Australian TiVo -- now with less

If you're a Australian fan of TiVo, arguably the world's most popular PVR solution, you've been waiting a long, long while for an official Australian TiVo. Well, actually, you're probably part of the thriving Australian hacked TiVo community, but that's just splitting hairs.

As of July 29th, you'll be able to pop down to your local Harvey Norman or Domayne store and plop down $699 for an official model. Seven yesterday even confirmed that the $699 down payment might be all you ever need to pay, as it's scrapped the subscription model that defines TiVo in every other marketplace.

Well, sort of.

There's always a catch, isn't there? In the case of TiVo, it'll be that the model sold to Australian audiences will have some significant omissions to the feature set, some of which will be available at a later date for an additional fee. While the PVR basics will ship with the July model -- twin HD tuners, "season pass" for recording an entire series with a simple button press -- more complex features, such as an Internet store, and the ability to stream media from your home network -- will be absent, to be offered as premium software upgrades at a later date. Reports in the Sydney Morning Herald suggest that the features -- which may also include iPod compatibility -- won't be available until early next year for a fee "in the tens of dollars", according to Seven's TiVo general manager Mark Hughes. You'll also need a broadband connection to utilise TiVo's existing features, adding to the overall package cost.

Ad-skipping has long been a beloved feature of TiVo owners, but Australians shouldn't get too excited about that, either, as the best you'll get from an Aussie unit is the ability to fast forward through ads (we suppose it was overly optimistic to hope that a commercial TV network would bring the Tivo to Australia with ad-skipping intact). To add insult to injury, according to reports in The Australian, Channel Seven has future plans to add slow banner-style ads over its ad breaks, so you'll still have your eyeballs bombarded even when fast forwarding.

Suddenly, the $699 price point doesn't look so compelling -- not only does TiVo have to compete with Foxtel's iQ2 HD box -- which already has a significant market share and, probably more importantly, significant audience mindshare -- but also other PVR solutions such as the Beyonwiz DP-P1, which offers the majority of the features of the TiVo with no content restrictions at all, albeit at a higher initial asking price.

Astonishingly, given the very small timeframe that TiVo has to gain public acceptance, the local TiVo web site, www.mytivo.com.au, has not been updated, and still only offers a pre-registration facility, along with links to 2007-era media articles -- or, in other words, the last time that anyone at Seven was actively talking TiVo.