TiVo: Still Haunted By HDTV
The DVR service reports a loss in subscribers.
By Swanni
The DVR service reported that it had 3.95 million subscribers at the end of the fourth quarter, a decline from approximately 4.1 million at the end of the third quarter.
In an investors call with Wall Street analysts, TiVo CEO Tom Rogers noted that many DIRECTV/TiVo standard-def subscribers have upgraded to DIRECTV's HD DVR, which contributed to the company's monthly churn rate rising from 1.2 percent to 1.5 percent.
DIRECTV does not offer a TiVo HD DVR. But TiVo does have a standalone HD DVR, which retails for $299.
However, the low-cost TiVo HD was not introduced until the second half of last year -- after nearly 30 million people had purchased high-def sets. Until then, TiVo had offered a $799 HD DVR and company officials acknowledge that it was too expensive.
The failure to provide an HD DVR to DIRECTV while the companies had a marketing partnership (the marketing deal was halted two years ago by DIRECTV) and the decision to delay the introduction of a low-cost standalone box has clearly slowed TiVo's sub growth.
"I would say that the HDTV television set trend was one where we didn’t fully tie ourselves into that trend as well as I would like to see," Rogers said yesterday.
Rogers said the company recently was able to reduce manufacturing costs on the $299 TiVo HD and sales are rising. However, he would not offer specific figures.
The TiVo CEO added that the company is examining ways to bundle the TiVo HD with HDTVs at retail.
"Over the course of this year, we’re very much looking to see if we can accomplish bundled sales, actually selling the TiVo under some kind of an arrangement with the retailer at the time an HD set is sold and we think with that we could also see a different trend-line in terms of what our overall net adds for the year are," he said.
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