[mythtv-users] re:MythTV production run

[Bill Chmura]

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Hi Mike,

On Tuesday 04 May 2004 05:45 pm, Mike Smith wrote:
> The DVR market is growing rapidly.   Guys here are talking about selling
> 1000 units, which is really a small number.   How does the future look like
> if a startup company could find big investment money, sell a product based
> on mythtv, design specialized hardware to reduce cost to around $200,
> provide reliable EPG data, 

So far it sounds like the Tivo story...

> just compete with Tivo?   I expect the number 
> of sold units would be tens of  thousands a year, maybe millions a few
> years later.  The company could live without charging monthly fee to get
> more customers by charging more for hardware instead.

I am not sure the average american dullard is going to see the benefit of 
paying more upfront without a monthly fee than less with a monthly fee after.

> The only difficulty seems to be writing drivers for specialized capture
> card/mpeg encoder/mpeg decoder, which should be done in about 1 man-year.
> For stability consideration, many  features could (should?) be removed from
> mythtv.  Even so, an overhaul on mythtv would take about 5 man-year or
> maybe less?  

5 years is crazy for this... the entertainment field is constantly changing.  
If you took mythtv and spent five years overhauling, you would be 5 years 
behind when you finished it.  Not to mention the technology changing.

> So the financial  requirement is not that high either.    

Are you still doing the above "design specialized hardware to reduce costs"?  
That would be a significant investment.  Then getting someone set up to 
produce and troubleshoot a few boards would be costly.  I've been on a few 
small design projects and the costs were significant even for seemingly 
trivial (board was a few cm long, 1/4 cm wide).  Unless you are going to be 
able to sell the aforementioned thousands, the payback would make it worth 
just using COTS parts.  Micro boards, etc...

> Ok,  
> Cable companies would not allow you to advertise mythtv, like what happened
> to Tivo, but there are many other ways to advertise like

Cable companies are starting to develop ways to compete with Tivo...  Pretty 
soon the Cable box will have a DVR built in for only a higher monthly fee.  
Everything I read says Tivo is going to be in trouble from all the 
competition coming along.

> newspapers/radio/mails/.... When the startup company is small, the big
> companies would not bother to sue you.

Either that or you never hear about the smaller companies getting sued or 
stamped out by lawyers.  I'm sure the Microsoft media lawyers would just 
drive by and slap you with a lawsuit just so they don't have to compete 
sometime down the line.

>   Any other major hurdles for a startup company?  Anyone interested in this
> topic?

The problem is that the market will soon be firmly established as the big 
firms (Pioneer, Panasonic, JVC, Microsoft) finish their offerings.  Tivo has 
a chance because they got backing and they were there first.   Myth is 
probably a superior product but would take such backing to make it the way 
your talking about.

This seemed decent about what else is going on in dvr land:
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/apr/04252004/business/160155.asp

The one thought that sounded good was building a real high end box...  If you 
did that, got some advertising in some of the audiophile magazines then maybe 
you could sell some high end system...  You know... DVR of the rich and 
famous...  

I'm interested from a thinking exercise point of view - not to actually 
implement something.

Later

>
>
> Thanks
>
> Mike
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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- -- 

Bill Chmura

w. http://www.fistfullofcode.com
w. http://www.explosivo.com

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