Thumbs up for TiVo (Nasdaq: TIVO). Indeed, it's arguably the day many investors have been waiting for -- the day when TiVo announces a partnership with a major cable company to provide its user-friendly box to a large number of people.
Yes, TiVo has finally inked a partnership with mighty cable provider Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA). Anybody who has been following TiVo knows that for TiVo, establishing such a partnership is like finding the holy grail. TiVo's lack of deals with cable companies had turned into an Achilles' heel -- with the threat of a bad case of gangrene -- given the increasingly competitive and changing landscape.
It's particularly good news considering the other partnership that TiVo did have, the one with DirecTV (NYSE: DTV), has soured a bit now that the latter has decided to provide its own DVR box to its millions of subscribers.
As one of the denizens of our TiVo discussion board pointed out, some zesty details are available in TiVo's Form 8-K, filed today. (It's available for free on the SEC's website. Read it, really -- it's much more telling than the press announcement.) According to that document, TiVo will create a software solution for deployment on Comcast's DVR platform, which would allow for TiVo features such as wish lists, season passes, home media, and TiVoToGo. TiVo's advertising initiatives are also part of this deal.
Comcast will pay an upfront fee and a recurring monthly fee for each of its customers who opt for the TiVo-branded service. Comcast will also pay up for engineering services as TiVo develops the software solution and an advertisement management system. This partnership is expected to launch in 2006.
If anything brings hope to investors, it's opening up the opportunity for all 21.5 million Comcast customers to get hooked on the TiVo experience. It also means that soon enough, more of those people who currently erroneously claim, "I have TiVo," when they have another brand of DVR, actually will have TiVo.
Of course, this is one heck of an industry at the moment, and many companies are poised to duke it out over the "digital living room." Recent announcements show that TiVo continues to try to load up its service with features that bridge television, broadband, and all manner of digital content. However, plenty of rivals -- Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) spring to mind -- want to gain the keys to your living room. Given TiVo's history of innovation, maybe Comcast needs TiVo just as much as TiVo needs Comcast.
I can't say I ever really gave up on TiVo, given its great product, addictive nature, and entrepreneurial spirit -- namely, some of the initiatives it has explored that could continue to differentiate it from its rivals. In this case, bunking up with the enemy is the way to win the war, and long-suffering TiVo investors are experiencing a long-awaited day of vindication.
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Alyce Lomax does not own shares of any of the companies mentioned. She's a content TiVo customer, though.
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