TiVo tunes in on wireless

Wireline/wireless convergence may not have advanced very far yet, but the industry is starting, application by application, to cement it in the mind of the consumer. AT&T last month unified its Yahoo portal over both its own DSL service and Cingular Wireless' network. Sprint recently took the first steps to link calling plans between the home and cellular phones. And perhaps most significantly, Verizon Wireless and TiVo became the first to link those two most disparate media in the communications industry — the cell phone and the TV.

Verizon Wireless is planning to sell over its Get It Now service a BREW application that allows customers to program their TiVo digital video recorders (DVRs) from their mobile phones — effectively turning the handset into an ultra-long-range remote control. Though Verizon hasn't yet launched the service or announced any pricing models for the app, TiVo expects that it will be just the first step in closing the massive gap between home entertainment and mobile communications.

“I don't think the mass market is at the point yet where they look at the phone as a key entertainment device,” said Naveen Chopra, director of business development for TiVo. “We'll gradually change that perception, though, starting out with something simple but very tangible.”

By tangible, Chopra means the ability to program the home DVR to record shows — TiVo's core service — from the phone. By simple, Chopra means the application wouldn't have the full functionality of the TiVo service. The settings and contents of the home TiVo box won't be available over the phone, and neither will the personalization and recommendations of the TiVo network. Instead, customers will get standard programming guides, off of which they can select shows to record. The phone communicates with TiVo, and TiVo in turn communicates back with the set-top box. Eventually though, as new technologies like IP multimedia subsystem emerge and standard communications protocols link the phone to the home, greater functionality will be the norm, Chopra said.

Today the application targets impulse use — hearing about a show from a friend at the office and telling TiVo to record it that night. Later though, TiVo will get into the place-shifting as well as the time-shifting business. TiVo already has plans to allow transfer video between the DVR and devices like Apple's Video iPod and Sony's PlayStation Portable. It's not a stretch to imagine that the video-capable cell phone is far behind.