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- Tivo History-
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Tivo at a Glance
Current stock quote: TIVO $6.12 (+0.18)
Corporate headquarters: Alviso, California
Company founded: 1997
Initial IPO: September 30, 1999
Current product lines:Standalone Tivo, Directv with Tivo
Monthly subscription cost:$12.95
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Early Tivo History
Tivo was first founded in 1997, by former Silicon Graphics senior vice president Michael Ramsay and vice president James Barton, with the idea of introducing a product that would revolutionize the consumer electronics market, in particular the home video market. The Tivo idea at the time was fresh and extremely original. Its goal was primarily to personalize the home television market and simplify and enhance the recording of television.
The Tivo concept was to allow you to control when, when and how you watch television in very different ways that what were previously thought possible. Tivo allows you to easily record, rewind, fast forward, search and slow motion all your favorite television programs. No awkward tapes to buy and replace, replaced instead with a digital hard drive.
At the time, if you wanted to record a television program while you were away, it meant putting in a VCR tape and programming your VCR, which often meant rewinding and fast forwarding. Finding a particular show on a 65 hour recording was difficult and many times a time consuming process. Tivo changed that by storing each show as a seperate file on the hard drive, which could be easily retrieved with a simple click of a button. And because it is stored digitally, there was very little sound or video quality loss, compared to the VCR, which often reduced programs to grainy, mono programs with little life to them.
The actual Tivo unit was actually a scaled down multimedia computer, running a variant of the stable Linux platform with a high end television tuner, which would record programs digitally on a computer hard drive. When the Tivo was first introduced in 1999, it was destined to become one of the hottest new products since the invention of the VCR or digital satellite system. One of Tivo's most talked about features, was its "live TV pause and resume" functionality, which allowed a customer to pause a live television broadcast and resume it at a later time. This was accomplished by constantly recording the live program that a person is watching.
The heart of the Tivo, was its unique interactive program guide, which offered very detailed information about coming programs, actors and more. It also allowed the user to search through specified "themes" and to select shows to record. The Tivo was also intelligent, as it was capable of monitoring its users viewing habits, which allowed it the ability to make recommendations of worthy shows to record. The Tivo was designed to automatically updates its programming guide via a toll free late night phone call to the Tivo operations system.
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The Tivo Series 1 personal video recorder offered many advanced recording features and appealed to many people and helped to better personalize their television experience.
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Original Tivo Series 1 Features
The Tivo software, provided a very fun and friendly interface which allowed people to find the feature they want very easily. It offered original ideas, such as
- TiVo Season Pass™ Automatically records every episode of your favorite shows. Even if the show changes timeslots.
- Network Showcase™ Daily updates of the best shows the TV networks have to offer.
- Now Playing™ An on-screen listing of shows you recorded. Each show is instantly available with the touch of a button on the TiVo remote.
- TiVolution Magazine™ A daily on-screen guide produced by TiVo's editorial team to keep you current on noteworthy specials, movies and television events.
- TiVomatic™ Previews For the first time ever, record shows on impulse while watching the previews for those shows. It's TiVo's exclusive interactive service.
- TiVo's Suggestions Teach TiVo the programs you enjoy by pressing the unique Thumbs Up ™ and Thumbs Down ™ buttons on the TiVo remote. TiVo will suggest shows that match your interests.
- TiVo Takes™ The industry's only interactive video program that lets you get the most out of TiVo and find the best of TV. After watching TiVo Takes™ and setting up a week's worth of great shows, sit back and enjoy the "ifilm of the week," the television premiere of an original short film, complements of TiVo and ifilm.com.
- TrickPlay™ Pause live TV (for up to 30 minutes); rewind or fast forward (at 3,18, or 60x normal speed). Try the TiVo sl-mo (frame by frame); and even instant replay.
Business Model
The Tivo business model was that they would sell the equipment and also license the technology to 3rd party equipment manufacturers. It would then charge a subscription fee to customers, which would allow them to download detailed program information. Customers had the initial option of choosing a recorder "Lifetime" subscription to Tivo for a one time cost of $199, or they could opt for a monthly cost of
$9.99 per month.
The Tivo was capable of recording and displaying program listings from satellite, cable vision and most off air markets. The customer would specify their location and satellite or cable vision provider in the initial setup. The Tivo would then download the program guide for the particular service using the telephone line. It was capable of storing up to 13 days worth of programming details at a time, which would allow the user to pre-schedule their show recordings days and even weeks in advance. It even offers show conflict warning if you had 2 overlapping shows and would attempt to help resolve the conflict by searching for an alternative time slot for one of the shows.
Little more than a year after its initial release, Tivo announced a strategic partnership with Directv, the leading direct to home satellite operator in the United States in January 2000. Tivo would provide the technology to integrate a Directv satellite receiver with a Tivo unit, allowing Directv to solidify their existing customer bases and also allowing Tivo to access their more than 5 million customers. Directv would market the new Directv with Tivo units to their existing customers and Tivo would be compensated a residual on the $5.99 fee that Directv would charge its customers to access the Tivo service. This combination system proved to be a huge hit and retailers across America often found it difficult to obtain news systems at times. This gave Directv a leg up on its competition as no other satellite or cable company offered it at that time. As well, the merging of technology allowed a technological improvement as the Tivo program information could be downloaded from the Directv satellite, rather than a phone line connection, allowing a compete initial download in minutes instead of hours.
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Tivo Online scheduling made it possible to login the Tivo website and program your Tivo remotely over the Internet.
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Today's Tivo
Today, Tivo offers more features than ever before. Its popularity has also caused dozens of copycat services as well, which has significantly shrunk their market share. Unfortunately, their weakness has proven to be establishing agreements with cable vision companies in America. Most cable vision companies began offering their customers their own versions of personal video recorders by the fall of 2003. Echostar also has released its own version of the personal video recorder to its customers.
Microsoft also attempted an entry into the satellite PVR market as well in 2000, with their Ultimatetv system, which was later scrapped due to its inability to gain market share over the Directv with Tivo system. Even their agreement with Directv has suffered a setback with the News Corp./Directv merger when News Corp. announced plans to release their own version of the DVR to Directv customers, which would inter-compete directly with Tivo. As of mid-2005, this has not yet come to fruition, and the Directv-Tivo agreement still provides the bulk of the annual revenues of Tivo.
Tivo has also recently released some new features as well as new innovations to help them keep on top of the market that they originated. Tivo online scheduling made it possible for customers to login to the Tivo website and browse show listings and program their Tivo remotely as well as performing other features. The Tivo to go™ feature allowed people to transfer their shows to a personal computer, laptop or even CD or DVD easily for the first time. Tivo is also returning the favor to Microsoft and cutting in on their home media business by offering a home media Tivo option allowing people to store their favorite photos, music on their Tivo and also allowing multi-room streaming from 2 Tivos in the same house. This allows people to network their Tivo's together and to watch one rooms Tivo in another room.
Additionally, the Tivo "underground" is also thriving, offering people the ability to "hack" or modify their Tivo's for additional functionality. The Tivo network feature for example was originally a "hack", allowing a network card to be installed on a series 1 Tivo, which allowed the Tivo program information to be obtained over a high speed Internet connection, as opposed to a low speed telephone modem connection. Another popular "Tivo Hack" was to increase the stock Tivo hard drive with a larger hard drive, thus increasing the recording time.
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09/19/2007 12:08 AM
Welcome to our new site. digitalinsurrection.com is now lounge0101.com. Please excuse our mess as we complete a long overdue redesign of our website. The new primary url of our website is now www.lounge0101.com. Please update your bookmarks. With the redesign, you will find all areas of the website have been updated. Stay tuned for more coming soon.
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Thursday, July 3, 2008
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Fear Itself
NBC 10:00 pm ET
You get the feeling he didn't get his nickname because he watches a lot of Food Network? In this new tale, a rookie police officer (Elisabeth Moss) gets a scary assignment on her first night at the station: baby-sitting a serial killer known as The Eater. As if that weren't enough to make her shudder, her fellow officers start exhibiting bizarre behavior. Russell Hornsby and Stephen R. Hart also star in "Eater."
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Soundstage
PBS 10:00 pm ET
Have you kept on loving REO Speedwagon? Don't fight the feeling. More than three decades after releasing its first record, the band is still rocking. In this new installment of the concert series, Speedwagon takes the stage to perform a crowd-friendly assortment of its hits, including "Keep on Loving You," "Take It on the Run," "Can't Fight This Feeling" and more.
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Swingtown
CBS 10:00 pm ET
Does the name Harry Reems mean anything to you? If you remember the 1970s, you'll recognize his name; he was the biggest male porn star of the era. He appears in this new episode, played by an actor (Rick D. Wasserman, "24"), in which the Deckers (Grant Show, Lana Parrilla) host a fundraiser for an actor in legal trouble. Yes, the real Reems did get in trouble over "Deep Throat."
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PGA Tour Golf
GOLF 3:00 pm ET
By all accounts, the inaugural AT&T National was a rousing success -- but what else is expected when Tiger Woods is the host? The only disappointing part for the world's top golfer is that he finished tied for sixth, seven shots behind K.J. Choi, who posted his sixth career PGA Tour win, the most ever by an Asian-born player. Like 2007, when 139,000 fans enjoyed the holiday weekend golf, another huge gallery will roam Maryland's Congressional Country Club.
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Good Times
TCM 6:15 pm ET
Bang-bang, someone should've shot this idea down. One of many misguided attempts by pop stars to grab a piece of the Beatles' success with "A Hard Day's Night," this 1967 musical stars a very young Sonny and Cher, back when they were still making literal and figurative beautiful music together. A producer (George Sanders) wants to put them in a movie, which leads to a bunch of fantasy sequences spoofing various film genres. Cher proved years later that she's a terrific actress, but you'd never know it from this.
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Last Dance
SHO 6:30 pm ET
The mid-1990s gave us a great movie about death row. It was called "Dead Man Walking." Even if this 1996 drama hadn't been released the year after "Dead Man," it would still pale in comparison. Its only bright spot is Sharon Stone, who can look hot even as a 12-year resident of death row. But the character doesn't give us any reason to root for her, being guilty of a double murder and all. And Rob Morrow brings little to the role of the rookie lawyer who makes it his mission to get her life spared. Did we mention "Dead Man Walking" is a great movie? Watch that instead.
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Smallville
CW 8:00 pm ET
If you've seen the movie "My Super Ex-Girlfriend," you know the dangers of messing with a girl who has superpowers. In this episode, Lana (Kristin Kreuk) absorbs Clark's (Tom Welling) powers and breaks into Lex's (Michael Rosenbaum) safe. She picks up some incriminating information and takes it to Lois and Grant (Erica Durance, Michael Cassidy), demanding an expose. Grant refuses, so Lana takes on Lex herself. This is gonna get ugly.
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Ugly Betty
ABC 8:00 pm ET
She's bending it like Beckham -- the spotlight, that is. Wilhelmina (Vanessa Williams) has cause to regret asking Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham to be in her wedding when the bridesmaid steals all her thunder. She hasn't seen anything yet, though; Bradford (Alan Dale), her groom, is about to commit the mother of all thunder stealers. America Ferrera, Tony Plana and Eric Mabius also star in "Nice Day for a Posh Wedding."
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The Ten
SHO 8:15 pm ET
An intriguing ensemble cast puts surprising spins on the Ten Commandments in this comedy, which the truly religious may have some trouble finding the humor in. Think of any canon of the tablets that can be broken, and it pretty much is here. Co-stars Paul Rudd and Ken Marino also co-produced the film, and the other actors on hand include Winona Ryder, Liev Schreiber, Jessica Alba, Ron Silver, Gretchen Mol, Oliver Platt and Bobby Cannavale.
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CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
CBS 9:00 pm ET
You may need tissues for this one, as the victim of the week is a 3-year-old girl whose body is discovered in a packing box outside a comedy club. One clue leads the CSI team to a registered sex offender and his girlfriend, but the man denies any involvement in the child's death. But Catherine's (Marg Helgenberger) emotional investment in the case is pegging her skepticism meter in "A Thousand Days on Earth."
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Grey's Anatomy
ABC 9:00 pm ET
For those who watch for the soap, not the medicine, this episode is a veritable Suds-O-Rama. Callie (Sara Ramirez) confronts Izzie (Katherine Heigl) about her tryst with George (T.R. Knight). Richard's (James Pickens Jr.) 18-year-old niece refuses further treatment for her cancer. And Norm (Edward Herrmann) botches a "you're dying" speech -- but that's OK; he gave it to the wrong patient. Oops.
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Supernatural
CW 9:00 pm ET
Who knew vampires had their own version of a date-rape drug? Sam and Dean (Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles) meet a female vampire (Mercedes McNab, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") who has no idea how she got that way. Turns out there's a vampire dude (Matthew Humphreys) who's hitting the bars and giving women blood cocktails. He also works his magic on Gordon (Sterling K. Brown), making him a more powerful adversary, in "Fresh Blood."
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