City analysts quiz Virgin Media over lack of apps and iPad app for TiVo

Where is it then?!?!

Regular readers of this blog will know I've been disappointed with the glacier-paced rollout of decent apps for TiVo, which is looking increasing weak in this area compared to other home entertainment devices like Game Consoles, Smart TVs and Media Players - a point raised by City analysts during a meeting with Virgin following the release of the Q4 2011 results. Broadband TV News & PaidContent:UK reports that Virgin's COO, Andrew Barron, said that:

It’s the easiest thing in the world, because it runs in Flash to publish all sorts of stuff to it, but that’s not consistent with the TiVo environment, we want the Twitters and the Facebooks and the iPlayers

Okkkayyyy, I hate to nitpick, but a Facebook app was described as 'Coming Soon' within Virgin's own YouTube video (uploaded in June last year) to promote forthcoming TiVo apps:

But what about the delays for the iPad app? The one which was part of the reported features of the 15.2 software update? The one which some cunning customers have had kinda working now for quite a while?

We’ve got it, it works. Ninety-nine percent of companies would have rolled it by now - it’s stable, impressive - but we haven’t…We wanted to make sure early adopter enthusiasts will love it - but that, when it hits, it goes. mass-market quite quickly and is not viewed as some flaky application for enthusiasts but is polished and doesn’t generate calls to support. It shows you our philosophy - we’re a mass-market company.

There is a fundamental difference between what we’re trying to do with TiVo and what a lot of other people around the industry are doing. We are an open platform, we carry Spotify, we were iPlayer’s founder and largest distributor, we’re Sky’s largest distributor for premium content

Looking ahead, CEO Neil Berkett aims to have Virgin's entire TV Customer base (currently 3.8 million) on TiVo, "In five years time we’ll retire Liberate, in five years time our customers will be exclusively on TiVo, and I’m sure we’ll then be considering the son of TiVo”.