The same article was posted to the OzTiVo mailing list today.

It's not exactly surprising that someone from a competing company plays down TiVo potential impact. I expect to see a lot more negative comments from people associated with Foxtel as Rob is.

Rob's role at BskyB was in interactive advertising, and just as he left BskyB announced their suprise at how lucrative this market segment was. He now runs the same dept at MCN providing the red button content for Foxtel.

Should TiVo become successful here it will be taking revenue from both MCN and Foxtel.

As to TiVo in the UK it was a mistake, TiVo Inc was already stretched in the US and they entered the market too early with a box that was too expensive with only 40hours on basic. They gave up after only 2 years.

The price when TiVo was first launched into the UK was GBP400 which was fairly quickly dropped to GPB299. That is still a lot of money for most people, add to that the need to cable it to a phone line, it was just too difficult. But realistically unlike Australia, the UK is not known as a country of early adopters.

Marketing was left to 2 retailers, with limited funding from TiVo.

Another benefit for the US which the UK did not have was there were more than one DVR released at the time (replay & microsoft) so consumers were better informed of the potential of DVR's in general.

The situation here is TiVo is not involved hands on at all. Marketing and Distribution will handled by Engin, who are already successful in building their VOIP business. They have already appointed a new CEO who has triple play experience. And Seven providing content. Both companies have deep pockets and both are currently on a high.

Peter.