[mythtv-users] re:MythTV production run

Joseph A. Caputo jcaputo1 at comcast.net
Thu May 6 14:42:03 EDT 2004


On Thursday 06 May 2004 03:54, mythtvyahoomike at hotmail.com wrote:
>      It's amazing that Tivo still loses money when it has more than 1
> million subscribers(that's more than $100M!) with less than 300
> employers. I don't think Tivo make profit from selling hardware,  but
> I don't think it loses either.  One reason I believe is the high cost
> in the states.
>
>
>
> Your numbers seem reasonable, if you put as much effort in as Tivo
> did. Tivo is the market leader, and they spent about 5 years to get
> to their first profitable quarter (2004 Q4). Sony has sold about
> twice as many copies of Everquest as Tivo has sold subscriptions in
> the same first 5 years. And Tivo doesn't even make the hardware. More
> people play online games with their PS2 than own a Tivo unit. I sure
> hope the DVR market starts to grow rapidly, it's
> been dismally slow so far. ;)
>
> Sources:
> http://www.tivo.com/pdfs/reports/Q4_FY04_release.pdf
> http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=2038&page=1
> http://mag.awn.com/index.php?article_no=2038&page=3
>
> > The only difficulty seems to be writing drivers for specialized
> > capture card/mpeg encoder/mpeg decoder, which should be done in
> > about 1 man-year. For stability consideration, many  features could
> > (should?) be removed
>
> from
>
> > mythtv.  Even so, an overhaul on mythtv would take about 5 man-year
> > or maybe less?   So the financial  requirement is not that high
> > either.
>
> Ok,
>
> > Cable companies would not allow you to advertise mythtv, like what
>
> happened
>
> > to Tivo, but there are many other ways to advertise like
> > newspapers/radio/mails/.... When the startup company is small, the
> > big companies would not bother to sue you.
>
> I'm not sure I would count on that. Big companies often sue small
> companies simply to give a competitor the burden of defense costs.
>
> I assume the man-year numbers are grabbed from thin air. Also, don't
> forget the hardware costs of creating that specialized capture
> hardware.
>
> >   Any other major hurdles for a startup company?  Anyone interested
> > in
>
> this
>
> > topic?
>
> I think the showstopper (pun intended :) is the hardware cost.
> Selling a MythTV-based DVR product based on general purpose PC
> hardware is just not going to compete cost-effectively with the
> growing options from cable and satellite service providers and other
> DVR competition.

You could probably come up with a good price point for a frontend-only 
system.  You could then sell the frontend & backend separately, with 
the backend being billed as a more general-purpose PC, which the home 
user can use for other things in addition to MythTV... surfing the web, 
checking email... anything a Linux desktop can do.  If you use a 
hardware encoder and a dedicated video partition, general-use 
activities shouldn't impact mythbackend.  Folks might be more willing 
to pay full-fledged-PC-like prices if they are made fully aware that 
they're getting a full-fledged PC.

Or, you could sell "upgrade kits" or an upgrade service to allow someone 
to turn an existing PC into a Myth backend.  The kit would contain (at 
minimum) 1 or more tuner cards and a software installer.  Then they 
could buy as many low-priced frontends as they wanted.  It seems a 
number of the home-media companies are going this route, like 
Hauppauge.  They sell an inexpensive, low-power, SFF set-top box, with 
content served from a (Windows) PC where you install their server 
software.

I'd love to get involved in a business based around MythTV; I just can't 
afford to quit my job :-)

-JAC


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