TiVo’s fine iOS “companion” app sees a rather significant update today. And, while it doesn’t yet feature iPad “retina” graphics (coming soon), the oft forgotten TiVo HD and Series 3 owners should be quite pleased with their newfound ability to manage Season Passes. Speaking of Season Passes, we’re now free to continue using the app while reordering occurs. Some screencaps and additional details follow and the free app is available now via iTunes.
New features for iPad:
-Graphical full-screen Browse experience that makes it much faster and easier to find new shows and movies
-Collapsible folders
Other new features for both iPad and iPhone:
-Added “Keep Until I Delete” option for shows in My Shows
-Added recording options for shows set to record in the To Do List
-Create WishList for shows that aren’t airing right now
-Added My Shows, To Do List, Season Pass manager capability in Away mode for Series4 DVRs
-Added To Do List/Season Pass manager capability for Series3 DVRs
-Make Away mode more resilient to network drops
-Can use app while Season Pass recordings are reprioritizing
Multiple bug fixes including:
-Guide scrolling ahead by days
-Allow background music to continue playing while using the app
-Added new icons to My Shows
-Add live TV padding notification when recording a live event on TV
-Added Facebook single sign-on for easier Facebook login
Multiple performance enhancements and bug fixes
Unfortunately, it looks like the update still has occasional problems communicating with my Premiere… as I had to reboot it for the app to work. But it’s well done and in many ways beats using the standard 10′ UI and peanut remote.
I really like the away mode enhancements. I can not only manage my To Do list and Season Passes remotely just like on TiVo.com, but I can also see My Shows and even delete a recording if I so desire. All actions appear to occur in real time.
The Series 3 season pass manager is flakey though. The first time I tried it, it showed all “Unknown” entries. The next time I tried it, it appeared to work better as most of my season passes displayed (though there still a number of unknown entries), but Amazon, YouTube, Jaman, etc were also listed as season passes. So that part doesn’t appear to be ready for prime time. The To Do list worked fine on my S3 though.
I will have to try the away mode. I need to set it up so I can manage my mother’s season pass manager. She is really bad about prioritizing them and since TiVo doesn’t offer a real conflict manager I end up being the one who has to do it.
As a I tweeted TiVodesign, it would be nice if they would release the SDK to developers so this functionality could be added to KMTTG. I already find it the best way to manage season passes across the Premieres.
Ah, I glossed over the “away mode” – that’ll be handy.
Brennok, it sounds like some of these things may make their way into the new SDK/API program. If and when and WHO remains to be seen. Right now, it’s all invite only.
Are these improvements coming for the Android app anytime soon?
yep, Bryan asked my question – any word on update for Android app?
Per the TiVo Blog, “Android – We expect these features to be available on our Android Apps this summer. (For those of you anticipating the Android Tablet App, it is also expected this spring.)”
http://blog.tivo.com/2012/03/an-update-to-the-tivo-app-for-ipad-and-iphone-2/
I have a TiVo HD and the Season Pass Manager sounds nice. It’s just painful to do it on the TiVo.
Hopefully they fixed some of the connection bugs. Half the time, it can’t find my TiVo.
I checked in with TiVo and the current plan is for these features to hit Android this summer. Of course, dev schedules can slip and what not, but it’s on the roadmap and they clearly have a near term target.
Oops, I see Sam already covered this point and that TiVo blogged the release. Didn’t know they still updated the blog and I don’t check Google Reader much these days.
Season Pass Manager for S3 is buggy… I had to go in and out numerous times to resolve blank spots or “title not available” messaging…
I hope that it is better at “caching” todo list, etc. I constantly had the previous version refresh my todo list once I get about a week ahead – it makes it almost unusable for managing todo items.
Why the Android version isn’t released at the same time baffles me when so many other companies release their product on both simultaneously.
Thanks Sam and Dave.
ZeoTiVo–
Not trying to start a flame war here. Just theorizing.
I assume they have limited resources assigned to this and have prioritized iOS higher. Certainly for tablets that’s understandable given the iPad’s sales vs. Android tablets. Plus of course the many different resolutions an Android tablet version has to deal with, so it almost certainly takes longer to develop and test. That certainly seems to be the sense I get from reading any app developer blogs for people doing both.
For phones of course its less obvious. You’d think there would be more TiVo users using Android in the US than iPhone users. Well, except that iOS users include iPod Touch customers and that number could be close.
Also of course since I fill out TiVo surveys once a month like a lot of people and TiVo has data from the number of app downloads and how often they’re used and so forth there could simply be more iOS users than Android. Lots of people have theorized about the Android population, and how to make sense of the numbers. One theory, don’t know if its correct, is that a lot of the Android customers (speaking of non-techies here, which are the bulk of any market) are simply people who went to their phone carrier and got a phone. Android users for whatever reason seem to browse the web less, download fewer apps, and pay for many fewer apps. There could be a profile here that mans that fewer of them own TiVos, which at this point is a small self-selected set of unusual people probably, except maybe in the UK with the Virgin depoyment.
It is interesting and i will shear with my all friends. Great Job….