TiVo Reports Q2 Profit, Downplays Networked DVR

TiVo posted quarterly profits for just the third time in its 11-year history, Yahoo is reporting.

The DVR pioneer posted $2.9 million (three cents per share) in net income in its fiscal second quarter that ended July 31.

This marks the first time TiVo has ever posted back-to-back quarters of profit. The company posted a loss of $17.7 million in the same quarter last year.

Chief executive Tom Rogers attributes the increase to "heavier marketing for Mother's Day, Father's Day and graduation."

"We've had a real focus on trying to drive our subscriber acquisition cost numbers down," Rogers says.

"A lot of that is being able to develop better opportunities for third parties to market us."

The company says Comcast, its distribution partner, has expanded a TiVo package in Connecticut. Cox Communications should also begin deploying TiVo by the end of 2008, while Seven Media introduced TiVo in Australia.

TiVo Says Networked DVR Poses No Threat

TiVo, despite the quarter-to-quarter increase, has been losing subscribers due to increased competition. One of those competitors is Cablevision's Remote Storage DVR (RS-DVR), which the U.S. District Court of Appeals recently ruled doesn't infringe upon copyright laws.

Rogers, according to Cable Digital News, is shrugging off the potential threat.

"I think probably the more significant issue, from a TiVo point of view, is that we don't see this ruling having anything to do with our business relationship with the cable world," he says.

Rogers says the cable network has "total inadequate capacity at this point for broad scale deployment of a network DVR solution."

Rogers also says recording and storing HD content during prime time "is beyond the realm of most cable operators' capacity."

Do networked DVR solutions pose a threat to TiVo? Let us know.