TiVo Plans First Venture Overseas

The maker of TV set-top boxes allowing users to instantly record, pause and play back broadcast and cable programs plans to announce today a marketing partnership with BSkyB, the British satellite service partially owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The deal would be TiVo’s first outside the United States, where it has sold about 26,000 units since rolling out its service late last year. Under the arrangement BSkyB will handle all of TiVo’s customer service, billing and retail marketing in Britain, including that for customers who are not BSkyB subscribers. “TiVo for the first time is an international company,” said its chairman and chief executive, Michael Ramsay. He said the company hasn’t settled on pricing for its British boxes; in the U.S., the units start at $399 for 14 hours of recording capacity, plus a monthly service fee of about $10.