America Online Inc has taken a minority equity stake in Sunnyvale, California-based TiVO Inc, and plans to partner with the company on interactive television technology. AOL says it wants to combine TiVo’s personal television service with AOL TV, its own enhanced interactive television services. Future versions of TiVo’s personal video receiver will enable consumers to access AOL services.
TiVo’s technology enables consumers to exercise pause, rewind, slow motion and instant replay control over live broadcast television. It continues to record a program to the end during pause or replay, and consumers can automatically find and record programs. A thumbs up/thumbs down key on the remote control can be used to train the system to record programs based on individual preferences. TiVo’s hardware uses the Linux operating system running on a PowerPC chip, and hard disk drive technology from Quantum Corp.
AOL TV, part of the AOL Anywhere initiative, promises to offer members a new AOL interactive service on the television platform, and will include key pieces of AOL’s current functionality along with new features designed to enhance the television viewing experience. DirecTV and its parent Hughes Network Services, Philips Electronics NV and Liberate Technologies Inc (formerly Oracle Corp’s Network Computer Inc) are all working with AOL on the project, following an announcement earlier this year. No timescales were given.
TiVo was formed in 1997 by two former Silicon Graphics Inc executives, Michael Ramsey and James Barton. It sells two models of its personal video receiver for $500 and $1,000, and charges a $10 per month service fee or $200 one-time fee. Both it and its competitor, Mountain View, California-based Replay Networks Inc, have each sold a few thousand units to date. The media networks are watching nervously, and last week CBS, Discovery, ABC, Fox and Time Warner indicated that they were considering taking legal action unless licenses for their programming were obtained. Many of those networks, and others, are investors in TiVo, along with DirecTV and cable operators Cox Communications Inc and Comcast Corp. รก
