TiVo Founders Reunite, Prep Qplay TV Adapter

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Shortly after TiVo co-founder Jim Barton resigned from the DVR maker in 2012, he reunited with his former DVR compatriot Michael Ramsay to found InVisioneer. While the Kleiner-backed company is somewhat shrouded in secrecy, descriptions from their recruitment efforts provide some insight (1, 2):

InVisioneer is building a product that sits at the nexus of exciting trends in video, mobile, and social.

We’re building a compelling new way to discover and play media that will become an integral part of people’s lives.

Scouring the web for clues has turned up a variety of intriguing LinkedIn profiles and other social mentions, including an early survey and what appears to be a test Twitter account… with one very familiar follower. Of course, given the headline and imagery above, you’ve already discerned that InVisioneer sent some hardware through the FCC in the form of a Qplay TV Adapter. The USB-powered set-top is the companion to an iPad app, which presumably encompasses the aforementioned mobile, social, video elements. And, given the Q (“queue”) branding, I’ll go ahead and assume this device is designed to play your tagged and shared YouTube, Vimeo, etc videos on the big screen. A little bit Chromecast/Airplay, a little bit (OG) Boxee? Adding fuel to the Qplay fire, qplay.co has been registered by another former TiVo employee, now working at InVisioneer.

Suppose we’ll find out more… in 2014?

10 thoughts on “TiVo Founders Reunite, Prep Qplay TV Adapter”

  5. Huh. Well, there’s already a host of laptop to bigscreen HDMI dongle solutions, like this one:

    http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/airtame-wireless-hdmi-for-everyone–2

    No idea if any of them are any good. All competing with Intel’s closed Wi-Di of course though there are also solutions that require a dongle on the laptop.

    Without the dongle I assume you could do projection from an app on your phone too, but of course Apple already owns that on iOS and won’t let you play except inside your own app. If you can get app support like Google/DIAL you have a shot, though I’d suggest just supporting DIAL…

    Not convinced there’s room for this, but hey, I’m wrong a lot…

  6. Yeah, there are a whole lot of players (and junk) in this space right now… will be interesting to see how it shakes out and who survives. Of course, until InVisioneer starts talking we can only speculate as to their plans or services. What they have going for them is a solid team and some cash. On the other hand, they’ve been cranking away on something(s) for over a year and have yet to release a single line of code.

  7. Wow. I don’t see anything here that isn’t already being done by someone else, and even those efforts seem to me to be a solution in search of a problem. I expected a lot more from the team that conceptualized Tivo. To me this has the look of an epic fail. I’m really at a loss to understand what they are thinking…

  9. So it’s out…

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/tivo-founders-try-to-reprogram-internet-video/2014/02/25/24c7173c-9e38-11e3-878c-65222df220eb_story.html

    http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2454018,00.asp

    I’m not sure why their hardware is necessary if one already has a Chromecast or TV or TiVo or other device that supports DIAL… I guess it depends on whether the hardware is simply an initial “enabler” target or if their goal is to sell tons of these “yet another thing that plugs into your TV” devices.

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