In an effort to stay alive, TiVo has announced a new offering for their subscribers - on demand advertisements. Initially the offering will be in an opt-in basis that lets TiVo subscribers control which type of advertisements they see. I fail to see where this is going for a couple of reasons:
1) The clear reason - most people buy a TiVo to record their shows and skip the commercials, they are paying a monthly fee after all for this product and there has to be a reason to choose TiVo over the others provided by Comcast, DISH, DirecTV etc, you get the picture. People do not want to see advertisements.
2) You should not be able to control content which is not yours, so why it TiVo trying to? I would not be surprised to see the big networks like NBC, CBS, ABC take a stance that is in line with Hollywood, and that is to protect their content. Why would an advertiser spend money on a network buy, cable company, and now TiVo? Is there a grove of money trees hidden somewhere on the moon that I am missing? This is borderline ridiculous. TiVo is not a content provider despite their best efforts to be. They need to understand the industry and how it works before they get sued and lose everything they have worked hard for. NBC is thinking about it already.
3) People will eventually get tired of paying for something that they can get for free. DirecTV is already making moves to drop TiVo, DISH has never used TiVo and Comcast is giving their customers an HDTV PVR.
TiVo is a sunken ship. They have created a commodity product and have done a very poor job of protecting their business. They are not a content provider, they will have trouble controlling content that is not theirs, and the TiVo is not a full-blown Media Center product. They have lost their identity.
Expect to see TiVo in college business courses in a few years as a case study of what not to do with your business.