Australian Tivo service doomed.

Whilst the article in The Australian IT states Tivo will fail in Australia for reasons such as it being too difficult to sell and being too costly, the real reason for it’s demise will be that it is anchored to one of Australia’s free to air broadcasters, Channel Seven. Being aligned to a free to air broadcaster will drive their competitors away from the service.

TiVo is a very successful digital video recorder service in the US and many companies around the world refer to it with envious jealousy at it’s household acceptance within the US as the system of choice to digitally record and watch TV content. The independence of the service ensures non biased access to content.

If the service is released in Australia by an incumbent broadcaster, it will be bereft of issues such as fully populated electronic programme guides and even issues around access to high definition digital content from competitors.

Anyone who has access to a Foxtel IQ system will be more than aware of how these issues affect use of the service by how both Channel Seven & Channel 10 continue to stuff up their viewers by not allowing their EPGs to be viewed through the IQ service.

Posted by Shane Williamson