TiVo executive sees great potential for firm

If any students missed the most recent episode of 24, David Courtney may be their savior. The TiVo chief financial officer said the company is working to "recording anything, anytime, anywhere."

Courtney, who is also executive vice president and coordinator of worldwide operations for the Alviso, Calif.-based company, spoke yesterday about TiVo, which makes Digital Video Recorders for television. The company now boasts more than three million subscribers.

Instead of TiVo being an archival device, Courtney envisions it as the mediator between television programs, MP3 files and pictures stored somewhere on the Web and TiVo's clients.

"With this kind of service, you would be able to retrieve media files anywhere you wanted," Courtney said.

TiVo has a long way to go before it reaches its ultimate goal of complete media proliferation, or financial sustainability for that matter. The still-unprofitable company hopes that its trend of revenue increase will take it to a new level before the year is over. And with revenues of around $35 million in January, Courtney may get his wish.

NBC was one of the first investors in the company, believing that TiVo would change the way people view television, Courtney said.

Although it was one of the early adapters, NBC sometimes starts its programs a few minutes earlier or a few minutes later, which keeps regular viewers from switching channels but harms TiVo's recordings. This affects viewers like those interested in both The Apprentice and Gilmore Girls, who will have to choose between one of the two because they sometimes overlap.

Despite the minor recording issues, TiVo has had an amazing response from clients. Categorizing the subscribers as "passionate and evangelical," Courtney said they were partly responsible for the success of the company.

Wharton freshman Jason Gurwin -- who owns six TiVos at home and at school -- said "there's no other way to watch TV."

He admitted to being "obsessed with TiVo because it's one of the cult atmospheres like Mac, that once you use it there's nothing like it."

However, the overlap of users of Apple and TiVo has not been enough to strike any chemistry between the companies.

"We haven't committed to any plans [for integration] to it because of the cost," Courtney said.

He added that being able to watch media on Apple computers using TiVo seems unlikely "unless we find a way to record it under the current platform, and I don't think that will happen in the next few years."

However, deals with DirecTV and Philadelphia-based Comcast have earned TiVo many new clients, who don't have to worry about technology differences between their cable company and the digital video recorder.

Mike Watson, an Engineering graduate student, declared himself one of the "biggest advocates [of TiVo] you'll ever meet," saying it is difficult to understand why the TiVo is so cool without using it.

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