Digeo's Moxi, NDS's PVR, Echostar PVRs, Scientific Atlanta PVRs, Motorola PVRs, Microsoft Media Centers and Media Extenders to name a few. Scientific Atlanta boxes are not the prettiest things to look at and have more than their share of poorly designed UI/logic, but they dont care as long as their customers are happy. And their customers are not you nor I. They're the cable-co's. Cable-Co's move like lemmings. They tend to all go with the same or similar solutions as one another. MS isn't going to sit around packing XP Media Center into only high-priced PCs. You'll start to see a lot more products featuring their OS at lower price points and supporting Open Cable as well as other initiatives. The Satelite industry is practically closed to competition, with Dish Network using only boxes of its parent, Echostar Communications (asian boxes). DirecTV is likely (pretty much a done deal) to start offering NDS boxes instead of TiVo in the near future (News Corp has a stake in both, so it makes sense - it's also been announced). Their contract with TiVo (responsible for the vast majority of TiVo units shipped each quarter and currently in use) ends in 2007. I'm just amazed that no one else has provided an interface closer to TiVo's instead of the junk I see out there (SA, Motorola and Echostar). Moxi is nice but not widely adopted yet. The NDS solution also looks pretty nice.

TiVo needs to move in a big way in the stand-alone market. Unfortunately I don't believe the stand-alone market is going to offer tremendous room for growth when Open Cable is around the corner and HDTV set to push harder than it ever has. You never know though. maybe they'll be ready for Open-Cable before everyone else. Maybe they can convince cable-co's to go with their solution. But doubtful. See, TiVo is a software company. Cable-Co's want a piece of hardware with some software on it and don't want to pass another monthly bill on to their customers. If anyone is going to make another $5-15 per month for PVR "service" it will be them, not TiVo. And with the box makers already set making their own lackluster software that just needs to be "good enough" - well, you get the picture. At least with Open Cable you'd be able to use a retail TiVo in place of your cable-co's supplied box. This may be able to stimulate some sales. But that means selling to the consumer, which in this industry, is not anywhere as lucrative as selling to the content provider.

I didnt write Replay above because they're not even on the map right now. I also just saw Tom's post above. Knowing the TiVo name is good, but not necessarily good enough. The bottom line in my opinion is that TiVo doesn't have to invest radically in engineering to win the struggle to stay alive, but rather in marketing and business strategy. Their current revenue model is not sound for future growth.

Bruno