TiVo Premiere DVRs to Get Roamio Software in February

Some “patches” of Roamio software, which debuted with the launch of new DVRs in August, have been downloaded to the Premiere DVRs, but the wholesale shift won’t occur until February, Risis said. The Roamio software will mean a “crisper” user interface on the Premiere DVRs and bring additional functions like out-of-home streaming and downloading that was added earlier this fall to the Roamio Pro and Roamio Plus, TiVo officials have said.

The Roamio DVRs have more capacity -- up to 450 hours of HD programming -- and a faster processor than the Premiere models. But the high-end Premiere model, which can store 300 hours of HD content, is less expensive at $399 than the top-end Roamio, which has a $599 retail price. The top-end TiVo Premiere 4XL also was being promoted on Amazon Thursday at $211, down from $399. Atlantic Broadband is, so far, the only cable operator to offer the Roamio DVRs, but other service providers will get it after the DVR “cycles through retail,” Risis said.

The Roamio and Premiere DVRs are a prelude to the network DVRs with a TiVo Cloud service that will be demonstrated at CES in January, Risis said. TiVo unveiled the network DVR at the International Broadcast Conference in Amsterdam in September and a finished product is “not that far away,” said Risis, declining to be more specific.

Having a cloud-based strategy will more closely mesh with the plans of tier one U.S. cable operators, Risis said. While TiVo Premiere DVRs are preloaded with Comcast’s Xfinity video-on-demand (VOD) service in eight markets, discussions with Charter Communications, which is expected to test a cloud-based user interface in the Fort Worth market by early 2014, have moved slower. Charter had originally planned to resell TiVo DVRs, but abandoned that strategy, CEO Thomas Rutledge has said (CED Oct 11 p10). Cox Communications also had plans, like Comcast, to reload a TiVo Premiere DVR with its VOD service. TiVo had $29.5 million in deferred costs as of Oct. 31 tied to development work largely for cable operator Com Hem, Cableuropa’s Ono in Spain and Charter, TiVo said in a 10-Q filed with the SEC.

The TiVo cloud service would allow programmers and cable operators to manage content rights and create multiple tiers of network DVR features, TiVo officials have said. It also would allow for multiscreen policies that would speed the transition to an all-IP video world, TiVo officials have said. TiVo also is working with cable set-top supplier Pace on developing gateways and DVRs with its interface, TiVo has said. Pace already provides products with TiVo DVR software to cable operators like General Communications in Alaska, Investor Relations Director Derrick Nueman said. TiVo’s hardware revenue and gross margins, which totaled $25.7 million and $2.5 million in Q3 ended Oct. 31, are expected to decline in future quarters as cable customers “transition to third-party” devices like Pace’s DVR, TiVo said in an SEC filing.

With TiVo’s cloud-based strategy, “Cox and Charter are more interested because they can get economies of scale from a hardware manufacturer,” Risis said. “And if they can add a better experience of TiVo, they are much happier. Their issue is that they don’t want to be tethered to TiVo” the way mid-tier cable operators are, Risis said. “They want to have flexibility."

Cable operator RCN also introduced a TiVo-powered TV Everywhere service in select markets and is expected to be followed by Atlantic Broadband, Blue Ridge Communications and others, Nueman told us earlier this week at the UBS Global Media and Communications investor conference in New York. The RCN2Go website, which carries the “Powered by TiVo” banner, redirects a user to a login page. RCN2Go launched Dec. 4 as an exclusive preview for RCN’s TiVo DVR customers, said Jackie Heitman, RCN senior vice president-marketing. It will be available to all digital customers in Q1 and currently has 70,000 hours of programming from more than 27 networks, Heitman said. RCN2GO requires a subscription to the cable operator’s digital TV package, she said. Atlantic didn’t comment. RCN selected TiVo and thePlatform in 2012 to help develop a portal for watching video over an Internet connection on a variety of devices. At the time, RCN planned to deploy TV Everywhere in phases starting in 2012. TiVo’s TV Everywhere platform includes “What to Watch,” which recommends shows, search across TV, operator VOD and over-the-top content and scheduling and managing recordings, TiVo has said.

In the future, the TiVo “experience could be cleanly separated from any type of hardware and live on any connected device in delivering linear television and broadband video and interactive elements,” Risis said during a panel at the TVOT conference. It would be “highly personal, using predictive logic to understand how to take this huge volume of content that is increasing every day and make it something for the television viewer to navigate and provide the feeling that something is truly theirs,” he said.