Virgin Media have recently announced that they are going to launch a TIVO service to their customers in the UK.
TIVO is a highly sophisticated PVR (Personal video recorder) which allows the recording of Multiple TV channels at the same time as well as traditional Time Shift functionality, but it’s the quality of the software which sets it’s self apart from the competition. TIVO’s are easy to use and in addition to manual programming will learn what type of programs you like to watch, and if the box has the capacity will automatically choose and record programs that it thinks will interest you.
Virgin Media will provide every TIVO box with it’s own 10mb broadband connection, so that it won’t eat into your Internet experience, this is required as Virgin Media are integrating their TV on Demand service into the TIVO box allowing EPG access to a 7 day archive of programs for several channels, so even if you forget to record a program you will be able to watch it
The TIVO PVR brand has been highly popular in the USA for many years, but previous attempts to launch in the UK haven’t been so successful, despite launching first with recommendations from Sky, Sky were able to out their marketing muscle behind their SKY+ box when then entered the PVR market.
My First PVR was a Thompson built TIVO box, the thrill of pressing pause on Live TV soon wore off, but through the use of the Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down buttons on the TIVO Remote control, the box soon learnt what type of program I liked, this was very important to me because at the time I had very little time to watch TV so it was very important that when I did sit down there was something on the Box that I wanted to watch. TIVO was a Godsend and I became quite attached to it. The ability to search the EPR and a true series link (which could span channels) was great as well.
Virgin are some way behind Sky with their V+ PVR boxes, but have a much greater VoD offering, so this teaming seems like a perfect match up.