Rhapsody Meets TiVo - First Take

Michael Gartenberg | October 09, 2007, 06:09 AM

Some interesting news today that Real's Rhapsody service will be offered on TiVo boxes, effective immediately. This is a nice win, for both TiVo and Rhapsody and there's more to this one than "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". For TiVo, it's a nice way to keep differentiating their offering from the free STBs that consumers can get from their Cable and Sat providers. For Rhapsody, it's another way to extend their service beyond the PC to the living room (those TiVo's are hooked up to nice HiDef screens and nice surround sound systems).

More importantly, unlike the deals Real has done with Nokia on the N800 and Sonos, TiVo customers already get the notion of a subscription services and paying monthly fees for them. In fact, they're mostly paying for utilitarian services (EPG, pause, rewind etc...) rather than content. While most TiVOs probably are connected over WiFi, music is one of the applications that can actually work well, despite the mess that's the current home network.

Overall, this is one of those rare deals. Good for TiVo, good for Real and most important, good for customers of both companies.