I received a flyer in the mail yesterday from DirecTV. It was touting their newest MPEG-4 HD receivers or the 100 new HD channels they will be launching in the next couple of weeks. No, it was promoting features that will be available in a TiVo software update in early 2008!
This is pretty surprising, first of all that they are releasing new features, and secondly that they once again care about TiVo customers, since they dropped TiVo as their DVR supplier many months ago. My best guess is that they know there are a lot of loyal TiVo users who are more loyal to TiVo than to DirecTV. With the TiVo HD out, this makes a jump to cable even more attractive. I just posted a couple of days ago about my plans to do just that.
The brochure touts:
What do you need to do to get the most innovative new features? Nothing. We will bring them to you!
[. . .] And know that DIRECTV and TiVo will continue to explore ways to bring future enhancements to our valued DIRECTV customers with TiVo service.
The new features are what has already been disclosed in a press release: Remote Booking via the web, a Recently Deleted Folder, and Overlap Protection. These features are great, but I wouldn’t call them “the most innovative new features.” If DirecTV wants to keep loyal TiVo users like me around, they need to give us some of the more advanced features, such as:
- Network support (come one – a lot of people don’t even have a phone line anymore and we’re sick of the “make a daily call soon message),
- Multi-Room Viewing
- TiVoToGo (or I guess it would be DirecTVToGo)
- No need to offer TiVoCast or Amazon Unbox support, because these services are (somewhat) competitors to DirecTV, just give us ways to use the content DirecTV provides.
If could get these features from DirecTV, I’d be very happy and would stick with DirecTV for a long, long time. But with only the features listed, that’s not quite enough to keep me from eventually jumping to cable and a TiVo HD. However, it does bode well for a new DVR collaboration between DirecTV and TiVo. If they offer an MPEG-4 capable box with network support, it would be the ultimate combination for me. Here’s hoping.