So ironic that someone with your perfect judgement would say “don’t worry, he will probably screw this up to.”

when I guess you mean, “too”? I think you screwed that up, guy. You’re fired.

The only thing Thomas is wrong about is the simplicity of a dual tuner standalone box. Without CableCards it’s not really feasible.

But Sony has had CableCard products out for almost 6 months. It’s TiVo’s fault that they are still over a year away from a CableCard product. You can’t blame that on the FCC.

You can not make a good HD box without either integrating into the settop box or using cable card. This also applies back to the two tuner model, without cable card a two tuner model of any standalone type would be too cumbersome or expensive. Can you picture two IR balsters going to two cable boxes.

The complain that TiVo let DirectTV get too much control of the DirectTiVo box and then also complain that TiVo did not negotiate better with cable companies. All the cable companies wanted was the TiVo software at rock bottom prices. How in the world do you reconcile that both were mistakes?

TiVos only real mistake is that they did not badger the FCC constantly to get the cable card spec out so TiVo can get down the Stand alone road more easily, but if TiVo can bleed slow enough to see the cable card TiVo come out they will be well positioned in the new – who needs what the cable company tries to foist on us market.

so in short – You do not know what you are talking about

1. It would have been simple to build a multi tuner system much earlier in the process. A single tuner standalone box is unacceptable these days.

2. The DirecTV HDTV box had excellent sales. TiVo should have pursued an HDTV strategy for a standalone box much earlier.

3. Instead of doing either of the above the company spent the last year working on TiVo to Go which only works with less than 50% of their customers.

4. They should have sold their brand name recognition to another company while the stock was still up rather than let the vultures pick it up in bankruptcy court.

5. They should have negotiated better with the content providers and brought more original content to the TiVo platform.

6. They should have been more open and transparent with their customers about the state of their pipeline and allowed their customers to better evangelize their products.

7. They were a weak negotiator with DirecTV when they had a much stronger hand. They took too little and gave too many concessions in terms of giving up control over the hardware (disabling USB ports, HMO, etc.).

8. The whole ads over ad skipping technology was a huge PR blunder that will not provide any type of significant revenue to the firm in time to work.

Amongst other things.

I’ve never been burned by TiVo’s stock because I’ve never owned it – although I do own two TiVo machines and appreciate the technology. The bottom line is that Ramsay did not do a good job running the business. Don’t take my word for it, take the stock market’s word for it.