Advanced Television

TiVo tops 2.5m subs in Europe

March 13, 2014

Colin Mann @ Cable Congress

TiVo_newAdvanced television entertainment market specialist TiVo has surpassed 2.5 million subscribers across Europe as consumers in the UK, Spain and Sweden quickly embrace the TiVo experience offered by Virgin Media, ONO, and Com Hem, respectively. TiVo’s pay-TV operator partners continue to aggressively deploy its next-generation hybrid TV software solutions and advanced television services to meet customer demand, making TiVo Europe’s most broadly deployed advanced cable television solution. TiVo now covers nearly half of the subscribers at Virgin Media and a third of ONO subscribers.

“Consumers globally are increasingly demanding a superior TV viewing experience that enables them to access content across multiple screens and devices anytime and anywhere. Our growing roster of international pay-TV operator partners including Com Hem, Virgin Media and ONO recognised this trend early and share TiVo’s vision for the future of TV consumption,” said David Sandford, Vice President, General Manager, International at TiVo. “TiVo leads the market in multi-screen, TV Everywhere capabilities with deployments across multiple third party set-top boxes, iOS and Android operating systems and the Web, and Europe represents the largest share of TiVo deployments worldwide to date. Our success here puts a fine point on the overall success of TiVo’s strategic transformation to a major international advanced television platform and services company. We are extremely pleased with the strong and sustained rate of adoption throughout Europe.”

According to TiVo pay-TV operators face an increasingly challenging and competitive landscape. Solving for this is not always easy and often is cost prohibitive for operators that don’t have the financial means or the technological wherewithal to develop and deploy a flexible and scalable advanced TV offering. As such, operators around the world are increasingly turning to TiVo to deliver the most feature-rich and consumer friendly television experience while helping them avoid significant in-house development costs and the complexity of piecemeal alternatives.

Specifically, TiVo’s work with Com Hem, Virgin Media and ONO has served to demonstrate how it can effectively develop and customise a hybrid television platform that is quick to market, economical, flexible, and build on innovative technology that seamlessly blends Internet and traditional television content through TiVo’s award-winning user interface.

Adding to its suite of TV services, TiVo recently began showcasing its full hybrid QAM/IP and IPTV offering. This solution is designed to work within cable operators’ existing architecture to implement its best-in-class advanced television solution as cable operators continue to transition to video delivery over IP. The solution can be migrated between either network while providing the same TiVo experience including integration of linear, On Demand, Catch Up and over the top services. The TiVo service provides a single, future-proof solution across all screens and network types. Com Hem’s launch of TiVo in October 2013 was the first such full hybrid QAM/IP and IPTV deployment and served to demonstrate that cable operators have a clear migration path to IPTV utilising TiVo’s solutions.

Looking ahead, TiVo says it will aggressively continue moving its advanced television capabilities to the cloud, further enhancing the service it can deliver for operators. TiVo plans to deploy a full-featured network PVR solution with initial customers later this year. The TiVo network PVR will use TiVo’s service delivered from the cloud and is a natural extension of the TiVo solution as operators consider a transition to IP delivered content and the utilisation of low-cost IP clients and consumer provided devices (tablets, smartphones, etc.) with an eye toward enhancing the user experience inside and outside of the home. As previously announced, TiVo is also opening up APIs to the TiVo Cloud Service, enabling operators to innovate with a range of client applications and devices that will take advantage of the same integrated search, browse and discovery capabilities across any screen.

Sandford said the company’s ability to innovate, collaborate and deliver high-quality and unique services has earned it tremendous recognition, and it looked forward to continued success working in tandem with operators across the globe and delivering the products and services that customers demand.

Overview of TiVo’s European Deployments

Com Hem

In Sweden, Com Hem launched its video offering with TiVo in October 2013, making its content line-up available simultaneously to television, mobile and the web with a single, consistent experience. Com Hem recently reported 38,000 TiVo subscribers, with the service already reaching 6 per cent of its customers in just three months following launch. Andrew Barron, Executive Chairman of Com Hem recently said that TiVo was important to Com Hem as it is the key to restoring growth in its DTV business. “The combination of the powerful TiVo platform and our broad content offers provide the strongest TV product available in our market.”

Virgin Media

In the UK, two million Virgin Media TiVo customers have been connected since the service launched in December 2010. According to Scott Kewley, Virgin Media’s director of digital entertainment, Virgin Media TiVo started a revolution in the way people watch and discover great TV and it was clear from the operator’s growth that its customers agreed. “By offering different ways to watch, with subscription and pay-per-view options, all integrated into a straightforward, intuitive experience, there’s an unrivalled world of great entertainment at our customers’ fingertips.”

Virgin Media began offering access to Netflix to its TiVo subscribers in September 2013. This marked the first time an over the top offering such as Netflix has been accessible by subscribers through a Pay-TV platform.

ONO

ONO recently announced that the TiVo product has now reached more than 323,000 active users, a growth of 65,000 subscribers in just the last quarter. Rosalia Portela, CEO of ONO, recently said the company was positioning TiVo as the Pay-TV market benchmark and the record numbers shown in the last quarter show customers recognise that it’s an easy to use, highly advanced service that is superior to traditional offerings.

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