Poor TiVo

Every time I hear that TiVo is sucking in its last breath, or that it is embroiled in another IP lawsuit, or some other “end of the road as we know it” story, I shed a movie-like solitary tear. It is truly a sad situation.

Like many others, I am a TiVo true believer. An evangelist. A satisfied user and customer. Every time someone comes over and sees my TiVo, or asks about it, I launch into an often practiced but never disingenuous story of how TiVo is the greatest thing to adorn my home theater setup. How it has revolutionized the way I watch television. How TiVo is such a smart company that understands and believes in its users. How they “support” the hacking community, embrace open source software and Linux, and yes, even designed the world’s greatest remote control.

The scariest thing is, every single person I know that has tried TiVo has felt almost the same way. Every single one of them is a die-hard TiVo user to this day, and will continue to be until they finally shut off the proverbial life support.

Sure, I’ve tried the ReplayTV and the Comcast-supplied DVRs. They blow in comparison from a user-experience point of view.

So why has it been such a tough road for this much-heralded company that seems, otherwise, to be doing everything right by its customers? The TiVo Deathwatch is almost as feverish as the Apple Deathwatch, and similar to the Palm Deathwatch. There are a lot of hypotheses as to why, but I think the real reason is very simple.

There are close to 70M cable television subscribers in the United States alone, 347M worldwide. TiVo has around 4M subscribers (of which, by the way, not all pay monthly fees due to the now-defunct lifetime agreement). That’s pathetic. Especially for a company that has been at it for as long as TiVo (seven years as a public company).

What does this boil down to?

Most cable television subscribers either a) don’t care about PVR, or b) just don’t get what a PVR does for them.

Remember I said that I’ve told the tale of TiVo countless times? Fun for me, but not good for TiVo.

That’s because most everyone that walks into my house has never heard of a digital video recorder, much less TiVo. Sure, it made it onto Friends, and Jon Stewart mentions it all the time on The Daily Show, but it is totally not enough. TiVo is not penetrating the consciousness of the American public. Well, certainly not like the Apple iPod. Why?

The iPod is an accessory. The TiVo sits in your living room. The iPod looks cool and makes music hip and funky. The TiVo makes watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island a little less painful. Music is all about individuality, taste, and selection — some people are defined by their music. Television is a commodity dictated to the consumer. Music can be active (while snowboarding, driving, or otherwise playing some sort of Extreme sport). Television is sedentary — I watch after eating a big dinner.

In the end, maybe the average user just doesn’t need or want to exert control over their television viewing to a point that a TiVo is deemed necessary. They watch television at prime time and just watch whatever is on. If they must see “Lost”, they sit down at that time. If they miss it, oh well, they move on with their lives.

It’s a sad state of affairs from a TiVo-owner’s perspective, but hey, it’s probably a good portion of the cable television subscribers out there.

Those that I have shown the TiVo to are usually quite impressed with the whole experience. But not every one of them gets that “must have” craving in their eyes. They recognize the utility, but in the end, they just don’t need one badly enough. It’s just television.

So, what should TiVo do? I have no idea. Maybe get bought by Apple like a lot of Apple/TiVo fanboys (and fangirls) have been yammering about. I have no idea how this helps them, except, possibly, from a cool perspective, and maybe an advertising perspective. Maybe that gets people more invested.

Maybe release their interface and technology as software for your PC? The Apple route does this, but then again, so does Windows Media Center Edition and countless other packages. Sure, TiVo would be cooler than the competition, but it still does not address the “don’t need it” factor.

In the end, maybe the American consumer has, as they say, “voted with their wallets”. Sad to hear it, but really, it’s only television.

I guess I need to get over it.

Now, what to do about my TiVo4Evah tattoo…