This is being heavily discussed at engadget.com and tivocommunity.com, but here's the quick summary, as I understand it.

TiVo:
- TiVoToGo is finally shipping. Works with standalone, but not DirecTV units.
- They're planning to support CableCard in 2006.
- Humax has integrated Tivo into a 26" LCD television
- A next generation of HMO ("TiVo Desktop 2.0") will support Internet video purchase download.

DirecTV:
- Announced their homebrew TiVo replacement (shipping mid-2005), but no HD support
- Announced the delivery of HD local channels in some of their bigger markets on a new satellite (second half of 2005), transcoded into MPEG4 at half of the original MPEG2 bandwidth, requiring a new dish and new set-top box to receive
- Announced a new "Home Media Center" (shipping in 2006) that sounds like TiVo HMO

Now that I've gone to the trouble of putting an OTA antenna on my roof, and it works pretty well with my HD-TiVo, I won't feel any need to get HD locals from the satellite. The only thing that might nudge me away from my current setup is either DirecTV dropping support for it or some competitive box that offers show extraction and other integration features with the home computer.

They are also saying that ALL channels will eventually be transmitted with MPEG4, although I can't find the quote in the press releases now.

The HR10-250 that a lot of us dropped over 1k on will be a boat anchor in a few years, it sounds like. It's exciting to see D* add all those HD channels, but it's sad to be made obsolete with something that we recently bought that I for one, thought would have a longer shelf life...

- Jon

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TiVoToGo is finally shipping.

My brother-in-law got his email from Tivo today confirming this. He had to rub in the fact that DirecTivo users will not be offered this...

It looks like DirecTV has no long term plans to keep Tivo... Do they realize that many people are keeping their DirecTV subscriptions only because of the DrecTivo boxes? I'll probably drop DirecTV now if anyone else offers a digital box with builtin Tivo.

I don't think anyone else will be offering built-in TiVo. You'll likely have to go to digital cable in 2006. Ahh, TiVo is too slow. There will be other PVR solutions with cable card support this year. TiVo is going to get clobbered in the next two years, IMO. They're my favorite and I'm sad to see this happen, but I think their days are numbered as any type of major player. As it stands, they're mostly just a player by name anyway.

But who knows. Digital cable integration might just save their ass - it's just worrisome to not see them be there first.

Bruno

Gazing into my crystal ball...

- In the near term (2-3 years), DirecTV's three main satellites will continue to broadcast their current MPEG2 standard. Changing this to MPEG4 would break every single pre-installed DirecTV set-top box, so it's out of the question. The initial roll-out of MPEG4 will only be on a new satellite, requiring a new dish and so forth. They'll be catering to early adopters, particularly HD people.

- That means the HD-Tivos won't be boat anchors for a while, and, if they've got things together and they can make the new channels and services sufficiently compelling, then some of the HD-Tivo people will voluntarily migrate. Never mind that half of the new services are things that the Tivos could do if they only wanted them to (e.g., Tivo HMO). If they get something "close enough" to Tivo, and maybe sweeten the deal somehow in terms of adoption price, then most people will stick with DirecTV and dump Tivo.

- Transmitting HD locals on the satellite is an important move. It lets them charge for something you can get for yourself for free (always a bonus), and it means that people don't have to dork around with hybrid OTA/satellite solutions. It was a pain to get everything done right at my house. I'm sure it's a pain elsewhere, limiting it to early adopters. Doing everything over satellite will radically increase their HD market penetration.

- DirecTV will watch their market demographics for HD. Once they've got a large-enough installed base of the new MPEG4 gear, then they'll look at taking their current #3 satellite (carrying most of the current HD content) and migrating that to MPEG4 (and turning the HD-Tivos into boat anchors). The current #1 and #2 satellites will be the last to switch over, and may well be looking at end-of-life issues, for all we know. How long does a satellite last, anyway?

- In that same 3+ year timeframe, the CableCard disaster will have shaken itself out and will hopefully "just work". Tivo and everybody else will offer dual-tuner HD cable boxes. Hopefully, Tivo's relationships with Japanese and Korean box builders will keep them out in front, in terms of licensing their software.

My crystal ball doesn't have much to say about Internet video-on-demand. Assuming we want to send full DVD images around (4.7GB), then a double-speed (3Mbps) DSL connection would need 3.5 hours to get the full thing (~2 hours of MPEG2 SD-quality or MPEG4 HD-quality). That's about half of real-time. The Tivo model of delayed delivery is certainly compatible with something like this. The wildcard is whether Hollywood will play ball. Do people want their favorite sitcoms in syndication or do they want them on video-on-demand or on DVD or something else?

My crystal ball is also toying with the FCC sticking its nose into the satellite business. Once consumers get happy with CableCard and ditch their cable boxes, they'll start pushing the FCC to make similar mandates to DirecTV, Dish, and Voom (if they're still around). Then you get a world that resembles GSM cel phones. You can use any GSM phone on any network, but there will be sweetheart deals and exclusives on certain gear for certain networks.

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It looks like DirecTV has no long term plans to keep Tivo... Do they realize that many people are keeping their DirecTV subscriptions only because of the DrecTivo boxes? I'll probably drop DirecTV now if anyone else offers a digital box with builtin Tivo.

I agree with that the only reason I thought about getting direct tv was for the Tivo.

Also I have a feeling while there will be a ton of PVRs coming out none will do it the way I want so it won't really matter. (just like the empeg)

From the Reuters article,

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While DirecTV executives said they were still contractually obligated to continue selling TiVo devices, which let television viewers pause and record live TV, the company said its focus would be on marketing its own devices.

So, at least until that contract gives out, combo unit TiVos will still be supported by DirecTV. After that, it's just a matter of whether DirecTV wants to honk off their customers or not.

My crystal ball offered up another thought. If and when DirecTV tries to obsolete its TiVo userbase, they'll be offering some kind of "pay X and we'll give you the new DirecTV-brand box" incentive. As long as X is a non-trivial amount of money, that's an opportunity for TiVo or anybody else to offer a counter-incentive to migrate to whatever box they're offering.

Should be interesting to see how this pans out.

*edit* I believe this is a NY Times article *edit*

DirecTV Machine Will Compete With TiVo
By ERIC A. TAUB

Published: January 7, 2005


AS VEGAS, Jan. 6 - TiVo, the company that created the market for digital video recorders, received a serious challenge to its business on Thursday when DirecTV, the satellite provider, announced that it would begin offering its own brand of digital video recorder later this year.

The move ends an exclusive relationship between the companies that supplied TiVo with two million of its three million subscribers.

The satellite company hopes that many of its customers who now use machines with TiVo technology will switch to DirecTV's machine.

"We will still support our TiVo service, but our core marketing and sales efforts will be with our new DVR," said Bob Marsocci, a DirecTV spokesman.

For its part, TiVo remains optimistic about the change in relationship. "We fully expect to compete for DirecTV's business," said Brodie Keast, TiVo executive vice president, who noted that the company competed against the Microsoft UltimateTV product for DirecTV subscribers when TiVo started its service in 2000.

DirecTV executives declined to discuss how much longer they would maintain their contractual relationship with TiVo, although Mr. Keast noted that the company's current arrangement to supply TiVo boxes to DirecTV customers runs through the end of 2007.

The new DirecTV digital video recorder is being designed by NDS, which is based in Britain and owned by the News Corporation, which owns a minority interest in DirecTV.

To encourage subscribers to switch, DirecTV will offer advanced features on its device, including longer recording capacity and the ability to use interactive services.

DirecTV subscribers using the new recorder will also be able to record several pay-per-view movies at a time and then pay for a movie only if it is viewed, the company said.

DirecTV also said that it would offer local high-definition TV broadcasts in 12 markets beginning later this year. To increase its channel capacity, the company will launch several satellites designed to carry HDTV programming.

DirecTV will market a home media center by the end of this year that will permit customers to transmit programming stored on a digital recorder to any other television in the house.

I wouldn't mind paying Tivo the $13 dollars a month instead of paying DirecTV $5 a month if Tivo ended up supporting the DirecTivo users at some point. It seems like all of the new features that DirecTV is going to put into their new boxes (at least the tempting features) are already offered by Tivo on their stand alone recorders.

Among all the panic over at the Tivo boards, I don't see any reason that Tivo (or other companies) wouldn't be allowed to make their own branded DirecTV receivers with Tivo built in. DirecTV receivers are already made by quite a few different companies, I don't see what'd make them stop or why they couldn't add Tivo to it.

I was shocked to hear that Tivo only has 3 million subscrbors and that 2 million of those are from DirecTV! DirecTV was getting quite a good deal being able to offer those services to it's customers for such a low fee (less than the $5 customers paid).

To jump to conclusions, because it would undermine DirecTV's efforts in the PVR arena. That is, if they license the DirecTV tech to TiVo, who create a receiver, why would someone want to buy the DirecTV branded one? So that would reduce their market share by 50%. I doubt licensing fees could make that up.

On the other hand, I have to wonder how exorbitant TiVo's licensing fees are that everyone and their grandmother is developing their own PVR to compete.

Maybe, like all of the people that claimed they could make their own empegs out of PCs, they don't realized how hard the software is.

I'm guessing that DirecTV will be practically giving away their own branded PVR to compete with cable providers that do this - and to also sway people away from buying a Tivo one, even if it is a DirecTV model. Just a guess though.

Hey, I'm not defending the quality of the other PVRs. From what I hear, they're uniformly lousy, but I've not actually used one, having not had cable TV for over 8 years.

This on NewsScan seems to say TiVo is headed into cable box production. The latimes link seems not to be a correct citation.

TiVo is far behind in the cable arena though. 2006 for Cable-card? Digeo's Moxi already does so much TiVo doesn't. By 2006 you'll likely see Moxi on some boxes from every major cable-co. They're already in Motorola and Scientific Atlanta boxes (likely the two most popular brands along with GI as a third) What Moxi needs sorely is a DirecTV-style guide. And that's coming so I've been told.

On the DirecTV front, you can expect TiVo to be dropped like a hot potato when the contract runs out. DTV's obligation to its customers can be fulfilled by replacing their units with an NDS box - which is also a LOT more advanced than TiVo's current boxes.

I love TiVo. They'll have some things that just aren't the same elsewhere, but it's not an empeg-to-others comparison. Some of these other companies "get-it" a lot bettter than TiVo does.

TiVo hasn't been able to market themselves effectively and their subscription model is going to really seem like a crummy deal soon. I don't know if they have the marketing savvy to really go the distance. It looks like it will have to be a pure retail product. But it will have to change a lot from its current incarnation to have any chance against all the offerings you'll be able to get from your TV providers.

I haven't checked out the DishNet booth to see if they have any new deals coming. Moxi is will continue to be exclusive to cable and I don't know if the NDS box will be making a DishNet appearance...

Bruno

One argument for waiting until 2006 would be the release of the CableCard 2 standard, which should allow for pay-per-view and such. Also, given the horror stories I've read about people trying to get CableCard systems working, Tivo might be smart in delaying their release until the stuff actually works.

(Or, for all we know, they might have signed some kind of exclusive agreement with DirecTV that precludes them from coming to market any time sooner.)

Hughes Electronics owns DirecTV. Hughes Electronics was recently purchased by one of Murdock's companies (Sky TV I think) for the express intent ot getting into the US satellite business. Sky already has a PVR device that they developed, so that's probably why they dumped Tivo more than anything.

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The rational behind this was to provide a unified experience for customers with a single UI for every box and to reduce support costs.

I actually think this is a good idea because so many DirecTV receivers had horrible interfaces. To make it worse, they are all different. I really liked my Sony a lot - too bad they didn't go with that one! This must have been a recent move though.. my father just signed up for DirecTV last winter (March?) and was given all RCA branded boxes.

Newscorp (Murdoch's company) was already in the US sat business. They also own Echostar/DishNetwork. Everything I saw at CES indicated TiVo is quite possibly doomed to competing for third-tier business with the likes of small software vendors like Medio.

Bruno

General Motors, Hughes Electronic's former owner, was in long talks with Newscorp to sell Newscorp. Newscorp played hardball and proposed a lower price than GM was willing to sell for. Newscorp knew that Echnostar was the only other bidder in serious competition. After GM withdrew from the Newscorp talks, they were approached by Echostar and both companies reached a merger deal. Unfortuneately for them, the FCC rejected the merger on grounds that Echostar/DirecTV would have a monopoly on consumer satellite TV in the USA. Murdoch stepped back in, this time making an even lower bid and GM was forced to take it. The Hughes stock has been dropping over the years due to speculation over possible spin off and sales of the company (I can attest to this as a former Hughes employee - my company stock was pretty much worthless by the time I left - right before the merger.) Newscorp has a huge worldwide pressence, but until the Hughes/DirecTV "merger" had no business in the USA other than the Fox channels.

Newscorp does not own Echostar (yet?).

In fact you're right. Newscorp own a large number of Echostar shares, but not a controlling percentage as I had thought.

By the way, Sky's boxes are made by Pace. And I was (snooping around) by the Digeo booth (closed-office) at CES when who should pop by for a visit with a small entourage? Pace. Supposedly Digeo have an exclusive cable agreement for Moxi - at least in North America.

BTW, can anyone get me one of the new (white and black) DirecTV remotes? Or know where I can order one?

Bruno

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Newscorp own a large number of Echostar shares

I didn't know that. Echostar has been trying to take Newscorp to court a lot recently too. Odd relationship!

That's 'cause Echostar CEO Charlie Ergen may be an odd dude, but he's also nobody's bitch (least of all, scum like Murdoch's). I own a DiSH PVR, and despite dual tuners, a customized Linux OS, and a 200GB+ HDD, yes, it does indeed suck compared to TiVo or ReplayTV. Then again, I have never and will never pay a monthly guide fee FOR LIFE, so you can't beat the price at the time.