Personalization, on-the-move. Reported by a few blogs and spotted by New Scientist it looks like the race has begun for location aware profiling – TiVo have put in a patent for “a mobile personalization system“. The patent synopsis
A multimedia mobile personalization system provides a remote control that detects a user’s electronic tag, e.g. an RFID tag. The remote control notifies a multimedia device of the user’s identity. The multimedia devices tailors it operations to the user’s preferences stored locally. Multimedia content such as broadcast or recorded television programs, music play lists, and the like could be sorted, displayed, or restricted, depending on the user identifier.
This is long overdue especially as TV-Anytime which I co-led (and who had TiVo in its ranks for a few years) talked about the importance of mobile profiles in its phase two work – why expect a hundred systems to learn your likes and dislikes when you could do it once and have compatibility. Indeed I wrote several articles and papers on it over the last 5 years, one here. But as in other very recent TiVo developments its TiVoToGo software (report by StarTribune) aimed at video iPod and PSP has got the backs up of the TV industry. Variety in it’s article “Peeved over TiVo” reports that TiVo who already has upset the TV industry for many years with their ad skipping capability have now upset them again because they are allowing viewers to easily capture TV programmes and get them mobile! Especially after the $1.99 per programme business model which looked set to start TV down a new road…
The pioneer of the digital video recording bizbiz called the move an “enhancement” of its TiVoToGo service, which allows users to transfer recorded shows to a PC. The new software, which will be released early next year, allows users to transfer these files to a portable player.
“We’re making it easy for consumers to enjoy the TV shows they want to watch right from their iPod or PSP,” said TiVo CEO and former NBC exec Tom Rogers. (snip)
The immediate impact of the service, which will be offered soon after the new year, would be to undercut ABC’s video-on-demand offering, through which users can buy episodes of “Lost” and other shows for $1.99 each to view on PCs or video iPods.
NBC and CBS recently began offering skeins on-demand for 99¢ through DirecTV and Comcast, respectively.
The boat is not yet tipped over but TiVo, Google and others are severly rocking it at the moment. Another article trying to capture the storms hitting the ‘video/tv’ industry at the moment is also captured in business week’s report End of TV article. Just like good journalism that thrives on good gossip generated by its TV stars on the way and then can’t wait to trash them to generate more readership, so TV seems to be the star at the moment. Everyone wants to toll it’s final bell, or at least be the first to suggest TV is over. I think just those who said film and radio was going to die in the late 40s, or how in early 2000’s VOD will kill off DVD film there may be some egg on faces. I for one suggest TV will simply evolve, become video delivered in a multitude of ways. TV will not die, simply the word we currently use for video delivered in a most inefficient way – schedule broadcast.
Posted by Gary Hayes ©2005
