TiVo realized (and realizes) that it needs to hustle if it wants to stick around, and in the past year I’ve seen some positive signs that they’ll pull it off. The mere fact that they realized that they needed to turn things around is promising — there are tons of tech companies that never understand that they need to change or die.

I hope that the Death Watch played some small part in getting TiVo’s ass in gear (though I doubt it!). It would not bring me any pleasure to see TiVo go out of business, and I’ll be very happy to suspend the Death Watch when TiVo reports a solidly profitable quarter.

Points very well taken and in defense of your Death Watch TiVo is a different animal today in many ways than they were then.

Rogers seems to have invigorated the company in some important ways especially culminating in the Comcast deal. Series 3 seems closer to reality now and the future does indeed look brighter for the company than it did when Engadget instituted their death watch.

Of course you note their break even quarter, which is not exactly profitibility, but much of TiVo’s profitibility picture has to do with their choice to grow (more specifically rebate costs on boxes in the form of marketing dollars) and is easier to control than we might suspect.

I guess the thing that I’m not getting about Swann’s prediction is that since your death watch the company has actually (in my mind at least) improved quite a bit.

The most recent news of the possibility of a subscription only pricing model may be just what the mass market needs.

My useage of the death watch analogy with Swann perhaps should have been better expounded. I just found it ironic that with the improvement he issues his TiVo is dead prediction — especially on what seemed to me to be based on not enough press coverage of a clearly orchestrated fun and silly event.

I will have no qualms dumping DirecTV and going back to cable, if I have to to keep using TiVos even if it means a slight price increase.

That said, it seems like their situation has changed since we announced the Death Watch. They shuffled their senior management and cut some very important deals (like with Comcast). I don’t pretend to know what will happen, but I’m cautiously optimistic that they’ll either report a profitable quarter soon or get acquired by some bigger player.

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:KLqCixrhweoJ:www.tvpredictions.com/tivodie081204.html+tivo+site:tvpredictions.com&hl;=en≷=us&ct;=clnk&cd;=21

TinyURL in case the above doesn’t work:
http://tinyurl.com/gurym

It’s the same old story with that guy. Nothing to see there.

The jury is still out… the second half of 2006 and into 2007 will be telling. How many people buy up a Series 3 and how large a rollout Comcast has of TiVo-enabled boxes will be more directly related to business success. I’m also interested to see how TiVo approaches the analog phase-out. For example, about this time next year they won’t be able to sell the Series 2 in it’s current form. They’ll have to introduce a new product or yank out the analog tuner.

The loss of DirecTV is significant, but I’m not sure how it impacts the ultimate success or failure of the company. I als wondeer if DTV will try to extend their relationship another year instead of buying customers new units.