I recently came across a blog post that mused over the possibility of TiVo buying SageTV. Alan Cooke of Missing Remote beleives that SageTV would be a good acquisition choice for TiVo allowing them to move into the PC PVR market.Many people have already suggested that they would like to see the TiVo service available on a media center PC, much like the Microsoft Media Center, Sage TV and Beyond TV..
However, I do not think buying SageTV is the answer, SageTV is a different product to TiVo and buying them simply buys out a competitor. TiVo is not a company making a profit so any acquisitions it makes should be extremely vital to its success.
I'm sure TiVo is very capable of bringing its product to PCs should it want too, even with the TiVo EPG being a Linux based software.
I have personally never seen a comment from TiVo on the matter of bringing its service to a PC and would be very interested in what the company has to say. Does anyone else know of TiVo's opinion on this?
1. That raises an interesting question. *IS* there a PC DVR software market to begin with? I wonder how many people have spent money on BeyondTV and SageTV? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? I think it will always be a niche for anyone other than Microsoft and Apple who are in the space in one form or another. TiVo shouldn't buy or build PC DVR software - their resources are better used elsewhere.
I read or heard CEO Ramsay alluded to some sort of PC DVR functionality maybe two years ago in passing, but nothing came of it. I don't remember where I came acros this, but I do recall thinking "don't do it."
Posted at 10:25PM on Nov 15th 2006 by Dave Zatz