[mythtv-users] re:MythTV production run

[James L. Paul]

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On Tuesday 04 May 2004 11:45, 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,  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.

Your numbers seem reasonable, if you put as much effort in as Tivo did. Tivo 
is the market leader, and they spent about 5 years to get to their first 
profitable quarter (2004 Q4). Sony has sold about twice as many copies of 
Everquest as Tivo has sold subscriptions in the same first 5 years. And Tivo 
doesn't even make the hardware. More people play online games with their PS2 
than own a Tivo unit. I sure hope the DVR market starts to grow rapidly, it's 
been dismally slow so far. ;)

Sources:
http://www.tivo.com/pdfs/reports/Q4_FY04_release.pdf
http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=2038&page=1
http://mag.awn.com/index.php?article_no=2038&page=3

> 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?   So the financial  requirement is not that high either.    Ok,
> Cable companies would not allow you to advertise mythtv, like what happened
> to Tivo, but there are many other ways to advertise like
> newspapers/radio/mails/.... When the startup company is small, the big
> companies would not bother to sue you.

I'm not sure I would count on that. Big companies often sue small companies 
simply to give a competitor the burden of defense costs. 

I assume the man-year numbers are grabbed from thin air. Also, don't forget 
the hardware costs of creating that specialized capture hardware.

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

I think the showstopper (pun intended :) is the hardware cost. Selling a 
MythTV-based DVR product based on general purpose PC hardware is just not 
going to compete cost-effectively with the growing options from cable and 
satellite service providers and other DVR competition.

If you have the resources to have a custom single-board platform designed and 
manufactured in quantity to be the heart of a MythTV box for a cost well 
under $100 per unit then after the manhours, production, packaging, marketing 
and distribution you just might profit a few dollar on each unit at some 
pricepoint that will encourage success.

I won't be investing, but I'll certainly be watching any of you who do! :)

>
> Thanks
>
> Mike
>
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