TiVo Fastforwards Online Deals and Home Networking

TiVo's Robbee Minicola

TiVo is launching a home networking package that will let owners shift content between the PVR and their computers, iPads and PSPs.

It will sell for $129 through the new mytivo.co.nz online shop from this weekend.

“It’s a home networking service where one TiVo can talk to another TiVo, or you can take the content off your TiVo on to your computer, or your photos and DivX files and music up from your computer to your TiVo,” says Robbee Minicola, the chief executive of Hybrid Television Services, the TiVo licensee in NZ and Australia.

“With the home networking package you can transfer content from TiVo to your iPhone, iPad or your PSP [Mac users will need to install RoxioToast as well]. It’s a really important bit of software.”

In Australia, where TiVo went on sale a year earlier, more than 65% of customers have the home networking package, Minicola says.

“New Zealanders have been screaming out for home networking and under the [Telecom] exclusivity clause we weren’t able to provide it but that’s going live this weekend.”

Hybrid launched TiVo in NZ exclusively through Telecom but now is in talks with other telcos to offer customers unmetered broadband access to the media device and its CASPA video on demand downloads.

It’s also opened the online store to expedite TiVo sales with special offers and packages. For instance, a TiVo and wireless adaptor bundle has been discounted by $238, to $750, until the end of September.

And by the end of this month it will be possible to buy a TiVo online for $199 upfront, and pay the rest in 12, $45.95 instalments. TiVo also will include a free new-release movie download every month in the deal.

“We recognise if people aren’t with Telecom, they’re reticent to go into Telecom to buy a TiVo,” Minicola says of the online store initiative.

“Maybe some people are delaying buying TiVo because they couldn’t get a payment plan, didn’t want to buy from Telecom or couldn’t get home networking – hopefully we’re removing those barriers.”

Minicola says TiVo is the top-selling PVR in Australia and although it’s not marketed through stores here — yet — she claims it’s “hands-down” the #1 PVR in this market, too — although she acknowledges take-up has been much slower than across the Tasman, possibly because of Telecom’s exclusive window.

“If 50 percent of the market didn’t want to deal with Telecom, that shut out 50 percent of the market for us … We know the minute people try a TiVo they absolutely love it and can’t live without it. We’ve got to figure out ways for customers to experience our product so they can never give it up.

“That’s why payment plans are important. We need more ISPs to jump on board, and explain the product in store and the broadband solution, and we need to get good prices out there, and try before you buy, and things like that, so we can get critical mass.”