TiVo, which already has contracts in place with Virgin Media and Spain’s ONO, says it is continuing to concentrate on the larger markets of Western Europe as operators plan the upgrade of their services to next generation solutions. In addition the company is tracking Latin America as well as India and China.
Tom Rogers, President and CEO of TiVo, positioned TiVo as the only advanced solution with proven deployments and a branded experience. “TiVo does not come with an agenda which seeks to leverage its user interface as a Trojan horse to sell middleware, conditional access, or set-top boxes,” he said.
“The catalysts for this international progress are clear and we see a strong pipeline of interest,” said Rogers. “Unlike some of the large operators in the US, international players must rely on outside partners to provide their set-top-box software. There are very few players who can credibly provide solutions that handle an incredibly dynamic and strategically important set of consumer-facing features in combination with an increasingly complex set-top box and network infrastructure”.
Rogers said that in addition to Cisco, which is supplying set-tops to both Virgin and ONO, and Technicolor that will be supporting US DBS provider DirecTV and other operators, a number of other set-top box manufacturers had come forward. “The integration of TiVo software onto a set-top box is truly a differentiator for set-top box manufactures looking to gain advanced television solutions deployments with multichannel operators.”
Work was progressing to launch the TiVo platform on Virgin by the year-end. Between them ONO and Virgin would place the technology into some five million homes. “We believe we have a strong pipeline for additional deals with similar forms of commitment,” said Rogers.
TiVo reported a second quarter loss of $15.3 million, a substantial increase on the $2.7 million of Q2 2009, though in line with guidance. The company is beginning to benefit from the deployment of its retail TiVo Premiere box on the smaller US MSOs of RCN and Suddenlink, in addition to the more familiar names in the international scene of Cox Communications.
The recent integration of Cox On Demand into the TiVo Premiere marks the first time that a cable operator has made its entire video on demand library available to a retail device such that the VOD and linear TV content is fully integrated with a titles delivered from the internet.
