More TV For iPods & PlayStation
TiVo Inc. is expanding its video recording service so users will be able to transfer recorded television shows onto Apple Computer Inc.'s iPods or Sony Corp.'s PlayStation Portable - the latest move aimed at putting TV in people's hands for viewing anywhere.
The new service feature will be available Monday for current TiVo subscribers as a beta test and for the general public in the first quarter of next year.
Consumers would need certain video encoding software on their computers, provided by TiVo or purchased elsewhere for about $15 to $30 in stores.
TiVoToGo is also adding new copy-protection measures to discourage possible copyright abuse that would anger Hollywood.
TiVo officials say shows recorded via TiVoToGo will have digital watermarks. The extra encoding will follow the copied program wherever it goes, giving TiVo the ability to trace the origin of a transferred program that might get posted freely onto the Internet.
With its introduction in January of TiVoToGo, the digital video recording pioneer gave its broadband Series2 subscribers the ability to transfer recorded shows to Windows-based PCs and laptops as well as portable media players. But the service was available only to devices compatible with Microsoft Corp.'s Portable Media Center platform, such as Creative Technology Ltd.'s Zen.
Now, by adding support for the MPEG-4 video format, TiVo hopes to capitalize on the popularity of iPods and PSPs, which are among today's hottest handheld gadgets with video capabilities.
"There's a lot of flexibility now in the devices we support, and this puts choices in the consumer's hands," said Jim Denney, TiVo's vice president of product marketing.
"If TiVo is to survive as a company, it has to find a way to add value beyond just recording TV shows. So putting video on portable devices like the iPod could help distinguish TiVo from its rivals," says CBS News Technology Analyst Larry Magid. "Hitching its wagon to iPod's star is certainly a good move for TiVo. There is currently a shortage of TV shows that you can legally download to watch on the new video iPod, so if TiVo can significantly expand the iPod's ability to play television, that could be a big win for the company."
"Even though TiVo is the biggest name in personal video recorders, it has lost market share," says Magid. "So creating some unique services such as TiVoToGo could help distinguish the company from the competition."
Some tech-savvy owners of the new video-playing iPod or PSP have already figured out on their own how to sync TiVo shows with the portable players, but the process involves video format conversions that many consumers would rather not tackle.
TiVo will now do the conversions in the background.
The enhanced TiVoToGo will allow users for the first time to set their TiVos to automatically load new recordings of their favorite programs to portable gadgets via their PC. The recordings would be transferred overnight, similar to how shows are downloaded to TiVo boxes overnight for those who request automatic recording of certain programs.
The transfer process does take time. Moving a show from a TiVo Series2 set-top-box to a PC - a necessary step before synching to a portable - occurs roughly in real-time. An hour-long show will take an hour to transfer to the PC, then roughly another 10 minutes or so to sync to a portable device.