TiVo cancels press preso for informal product demos
We headed over to a scheduled TiVo press presentation here at the LVCC to discover they'd cancelled the bulk of the scheduled presentation in favor of a very brief four-point spiel and one-on-one tours around TiVo product stations. When asked about the cancellation they indicated they felt they'd made a lot of announcements in the weeks and months leading up to CES and wanted to avoid over-saturation, ending up in favor of showing off some of their newer products in a more informal hands-on demo setting.
The talking points from the uber-brief presentation included a statement about the magic of TiVo's cable approach being due to its hardware independence and the partnership with Comcast involving some interesting upcoming software development. They also professed a committment to not leaving analog subscribers behind, with some interesting arrangements on the horizon for those analog subs not planning to make the leap to digital anytime soon. Future directions include working on developing the viewing experience in order to target content ever more precisely towards individual viewers' tastes, such that the kinds of programs you prefer to watch tend to find you more easily. The last blurb was a bit about how TiVo functionality is apparently ranked incredibly high for people considering adopting a new cable subscription or changing cable providers -- higher than TiVo themselves had apparently expected. After the brief shpiel they let us loose on the floor to snag hands-on demos from TiVo staff.
They had stations set up to show off the TiVo and Yahoo integration, the PSP and iPod integration, and the Wireless G USB network adapter. The TiVo/Yahoo partnership includes support for content downloads on top of the integration with traffic, weather and photos, including support for podcast and videoblog downloads (Rocketboom, anyone?). PSP and iPod integration services for TiVoToGo are expected to be fully launched by mid-2006. When asked about Mac support for TiVo Desktop software, the stock answer appeared to be "mid-2006," so Mac users sit tight on your TiVoToGo compatibility. Overall, nothing we haven't seen before and no big announcements.
