[NTLUG:Discuss] RE: HDTV, broadcast flag, ...

[Paul Ingendorf]

Tivo is a linux based product and has been discussed frequently on this list
without issue.  I have owned my Tivo now for going on 6 years and have not
had a problem.  But this is not the reason why, they subsidize the units.
Make no mistake the units are sold in a way to make them available to the
general public this means less upfront costs.  You can either pay up front
for the hardware and the service or you can choose to pay less up front and
get the hardware and slowly pay Tivo back the costs of subsidizing the
units.

The way it works is lets say Phillips produces a box for $300 to be sold in
retail stores.  Phillips needs to make a little money off the unit and Tivo
gets a royalty for their software and the use of the Tivo logo.  Electronics
like this would need a retail price tag of over $500 to cover the handling
of the unit and give the retailer a margin to work with.  What Tivo has done
to make their units more accessible is to differ the initial cost of
ownership by subsidizing the cost of the units for Phillips.  This enables
Phillips to offer lower costs to the retailers.  So now instead of a 500+
dollar retail unit they are able to sell it for $99 which is a low price
point and widely affordable.  Next Tivo has to recoup the costs of the
subsidy.  They do this one of two ways.  They either take the entire subsidy
up front for the lifetime service and end up loosing out over the life of
the unit or they take a monthly subscription fee the recoups the initial
investment and gives them a reliable recurring revenue stream to book that
looks good for investors.

The only difference between Tivo and cell phones is that with Tivo you are
not required to enter into a service contract in order to make the purchase.
Cell phones are subsidized in the very same way.  This is why it is so
difficult to move a phone form one service provider to another without
getting a subsidy code for your phone and paying to get out of your
contract.

In the end if you do a cost analysis of the product you will find that Tivo
has done a great job at keeping costs down while offering a great product to
customers.  They also have a huge underground that enables advanced users to
take advantage of the underlying hardware to get the most out of it.
Everything from the project I worked on enabling caller id to show up on
your Tv to the tivoweb project which allows full control of your tivo and
using tivowebplus even allows you to stream content off your tivo to your pc
to view using windows media player.

You may end up not liking the Tivo but right now you seem to be against it
for all the wrong reasons.

-----Original Message-----
From: tr_data1 [mailto:tr_data1 at ev1.net]
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 12:10 PM
To: discuss at ntlug.org; pauldy at wantek.net
Subject: OT: HDTV, broadcast flag, ...


Unless others don't mind, please send replies that don't talk about
a Linux solution to my questions directly to me, not the list. I am
interested in the various solutions but don't wish to flood the list
with non-Linux ones. Sorry, I should have made that more clear.

> Tivo does not require a monthly fee ... lifetime service for $299.

BUT, that's still $299. They are simply giving you the choice of
pay in full now or monthly installments (based on the likelyhood that
it would be quite obsolete in three years). Also, Tivo will likely
impose the broadcast flag -- the very thing I'm trying to avoid.
AND-- the advertising is becoming more and more. Just look at
their latest (pop-up ads):
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/11/26/tivo.surrender.ap/index.html

It might be worth it if 1) buying a TiVo before July 2005 means I
won't ever have a broadcast flag imposed on me and 2) the machine
has the ability (or can be LEGALLY hacked to) export the compressed,
full-res HDTV files to secondary storage (ie: firewire to PC). Otherwise,
you are stuck with a finite space. Keep around Christmas special this
and historical event  that -- you eventually run out of space.

> tivo is one of the most hacked PVRs out there.

sure, but LEGALLY?  Sorry about the tone, it isn't intended as a flame.
=TR=