It's just occured to me that I have missed the main bit of news coming from VM's presentations in London yesterday and New York today...
EVERYONE will get the tivo EPG eventually. VM are to decide the rollout schedule, but the deal with tivo replaces the current Liberate supplied EPG software. The Liberate deal expires in January. What we don't know is what happens when that deal expires and when everyone will get a tivo epg on their boxes.
VM's bosses have given a few clues though, as to how this will rollout. Firstly, obviously, they are hoping lots of people will purchase the new tivo 1tb pvrs when they're released next year. Secondly, there will be different tivo pvrs with smaller hard drives introduced throughout 2011. Thirdly, VM made clear again that the new cisco HD boxes (non-pvr) are tivo compatible and will get tivo downloaded onto them at some point, probably in the first half of 2011. There are currently half a million of those boxes in circulation.
The question is what happens to all the other boxes. Well, Neil Berkett said that VM purchases a million stbs each year, so if you do the maths, everyone should be getting a new box within 3 years....hmmm. Hopefully VM will buy a few more boxes to speed things up!
To be clear, the only boxes that will run tivo are the new tivo pvrs and the current cisco HD boxes (non-pvr version). All the other boxes will need to be replaced at some point.
VM's bosses also made clear that existing customers will get the new tivo box at a discount, but as yet the details are not known, although media boy provided details from his insider of what the prices might be.