look, i have made it clear that i am talking about what is happening in this space over the next couple years. i have said from the beginning that current Extenders are "bleeding edge". the prices can easily come down--certainly people were paying upwards of a grand for high-end DVRs not long ago. do you want to argue that the actual components in an Extender are more expensive than those in a Tivo?
if the Extenders have cheaper components, then why are Extenders going to be more expensive in the long run? especially when you factor in the reduction in monthly fees to Tivo and/or MSO?
please, i don't even have a position in Tivo (or MSFT, although i am long some INTC puts :), i'm just interested in the direction of this space over time.
And DirecTV's 10 million subs have Tivo available at $49 for new units, with only a $5 per household charge for Tivo service
that's a good deal--sounds like a better deal than what you get from subscribing to Tivo directly (edit: i see the $5 charge is just for the Tivo part; this doesn't say anything about the charge for the DVRs and for the receivers). i wish they had that kind of deal at Time Warner. then again, i doubt Tivo is making a lot of money on these subscribers, or they would've struck more of these kinds of deals years ago, instead of waiting for the CEO to resign, the president to quit and the stock to plummet.
sfgate.com
it seems to me that Tivo has wanted to go the independent route. i question whether that business model will be able to last.
Fortunately for consumers, many upstarts refuse to roll over in the face of vaporware threats or second-rate products from Microsoft.
where are all the "consumers" with Tivo. the number of Tivo-owned customers does not impress me.
Not $15/month.
i was talking about the cable co. my cable co. "or Tivo" was in parentheses in my post. sorry a million billion times for not writing "or Tivo, in which case it would only be $12.95 per month for the first box and then $6.95/month for each additional box, plus on top of that the $8 or so the cable co charges for each additional digital receiver, which can't be HDTV since Tivo direct doesn't do HDTV unlike MCE which is free)".
Check out today's WSJ article on re-intermediation in the photo industry - everyone thought that home photo printing would be the way of the future
well, you can always take an irrelevant anecdote to try to prove a generality, and then extend the generality to your specific argument. but whether that matters outside your own head is open to debate. as a contrary anecdote, i can say i'm pleased as punch to have dumped my shite RBOC (phone company) as i have switched to VOIP, thereby disintermediating one more monopoly dinosaur out of my personal consumer nirvana. i don't claim VOIP adoption by consumers as they disintermediate the RBOCs proves anything about Tivo. why should photo printing labs prove the opposite?
i don't claim to know how this will all work out in the DVR space--i think it's "up in the air", which is why it's an interesting space to follow and discuss. but it seems some Tivo longs have decided everything's already set in stone. i don't see it that way. |
