TiVo enters partnership with Comcast

SAN FRANCISCO — TiVo Inc.'s deal to adapt its popular digital video recorders for Comcast cable subscribers is only the first of the partnerships the struggling pioneer hopes to forge with cable operators, a top executive said Tuesday.

Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable TV system operator, expects to begin marketing the TiVo-branded DVRs by mid- to late 2006. The companies refused to release financial details in announcing the eight-year, nonexclusive deal Tuesday.

Thomas Rogers, vice chairman of TiVo's board of directors, described the deal in a telephone interview as an icebreaker.

"I've done a lot of deals with the cable industry, and when you do a deal with the largest cable operator, it's very helpful in opening up other doors in the industry," said Rogers, former executive vice president for cable at NBC Inc.

Analysts hailed the agreement as a lifeline for the Alviso, Calif., company, whose shares jumped 75 percent, or $2.87, to close at $6.70 in Tuesday trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

DVRs let viewers record TV programs on hard drives, dispensing with the hassles of videotape. Users may pause live TV, do instant replays and begin watching programs even before the recording has finished. DVRs make it easy to skip over commercials, credits and other potential annoyances.

TiVo, which has more than 3 million subscribers, helped pioneer the DVR concept, and its brand quickly became a verb — as in, "I've TiVoed all episodes of 'Friends.' " The company controlled roughly one-third of the DVR market in 2004.

But TiVo has struggled to find a business strategy that would increase its subscriber base and withstand withering competition from generic DVRs offered directly by big cable companies. In the quarter that ended Jan. 31, TiVo lost $33.7 million, wider than the $12.4 million loss in the same period a year earlier.

Deep-pocketed cable and satellite operators could afford to subsidize hardware costs and market DVRs to tens of millions of existing customers, and they began undercutting TiVo's prices and status. Comcast charges DVR subscribers only $9.95, $3 less than TiVo.

Meanwhile, TiVo recently lost its exclusive supplier stance with News Corp.'s DirecTV, whose satellite customers accounted for about two-thirds of TiVo's subscribers. That arrangement ends in 2007.