Best Buy and TiVo partner to invade more living rooms with advertising

Best Buy better remain cautious here: if it starts selling TiVo boxes and pushing out a bunch of Best Buy advertising to its new customers, there could be a large backlash. One of the delicate issues TiVo has considered recently is how to uniquely push advertising to its paying customers (who pay $13 a month or more just to record television) without being obtrusive. It's kind of the new thing: even though customers pay for your service, you still send them advertising. The point is to stop before you make the majority of your customers mad.

The two companies, however, claim the collaboration will produce much more palatable, yet open-ended, features, like this: "TiVo intends to work with Best Buy's Exclusive Brands group (e.g., Insignia, Dynex, etc.) to explore integration of its user interface, search, and other TiVo benefits to help further grow that consumer electronics line." That is, by design, very vague and could lead to several integrations of TiVo functionality across Best Buy's store-brand television lines.

Adding high-speed internet connectivity and TiVo functionality into newer television sets could cause a windfall for the retailer, as there has been little finished product success integrating all of these components into a single unit. Sure -- TiVo signed this deal to grasp more consumers to its services (which it desperately needs), but let's hope the end result of this collaboration is something really unique. It could be very beneficial for Best Buy, but TiVo desperately needs it to, too.