TiVo has two new press releases out today.
The first is here. It basically means that more types of video from the internet can now be converted and sent to broadband TiVos from a PC so that you can watch internet video on your TiVo instead of your computer. Definitely a step forward- but really a pretty small one.
The next press release regards sharing your own home videos, and this one is here. This is a bit of Web 2.0 in your TiVo – content sharing. You create your own “channel” of slides or video and then give the code to others, and others can share them. So your parents can see your kids home movies on their TiVo. Frankly, it’s a lot like posting a video to the web, and then giving someone the web page address, but it happens, on the viewer side, on the TV. Seems incremental, but, to me, this is the big change.
TiVo has needed to harness the “network effect” for years, and this second feature is one of the first signs of it. The network effect is the idea that hardware or software becomes important to have because others have it, and people need compatibility essentially. Windows as a network effect – if applications exist only on Windows, then people need to get Windows machines. Once upon a time, files weren’t easily translatable to other OSes, so in the business world, if you wanted to communicate, you needed Windows. So here the idea is, you have these super-cute grandkids out there, across the country. They have a TiVo. Wanna see them? Gotta get a TiVo. It gives people a reason to get a TiVo – the reason being compatibility.