TiVo’s Tom Rogers Sizes Up Cable And Competition

The world has woken up to the potential of over-the-top TV. To which TiVo’s CEO Tom Rogers might say, what took everyone so long?

While best known for its breakthrough as a recording device, TiVo’s was bringing broadband feeds to the TV set years before it became fashionable. TiVo’s was going over the top before over the top was cool. But being ahead of the curve hasn't helped the company much considering it’s coming off multiple years of revenue and subscriber losses, a trend Roger is hopeful TiVo’s will reverse in 2011 on the strength of both retail sales, which he said ticked up over the holiday season, and distribution deals with cable operators worldwide. But forgive Rogers if he’s a little frustrated with the operators, who he recalled turned a deaf ear to his warnings that they figure out a way to package video from both their cable and broadband pipes. It took some more prominent competitors to get the operators to notice their new competitive threat. “We've found that the entry into this space by Google and Apple has certainly lit a fire under the operator community, which was kind of taking its time as to how this would all come about and affect their business,” he said. Nevertheless, he still believes cable can hold its ground. But he sees TiVo’s providing them the very thing the cable industry has long lacked: a compelling user interface that seamlessly intermingles broadcast, cable, DVR and broadband programming. “You can't have an interface that looks like 1987 when consumers have tablets from 2010,” he said.