{"id":188,"date":"2006-01-31T16:15:06","date_gmt":"2006-01-31T21:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/index.php\/2006\/01\/31\/cisco-buy-tivo-dream-on-tivo-fans\/"},"modified":"2006-01-31T16:15:06","modified_gmt":"2006-01-31T21:15:06","slug":"cisco-buy-tivo-dream-on-tivo-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/01\/31\/cisco-buy-tivo-dream-on-tivo-fans\/","title":{"rendered":"Cisco buy TiVo? Dream on, TiVo fans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CNet.com has <a href=\"http:\/\/news.com.com\/Is+TiVo+next+on+Ciscos+push+into+homes\/2100-1036_3-6032452.html?tag=st.num\">a piece up on its website<\/a> that talks about how networking equipment giant Cisco Systems might be looking to acquire TiVo, the digital-video recording pioneer. The article, which is labelled &#8220;news analysis&#8221; &#8212; which in the journalism business is code for &#8220;speculation&#8221; &#8212; starts off with Cisco&#8217;s recently announced <a href=\"http:\/\/newsroom.cisco.com\/dlls\/2005\/corp_111805.html\">$6.9-billion acquisition<\/a> of Scientific-Atlanta, one of the largest makers of set-top boxes in the world next to Motorola, and then asks the question &#8220;Who&#8217;s next?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>One response might be &#8220;Why should anyone be next?&#8221; The purchase of SA is one of the largest acquisitions Cisco has ever done. The idea that it&#8217;s going to rush out and buy something else right away is more than a little wacky. But a better response might be &#8220;Why TiVo?&#8221; As much as everyone <a href=\"http:\/\/news.com.com\/2100-1041_3-5673225.html\">seems to want to see<\/a> TiVo get snapped up by either Yahoo, Google or Microsoft, I&#8217;m not sure that&#8217;s as likely as TiVo fans might want it to be &#8212; and I think a purchase by Cisco is probably even less likely (The Stalwart <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestalwart.com\/the_stalwart\/2006\/01\/is_cisco_back_u.html\">isn&#8217;t convinced either<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Why? Because &#8212; as Rafat Ali also points out at PaidContent.org &#8212; TiVo doesn&#8217;t really bring anything to the table that Cisco doesn&#8217;t already have with Scientific-Atlanta. Yes, it&#8217;s true that TiVo (and Replay TV) pioneered the DVR business, and the company has a small legion of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tivocommunity.com\/tivo-vb\/archive\/index.php\/\">devoted fans<\/a> who love the extra features it provides. But when it gets right down to it, DVRs are a commodity, SA already makes them &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnet.com\/4831-11405_1-6411591.html\">including ones that do high-definition<\/a>, and have interactive features for integration with the Internet (or the ability to add them) &#8212; and so there is little or no reason to pay the $500-million or whatever it would take to buy TiVo. For what it&#8217;s worth, I think the idea of Cisco buying Nintendo makes even less sense, but maybe that&#8217;s just me.<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CNet.com has a piece up on its website that talks about how networking equipment giant Cisco Systems might be looking to acquire TiVo, the digital-video recording pioneer. The article, which is labelled &#8220;news analysis&#8221; &#8212; which in the journalism business is code for &#8220;speculation&#8221; &#8212; starts off with Cisco&#8217;s recently announced $6.9-billion acquisition of Scientific-Atlanta, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/01\/31\/cisco-buy-tivo-dream-on-tivo-fans\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Cisco buy TiVo? Dream on, TiVo fans&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}