TiVo CEO Tom Rogers: Tech's Major Players Have Let TV Down

The current trend in television of brighter pictures hooked up to more devices is leading to "more chaos" for the consumer, TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said Tuesday at an investor conference where he also likened the state of the TV industry to the "fiscal cliff."

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Technology overload, commercial avoidance and other issues aren’t going away, he said at the Citi Global Internet, Media & Telecommunications Conference, the implication being, of course, that cable, satellite and the TV industry in general need a nimble and innovative company like TiVo to save the day.

TV, he said, has "nicely avoided the digital cliff… but at some point kicking the can won't work." Connecting more Internet devices to TV sets isn't hard, he said, but simplifying the consumer experience is, and that's what his company does best.

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The goal at TiVo is to give consumers access to everything without the consumer even knowing where it came from, and telling them what their friends and family are watching so that they don’t miss out on the latest viewing fads, he said.

"The major players kind of let the industry down," he said, calling out Cisco and Motorola, two companies TiVo has sued for patent infringement.

Rogers made his remarks just after TiVo, the company that pioneered the DVR and thus mainstreamed ad-skipping, released a report highlighting some of the top consumer-electronics brands whose TV commercials are skipped the least.

Among HD television sets, LG was tops with a fast-forward rate 20 percent lower than Samsung and 40 percent lower than Panasonic.

Among Tablets, NOOK was best and among game consoles, Xbox 360 was tops, while Kmart won a tight race among retail outlets.