TiVo To Land In Mid-July At Harvey Norman, Cost $700
If reports from the Financial Review are correct, we’ll soon be able to play with our very own peanut controller when TiVo launches in Australia in mid-July.
Aside from the obvious dilemma of where to spend your money (there’s some new phone launching on July 11, remember?), the mid-July timeframe does work with the previous announcements that Channel 7 made about it launching before the Olympics.
The box itself is likely to cost somewhere around the $700 mark, which isn’t exactly cheap for a DVR. Seven are likely to promote the box’s superior EPG functionality in order to justify that price, although we’ll wait to see how it’s implemented ourselves before we recommend on whether you should spend the money.
The other interesting point made in the Fin’s article is that Harvey Norman are likely to have an exclusive distribution arrangement for 3 months, before it will be available in JB Hi-Fi and Dick Smith’s shops.
I’m sure there are important factors influencing that decision, like scratching the backs of old mates and heavy advertisers, but I think Channel 7 may be overestimating TiVo’s appeal in Australia. Personally – I’m very intrigued, but I would need to see some obvious advantages in TiVo’s local implementation before I dropped 700 big ones. Especially now that Foxtel’s iQ2 is on the market.
UPDATE: Pete Blasina over at GadgetGuy.com.au is reporting that the launch date is officially July 15. Considering his relationship with Channel 7, I reckon this is pretty much guaranteed.
[MIS Australia and GadgetGuy]
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Comments
Personally, I doubt I’d be dropping 700 big ones on this thing. Until the networks start putting decent programs on I really don’t see the point.
Pete Blasina is a moron, he can’t get anything right. The date is 1 July, That is from the mouth of the guy in charge of Tivo from Harvey Norman. I think he should know.
Who’s the moron Adam? July 1 is the date on which Tivo is being officially ‘announced’, it’s not on sale in Harvey Norman stores until late July.
GadgetGuy has the first TiVo review in, at http://www.gadgetguy.com.au/product.asp?m_review=152341, plus an article called TiVo vs other PVRs, at http://www.gadgetguy.com.au/article.asp?m_article=3157
FoxtelIQ has such a horrible interface and is so not nice to use. Tivo is the opposite.
This would be great if you could use Tivo with a foxtel cable subscription.
If you cannot 699 is way overpriced as you can just buy a pc that would come with a monitor and remote for that price and then still be able to use it as a pc.
A few things that need correcting and pointing out…
Harvey Norman will have the unit on display from July 17th and it will be available for purchase on the July 29th. This info is from a PDF available on Tivo.com.au and confirmed by an unnameable representative of Harvey Norman.
While this unit may be free from a subscription service fee you will still be paying it. The unit its self is only worth around $400.00 and a life time paid service fee in the U.S. is US$300.00, with maths like that it’s a little to much of a coincidence for me…
(While unable to name the person or company, the unit cost price has been confirmed.)
what is tivo anyway it sounds to me it’s they same as foxtel iq except that it doesn’t have all those channels really!!!!!!
what is it ????