Top Downloads August 24 - August 31

Source: TorrentFreak

Much of the thinking here is actually Bill’s.  Though we’ve bashed TiVo (and from TiVo’s perspective, probably incessantly) a lot since our launch, we honestly don’t disagree with its current strategy.  TiVo to its credit did spend less money, cut marketing out almost entirely all while growing the amount of cash on hand it has to weather the storm. 

Being in the intellectual property business can be a good business to be in.  It’s not at all clear TiVo will receive the full  amount the court has decided in its favor (Echostar/Dish will likely tie this up for years if it can), any of it at all, or merely a fraction of the ~$100 million via licensing agreements.   The stock price is seemingly being held up on the belief that somehow, some way, TiVo will cash in on its intellectual property.

Based on this, we can’t really fault TiVo’s current strategy which seems to be:

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TiVo Loses 178k Subscribers vs. 145k in Previous Quarter

TiVo’s total subscribers fell to 3.623 million, approximately the same level they had in July, 2005.

TiVo subscribers July 2001- July 2008

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“Fake it till you make it” is a fine mantra for alcoholics and drug addicts on the mend, but not much to base a business on, really. But my hat is off to TiVo’s ability to continually ignore reality.

TiVo bled another 178,000 subscribers during the three months ending July 31, 2008. That’s even worse than the year ago quarter where it “only” lost 145,000 subscribers for the quarter.  TiVo has now had about eight consecutive quarters of subscriber losses.  I’m sure Mr. Gorman will weigh in on this with pretty charts sometime soon, in the meanwhile, you can read TiVo doing what it does best: painting sunshine and blue skies where rain is falling. 

But hey, it is a lovely day in the San Francisco Bay area.

Bill is quick: here’s the latest chart – the 178,000 was the most net subscribers lost for TiVo during any quarter in its history (and again, it’s now bled subscribers 8 quarters running).

Just in case you can’t get enough of me here (and with Bill being on vacation, that strikes me as highly unlikely!), NewTeeVee.com was gracious enough to grant me a change of scenery (thank you!) and I wrote a guest post there: More Olympics Platforms Mean More Viewing.

I really like the orange and black of NewTeeVee, but hey, I’m a huge San Francisco Giants fan. Amazingly, they only chopped a couple of hundred words out of it. The piece is on the roll-out of NBC’s Total Audience Measurement index (TAMi). Things look great for the broadcast networks today, but as we gaze into the future, who knows? Here’s a snippet from the post:

But it seems inevitable that as broadband usage grows, it [online viewing] will cannibalize viewing from the broadcast network. Heroes is only on once a week for one hour, with around 24 new episodes a year. Especially for those who have no DVR and could not watch it live, online really is additive viewing. Best of all is the level of control it gives over the viewer experience. More and more, people will watch programming (except probably sports and other major live events) on their own terms.

If you’re not sick of me yet, please read the rest on NewTeeVee.Com. There’s also a nice (I thought) little riff in there of how current online viewing compare to TV viewing (hint, it’s pretty tiny). 

Steve’s little hobby has been so little, not even he is talking about Apple TV lately.  I still mantain that currently it’s nothing more than a glorified, overpriced media extender, but I still envision a futuristic AppleTV that has both DVR and Slingbox capabilities and that version changes my view dramatically.  

We’re seemingly nowhere closer to that world than when I first started thinking about it over a year ago.  But this blog post: Is The Apple TV Dead? got me thinking about it again.

Perhaps we should have a little discussion about mainstream and what this word means to people.  As defined by Webster, the primary definition of “mainstream” is: the principal or dominant course, tendency, or trend

As a literalist, the words that grab me there are principal or dominant.

By this standard, even after being in existence for over 10 years, digital video recorders (DVRs) are not yet mainstream.  Nielsen estimates currently place DVRs in about 25% of the homes in the US, or just over 28 million homes.  That means three out of four homes do not currently have any DVRs in them.   

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Nielsen now estimates that 28 million homes have DVRs and that 30% have more than one. That means the installed base of DVRs in the US is at least 36.4 million units.

The latest figures from Nielsen show that DVR penetration has climbed to 25% of U.S. homes–up 5% from nine months ago, as cable and satellite operators aggressively try to persuade customers to take on the devices. Separately, data shows that households may increasingly be preparing–albeit not at breakneck speed–for their TV service to continue uninterrupted during next year’s digital transition.

Nielsen data confirms widespread anecdotal evidence: DVR users appear to be passionate about the hardware. Research shows that of the estimated 28 million homes with DVRs, some 30% have the devices teed up for more than one set.

Also, data shows that among DVR homes, 53% are cable subscribers, with 40% using DBS.

Combine that with TiVo’s shrinking subscriber base and TiVo DVRs now make up only a declining 10% of the installed base.

TiVo Loses 145k Subscribers vs. 121k in Previous Quarter

As of April 30, 2008 TiVo had 1.728 million subscribers (down 17,000) using its own DVRs and 2.073 million subscribers with DirecTV TiVo DVRs (down 128,000).

To see TiVo’s share of the DVR installed base (last updated Aug 2007) go here.