• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Yahoo to Link Service to TiVo Set-Top Boxes

Posted on: Tuesday, 8 November 2005, 12:00 CST

By Saul Hansell

Yahoo and TiVo were to announce a deal on Monday to connect Yahoo's vast online service to TiVo's set-top boxes, which, in addition to recording television programs, have a largely unused ability to connect to the Internet.

The deal would allow TiVo, which has been struggling to differentiate its service from that of generic video recorders offered by cable and satellite companies, to offer a range of content and services linked to the Internet.

Conversely, Yahoo is working to move its services from personal computers to other devices, including mobile phones and by way of devices like TiVo the television set.

The first fruits of this deal are relatively modest. This month, TiVo users would be able to use Yahoo's television listings to find programs and, by checking the appropriate boxes, send instructions to their TiVos to record those shows.

In the coming months, TiVo users would be able to view on their televisions pictures that have been stored on the Yahoo Photos site as well as local weather and traffic information from Yahoo. Notably absent from the deal is a way for TiVo users to watch video via Yahoo.

As Yahoo and most other major media and Internet companies rapidly develop video programming, users may want to watch some of it on big screens in living rooms, rather than on PC monitors.

David Katz, Yahoo's vice president for entertainment and sports programming, described the deal as a first step as Yahoo explores TiVo's technology.

"Our core business today exists on the computer because that's where the majority of our users are," Katz said. "Our goal is to provide our users on any platform with whatever content they are most interested in."

This year, Yahoo acquired VerdiSoft, a company that makes software that links various devices to online services.

Its founder, Marco Boerries, who developed Sun Microsystems' StarOffice software, is now the senior vice president of a Yahoo division called Connected Life, which manages its efforts to reach television sets, wireless phones and other devices.

So far, attempts to combine the Internet and television, like WebTV from Microsoft, since renamed MSNTV, have had limited appeal. America Online abandoned its similar AOLTV product. Some manufacturers, like Thomson, have put Web browsers into high-end televisions, but this feature has not caught on. Internet and media companies have found that people are much more interested in using their services through mobile phones and in using text services and, increasingly, video.

Wireless phone customers appear willing to pay higher fees for access to more content, and existing cable and satellite distributors seem not to feel threatened if short programming segments are sent to cellphones.

Talk of linking the Internet to television sets has been growing again, not so much for Web browsing but to view the increasing range of video programming that is being offered online.

The Internet, in theory, can offer a selection of video programming that even the most advanced cable systems cannot match, and technology is helping improve the often grainy quality of online video. But the cable and satellite companies are becoming concerned about providers of video programming using the Internet to reach customers directly.

Larry Kramer, the president of CBS Digital Media, has explicitly called the network's Internet video strategy a "cable bypass."

Yuanzhe Cai, the director of broadband research at Parks Associates, said: "We are seeing a lot of experimentation in terms of video programming through the Internet, and a lot of people are going to want to sit back and watch it on their TV. The big hurdle now is the digital rights issues of the studios and content owners."

TiVo is caught in the middle. Its current digital recorder is capable of viewing programming from the Internet. It recently conducted a test that allowed its users to download movies offered by the Independent Film Channel.

"There is more video content that is coming down the broadband pipes," said Tom Rogers, TiVo's chief executive, referring to high- speed connections.

He argued that TiVo's technology could be important in helping providers that put programs on the Internet to gain a wider audience.

"People will be much more inclined to watch broadband-delivered video if it shows up on the TV screen," Rogers said, adding that business models for such programming had yet to be worked out.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but they involve more cross- promotion than cash, he said.

At the same time, TiVo depends on the very companies that this technology bypasses. Two-thirds of TiVo's 3.6 million subscribers use boxes distributed by the satellite television company DirecTV. But that relationship is unsteady because DirecTV now offers its own video recorder. Now TiVo is working to build its recorder technology into set-top boxes to be deployed by Comcast, the largest U.S. cable company.

Source: International Herald Tribune

More News in this Category