Incomplete Gamer

The Australian TiVo website is up and running and in less than two days TiVo makes an in-store appearance at your friendly neighbourhood Harvey Norman. The Incomplete Gamer hopes they’ve built a golden shrine to TiVo in each and every store: a raised rotating dais, complete with sexy smiling Sale of the Century models, gifting plush TiVo dolls, TiVo Beach towels and TiVo Slippers to everyone who passes; all the while extolling the virtues of TiVo – the god of Digital Video Recording.

The reality we fear, will be something far less compelling. The way we see it, TiVo in-store demonstrations just don’t work.

There are three basic problems here.

First up; have you been inside a Harvey Norman store lately? Harvey Norman might well be ‘Your Technology Destination’, but HN is also your one-stop electrical shop. Everything from your Tefal Breadmaker to your Vidal Sassoon Hair Straightener. All fine products, to be fair, but there’s something a little disconcerting about that Sunbeam Classic Banquet Frypan hovering so close to the high-end AV gear.

Now your own personal Harvey Norman shopping experience may differ from The Incomplete Gamer’s. We gave up on our dreams of visiting all 160+ Harvey Norman stores last year, when Penguin turned down our Harvey Norman coffee table photo book. Having never seen the inside of the Indooroopilly HN store, it may well be that the toasters and the televisions are keeping well away from each other, but that’s not been our experience.

The problem boils down to the way Harvey Norman have classified and franchised sections of the store. You’ve got your aforementioned electrical and small appliances corralled over there and your computers over here. While that demarcation at least ensures the waffle makers will never get too cosy with the wireless routers, it’s still doesn’t seem the most logical way to sort the stock.

Then we have the sales staff. Now to be fair, it can’t always be easy selling in today’s internet age. We live in a time when we, the consumer, can arm ourselves with the specs, the reviews, the head to head comparisons and the prices from around the country before we’ve even left home. The upside of course, is that you could, if your were so inclined, be the best informed salesman on the floor. There is nothing you couldn’t learn about the products you sell, and nothing you wouldn’t know that you couldn’t find within seconds of checking online. Which makes it all the more disheartening to overhear a salesman yesterday telling a customer that he just doesn’t know if the router is compatible and suggesting the customer will need to contact the manufacturer directly himself.

But the biggest problem of all; far worse than cluttered floor space and ill-informed salesmen, is the fact that a demonstration of a TiVo is just plain dull. Frankly, we’d rather watch the Sunbeam Pie Magic being put through its paces. At least then there’s the possible pay-out of a freshly baked pie. It’s not that we’re immune to the charms of TiVo. We’re clearly not, but we think it’s going to take more than an in-store demonstration to charm the average pvr shopper.

In the US, TiVo are so sure you’ll love their DVR that they offer a ‘no questions asked’ 30-day money-back guarantee. It’s an indication of the faith the company has in TiVo, but perhaps also a tacit admission that the only way to truly appreciate TiVo is to take it home, plug it in and live with it for a month.