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.

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.

According to the Herald Sun the long-awaited Australian launch of TiVo by Seven Network will come ‘next month’. This isn’t too surprising as Seven as repeatedly said they will launch TiVo service before the Olympics, to which they hold the Australian broadcast rights, and they do need to get the boxes to customers in advance of the broadcasts. On another forum I recently said that if they didn’t launch by mid-July, then it would be time to worry.

The Herald Sun predicts that the TiVo is expected to sell for around AUD$700, which is rather more than the AUD$500 predicted by the Sydney Morning Herald last month. However, both papers predict that there will be no monthly subscription fees. The Sun reports that final pricing and plans will be announced this week,

Seven Network is planning to make an announcement Monday regarding the launch of the TiVo service in Australia, according to Smarthouse. And apparently Seven is very unhappy with parent company Unwired for leaking their plans to sell TiVo sans subscription fees and stealing thing thunder, as it were.

According to Seven Media insiders, James Warburton the network’s sales director “blew his stack” with Unwired CEO David Spence after he revealed to the Sydney Morning Herald last month intimate details in the TiVo roll out.

Unwired will handle distribution, sales, and service for TiVo in Australia, with the majority of units sold at retail. This is also interesting:

It is expected that consumers who take up the service could end up getting over 100 channels of content for free however the only hitch will be that users will be unable to remove advertising totally with new software set to deliver a commercial as they try to fast forward.

That really just sounds like the ‘billboard’ ads we have in the US, where static image ads may be displayed while fast forwarding through recorded commercials. Which really isn’t such a big deal. It isn’t known if the 30-second skip back door will work in Australia as it does in the US. I’m not sure where the 100 channels of content will come from, since there aren’t that many OTA DVB-T channels. I’m guessing they mean some kind of downloaded content.

A few weeks ago I reported the news that Seven Network would ’slash’ the planned AUD$10-12 subscription fee for TiVo service, in the face of increasing competition from Freeview and push-back from retailers.

However, due to feedback from retailers such as Harvey Norman, they’ll be dropping the monthly subscription fee. Seven had planned to charge AUD$10-$12 per month, but now will be reportedly ’slashing’ that - though the new fee hasn’t been announced.

Well, now the new price has been announced - AUD$0. That’s right, TiVo will not carry a subscription fee down under. Basically the is the equivalent to selling the TiVo with a bundled product lifetime subscription. This according to the Sydney Morning Herald:

THE Seven Media Group will launch its TiVo digital video recorder in July after a strategic overhaul that includes a surprise move to scrap a planned monthly subscription fee for the broadband-enabled service.

Before you pack up and head to Australia to take advantage of the free TiVo service, note that the box is expected to sell for around AUD$500. And that’s about USD$482.21 right now. Though that is better than the US$699 (MSRP) for a TiVo HD with product lifetime, which is the rough equivalent, it isn’t a huge savings.

Seven Network would not confirm the July launch date, but they’ve been clear that they want it available in time for users to be up and running for the Olympics - which Seven is airing in Australia. Nine and Ten networks have also signed deals with Seven Network for their channels’ guide data to be included in the TiVo EPG. And deals are being finalized with up to six retailers to carry the box.

It sounds like Australians will get a solid product:

Mr Spence said TiVo’s initial focus on an electronic program guide and the ease of recording TV programs would expand considerably by the end of the year to include online TV content and broader interactive services.

“That’s when we will start to see more things obtained off the internet,” he said.

“The main thing is to get TiVo launched for the Olympics.”

In the US, TiVo offers music and movie downloads, sharing of digital photo libraries with personal computers and access to social networking sites and online video channels.

The head of Seven’s hybrid TV services, Mark Hughes, said TiVo Australia’s line-up would match that offered in the US.

Later this year TiVo is adding YouTube to the US TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD boxes (the Australian box is based on the TiVo HD), which means enabling MPEG-4/H.264 decoding. It sounds to me like that capability will be finding its way to Australia.

It will be interesting to see how the up-front pricing works for Seven and TiVo. In the US sales have favored lower up-front pricing with monthly fees, but Australia is a different market with potentially different trends.

(Dave Zatz twittered about his post just before my Google alert twigged me to the article.)