My skepticism over reports that TiVo is doomed seems to be justified. This is good news for the company…good enough to put some of the Deathwatches on hold for a bit. They're still some distance from showing a profit but if the Comcast people are going to be equipping their zillions of subscribers with TiVos, there's going to have to be some sort of long-term support there. So things are looking up a bit.
I wonder if anyone has done any sort of study on Technological Frustration, which is my term for the restlessness of consumers to see their software or hardware improved. I use a program called Forte Agent for most of my e-mail, and I'm convinced that the only thing that prevented it from dominating the market is that it took its various makers (the company changed hands a few times) ten years to make improvements that could/should have happened in two. Its remaining users are still sitting there, wondering if certain promised new features will appear this year or next or the one after…but many have given up on it, the same way a lot of folks gave up on Betamax back when all the sexy new developments were over in the VHS column. One can understand a company being overly-cautious about perfecting a new feature before releasing it — that seems to have been what delayed Sony with its Betamax advances. One can also understand that some techological advances just take time…more than anyone could anticipate. Still, at some point, you just get impatient.
TiVo was introduced into the marketplace in March of 1999. I ordered my first (of many) a month later and it was really quite a wonderful invention. I demonstrated it to everyone who came by my house for about the next year because that's how long it took before most people had even heard of the thing. The company sold at least a dozen more of them because of my efforts but I didn't want a commission. I only wanted TiVo to improve its product…and they have. Just not fast enough. The new "TiVo to Go" feature is disappointing for reasons I explained here, plus many are finding the picture quality unsatisfactory. But the whole thing is probably a greater disappointment than it could have been because it took so long to arrive. For months and months, we heard, "It's coming, it's coming." That kind of thing increases expectations and breaks down brand loyalty.
A few of my friends have given up on TiVo and assembled their own, homemade versions using computers and some software like Media Portal or Snapstream. One said to me, "It took me two days to build a Personal Video Recorder that can do everything I want. Why has it taken TiVo five years?" There are plenty of reasons, of course, including the fact that TiVo keeps being sued or threatened with suits for the supposed damages it will wreak on the television industry. But the point is that in this era of Immediate Gratification, a lot of folks aren't willing to wait…or to trust TiVo to improve itself at a satisfying clip. If they could only manage to do that, we could get rid of all the Deathwatches, once and for all.