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:
Read the rest of this entry »

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.