TiVo claims that changes to cable television are crippling its DVR service, and wants the U.S. government to do something about it.
In a complaint filed with the Federal Communications Commission, reported by Ars Technica, TiVo claims that it's suffering not because of the market, but because of the way cable prevents TiVo from operating with the same ease as cable DVR.
At issue is the method of channel delivery called switched digital video, or SDV. The technology allows cable boxes to only receive the specific channel the viewer is watching, while traditional technology would send all channels to a cable box and select between them. Obviously, SDV saves lots of bandwidth for cable companies because they don't have to send out all their channels to the user at the same time.
Unfortunately for TiVo, it's impossible for third party set-top boxes to control which channel is coming through the cable box. The only way to do this is to send a request back through the cable wire, which many providers don't allow. If your TiVo box can't change channels, that's why.
Congress has tried to mandate that cable companies open up to third-party boxes, such as TiVo, but the only result was a standard called CableCARD that didn't go anywhere due to limited features, such as a lack of program guides or video-on-demand, and devices that support CableCARD, including TiVo, still can't change channels.
Instead, TiVo wants to use the Internet to control channel output on its boxes, which the cable companies aren't crazy about. They want to keep TiVo locked into yet another standard called Tru2Way, which would require major upgrades to cable company infrastructure, and is not yet deployed everywhere. TiVo's method, by comparison, would work with existing technology.
I get TiVo's plight. Third-party cable boxes deserve a place alongside the ones you can lease from the cable company, as they offer cool features such as broadband video on demand. That said, it seems disingenuous for TiVo to pin its troubles on this particular issue of SDV. Between other broadband set-top boxes, online sites for catching up with shows such as Hulu, and the convenience of getting DVR from your cable company without the up-front cost of a TiVo box, the company may have bigger problems on its hands.
