With TiVo’s minor spring update behind us, the company has turned its attention to perhaps the most dramatic interface update since the launch of their original HDUI in 2010. It appears the primary objectives are improved UI consistency and completeness, along with additional discovery and organizational options. As RCN’s Jason Nealis alluded to just a few days ago, TiVo “plans to have the UI better present content from across these different sources in much more of a one stop shop” and a bit earlier had mentioned “some very cool enhancements coming down the pipe.”
Indeed, TiVo’s summer update is slated to bring the sharper Roamio interface to Premiere and Mini hardware, as TiVo VP Margret Schmidt had suggested several months back. Further, we see minor UI tweaks throughout. Yet, there remains work to be done as the Discovery Bar and optional Picture In Guide periodically vanish when flipping through screens.
The most dramatic addition to the refreshed UI is a third column… that makes its initial appearance in My Shows, along with a bevy of customizations (shown above) to sort our recordings (and more) beyond the “All” headliner. For me, at launch, I imagine the most effective use of this newfound capability would be to call out Movies (given my free HBO subscription). I still question TiVo’s approach of sticking video app shortcuts into My Shows, however if the Video Providers category evolved into a provider-agnostic repository of OTT video bookmarks it’d become something far more useful (and unique).
Related, “recording” options in the Guide will cover more than linear television for those with OTT sources and the need for instant gratification (above, right) – once again attempting to further blur the lines between cable and Internet content. Indeed, given intel from a reliable source back in January combined with recent outreach to Premiere owners running the standard definition interface, we expect an updated Amazon Instant will also make an appearance in the next few months. Combine that with Season Passes that bookmark and folderize On Demand content that you may have missed, TiVo’s vision becomes quite clear … and perhaps we’ll be that much closer to the “One Box” they once advertised themselves as.
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For whatever it's worth, in reviewing my TiVo dossier, it looks like I first heard of the current 3-column presentation back in mid-late 2013 and my Amazon Instant source spoke up in December. Maybe gives us a sense of how long a TiVo idea takes to turn into a shipped feature. Related, haven't heard anything on Android streaming recently - the last bit of intel suggested a late June launch.
I'm still hopeful we will one day see profiles. More sorting options will be welcome. Suggestions have become useless on my Roamio Pro - there's over 1k shows in there now, and it's practically impossible to find anything.
TiVo is certainly behind when it comes to user profiles. I seem to recall some discussion of trying to automatically determine who is watching TiVo and adjusting the suggestions automatically based on the viewer. They were suggesting that they could determine who was watching via a 2nd screen device like an iPhone. I think the simplicity of the Netflix approach works well and TiVo should implement something similar.
I also noticed from some of the videos from the NCTA Cable Show that a number of TiVo's vendors, Cisco in particular, already have user profiles implemented for their Snowflake UI which forms the basis for Cox's Contour and Liberty's Horizon systems.