Gizmo Lovers Blog » TVWeek

DVRs In 44% Of US Households By 2014

MegaZone — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 12:24:29 +0000

According to an article in TVWeek, research firm Magna released a report saying 44% of US households will have a DVR by 2014. They believe this will lower viewing impressions across all dayparts by 4%, but will also increase TV viewing so in the end total viewing impressions will be up 20%. They also say that video-on-demand will increase from 40.4 to 68.8 million households and broadband from 68.3 to 86.2 million by 2014.

TiVo CEO Tom Rogers Set To Speak At NATPE Conference

MegaZone — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 07:48:58 +0000

TiVo CEO Tom Rogers will deliver the Newsmaker Address at the National Association of Television Program Executive (NATPE) on January 28, 2009, as reported by TVWeek. Rogers’s address is entitled entitled “Avoiding the Demise of Advertising”, and will address the impact on TV advertising from DVR users skipping ads, and how the industry can respond. (My speculation, it will involve TiVo’s interactive ad capabilities.)

Profile Of TiVo’s Jim Denney Provides Hints

MegaZone — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:52:15 +0000

I came across a little capsule profile of Jim Denney, TiVo’s VP of product marketing, at TVWeek.com today. Fairly standard stuff really, and most of it is stuff we’ve seen before. But there were a couple of bits I found interesting. First, he confirmed what I think most of us have figured out – that the TiVo HD is TiVo’s main product at this point.

This year, â€œTiVo HD has become our main stock-keeping unit in retail,â€ said Mr. Denney, who declined to disclose specific sales or a percentage of units sold.

Perhaps more interesting is an indication that HD content is finally coming to Amazon Unbox on TiVo:

Unbox, the content-downloading service TiVo started with Internet retail leader Amazon.com last year, canâ€™t process HD content, though the companies will announce HD capabilities â€œin the not too distant future,â€ Mr. Denney said.

This has been eagerly anticipated since the release of the TiVo Series3. Over a year ago the lead engineer on Amazon Unbox indicated that they were working on 16:9 aspect ratios and HD content, but little has been said since then. So it is nice to see something from an official representative that indicates it is still in the works, even though everyone figured it must be just to keep pace with the market. Personally I suspect it will be tied up with the YouTube update which will enable MPEG-4/H.264 decoding. Using H.264 for HD content would greatly reduce the download sizes compared to trying to use MPEG-2.