TiVo talk from Virgin Media's CEO; iPad app is coming; No fear towards potential Blockbuster-Lovefilm apps

In the afterglow of Virgin's impressive 4th Quarter results for 2010, CEO Neil Berkett spoke to PaidContent:UK about the potential impact which TiVo will have on the company and its customers:

In the second half of the year, we’ll start running TiVo applications on remote device. There is a (TiVo) iPad app available today which we will launch in the second half of the year.

[TiVo] will be our middleware in a few years time, It will be the glue that brings the PC, TV and mobile screen all together.

We have no fears about bringing a Blockbuster or a Lovefilm [TiVo app] in to Virgin.

Coming soon to a TiVo near you?

The application and content is the key to the wallet but, in our case, it is not the wallet. It allows us to be completely open versus our competitors, who need to be closed.

By competitors, Berkett means BT and mainly, Sky, who have to push VOD content via copper-line phone wires. No such worries for Virgin who provide a 10mb (well, at least 10mb and maybe 20mb) fibre optic broadband connection for every TiVo box and who these days focus on providing content via their network instead of owning and providing content.