Can TiVo Go Prime Time?

Step Four: It's All About the Software

Mike Ramsay is just back from a trip to Japan, where he conducted meetings and seminars with consumer-electronics makers in an attempt to convince them to embed TiVo's software in their products. "There was a huge level of interest," he says. The visit was an important one, since Ramsay knows that TiVo's success does not hinge on TiVo selling a lot of its own boxes but on cultivating a community of consumer-electronics makers and cable and satellite providers who want "TiVo inside" their boxes too.

Sony, for example, recently licensed TiVo's software for use in a PVR that it is marketing in Japan. And AT&T Broadband and DirecTV offer TiVo-enabled set-top boxes. Eventually, Ramsay envisions all kinds of devices with TiVo inside, such as a combination DVD burner and TiVo recorder that would enable users who want to archive shows for their own library to transfer them from TiVo's hard disk onto a DVD.

TiVo's task at hand is to preserve its lead and its premium brand as its competitors improve their offerings. "When companies come into a market second or third, they can see what works and what doesn't," says Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff. (Bernoff has two TiVo sets at home.) "Later entrants can go for volume, which means that they can do it cheaper. They can turn the business into a commodity business, which favors big, well-funded companies, not startups."

Ramsay is so focused on partnerships that he's rarely in his office. More often, he's on the road talking to companies that can build TiVo's software into their products and help build TiVo's subscriber base. But even 1 million devices embedded with TiVo's software, all generating $12.95 a month in subscription revenue for the company, won't mean that TiVo is home free.

Ramsay knows that many of the dynamics that he was able to control when TiVo was a first mover in the world of PVRs are now out of his hands. So he's pushing his team to control the things that they can control: marketing, the cost and simplicity of the product, and partnerships. "Those things are all really important to us if we want to stay on top of this trend as it takes off," he says. "And we do intend to stay on top."

Contributing editor Scott Kirsner (kirsner@att.net) writes from Boston's North End. Learn more about TiVo on the Web (www.tivo.com).

Sidebar: A Remote That Clicks

For such a revolutionary product, TiVo's appearance is pretty unremarkable. So the company's design team, led by Paul Newby, seized on the idea of developing a unique remote control that would set TiVo apart. "We knew early on that we needed something iconic, something that would embody TiVo's friendliness and ease of use and stand out among the coffee-table fray," says Newby, who earlier in his career designed bicycle helmets for Bell Sports and computer workstations for Silicon Graphics.

One of the signs that Newby and his team created a distinctive clicker: He recently got a photo in the mail from a TiVo user who had built a soapbox-derby car in the shape of the TiVo remote. Here are three of the principles that guided Newby through the design process.

1. Cut through complexity. Too many buttons make a remote unfriendly to users. "We wanted people to be able to figure out what every button does without referring to the instruction manual," Newby says. "We also wanted to make sure that the buttons were big enough so that people could feel them in the dark." Newby adds that "Braille-ability" -- being able to use the remote in the dark or without glancing down -- was an important objective.

2. Iterate, iterate, iterate. Newby says that he collaborated with industrial designers at Ideo to find a shape that would set the TiVo remote apart. They ended up with a peanut-shaped remote. They went through more than 40 foam mock-ups to get the shape just right. And the iteration didn't stop even after the product started shipping in 1999: The TiVo Series2 includes a remote that is slightly longer than the original, making it easier for users' fingers to reach the number keys on the bottom and rendering the remote cheaper to make.

3. The genius is in the details. No problem was too small. When beta testers reported that the keys on the remote were sticky, Newby and Ideo decided to add a silicone coating that made them feel smoother. They also opted for an unobtrusive, sliding battery door -- which is less likely to tempt users to fiddle with it until it breaks. "It's easy to have a lot of energy and momentum at the start of the design process," Newby says. "But success is about maintaining the vision even through the most grueling details."