Courtesy of Benzinga.
“We are very convinced that this is going to move the dial,” says Jeffrey Klugman, TiVo’s (NASDAQ: TIVO) Senior Vice President of Product and Revenue, about TiVo Stream.
TiVo, a provider of Digital Video Recorder (DVR) technology, announced late last month that it will release a new functionality called TiVo Stream. The company says TiVo stream will allow users to access television content recorded on TiVo devices from mobile devices, such as tablets and phones.
Klugman tells Benzinga TiVo has a time-to-market advantage with Stream and that the feature has resonated with consumers and other companies. He explains that high-level executives from other firms have told TiVo that their companies are a year away from developing similar features.
“The way that we most want to compete is making sure that we are doing two things,” explains Klugman, “recognizing both business and consumer trends as quickly as possible and using that to our advantage for bringing our products to market at quickly as possible.”
Making Video Content More Accessible
“I also think that content is going to continue to balkanize,” predicts Klugman. “I think that you are going to continue to see more and more walled gardens of content from probably every one of the top 25 network and cable broadcasters.”
A walled garden is a segregated location of content controlled by a single content provider. Klugman explains that walled gardens are making it difficult for consumers to find the content they want.
Even if you can navigate content providers’ walled gardens, describes Klugman, “you would have to be a little bit lucky to be able to find a show and an episode that you wanted to find.”
In light of this issue, Klugmen comments that TiVo Stream will offer consumers a way to access their favorite content without searching among and within walled gardens.
Klugman also explains, “I think that consumers are going to ask more and more to be able to not just view over a high bandwidth stream, but also be able to take the content with them.” He says later this year TiVo Steam is expected to allow users to side-load video content, enabling them to view the content without an internet connection.
Richard Tullo, Director of Research at Albert Fried and Company explains that he thinks TiVo Stream will be offered by Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR) and other Multiple System Operators and will provide an economical alternative to installing supplementary set top boxes.
“DVR services have been TiVo’s traditional core operation,” adds James Goss, Senior Investment Analyst at Barrington Research Associates. “Current efforts are focused and stepping off from this traditional position into a complement of advanced television services that include an engaging interface plus the ability to access content from a variety of sources and distribute that content to a variety of devices.”
Disclosure: At the time of this writing, I did not own shares of any companies mentioned in this post.
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