• by Emily Burg , March 16, 2007

In a deal with Verizon Wireless, TiVo will offer TV viewers the ability to program and control their digital video recorders remotely via their cell phones wihle on the go. Priced at just $1.99 per month, the new service is expected to appeal to the burgeoning mobile video marketplace and will allow TiVo to compete with personalized media control devices like SlingBox.

TiVo, which owns the product brand identity category for DVRs, has partnered with Verizon to create a system of mobile scheduling available exclusively through more than 12 Verizon Wireless Get It Now-enabled handsets.

TiVo TV listings are available right from a cell phone with TiVo Mobile, and customers don't even have to own a TiVo box to take advantage of TiVo Mobile scheduling. Compatible Verizon cell phones can view listings, air times, network coverage, cast and episode descriptions for viewers' local areas.

TiVo previously entered a partnership with Yahoo to allow subscribers to program their devices via the Internet.

The deal, formally announced yesterday, had been leaked a week prior to coincide with rival AT&T's announcement that subscribers to its Homezone video-on-demand service would be able to program their TVs via their cell phone service. The move is part of AT&T's three-screen integration strategy, by which it seeks to unify the primary sources of entertainment and communication it now owns thanks to its merger with BellSouth, and which it hopes to monetize via cross-platform advertising opportunities to marketers.

AT&T's service is free to cell phone users who subscribe to its Homezone service, which costs $9.99 a month along with a subscription to EchoStar's satellite TV service and AT&T's Yahoo High Speed broadband Internet service. Homezone currently is available in 13 markets, none of which are former SBC territories. Sprint is developing its version of a digital television service for launch later this year, via a partnership with cable providers Comcast and Time Warner Cable. The inclusion of mobile-phone command TV programming is more than likely.