From CES, The Digital Media Zone got their hands on some very interesting screengrabs… showing what looks to be a TiVo app running on Roku. No, not the full-fledged, cloud-based TiVo UI ported by ActiveVideo that we filmed at the Cable Show. Rather, this sports a more traditional Roku interface that appears to replicate TiVo Mini functionality in piping both live and recorded content to another television. However, given what I know of Roku’s platform, I’d imagine the technology at play is more akin to TiVo’s iOS apps in requiring a TiVo Roamio or Stream to transcode the content into something a bit more efficient than the raw MPEG2 that TiVo DVRs record. This would be a huge win for customers, such as myself, even though a service fee isn’t out of the question for the virtual client, as seen with DirecTV and DISH. Stay tuned?
Update: As Takeagabu points out in the comments, the Roku channel may just be an endpoint for TiVo’s network DVR to be offered by cable companies and not necessarily an option made available to retail customers. I know I’d pay for it…
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We're an urban single-teevee household, but if we had multiple teevees, I'd go with a Mini over this scheme. PQ matters a lot to me in the lean-back, even if it doesn't matter to everyone. I'm more than willing to pay more for good PQ. Same reason I use a Mac Mini to be my Plex client rather than transcoding to the Roku Plex client. Transcoding really sucks for the lean-back user. And if you think you're wisely pinching pennies with this scheme, consider how much you're paying monthly for that cable sub...
(Of course, if you have a genuinely tiny teevee in your kitchen, the equation could be different. But even when you start getting up to and above reasonably small 32" teevees, I'd still rather pay for the Mini. The PQ difference will be quite noticeable. The only real use-case scenario that makes sense to me is if you have a vacation home or travel a lot, and if this scheme works outside the LAN, then it could be sensible.)
/subscribed/
Could this be the end of the Mini, or will the Roku Channel be of lesser functionality? I hope the former.
Being dependent upon the Stream or Roamio Pro/Plus is not a negative IMO, but a monthly cost for the Channel would, let me buy it for a once off $50 fee (though this is Tivo, so $99 is probably more realistic) for all the Rokus on my account.
With that said, Tivo is becoming less relevant in our house. We dropped cable a long time ago, and have been OTA with a Premiere for a while, but the vast majority of TV viewing is via Netflix or Amazon Prime through a Roku.
"We dropped cable a long time ago, and have been OTA with a Premiere for a while, but the vast majority of TV viewing is via Netflix or Amazon Prime"
IMHO, that's another sensible use-case scenario for this scheme. If you're not watching much off your TiVo, being a cheapie here starts to make sense.