ON A POINTLESS TIVO/VERIZON WIRELESS DEAL

PENNY WISE, POUND FOOLISH

Well, TIvo continues it's campaign to provide remote programmability of their DVRs (Digital Video Recorders) via cell phones, announcing a deal with Verizon Wireless today.  This follows a number of announcements last year providing the ability to do the same via a web-enabled PC, via web-sites from Yahoo!, AOL, and devices like Apple's iPods and Sony's Playstation Portable (PSP).

As the AP story states (via USA Today):

"An agreement with Verizon Wireless, announced Tuesday, expands on TiVo's strategy to bring the digital video recording pioneer's capabilities beyond its set-top-boxes and the television, and directly to cellphones for the first time.

Dubbed TiVo Mobile, it's also the latest feature the Alviso, Calif.-based company is introducing to help differentiate itself from the growing number of rival DVR offerings from cable and satellite TV operators."

This partnership is reported to be "exclusive" with Verizon Wireless for 60 days or so, before likely announcements with other wireless carriers.

The current investor excitement over the growth of wireless is driven by the notion that we're going to replicate much of the functionality of a PC and/or laptop on cellphones.  And it's seductively easy to buy into that notion, given the pace at which hardware and software companies are cramming functionality into the cell phones of today and tomorrow.

But it's sentences like this at the end of the Tivo/Verizon partnership story that bring those fantasies to a screeching halt, reminding you once again that the wireless carriers have some very different plans for THEIR platform:

"Verizon subscribers will be able to access TiVo Mobile through its "Get It Now" service menu starting in the early summer. Verizon's pricing for the service will be announced then, TiVo said."

If you're curious, the rumored pricing is supposed to be around $5/month, "conveniently" added to your cell phone bill.

This convenience complements the $2.00 to 2.50 per song price that Verizon, Sprint and others are starting to charge for downloading music tracks on to your high-tech cell phone.  Of course, most of them offer no capability to transfer the songs on to a PC.  And if they do, in most cases they'll charge extra for the cable and/or software to do it with, and likely tack on another per track charge for the extra "feature".

Imagine if every feature and function of your PC had a specific a la carte charge attached to it, courtesy of Microsoft, Intel, and/or the PC vendor like Dell and others.  It'd be a very different world indeed.

You sometimes wonder why companies like Tivo even bother expending the time, energy and resources to craft such partnerships.  Most of these high-priced services are stillborn from the very start for ordinary, mainstream customers.  They make for great press releases and little else.

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[James]

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