Just a Great Essay On TiVo and Cable Co's

From Engadget's The Clicker:

Make no mistake about it -- TiVo and cable are not friends. Cable views TiVo as not only a threat to its large rental revenue but also as endangering the billions of dollars they expect to come from add on services (PPV, music and DVD purchases, etc.). There is no way that they're going to open their arms and help the process. The best we can hope for is that shame, public perception, and the FCC will keep them close to honest. In the meantime, it's fun to watch them both pretend they're like BFF. It's a little like watching the Simple Life -- one, drunk with power, and the other doing its best to hold on to the spotlight.

See the whole post! It's good, but I don't necessarily agree with all of it. I love to see companies that are not direct competitors work well together. Cable's core business is really wires to homes, combined with distributing media content over the wires. Tivo's business is allowing customers to control their media as they wish. That's what people pay those companies for.

I do appreciate the FCC's role in promoting and enforcing cable card technology. But the cable companies need to realize how much value could be created just by working together - many people have upgraded their service for TiVo. More people will want more HD programming with TiVo series 3 - playing nice would be win-win-win for everyone.