New TiVo with broadband TV portal continues attack on Foxtel and piracy

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 26 November 2009 18:11

Opinion and Analysis

I would guess that iTunes has the most content available legally to buy and rent, but Foxtel’s new channels and SD/HD content along with download capability certainly revs up the Foxtel platform tremendously, especially in the face of new free-to-air channels as Hybrid explained.

TiVo’s new content offering is also yet to truly be seen, we havea nice description but time will tell how good it really is.

Hybrid’s sales pitch continues: “The TiVo device is a true representation of the best of broadcast and broadband delivered directly to the living room for the enjoyment of you, your family and friends on the television.

“CASPA is our means of bringing Australians content and services that can be easily accessed through a TV remote and fairly priced or free, wherever possible. This new service proves the TiVo mandate of providing continuous features and benefits delivered over broadband as all our customers will be able to access CASPA from 1 December.

“With our proprietary broadband proposition it demonstrates how vital our internet partners, like Internode, Primus and iinet are, as they will unmeter CASPA downloads on the TiVo for customers on compatible plans. In addition some ISPs are providing larger capacity plans, unmetered plans or unmetered timebands like AAPTs 8pm to 8am all-you-can-download offering.

“Taking this one step further into our future NBN-world, where we will have ubiquitous high speed broadband connections over fibre-optics achieving speeds starting at 100Mbps. This makes our existing copper connections look like a dripping tap with its meager 512Kbps to 8Mbps.

“Internet speeds achieved through fibre-optics will mean that content consumption and service delivery can reach beyond PC screens and laptops and jump onto the television. We have a near 100% penetration of TVs – but not so with computers. With CASPA, Hybrid TV is poised to be Australia’s premier telco agnostic content service provider”, concluded Robbee Minicola, Chief Executive of Hybrid TV.

So… TiVo, Foxtel, iTunes and BigPond with its new T-Box and the new PS3 TV recorder are all vying for your TV and entertainment dollar, with download options now commonplace, giving Australians a nice range of effectively “on demand” video and other content, while the true and final solution to the piracy problem, if it exists, is yet to be found, as no paid service yet offers the range or ultimate consumer flexibility that piracy delivers, despite the very real chance of malware infection.

Naturally, iTWire in no way condones piracy in any shape or form, and encourages the development and usage of legal video services which are rapidly evolving before our eyes to become far richer in their content offerings.

A free Hulu like service is still yet to appear in Australia, despite a range of free TV show options from all the major free-to-air stations in Australia, so for now, an Internet connected TV recording device – or even two or three from different vendors if it’s in your budget and you love TV that much – is either already in your present or in your future if modern functionality like pausing live TV is something you now take for granted.

TiVo’s latest and greatest is now a more compelling option amongst an ever growing range of options. Choose wisely and hope that amongst all the many channels that there’s something worth watching!