thegeekchannel.com

I have to admit it - I love the TiVo logo.  It only somewhat looks like a television to me, but like Kleenex it’s become an integral part of my life.  Unfortunately, I don’t always like what TiVo, the company, does, and this post is going to talk a little about how they’re planning to sell consumer viewing habits and how it might ultimately affect you and your family.  Of course, not everything is a bad, and the “promotional pricing” that they’re pitching seems to be a good deal for everyone.

To be fair to my beloved TiVo, I will start with their new holiday season pricing plan, which seems to be offering new consumers a viable price-point that might allow them to “justify” their purchase.  First, the pay-as-you-go service (which you and I might call month-to-month) is $12.95 for everyone - not just those users looking to sign a three year plan.  That’s a savings of $4/month.  Buy a year up gront and it’s $50 less at $129; two years is $30 less at $249 and the three year plan stays the same at $299.  If you’re an existing customer you can even subscribe to their lifetime plan for $399, but that seems like a really bad call to me.  So what does all this mean to those of you that are currently subscribed to TiVo?  You get screwed.  Nothing.  Your pricing stays the same, and even if you’re on the month-to-month plan your subscription price will stay the same - this pricing applies to new TiVo subscribers only.  Nice, TiVo, thanks for taking care of your loyal customers.

For the past year or so TiVo has been selling people’s viewing habits.  This data includes what shows and commercials they watch (and presumeably what they skip), when they pause, fast-forward, rewind and so on.  Advertisers can use this information as a mini-review of their product to see how consumers watch or don’t watch their commercials.  Personally, I think this probably impacts our children the most, because they’re more likely to go back to a commercial about a toy or what-not, but I can’t prove that.

Now, TiVo will begin selling the viewing data with census data like age, income, marital status, and ethnicity.  Their initial sample of 20,00 “volunteers” (bribed by a chance to win a new Tivo) is larger than the Nielsen 3,000 families.  Add in some of the other things that TiVo opens the door to and this becomes a great opportunity for advertisers, but the potential impact on privacy is potentially enormous.

~geek

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