Voice control is all the rage these days… and TiVo is working on, not one, but two solutions. Beyond this exclusive pic of TiVo’s upcoming voice remote and native natural language processing capabilities, sources also indicate TiVo is dabbling in Alexa. Integration is not “terribly hard to do” given Amazon’s Alexa Skills api and TiVo’s already exposed network remote control and I’m guessing we might see the fruits of their labor this fall. Equally intriguing is a tip indicating TiVo will be bringing an IFTTT app to to the platform. How and where the automation framework links up remains a mystery, but there are certainly some interesting possibilities.
IFTTT as an “app” is interesting phraseology as a visual interface isn’t actually required … hoping to gather more details on implementation. For the uninitiated, IFTTT links up all sorts of services and products. So when my Arlo detects motion my deck, the Wemo deck light at that location goes on.
Hooking up to Amazon echo sounds amazing, and pretty straightforward! Voice on the TiVo, meh. I have it on my Nvidia Shield, and I’m never that impressed. Add a headphone jack to that remote and I finally won’t need to use other boxes!
These are only interesting if Tivo can deliver. Look at there 2 way IP control they announced 2 years ago with Control4 and hydra. Can Tivo actually deliver?
I wonder what way a TiVo would implement an IFTTT type command? Scheduling, perhaps?
@JP
Would be cool if you could get an email when a new show records… or maybe when a season starts back up.
Or when I pause video playback, Hue lighting goes to 100%? When I thumbs up a show, it gets added to an online list? Lots of possibilities, but not sure what they’re doing here and if there is really will be an app GUI. As with most TiVo pre-release chatter, Mitchell is right (as evidenced by Bolt Aereo Edition and Mavrik plus countless other delays and redirection), it doesn’t exist until it does.
@Dan S
Yes, that would be cool, especially on Wishlist recordings that are infrequent,
Odessa?
I had tried IFTTT when I had my first Smart hub. Not sure of the brand but I remember a big delay of a a couple of seconds when using it. So I returned it for the Samsung Smartthings hub which reacts almost instantly in my setup.
“As with most TiVo pre-release chatter, Mitchell is right (as evidenced by Bolt Aereo Edition and Mavrik plus countless other delays and redirection), it doesn’t exist until it does.”
While this is obviously true, seems worth noting that TiVo has a much better record in pre-release chatter at delivering on software than hardware.
Software generally actually shows up, even if often late. Hardware, on the other hand, is sometimes vaporware….
I have been playing around with the network remote control stuff for my TiVo and my Echo, and got something working with a HUE emulator… It took about 3 hours, but i was able to issue commands via my Echo. I hope this gets baked right into the platform.
Off-topic, but TiVo is selling refurbished Minis for $100, or those interested.