UPC Horizon and TiVo have much in common, writes Julian Clover
Slowly but surely Liberty Global’s Horizon project edges towards its anticipated launch. It may have slipped ever so slightly, but ahead lies what is possibly the most sophisticated cable box ever to grace European shores, even to call Horizon a box is probably doing it a disservice.
Possibly comes into it because there is also TiVo, in the UK with Virgin, and now in Spain through Ono. For conference organisers it is a guarantee of a packed room to have one of UPC’s senior management team run the operator’s Horizon promotion; and, as was the case at IBC, why not ask along Virgin Media as well.
Taken separately Virgin and UPC are actually telling a very similar story; both are creating the illusion that the customer can get access to content from the internet, they can, but it has been carefully curated. The consumer is in control, providing they pay their subs at least, and they want to access content on multiple devices. At least they will want to once they know it to be possible.
One of Virgin’s management lines that has emerged on the conference circuit has been that the cablenet is holding back the power of TiVo, like a caged tiger, so as not to confuse the customer. It’s good practice of course, launch too many features and however well managed the call centre might just topple over.
At this stage it is impossible to really compare Horizon to TiVo. We have assorted details of Horizon that have been drip fed to us in the 20 or so months since the project went public – and it was of course on the drawing board well before that.
It should be remembered that Liberty also looked at TiVo, leading to comments in August 2010 from CEO Mike Fries that the option would have been a “quarter step”. Given that Samsung is now joining Cisco in the production of TiVo boxes for Virgin there is now a common manufacturer.
The quiet trend within cable boxes is the addition of an ever-increasing number of tuners, not to put TV sets in multiple rooms of the house – but to enable the full selection of content on phones, tablets and PCs, without the worry of online rights. The IBC demo by Fries shows this as a seamless experience, but who is to say Virgin doesn’t add a few tuners to its TiVo and build up the home networking.
But given the reminders – heard again at CTAM Europe in Malta this week – that cable should actually focus less on the technology (and arguably not the price either) – maybe the customer is less bothered than the industry thinks.
