[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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