TVSquad

TiVo held its quarterly earnings call yesterday, and there's mixed news. Okay, that might be overstating it. Rather, there's bad news and reason for cautious optimism.

TiVo took a product inventory $11.2 million write-down. In a nutshell, that's because the company has more standard definition set top boxes than they need while the marketplace is clamoring for high definition boxes. On the bright side, TiVo did finally release an affordable high definition box this quarter, which could help turn things around in the future.Comcast is also prepared to roll out optional TiVo service to New England customers with Comcast HD PVRs in the next few weeks which could help TiVo pick up new subscribers. On the other hand, the company really needs those subscribers, as TiVo lost 145,000 subscriptions during the previous quarter. And a large number of subscribers are current DirecTV satellite customers, but DirecTV has begun promoting its own PVR in lieu of TiVo's.

TiVo Lovers' Megazone spotted a few other interesting tidbits in the press release:

• Comcast will fund OCAP research which could lead to TiVo software being deployed on Scientific Atlanta boxes as well as Motorola.
• An update is coming that will let you begin watching movies from Amazon Unbox before you've finished downloading the film.