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Surprises

by Mike Masnick

Thu, Dec 11th 2003 7:17pm





DirecTiVos Selling Like Crazy

from the didn't-see-that-coming? dept

Everyone who has a TiVo seems to love it, but they've always had trouble getting sales. The number of "will TiVo survive" stories, at points, seemed to outnumber the number of TiVo's sold. While TiVo has been trying to partner with cable and satellite providers as a channel, the only big one they've been able to land is DirecTV. DirecTV has offered TiVo boxes for years, but now, for no clear reason they can't keep them on the shelves. Shoppers ordering the combined DirecTV/TiVo offering are finding out that there's quite a delay. Part of this is apparently due to DirecTV cutting the price in half after someone realized that the initial price is a hurdle, and lowering that one-time hurdle means a lot more people will get hooked on the recurring service fees. If anything, DirecTV might want to consider going even lower. Imagine how many people would sign up for a "free TiVo" even if it meant paying a monthly service fee.

4 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    Kevin, Dec 11th, 2003 @ 7:31pm

    I use tivo so often and depend on it it would actually negatively impact my life if the service was shut down.

    I think us tivo worshipers have to be very worried that if tivo became too popular it would become enemy #1 of the TV industry and that would get very ugly.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Re: No Subject Given

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    dkan24, Dec 11th, 2003 @ 7:47pm

    Time Warner gives away free DVR's with a $7 monthly charge. I used to be a ReplayTV owner, who sold it, because the TW DVR is better in some key ways. It has 2 tuners, and records the digital stream, so there is no quality loss, and it gets the dolby digital surround audio signal. DirecTivo has these features, but not the regular Tivos. TW will have an HD DVR real soon as well.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    No Subject Given

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    Brian, Dec 12th, 2003 @ 7:28am

    I don't think it's so much an issue of DirecTV suddenly "seeing the light" as it is an issue of having a big inventory of 40-hour TiVo boxes they need to get rid of in order to make room for higher-capacity, more expensive models. Once the $99 promo ends in a couple of months, the price will almost certainly go back up, nad it will be back to trickling instead of flying off the shelves.

    I just bought one of these DirecTiVo systems last week, and it's great. I love it. It's worth $99 for the box and $5/mo for the service. Would the box be worth $299 to me? No way. Would the service be work $13/mo? Nope. It's cool, but it's not that cool.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    I don't get it

    identicon
    gary, Dec 12th, 2003 @ 6:44pm

    Digital video recording isn't that hard. The only service TiVo tries to provide is the TV guide service. My sat dish gives me a TV guide. Why do they have to link up with TiVo? Do you have to connect your sat box to a phone line just to get a TV guide? That seems dumb.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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