The TiVo service is partially modeled after the Internet's always-available content and search and browse features, said Stacy Jolna, vice president of programming at TiVo. With 99 percent penetration of TVs in U.S. homes, he thinks letting users search television programming is a greater opportunity than TV-based Web browsing. Josh Bernoff, principal analyst for TV research at Forrester Research, said people will pay to have greater control over programming. TiVo is applying smart-agent technology used to track usage patterns on the Web. Jolna said the agent technology automatically matches a user's likes and dislikes against the available broadcast content to recommend programming.
Users can also search based on genre, or the name of an actor or a show.
Jolna said user-viewing data is kept private, as the information is stored locally and sent back to TiVo servers in aggregate. Users can opt to provide demographic information, which TiVo hopes will let it eventually replace standard advertising with ads targeted to a particular viewer.