Telecom and TiVo
September 21st, 2009 at 5:53 am by David FarrarThe Herald has some details of the deal:
- TiVo is launching in early November.
- Telecom will take an unspecified share of the $899 cost for a set top box and offer its customers free broadband for downloads of movies and unspecified free advertising-funded content.
- It will take no share of TiVo’s income from pay per view movies so income will dry up while it has an ongoing cost for free broadband for TiVo content.
- Telecom says it owes consumers more details of the TiVo offer before they pay $899 for a set top box.
- It would not disfranchise customers, though would not rule out changes.
I think this is a very smart move by Telecom. While I am a very happy MySky customer, I understand TiVo is even more advanced in terms of functionality. And the ability to legally download movies on demand is the future.
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- The Telecom Split
September 21st, 2009 at 6:48 am
Isn’t it strange that one can illegally download movies as it is, without having to first buy an $899 set top box?
Can someone explain, that for this to become legal one must first invest such money, then no doubt pay some extra to Telecom somewhere, and then of course pay for each movie thus downloaded?
While everybody would of course want to be legit in his/her entertainment purchases, isn’t this huge price difference simply going to push more people into illegality?
Or am I not understanding this properly?
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 7:35 am
I’m not interested in recording, there is so many channels available now, and so much is repeated (and repeated) I watch as much as I want to now. I don’t like paying for a bunch of channels I don’t want. I’d rather pay less and get less.
So I guess Tivo isn’t for me.
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 8:16 am
To all those out there wondering about paying over coin for movies et al, I have one word: torrent.
I don’t see how these outfits such as TiVo can remain relevant as people get more and more tech savvy in the face of such services as bit torrent.
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 8:24 am
There are more basic mistakes than actual information in that story (there is no “free broadband offer”), although it’s useful to have it confirmed that Telecom won’t share in on-demand content revenues. But they’ll be pretty modest anyway. Telecom’s interest is in exclusivity.
The story also claims TiVo provides “interactivity between TV sets and the internet”. It doesn’t. It’s not an internet device. All the on-demand content provided is served out of TiVo’s content management system.
But yes, it’s a deal that serves all parties quite well. Telecom has been looking for an IPTV solution for a decade, and TVNZ/Hybrid/TiVo get to take on Sky in a sector where Sky has failed, as well as one where it has massive dominance.
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 9:01 am
It will be good to look at an alternative to Sky, I dumped mine a couple of years. This will almost certainly make them rethink their packages which make you take 3 or 4 shit programmes for each one you want. Though internet TV is starting to make a noise and as Xchequer points out, torrent is already available for movies.
Vote:This period will be called the media revolution in the same way as we had the industrial revolution.
September 21st, 2009 at 9:28 am
Im very curious how the data plan will work, with my current plan ( go large ) i actually have unlimited data so not worried about that as it is, however am clearly stuck at a lower speed than I could otherwise get (being within 250m of an exchange) at about 200-300k/s max at off peak hours on ADSL2 where as in theory being so close i should be able to get 5x that or more. If they leave it as is, that will mean film downloads in standard quality will take an hour or 2 to download, many hours for HD – which is hardly appealing impulse buy these things rely on, or will they up my speed just for those and then slow for normal internet – who knows either way but the fundamental problem is broadband is to slow and to restricted to make something like this fly. Be interesting to see how this works out.
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 9:36 am
I just want to be able to watch a certain programme. I don’t mind paying, but I do not want to be tied to a particular provider. I don’t want to sign up with Freeview or MySky or Telecom or TiVo. I don’t want to get my head around UHF and HD and whether my house can “see” a satellite.
For now torrents seem to be the ideal solution. I can go somewhere like EZTV and choose the show I want from an alphabetical list. Once downloaded I can watch video on my laptop, through my DVD player using a USB stick, or convert to play on my iPod Touch.
When I want to buy a book I don’t sign up with Amazon for one year’s worth of reading. I don’t pay $900 to enter Whitcoulls only to find there is crap on their shelves. I don’t get the book home only to find I am unable to read it in the lounge, or that I can’t lend it to my wife.
The future would seem to be something like EZTV on a pay per show basis. But why bring local companies into it to skim their cut? Why don’t I just pay money directly to Fox or Warner Brothers or the BBC?
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 9:59 am
Here’s some perspective.
I got a Tivo set top box on a one year contract from DirecTV in California in 2004.
I paid US$50 installed. And the unit was mine to sell at the end of the year, which I did for $100 from memory.
Hard to see why there should be such a difference. Are the fixed costs of introducing a second PVR really that much?
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 10:01 am
Mike78 – unlimited net from telecom? try downloading 3gig today an see what happens.
this tivo thing is garbage. youd be nuts to go anywhere near it.
then again, mysky sucks too. try a media centre people! best purchase i ever made
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 10:39 am
A lot of people bag – Telecom and Go Large – however I usually download about 50gb a month (highest 100gb in a month, lowest about 15gb) – lots of streaming media, large downloads etc etc and never had an issue with Telecom, downloaded about 6GB on saturday during the day – so its a bloody good deal for $50 per month in comparison to what else is out there . The biggest issue is for Tivo, that 100-300k a sec is just not enough for a viable TIVO proposition in my opinion, where you want ON demand movies this is the offering that will get everyone what they want (except video rental stores) but we just dont have the infrastructure it seems. .
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 11:04 am
When it was introduced in the USA, a big selling point of TiVo was that it automatically removed advertisements from recorded programmes.
In their greed, the NZ distributors have crippled this function, so after paying $900 for a set top box, viewers will still have to fast-forward through advertisements. Shame on TiVo’s NZ distributor.
When I got Sky in the early 1990′s there were no advertisements and you could set your watch by the start time of every movie. All that has changed and Sky unilaterally introduced advertising without any reduction in subscription fees.
Two can play this sneaky game, now I download movies off the web that haven’t even been released in NZ, and get to watch the quality Australian SBS channel off the Optus satellitte, for free.
And for those Telecom broadband users who don’t want TiVo, well they should get used to a reduction in their own speeds as the TiVo users suck up all the bandwidth downloading their programming.
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 11:26 am
Chris2 – technophobe question here, can you tell me if I can access the Australian SBS channel via my satellite internet connection on Great Barrier Island or are you talking about through the freeview box? I think they both access the Optus satellite. Cheers.
As for Sky, yep they were a bunch of sneaky bastards. First the advertising, then so called Sky Box Office which was really just Sky Movies 1 repackaged for an extra charge. Then they introduce the Rugby Channel as if it can’t fit into one of the existing 4 sports channels. Maybe that was Sky confirming that rugby is a “religion” in NZ and deemed beyond being shown on “normal” sports channels? Or maybe it was simply a chance to gouge another 7$ out of gullible people. Whatever, that was the last straw for me. It was a bit of a mission getting it disconnected mind you! Nice letters and phone calls asking if I was sure and was there a problem! Took about 2 weeks from memory.
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 11:48 am
I just want to be able to watch a certain programme. I don’t mind paying, but I do not want to be tied to a particular provider. I don’t want to sign up with Freeview or MySky or Telecom or TiVo. I don’t want to get my head around UHF and HD and whether my house can “see” a satellite.
Do you get Prime with your existing aerial? If so, you’re good to go for Freeview HD. Buy a basic Freeview HD decoder ($200 and up, depending on specials), plug your aerial into it and connect it to your TV. It should just work.
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 11:57 am
You can download movies with Apple TV also.
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 12:05 pm
I got a Tivo set top box on a one year contract from DirecTV in California in 2004.
I paid US$50 installed. And the unit was mine to sell at the end of the year, which I did for $100 from memory.
Hard to see why there should be such a difference. Are the fixed costs of introducing a second PVR really that much?
TiVo licensed its box to DirecTV, which heavily subsidised the price in the hope of recouping it from your subscription payments. However you get it, TiVo is a subscriber service in the US. In NZ and Australia, there’s no subscription to TiVo — hence no subsidy — and you pay something like the real price of the box.
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Im very curious how the data plan will work, with my current plan ( go large ) i actually have unlimited data so not worried about that as it is, however am clearly stuck at a lower speed than I could otherwise get (being within 250m of an exchange) at about 200-300k/s max at off peak hours on ADSL2 where as in theory being so close i should be able to get 5x that or more.
Is that 200-300 kiloBYTES (tolerable) or kiloBITS (shabby)?
They said last week that a connection at 1.5Mbits should take about 10 mins to buffer before you can start watching.
But good question — in theory there’s no cause for Telecom to throttle your TiVo content, but I can’t see them being able to pull off the differential speeds.
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 12:16 pm
When it was introduced in the USA, a big selling point of TiVo was that it automatically removed advertisements from recorded programmes.
In their greed, the NZ distributors have crippled this function, so after paying $900 for a set top box, viewers will still have to fast-forward through advertisements. Shame on TiVo’s NZ distributor.
It’s not the distributors’ choice — the content owners and broadcasters wouldn’t wear it. They need to make money somehow. Sky, of course, doesn’t have that excuse.
Two can play this sneaky game, now I download movies off the web that haven’t even been released in NZ,
Not, of course, actually legal.
and get to watch the quality Australian SBS channel off the Optus satellitte, for free.
Praise be to the Aussie taxpayer …
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 12:33 pm
I can’t really see how TiVo can possibly stick. MySky appears to have done nothing but create dissatisfied customers (although I confess I did watch a hell of a lot of UKTV when I was in NZ recently).
Over here in Aus, I paid $60 for my HD set-top box. I get something like a dozen free-to-air channels (admittedly many of them are shite) to watch. I have cable broadband which costs bugger all and is lightning quick, which means I can download whatever TV or movies I want, either legally through my provider (Optus) for a small fee or slightly less legally via torrents.
Now, I know the two environments are completely different – ADSL is shite compared with Cable, for a start – but really, I have no need to get Foxtel here, and don’t know why on earth anyone would want Sky or TiVo over there. Especially since (I assume) TiVo won’t be showing Sky channels, and vice versa.
And again, as Dime said, Media Centre rocks!
Vote:September 21st, 2009 at 2:22 pm
kaya @ 11:26. Which satellite are you pointing at now – Optus D1 or Optus C1? SBS broadcasts on C1 but you need a set-top box with a tuner capable of performing a “blind scan” to find the transponder, and a subscription card to receive it, as the signal is encrypted.
Vote:September 22nd, 2009 at 9:44 am
I am not changing to Telecom, they have lost me as a customer. Looking to buy one of the PVR options already out there such as the Hyundai AH-3110 or the upcoming Magic TV from Freeviewshop.
Vote:September 25th, 2009 at 11:32 am
can anyone tell me what you would get with tv i.e do you get history channel sports discovery and so on or is it a basic package like free view?
Vote: