[MKPatrick]

Does anyone know if there is any technical reason why Sky Plus couldn't run a version of Tivo's software? Does it have the capcity in terms of processing power?

It seems to me that if Murdoch wanted to totally own the PVR market in the UK all he'd need to do would be to convert existing Sky Plus boxes into something approaching the DirecTV Tivo boxes on sale in the US.

Surely a simple over the air download could make our Sky Pluses just about the best PVR imaginable? Coupled with Sky's EPG, still the pacesetter in Europe, this would seem to make the best commercial sense ever.

Thoughts and musings?

Patrick

[Starburst]

I suspect SKY+ would have to be totally redesigned to run the TIVO software not to mention the most fundemental issue that SKY would have to pay TIVO to use the OS.
You then have SKY losing control of the EPG that they charge broadcasters to use and of course the money paid to TIVO per subscriber has to be passed on to the users or absorbed by SKY.

No argument that the DirecTV application of HD recording and TIVO OS is a great product but they had a very mature cable market and TIVO standalone base to compete with.
In the UK the cable companies and DTT are the only practical sectors that could launch this type of product in an attempt to leap fron SKY, no sense for SKY to do it themselves.

[MarkE19]

TiVo is also very hardware specific. The serial number of the mobo is how TiVo UK know if your box has a monthly, lifetime or no subscription when it dials in to their servers. This is obviously securely encoded within the mobo so it can't (easily) be hacked.
Also all the different TiVo boxes (in the USA) use the same remote, as would any new UK boxes.
For these and probably a million & one more reasons I would say it is very unlikely, if not impossible to convert the Sky+ software to TiVo.

Mark.

[MarkE19]

Nearly forgot, the Sky EPG would not be useable by the TiVo software because the Tribune (EPG suppliers for TiVo) data has so many embedded codes for use in the software for things like season passes and wish lists etc. This data just does not exist in the Sky EPG.

Mark.

That's not to say that Murdoch couldn't bring out a "Sky+2" for instance, that was indeed a TiVo.

All he'd need to do would be to take the US DirecTV TiVo (series 2) as the model. It would basically be a UK-ised series 2 TiVo with a Sky tuner (CAM) and could use a version of the Tribune EPG data delivered via a spare channel when the TiVo wasn't recording anything. I believe the DirecTV box does just this.

Of course, whether he'd want to do so would ultimately depend on how much he could increase the "premium" subscription to Sky to cover the costs - and how many existing Sky+ users could be persuaded to up their monthly fee by "just another £2" to get the new box.