TiVo partners with bad-boy ISP, TelstraClear sticks with Sky

Australasian TiVo licensee Hybrid TV has surprised the market with the announcement of its latest Australian ISP partner: iiNet.

The controversial iiNet is currently embroiled in a Federal Court copyright law test case. Hollywood studios, and the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, accused the provider of ignoring multiple take-down notices after its members posted or shared pirated music, movies and other files.

iiNet will not resell TiVo boxes, but it will offer unmetered data support for TiVo’s ondemand movies, TV-shows and music service, Caspa (in New Zealand, Caspa content is only open to Telecom Broadband customers).

Hybrid - whose Australia-New Zealand-wide operation is one-third owned by TVNZ (the balance by Seven Media) - now has five ISP partners for TiVo across the Tasman.

In New Zealand, TiVo has an exclusive arrangement with a single ISP, Telecom Broadband, which holds 57% share in the residential market (although those on other ISPs can use TiVo minus the on-demand content; read NBR's TiVo Q&A for more).

For Telecom, it's all about the churn
Neither Telecom nor Hybrid TV will comment on the length of the exclusive contract.

At Telecom’s quarterly results briefing on Friday, Telecom Retail chief executive Alan Gourdie would not be drawn on any financial terms of the deal.

But he did say that such extended services typically cut customer churn by half.

Since unbundling in March last year, Telecom Broadband's retail market share has slipped from 64% to 57%. TiVo will help hold the line.

Mr Gourdie also said that the unmetered data was “very low cost” to Telecom because the movies, TV shows and music offered via TiVo’s Caspa on-demand service are hosted locally, avoiding steep charges on international data traffic.

TelstraClear upgrades cable TV, sticks with Sky
Meanwhile, TelstraClear has unveiled a few details about the upgraded pay TV service that will be offered to its 80,000 or so cable customers in Auckland or Wellington from around February.

The service will be built around a set-top box that is custom-made for TelstraClear, called the HomeMedia PVR.

But although the HomeMedia PVR will sport some snazzier hardware specs over its predecessor (including an upgrade to a 300GB hard drive and full support for HD channels), there is no change to TelstraClear’s content strategy: it’s sticking with Sky TV, as widely expected.

All channels offered via HomeMedia PVR will be Sky TV channels, although TelstraClear said it is considering whether to also let customers view YouTube content.

TiVo, by contrast, already lets its users view almost any unportected photo or video or music content held on their PC on their TV, via a wi-fi connection - or copy TiVo content to a PC, PlayStation3 or iPhone.

See more on TelstraClear's coming PVR on its website here.