PriceSCAN Blog

All of these new capabilities seem to be zeroing in on the general problem that we might call portable TV access and storage. While this general capability has actually been around for years, until recently costs prevented the individual consumer from being able to afford any of these systems. Now that it is simple and cheap (say $1) to write disks that hold an hour or two of TV, this has all become quite a practical thing.

First, let me say that I think that this stuff deals with a real problem for which there is a broad market. It is curious that I have had conversations in real life that happen to be reflected in the advertisements for the TiVoToGo product (the topic was getting access to some episodes of "Desperate Housewives", an example they happen to use in their ads.)

Second, the broad acceptance of this technology would certainly create a nightmare for some copyright issues. At the moment only a relatively small proportion of the population has all of the necessary capabilities available. But computers are now dropping below $500, which should increase their presence in households dramatically. As cable or satellite TV becomes more and more available the interest in these capabilities might grow quiickly. If people find them useful and, more important perhaps, comfortable to use, they may actually begin to fuel the growth. While no one may really be concerned with copyright when the numbers of users are small, one can expect the equivalent of the RIAA to begin to take a real interest if the number begin to rise to any significance.

However, there are at least a few "flies in the ointment". Most of these have to do with cross-system compatability and DRM issues. While it is certainly conceptually straightforward to move these files around from system to system, I can say that at this point I have failed utterly to be able to get disks I write on one of my Media Centers to play on the other. There could be at least two reasons for this.

One is simple ignorance. To which I will plead guilty. In my defense, though, I have decades of experience with computers and a technical education that was substantial. If these systems require that kind of background, then we are talking about a very limited market indeed. It is surely not the target of the major computer manufacturers, who will have to make this equipment work simply enough to satisfy the needs of people who don't care about the technology, they only want to use it. So even if it is my ignorance that is interfering with my use, one has to expect it.

It is difficult to guess what economic impact the existence of this technology will have. It would seem that in many cases the existence of iPods and MP3 players have increased people's interest in purchasing music, rather than the reverse. The same might well be the case here. Indeed, as I think about it, it occurs to me that I might rather have a local "DVD" store do the long-run storage task for broadcast TV. Each night the five major networks produce about 15 disks. That's 100, or so, disks per week or about 5,000 per year. Even given their density, I don't really want to bother to store all that much.

So TiVoToGo offers some tantalizing prospects. I don't think it will take long for them to either fizzle out or to become very important. By this time next year I'd expect to know a lot that is only material for speculation today.