Not everyone in the cable industry hates/fears TiVo and its renewed DVR push. Suddenlink, the nation's eighth largest MSO, is so enamored with the service that it's entered into a "strategic relationship" with the DVR maker to distribute co-branded TiVo Premiere DVRs and, even more strangely, "non-DVR set-top boxes."
Which begs the question: why would TiVo build a set-top box without a DVR and why would Suddenlink want one?
Jerry Kent, Suddenlink's CEO, didn't really address the set-top question but did note in a corporate news release that TiVo has modified its retail DVRs to work with Suddenlink's VoD system "giving us the ability, in a matter of month, to deploy an incredibly robust software environment, together with a less expensive set-top box." TiVo, he concluded, will be "a significant part of our future plans" including collaborating on the development of a whole-home DVR system scheduled for introduction in 2011.
For more:
- see this news release
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