With on-demand HD content and various alternatives in the form of HD tuners and recording software to a TiVo, the company behind the infamous media box has been looking for ways to capture new customers. The steep price tag of a HD TiVo unit is definitely not helping them out, which retail going up to nearly $800 for one. The company is responding to peoples discontent with this, and will be looking to offer lower-priced units in the near future:
"We will be highly focused this year on moving forward with a lower-priced, mass appeal High-Def unit, which will allow us to much better participate in the HD television trend," said Rogers to analysts in a recent earnings report.
How much lower? They won't say, but given the quickly rising popularity of HD displays, both for TVs and computers, they have a lot to contend with. The company is outright admitting they aren't able to compete and have been losing sales, even when HD wasn't as popular. There are many caveats to capturing and storing HD content, especially in the realm of processing power to encode the content and storage space to keep it for later - even 30 minute TV episodes are massive when compared to standard def content.