17 thoughts on “TiVo enables AirPlay for in-home streaming to Apple TV via iOS devices”
A nice-to-have, but what I really need is a dedicated Roku or Fire TV app…
Yep, definitely a nice-to-have. For me a dedicated Xbox One app would be nice, although if they’ve got AirPlay working, maybe they could get a standard like DLNA working too.
App isn’t live yet. But based on what I’ve read, they didn’t actually get anything working… they just stopped blocking Apple’s built-in screen mirroring when on the home WiFi. TiVo did promise some “late July” Aereo news. Perhaps this is just one small piece of a broader 3rd party box story. Here’s to hoping!
If they came out with an app that let you use a third party media streamer as an extender (like the Nexus Player does with the HD Homerun), that would be awesome!
From the article, it’s just mirroring– so they didn’t have to do anything to allow it so much as stop _blocking_ it.
Anyway, this creates a scenario where you’re re-compressing video at the TiVo, streaming it to your iDevice over Wifi, then re-re-compressing the video and streaming it again via Wifi to an AppleTV. This will probably work, but isn’t the most elegant solution in the world. What people really want are TiVo _apps_ for the AppleTV, Roku, FireTV, and AndroidTV.
Good news and bad news:
Good: This isn’t just Mirroring. You don’t need to turn Mirroring on. You can set send it via AirPlay and the video will play via your Apple TV while the iPhone (or whatever) can continue to display the FF, Play/Pause, etc. buttons.
Bad: The PQ on the iPhone app is poor (not HD) and this is no better. And blowing it up to a bigger screen makes it look even worse.
FWIW, I’ve recently been experimenting with an Android phone (Nexus 5) and the TiVo app for Android has PQ of a much higher quality (I’m guessing full HD resolution, but not sure). The video isn’t perfectly smooth, but it’s “good enough.” Of course, with the Android app, you can’t stream to the Apple TV (unless there’s a 3rd party app to allow that sort of thing).
Ah, more-than-mirroring is certainly better… but not super surprised on pq. I think this is good in a pinch or infrequently, but can’t replace Mini for the vast majority of us. Whereas a full fledged native box app on whichever platform might be a different story (even with the transcode).
Another option is to use Plex:
There’s a Plex channel that allows you to copy individual TiVo recordings over to your Plex server on-demand (just takes 5 minutes or so if the Plex server and TiVo Roamio are both on ethernet). Then use the Plex app on the iPhone to watch your show and AirPlay it over to an Apple TV. Two benefits to this approach: You’ll get HD quality, and you can do this when traveling. The only downside compared to the native TiVo iOS app is that you can’t watch Live TV or a show where the recording is still in-progress.
I would say the biggest downside to the Plex solution is the fact that most Cablecos set the copy once flag on all channels except local. Plex is worthless if the copy flag was set.
Wes, right. I forgot about that because I’m fortunate in that my cableco (Comcast) doesn’t mark any of my channels that way.
Wes, it’s not “most” – TWC is the biggest offender. Comcast (THE largest cableco) and Verizon on my block are mostly open, other than some premium movie channels. So I’d say the biggest Plex limitation is no live TV. Still counting on some native box apps…
I’m urban-living single-room teevee, so what do I know? But it seems to me, that if you’re already hooked into the cable-sub environment, as I happily am, that the TiVo Mini is actually kinda a bargain and cool for MRV…
(Yeah, fine. I know all you folks don’t care about the PQ transcoding with Roku-esque clients, not to mention the UX. It’s ‘good enough’ for you folks. And for teevees in the kitchen, I’m actually with you in solidarity. But for a second real lean-back environment, if it were me, I’d want the PQ and UX of the Mini.)
“For my money, I’d want a “more TV” experience in terms of access and nav with the better quality audio/video TiVo->Mini.”
But Roku, Fire TV, etc apps would open their market to folks with different motivations and/or willing to make more compromises. Certainly, a Roku TV in the kitchen or deck would work for me as a tertiary viewing location…
Woah! I’m really loving the template/theme of this site.
It’s simple, yet effective. A lot of times it’s hard to get that “perfect balance” between usability and visual appearance.
I must say you have done a amazing job with this. Also, the blog loads very
fast for me on Opera. Superb Blog!
Incorpora un raÃl guÃa para sujetar el alimento que
quiere recortar y le da seguridad.
I’m really impressed together with your writing abilities and also with the format for your weblog. Is that this a paid theme or did you customize it yourself? Anyway keep up the nice high quality writing, it is rare to see a great weblog like this one nowadays..
A nice-to-have, but what I really need is a dedicated Roku or Fire TV app…
Yep, definitely a nice-to-have. For me a dedicated Xbox One app would be nice, although if they’ve got AirPlay working, maybe they could get a standard like DLNA working too.
App isn’t live yet. But based on what I’ve read, they didn’t actually get anything working… they just stopped blocking Apple’s built-in screen mirroring when on the home WiFi. TiVo did promise some “late July” Aereo news. Perhaps this is just one small piece of a broader 3rd party box story. Here’s to hoping!
If they came out with an app that let you use a third party media streamer as an extender (like the Nexus Player does with the HD Homerun), that would be awesome!
Doesn’t work on iOS 9…?
https://twitter.com/bsteinbach/status/621022956404232192
From the article, it’s just mirroring– so they didn’t have to do anything to allow it so much as stop _blocking_ it.
Anyway, this creates a scenario where you’re re-compressing video at the TiVo, streaming it to your iDevice over Wifi, then re-re-compressing the video and streaming it again via Wifi to an AppleTV. This will probably work, but isn’t the most elegant solution in the world. What people really want are TiVo _apps_ for the AppleTV, Roku, FireTV, and AndroidTV.
Good news and bad news:
Good: This isn’t just Mirroring. You don’t need to turn Mirroring on. You can set send it via AirPlay and the video will play via your Apple TV while the iPhone (or whatever) can continue to display the FF, Play/Pause, etc. buttons.
Bad: The PQ on the iPhone app is poor (not HD) and this is no better. And blowing it up to a bigger screen makes it look even worse.
FWIW, I’ve recently been experimenting with an Android phone (Nexus 5) and the TiVo app for Android has PQ of a much higher quality (I’m guessing full HD resolution, but not sure). The video isn’t perfectly smooth, but it’s “good enough.” Of course, with the Android app, you can’t stream to the Apple TV (unless there’s a 3rd party app to allow that sort of thing).
Ah, more-than-mirroring is certainly better… but not super surprised on pq. I think this is good in a pinch or infrequently, but can’t replace Mini for the vast majority of us. Whereas a full fledged native box app on whichever platform might be a different story (even with the transcode).
Another option is to use Plex:
There’s a Plex channel that allows you to copy individual TiVo recordings over to your Plex server on-demand (just takes 5 minutes or so if the Plex server and TiVo Roamio are both on ethernet). Then use the Plex app on the iPhone to watch your show and AirPlay it over to an Apple TV. Two benefits to this approach: You’ll get HD quality, and you can do this when traveling. The only downside compared to the native TiVo iOS app is that you can’t watch Live TV or a show where the recording is still in-progress.
I would say the biggest downside to the Plex solution is the fact that most Cablecos set the copy once flag on all channels except local. Plex is worthless if the copy flag was set.
Wes, right. I forgot about that because I’m fortunate in that my cableco (Comcast) doesn’t mark any of my channels that way.
Wes, it’s not “most” – TWC is the biggest offender. Comcast (THE largest cableco) and Verizon on my block are mostly open, other than some premium movie channels. So I’d say the biggest Plex limitation is no live TV. Still counting on some native box apps…
I’m urban-living single-room teevee, so what do I know? But it seems to me, that if you’re already hooked into the cable-sub environment, as I happily am, that the TiVo Mini is actually kinda a bargain and cool for MRV…
(Yeah, fine. I know all you folks don’t care about the PQ transcoding with Roku-esque clients, not to mention the UX. It’s ‘good enough’ for you folks. And for teevees in the kitchen, I’m actually with you in solidarity. But for a second real lean-back environment, if it were me, I’d want the PQ and UX of the Mini.)
Yeah, that’s what I concluded earlier on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/davezatz/status/621029427242246144
“For my money, I’d want a “more TV” experience in terms of access and nav with the better quality audio/video TiVo->Mini.”
But Roku, Fire TV, etc apps would open their market to folks with different motivations and/or willing to make more compromises. Certainly, a Roku TV in the kitchen or deck would work for me as a tertiary viewing location…
Woah! I’m really loving the template/theme of this site.
It’s simple, yet effective. A lot of times it’s hard to get that “perfect balance” between usability and visual appearance.
I must say you have done a amazing job with this. Also, the blog loads very
fast for me on Opera. Superb Blog!
My blog post checks unlimited coupon
Incorpora un raÃl guÃa para sujetar el alimento que
quiere recortar y le da seguridad.
I’m really impressed together with your writing abilities and also with the format for your weblog. Is that this a paid theme or did you customize it yourself? Anyway keep up the nice high quality writing, it is rare to see a great weblog like this one nowadays..