community has been defunct for nearly seven years now, but the name is still tied up.)

During the maintenance work on the TiVo and CASPA services, various features may be unavailable, including the CASPA On-Demand service, My Account functionality, TiVo Genie, and Games and Showcases. Additionally, activation of new TiVo accounts will be unavailable during this period, so it isn’t a good time to buy a new TiVo. But this should be a short period of inconvenience in exchange for a more robust system going forward.

Still, putting my datacom professional hat on, I wonder how the back end is architected. Normally you design things such that the ability to failover and upgrade doesn’t cause an outage. The short version is that you setup the new infrastructure in parallel, then cut over in one go. Or you cut the traffic to half the systems, upgrade, then cut over to the upgraded servers, upgrade the rest, then bring them all back. That’s oversimplifying, but I’ve done this for years and it is pretty common. Services you use daily do this all the time and you never know it. Hopefully that’s a lesson learned and this upgrade will also set the foundation for future upgrades without prolonged outages.

Via iTWire.

Despite the struggles, Hybrid TV Services claims that TiVo is in it for the long haul in ANZ. Hybrid is looking to the Australian government’s plans to disable analog broadcasts over the next few years as an opportunity. The switch to digital means that consumers will need digital-capable tuners, a roll TiVo is more than happy to fill.

In the meantime, hopefully Hybrid can sustain enough subscriber growth to keep the business viable and maintain the service for their existing subscribers, who are understandably tense after past events.

Via iTech Report.

APCMag.com has more news on what’s coming for TiVo in Australia. By the end of the week Hybrid TV Services will be offering three games, Classy Couples, Sudoku and Wild Pair, as well as a world clock and horoscopes. Joining them soon will be PixelEye, a service which provides access to Photobucket and Picasa – which US TiVo users already enjoy.

Coming on February 3, 2009 will be a 1TB external drive, eSATA I presume. I’d like to see 1TB offered here, currently the official expansion drive is 500GB. Also coming in early 2009 will be the addition of DMG Radio channels Nova and Vega FM, providing music through TiVo. And they did confirm Domino’s Pizza ordering is coming in early 2009 as well.

They’ve also released some statistics. The first test title for broadband movie downloads, The Water Horse, has been downloaded by 25% of TiVo owners. And 73% of TiVo users access the weather information currently available via broadband at least once a week.

For users interesting in owning their TiVo outright, but for whom the AUD$699 cost is too much to swallow in one go, a 10-payment plan is also offered. AUD$69.90 a month for 10 months covers the cost of the TiVo.

The up-front, no fees and retail options remains for user who prefer that option.

Foxtel’s General Manager Box Office, New Media and Pay-Per-View, Brenden Moo responded by saying“I was under the impression that TiVo were not going to offer a subscription service their new Flexirent offering smacks of a disguised subscription fee”. That is one way to look at it, but he may be concerned as Foxtel’s pay-TV service subscription costs from AUD$37.95 up to AUD$105.95 depending on the package, and their iQ2 HD DVR is an additional AUD$200 up-front. So a TiVo subscription package priced about the same as their low-end offer with no up-front fee could provide some strong competition.

There’s another interesting tidbit on the TiVo Australia website, while they’re using MPEG-2 today for movie downloads, by March 2009 they plan to use MPEG-4 to reduce bandwidth usage and speed up downloads. Since other announcements for Australia have later appeared in the US it makes me wonder if we’ll be seeing MPEG-4 movie downloads in the US soon.

Via Smarthouse.

Via Smarthouse.