TiVo’s momentum on the independent cable front continued Wednesday as the DVR pioneer announced a deal with WaveDivision Holdings, which runs Wave Broadband and Astound.
The co-branded deployment of TiVo-powered devices are expected to get underway in mid-2014, and will become the operator’s “primary offering” across its properties. WaveDivision serves about 415,000 residential and business customers covering Wave Broadband systems in Washington, Oregon and California; and Astound systems in the San Francisco Bay area, which happens to be near TiVo’s corporate headquarters.
WaveDivision will tap into TiVo’s full arsenal, including its T6 HD-DVR whole-home gateway outfitted with six tuners (and based on TiVo’s new Roamio hardware platform), the TiVo Mini (an IP set-top), TiVo Stream (video transcoder for streaming to mobile devices), as well as Digital Transport Adapters (DTAs) that support a version of the TiVo interface.
It was not immediately clear if Wave intends to limit the use of TiVo's video streaming capabilities to in the customer's home, or if it would enable out-of-home access as well. "It is still early in the process, but Wave plans to launch and support a full suite of TiVo services (including the DVR streaming capability available)," a spokesman said via email.
The deal also includes TiVo’s mobile apps for the Web and iOS- and Android-powered applications.
“We are excited to be working with TiVo to bring our customers access to more content choices and a superior, more personalized viewing experience on all screens in and out of the home,” said Steve Weed, Wave CEO, in a statement “Through this partnership with TiVo, we will bring a new standard of viewing experience to our key markets, while providing an optimized combination of all the great Wave and Astound content available now, plus access to new broadband content. We are confident that in return, our business will reap the benefits of improved subscriber satisfaction.”
Before TiVo entered the picture, Wave has been offering Arris gateways that run on its Moxi platform. Although TiVo is now Wave's "preferred solution," the operator will continue to support the Arris platform going forward, the spokesman said via email. "Customers will have exciting new equipment options available to them, but their current equipment will continue to work and they can continue to keep any equipment options they are happy with - no change required," he added.
TiVo ended its fiscal fourth quarter with 4.2 million total subs after adding a record 313,000 subs via pay-TV partnerships during the period. TiVo’s last reported grand total comprised 966,000 TiVo-owned subs and 3.2 million coming from partners. Other U.S.-based TiVo cable partners include Suddenlink Communications, Mediacom Communications, Vyve Broadband, Blue Ridge Communications, and Atlantic Broadband, among others.
