Is TiVo better than Sky+ and YouView?

BSkyB and YouView will find it difficult to match TiVo, according to a new report by investment bank Morgan Stanley.

The report on Virgin Media’s prospects claims that TiVo’s functionality will be hard to compete with. “Virgin plans to migrate the whole base to TiVo over next few years, so it needs to be suitable for technophobes as well as technophiles.

“It remains a ‘religious principle’ within the company that they will never give TiVo away for free.” The report adds that the cost, via IP/royalty payments to TiVo, are not that different to those paid to its previous Middleware supplier.

“Virgin believes TiVo has better functionality versus Sky: Search (brings up results from all platforms available on the box – TV catch-up, VoD, YouTube, iPlayer – and could eventually replace traditional ‘TV Guide’ browsing); a Recommendation engine; backwards EPG; a truly on-demand VoD library; dedicated bandwidth for on-demand; a 1TB DVR which is bigger than most Sky boxes; includes apps like Spotify or CNBC; and has a dedicated IP pipe for OTT services which, in theory, could be used for a deal with a provider of content direct to the customer.

“YouView (the JV between the BBC, BT, TalkTalk and the free broadcasters) could have more limited pay content and may not have same search and recommendation functionality. In addition bandwidth will be more variable until [BT’s fibre-service] Infinity is more widely available.”

Virgin Media suffered a drop in subscriber numbers in Q2 (down 36,000 in total – down 13,000 broadband) but told the bank that Q2 was typically a poor quarter.