TiVo Looms in ‘Broad Array’ of Best Buy Insignia TVs, TiVo CEO Says

TiVo and Best Buy formed an alliance in 2009, and recently amended the pact to include “non-DVR” products like TVs that can’t record to a hard drive, a staple feature of TiVo standalone DVRs. Best Buy has been selling TiVo standalone Premiere DVRs and bundling them with the sale of a DTV. But the new jointly developed sets will have a new user interface designed to “make them pop” and stand out on retail shelves, CEO Tom Rogers said. The agreement, which runs through January 2013, covers a so-called non-DVR media applications that can’t control a TV display, including pausing, fast forwarding and rewinding, TiVo has said (CED Sept 13 p1). The first products stemming from the TiVo/Best Buy partnership were to ship late this year. Rogers declined to comment on a delivery date. And Best Buy officials weren’t available for comment.

The development pact with Best Buy is part of a broadening of TiVo’s business to include custom versions of its DVR software and interface, Rogers said. Virgin Media is expected to ship Cisco-made set-top cable boxes this fall in the U.K. featuring TiVo DVR software, while Spain MSO Ono will field them in early 2011, TiVo officials have said. TiVo also agreed with Samsung to build DVR-equipped set-top boxes for the European market. Samsung once sold co-branded TiVo DVRs in the U.S.

Noting the sluggish roll out of tru2way cable set-top boxes, many MSOs are opting to distribute TiVo Premiere DVRs as they wait for the two-way technology to gain traction, Rogers said. TiVo signed a series of deals with RCN, Suddenlink and Cox Communications to market its DVRs. Cox also tested downloading TiVo DVR software to its Cisco STBs in Rhode Island and Connecticut, but hasn’t expanded the deployment. In offering standalone TiVo DVRs, MSOs give their customers access to DVR technology “here and now” instead of waiting for tru2way to arrive, Rogers said.

"Tru2way has taken much longer” to be deployed than MSOs expected because “there wasn’t a homogeneous approach” among cable operators to introducing the technology, Rogers said. Comcast also has tested downloads of TiVo DVR software to its STBs in the Boston market starting in 2008. But the cable operator hasn’t extended the service to the Chicago market as was originally planned.

TiVo and DirecTV are “continuing to test” a new broadband-enabled DVR/satellite receiver, Rogers said. But DirecTV remains expected to field product by year-end, he said. DirecTV confirmed product plans, but said an exact date for introducing it hasn’t been set.

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Best Buy will launch sales of Best Buy Connect brand 4G WiMAX service in Q1 with an assortment of products, said Paul Blalock, vice president of investor relations at Clearwire. Clearwire will provide the service to Best Buy under a wholesale agreement, the companies have said. Best Buy is expected to carry a range of WiMAX-equipped PCs this fall as it lays the groundwork for its 4G service. The chain currently sells two Dell WiMAX-ready notebooks with 14- ($699) and 15.6-inch ($799) LCDs (CED Aug 3 p6). Best Buy stores in Houston and St. Louis are marketing Clearwire’s prepaid Rover Puck 4G mobile hotspot device ($149). The hotspot product converts a WiFi connection to WiMax in delivering 3-6 Mbps download speeds. The service is priced at $5, $20 and $50 for daily, weekly and monthly subscriptions. Clearwire also is weighing adding a WiMax-capable tablet PC, Blalock told us. Clearwire ended Q2 with 1.7 million subscribers and expects to have 3 million by year-end, about half of whom will be retail customers, he said. Clearwire’s average revenue per user (ARPU) in Q2 was $41, up from $39.65 in late 2009. The remainder will be wholesale customers gained through partners Comcast, Sprint and Time-Warner Cable, which re-sell the service. Sprint owns 54 percent of Clearwire, which shares cell sites with the wireless carrier. Clearwire introduced its service a year ago and had 3.3 percent penetration in its first three markets -- Atlanta, Las Vegas and Portland, Ore., at the end of Q2, up from 2.7 percent in the previous quarter, Blalock said. Clearwire also is testing Long Term Evolution (LTE), considered the next generation of 3G and 4G cellular technology, in the Phoenix market, Blalock said. Rather than proprietary packet structures used for GSM and CDMA, LTE is based entirely on IP packets, with voice traveling over IP. It boasts download speeds up to 173 Mbps.

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Take-Two Interactive Software posted $61 million in digital download revenue from its PC and video games the first nine months of fiscal 2010 and will continue expanding the business, CEO Ben Feder said. Among the titles offered were Borderlands, Grand Theft Auto and Sid Meier’s Civilization, which is available through Facebook and Twitter, he said. The download games’ prices vary from 99 cents for Grand Theft Auto: China Wars HD, available this month through Apple’s iPad tablet PC, to $19.99 for a fuller version of the title for videogame consoles, Feder said. To increase digital revenue, Take-Two also is banking on the release of the multiplayer NBA Online in China that it’s developing with Tencent Holdings, Feder said. The shipping date for the NBA title, part of Take-Two’s effort to increase multiplayer online business in Asia, hasn’t been set, he said. It also will deliver the social network CivNetwork based on the Civilization game in 2011, Feder said. Meanwhile, Take-Two cut 40 jobs during a recent restructuring at the Rockstar Games studio in San Diego Feder told us. The San Diego studio developed Red Dead Redemption, which was released May 18 and has sold more than 6.9 million copies. The positions were trimmed “to properly align their resources with current and future goals,” Feder has said (CED Sept 7 p6). Feder declined to comment on Take-Two’s reported plans for releasing Grand Theft Auto 5 in 2011. Among the other new 2011 titles are Irrational Games’ first-person shooter Bioshock Infinite for PCs, PS3 and Xbox 360. Also shipping in 2011 will be L.A. Noire, whose release was delayed from this year to “give the game more of the development it needed,” Feder said. The game is being developed by Team Bondi in Australia and will be published by Take-Two’s Rockstar Games.