TWICE magazine today ran an article based on their discussions with Digeo at the recent CEDIA show. Digeo is apparently still planning to launch their new Moxi DMRs before the holidays this year, despite the dearth of solid information on the products.
Digeo is readying the launch of its Moxi digital media receivers (DMR) for what is expected to be a pre-holiday launch through select retailers across the country.
Really, nothing substantial has been revealed since the products were shown at CES back in January. If anything, the TWICE article makes it sound like Digeo has scaled back their launch plans:
Digeo will be looking to partner with A/V retailers that offer “an assisted selling environment in order to communicate all of the capabilities the product delivers,” [Michael Fidler, Digeo CEO] said.
“We have very modest goals for the product,” said Fidler. “We think it is establishing a new category. We know that TiVo has been out there with their product starting that, and this is a great new opportunity for retailers, who really haven’t participated in the cable industry at all, until the availability of a national umbrella [CableCARD] that allows this product to be sold in any retailer in the country [or] to any operator in the country.”
Digeo will look to build the Moxi brand mostly through online vehicles, Fidler said, although details of the launch campaign will be disclosed later.
Digeo will also supply a more basic box to be sold through retailers, Fidler said.
That sounds a lot more low-key than when I talked to them at CES. “Select retailers” and “mostly through online vehicles” – that doesn’t sound like they’re going to be widely available. The bit about partnering with retailers who do ‘assisted selling’ makes it sound like they’re going to be positioning this as more of a high-end boutique solution than something you’d see in the shelf in Best Buy. And while they’re happy to announce home control integration from 4HomeMedia they’re still not talking about basic features such as hard drive size or pricing. A year ago when the product was announced the price was set at “around $1000″ shipping in “fall 2007″ – they’ll certainly have to come in substantially below that to have decent sales in today’s market with the sub-$300 TiVo HD, or it really will be a small volume boutique item.
This bit makes me wonder:
All of Moxi’s retail-focused boxes will include a CableCARD slot that will accept multi-stream CableCARDs supplied by local operators.
Does that mean that the units will only have a single M-Card slot and will not be able to utilize two S-Cards, as the TiVo HD and Series3 can? Currently M-Card availability is still very spotty – my local Charter Digital outlet reports that they don’t have them at all yet, for example. Digeo could run into issues with M-Card availability in the near term if this is the case. Though, in the longer term, not having the second slot would decrease the component costs slightly.
I still think that, of all the vendors, Digeo has the best chance of competing with TiVo at retail based on their interface design and feature set. But they need to get a product on the market, at a competitive price, or it is all moot. I’d be happy to run a Moxi unit side-by-side with my Series3 to see how they compare.
