TiVo sales miss target
Telecom, which serves as TiVo’s exclusive distributor in New Zealand, said today that sales so far have been disappointing.
Some insiders say as few as 1500 units have been sold since TiVo's October launch.
At Telecom’s quarterly result briefing this morning, Telecom Retail chief executive Alan Gourdie told NBR that sales of TiVo boxes so far have been “modest”.
“We set some quite high targets for Christmas that we didn't deliver,” said Mr Gourdie.
Telecom will now try to drive the product harder.
TiVo boxes allow a viewer to receive broadcast TV on the Freeview HD platform, and also download on-demand movies, music and TV shows via a broadband connection (with unmetered data, if they are on Telecom Broadband).
Two handicaps
While living up to its reputation for user-friendliness, TiVo continues to be dogged by two handicaps in New Zealand: only a handful of new release movies available for its on-demand movie service, and Sky TV’s continued refusal to supply listings for Prime.
The license for TiVo in Australasia is held by Hybrid Television Services, two-thirds owned by Seven Media and one-third by TVNZ (a stake bought for $A8 million last year).
120,000 sales target
Hybrid has a long standing policy of not commenting on unit sales beyond its modest prediction at launch that it would sell 120,000 TiVo boxes during the service’s first five years in New Zealand.
Despite TiVo’s slow sales so far, the wider universe of Freeview HD set-top boxes, tuners and TVs continues to expand, yesterday hitting 22% population penetration, or 346,000 households.
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Comments and questions14
Yes. It's ALL about content. No question that HDTV is brilliant and that the TiVo box and set-up is smart (the interface with my laptop via wireless router especially useful).
But at the end of the day, it's still free to air repeats and the usual mindless drivel - interspersed with one or two great shows. CASPA is getting better, but very limited currently.
Not having the EPG for Prime is a disadvantage for TiVo, but then would you expect Sky Television to make it easy for a direct competitor?
I was disappointed with these shortcomings, and am glad to hear TELECOM want to give it a nudge, but as I said, success is all about access to content and no so much smart technology.
It's great technology but having xtra as the exclusive ISP limits sales. I wouldn't change ISP just to get Tivo and I think overcoming this inertia is a real challenge. Having said that I find inertia a huge problem and I can't get around to ordering MySky either ...
I wonder if this exclusivity is contingent upon sales and therefore likely to change.
At the moment Tivo has limited appeal being only a UHF system, should a tivo satellite box be released then I would be the first to get one.
Freeview's lack of interest in extending the UHF service is going to hold back Tivo in a major way in my opinion.
Can anyone say that co-operation on (or a lack of) EPG listings in Australia has lead to its success or failure?
The silence on sales in Australia is deafening - and yet its the second coming in NZ. What makes this countries TV environment so unique that Tivo can succeed??
[In Australia, TiVo has listings for all free-to-air channels. Hybrid has made no comment on sales; competitors claim they are low. TiVo is the only Freeview HD recorder in NZ that also offers ondemand movies and TV (and the only digital recorder, with Sky TV's IPTV content just resting), albeit with a limited selection at this point. CK]
Very few friends I know that can receive Freeview HD due to lack of coverage.
No educated person that I know still on Telecom Broadband or would ever go back.
I use an unrestricted Media PC with Freeview Satellite and download everything else from the internet.
[With TiVo, Xbox and iTunes only offering a limited amount of on-demand content, it's only going to encourage some people to grab content from less official parts of the internet. Lots of hardware and software PC makers, who gripe in other arenas about piracy, help to make this easy. - CK]
We seriously considered buying a TiVo unit, until we discovered that the New Zealand distributors have crippled one of TiVo's greatest selling points in other markets: the ability for the TiVo unit to seemlessly skip all advertising.
Without that feature TiVo is just an overpriced set-top box. Disabling the ad-zapping feature can only have been done out of pure greed - being able to tell advertisers that their advertisements will still get through.
I think the big problem has been the sub par marketing of the Tivo. hard drive recorders are nothing new and have been around for at least 5 years. Marketing the Tivo on features that are commonlace and already a given isnt a recipe for sucess. Perhaps the TV networks and Telecom should market on content. Oh thats right free to air TV has no content.
Perhaps they should look hard at their pricing - other freeview hard drive recorders are far cheaper....
It's like this, Tivo is already redundant because there is Ziln... the TV model of the future, watch it grow!
I agree - wouldnt touch TiVo because I have no desire at all to ever use Telecom for any service, ever again (based on current and historical form). Yes content is very important but I would drop my MySky tomorrow for TiVo if it wasnt linked exclusively to Telecom. Will build an HTPC instead I think.
I have no doubt the exclusive arrangement with Telecom will end after 12 months or so, much like the iPhone on AT&T.
I agree that the advertising is not great. I have TiVo and love it. Especially the thumbs and wish list features. TiVo suggestions, a feature that auto records shows based on previous recordings and thumbs ratings, is great also.
One thing I wish they woud do is pipe the tvnz and tv3 on demand content to the Tivo. It can't be that hard as other countries do it.
Something else I am hanging out for is to schedule a recording by thumbing up during an advert for the show in question. This is available in the US.
I have Tivo and the whole family loves it. Biggest bug bear is the missing EPG for Prime and Maori, they really need to get this sorted.
I do not understand why TVNZ do not stop sky using epg for their programs if they will not resipricate with Prime. Also if Sky actually want people to watch Prime surely it is in their interests to have its programs listed. While the answer to the first part may be in the second, why does Maori tv want its programs secret?
Got the TIVO (changed ISP because they said you had to be with Telecom) and now find that despite all the advertising on the website and newsletters you don't get the home networking so forget about putting your photos, or play DVD's from your computer. Only a short sentence on whole website to say not available and you don't read all the fine print just the pluses before you buy. Totally hopeless you stil have to look up the newspaper to see what is on Prime or Maori TV.
Why would you buy a tivo when there are products such as the UltraPlus F9000 already way ahead on the market?
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