Lee Gomes, in February 9, 2004 issue of Wall Street Journal Europe edition writes in his Portals column about TiVo’s patent violation suit against Echostar. I do not know about the validity of the legal claims, but as a potential consumer of such a product/service I have some reservations regarding the business model of these PVR companies.
As Gomes says in the article, PVR “is essentially just a generic computer to which has been added a TV tuner – just like the tuner you can buy for your PC – along with some special software.” Additionally, it needs access to the schedule of TV programming. Companies like TiVo have succeeded in marketing what is essentially a product as a service where consumers pay monthly subscription. Additionally, it looks like these companies collect usage data from the subscribers as Gomes indicates in his article. I suppose, they could mine this data for additional revenue.
With internet access, one could use one of many portals that provide TV schedules. That means basically the subscription is for using their custom software. Even Microsoft does not collect monthly fees for their products. 20 years after the introduction of PC and countless articles expounding the philosophy of “intelligence at the end”, businesses still prefer to operate differently. Conspiracy theorists can not blame the “bell-heads” for this as well.
Same thing is happening in VoIP; even though it is a product, it is being marketed as a service. Even Clay Shirky, who explains VoIP is a product and not a service, identifies Vonage as a successful player and at the same time denigrates Zapmail and telephone companies, evidently not realizing the irony.
Posted by aswath at February 9, 2004 05:49 PM