TiVo May Be Bailing On Hardware, Lays Off Most Of Its Industrial Design Team
TiVo has been high on cloud technology lately, enabling its Roamio Pro and Roamio Plus DVRs to stream to mobile devices, talking up an initiative to put its Roamio DVR in the cloud with a Network PVR, and demonstrating its TiVo nDVR network DVR prototype at CES, and accordingly, its time as a hardware maker may be coming to an end.
According to a Wired report, TiVo has laid off five of its industrial design team members, leaving just two people to man the division and lend support to current products and future third-party hardware. The source of the report also said that TiVo is moving away from making any hardware at all.
That nDVR device, which is obviously technically hardware, won’t be sold to consumers; instead, users will only be able to get it through a cable provider, and it’s not out of the question that TiVo would eventually simply let third parties actually do the designing and building of those devices and just make the software.
Moving to the cloud and away from local DVR boxes (arguably) isn’t a terrible strategy. Cloud-backed DVR can provide many additional and powerful features that you can’t get from a local device, and it’s a good position to be in as broadband adoption increases and Internet speeds are on the cusp of bursting through to a next generation of performance.
According to a Wired report, TiVo has laid off five of its industrial design team members, leaving just two people to man the division and lend support to current products and future third-party hardware. The source of the report also said that TiVo is moving away from making any hardware at all.
That nDVR device, which is obviously technically hardware, won’t be sold to consumers; instead, users will only be able to get it through a cable provider, and it’s not out of the question that TiVo would eventually simply let third parties actually do the designing and building of those devices and just make the software.
Moving to the cloud and away from local DVR boxes (arguably) isn’t a terrible strategy. Cloud-backed DVR can provide many additional and powerful features that you can’t get from a local device, and it’s a good position to be in as broadband adoption increases and Internet speeds are on the cusp of bursting through to a next generation of performance.
