TiVo 2 Go Arrives

Michael Gartenberg | January 03, 2005, 08:19 AM

Well, it's finally here, just a little later than TiVo had originally hoped for. TiVo owners will now be able to copy recorded content from their TiVo Series 2 boxes to their PCs and watch on the road. The service will be automatically pushed out to owners but you will need to download a new version of the TiVo desktop to make it all work. Windows is the initial platform with Macintosh support coming soon. It also applied only to standalone TiVo units, DirectTV units won't get this function. DVD burners, like the excellent Humax, will be supported in the near future.

I've been working with it for the last few weeks and the experience is very good. I had no problems transferring shows to my laptop and playing them from there. There's a few annoyances though. I hate having to enter a password every time I want to watch a show (Microsoft's MCE PCs let you do the same thing but they don't require any passwords to watch the content). Networks speed is also an issue (that's hardly a TiVo issue, but it's related to how more is being built on the rather shaky home network infrastructure) if you're using 80211.b. Transferring is something that is best done overnight for more than one show.

This is an important step for TiVo. At a time when standalone DVRs are coming under heavy fire from service offerings from cable and satellite companies, this is the time when they need to demonstrate to their customers the value of the premium service. It also lets TiVo compare favorably from a feature offering to the functionality that Microsoft is offering from their MCE machines. The problem is that marketing has already proven to a major challenge for TiVo. Adding features is great, but it also adds to the complexity of an already complicated marketing message to consumers. It's time for some very clear and very targeted marketing messages.