Great to read that a consumer electronics chain and a consumer electronics product are partnering. Why not partner with the store consumers use to purchase their big screen TV. "Best Buy will aggressively push TiVo's products in its stores and TiVo will let Best Buy advertise its in-store products and services to Tivo subscribers. Tivo also plans to give its subscribers access to Best Buy's Napster on their TV screens." Except consumers don't tend to buy digital video recorders.
Most consumers expect to get a DVR inside their cable set top box. As more channels become digitized and scrambled, the only way to get these channels is through a box. And how often do you see your local cable operator touting their cable cards so your TV or Tivo could work WITHOUT their box. Probably not. So while these partnerships are nice, the real return will come when Tivo partners with more cable operators. Its current partnership with Comcast has yielded an extremely slow rollout. Cablevision should soon be pushing a network DVR approach. As for the other cable companies; well, it's time for Tivo to close more of these partnerships.
Until then, or until more consumers are aware of the cablecard technology to bypass a cable set top box, I don't expect much to come from this Best Buy Tivo partnership.
