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.

CNET certainly seems to feel that way as well, breaking down the Australian DVR market and why they feel TiVo will still be a strong brand.

We’re not apologists for TiVo, but we don’t think it’s an amazing idea, given that the marketplace is going to be crowded with plenty of different options come the middle of the year — Foxtel iQ2, TiVo, IceTV, etc. We don’t think “branding” the already available EPG will make much of a difference to whether TiVo launches or not.

The Freeview board is only meeting for the first time this Friday, so their plans are still hazy. It sounds like they’re starting off with nothing more than a branding exercise. They’ll be putting the Freeview brand and logo on their existing EPG and digital channels, and only later will they be offering actual Freeview DVR hardware. It sounds like an effort to forestall adoption of TiVo, which Seven is planning to bring to market in June, as well as slow adoption of the Foxtel iQ2 DVR. Since the Freeview camp won’t have hardware to compete, they’re going to rely on pushing the brand without hardware to back it up and FUD about the competition.