With "It’s not TV until it’s on TV" as his rallying cry, TiVo CEO Tom Rogers announced the new TiVoCast service that brings the PVR pioneer one step closer to becoming a full-blown TV programming provider. The company is leveraging the red-hot IPTV market and circumventing cable, terrestrial, and satellite broadcasters. The new service will deliver video feeds to TiVo Series II settop-box owners over a broadband connection through licensing deals with the NBA, WNBA, The New York Times, iVillage and CNET.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor
of Projection Monthly

With TiVoCast, subscribers link to the company’s main menu called TiVo Central, where content is offered free of charge to subscribers and licensees can offer a variety of programming and advertising. Last December TiVo rolled out a host of online services for subscribers that included Web radio from Live365, Yahoo content and even Fandango movie reviews and tickets - but this announcement opens the door to a whole new set of programming options, including lucrative advertising revenue from programming streamed to TV sets outside the traditional distribution modes, potentially pitting the company against its traditional partners.

Some analysts have stated that this is "evolutionary" for TiVo and necessary in order for the company to survive. " They need to position themselves as a full-fledged TV service operator - not as a [cable and satellite] operator adjunct as it is today," said Colin Dixon of the Diffusion Group, as reported in a recent Internet Week story.

TiVoCast moves the Web in the direction of serving as a broadcast-medium backbone, with the eventual goal of offering cable- and satellite-like programming for the simple cost of a broadband connection. And there’s the rub. Most folks get broadband today from a cable modem, so cable TV providers are at risk of losing lucrative TV subscribers to Web-based delivery mechanisms like TiVo delivered on their own cable backbone!

Perhaps this is why cable and telecommunications companies such as Comcast, AT&T and Verizon are looking to Congress to help them become internet gatekeepers. In proposed legislation, they will stand between content providers and consumers. For this "service" they will extract a toll for connectivity and for putting an end to "network neutrality," a concept that states all Internet content must be treated alike and must move at the same speed over the network. (The debate over network neutrality is a critical one. To find out more, see www.savetheinternet.com.)

With TiVoCast, TiV once again finds itself in the unenviable position of empowering viewers with a new technology that flies in the face of large corporate interests. Last time, by offering time-shifting of TV programming, it empowered viewers to fast forward through annoying commercials, undercutting network TVs cash cow. This time, TiVo promises to offer a whole new delivery mechanism, transporting IPTV from the small computer monitor to the big leagues of your living room TV screen. This will circumvent traditional TV service providers - if those same network owners don’t get an Internet toll booth in place before Tivo starts rolling.