CNET sat down with TiVo VP Jim Denney for about 36 minutes of on-camera discussion. Over the years I’ve enjoyed my conversations with Jim, but there’s no way I’m sitting still long enough to take in the entire interview…. and will be outsourcing analysis to our readership. Did he say anything particularly revealing about TiVo’s roadmap?
Of course, the things I’m holding out for are a revamped multi-room viewing experience, based on streaming technologies versus file copy, and a modernized app platform with more partners. Not to mention, it’d be nice if TiVo got around to completing the HDUI and generally sped the Premiere up.
Sigh. @25:00 – Discuss the idea of second-screen, and TiVo has no information or product ideas to share.
@30:00 – “There’s a lot of work to be done” on the Premiere. No information on whether they are planning on 100% conversion of the menus.
@31:30 – “Our goal is to make it more open for developers” in reference to apps.
The only (barely) notable bullet point was that, while they weren’t announcing anything, they see TV integrating with mobile/tablet devices more.
Apps were brought up and the Premiere’s use of Flash enables a “more open” platform, but nothing specific.
There wasn’t really much new being covered. Rafe asked some good questions about Tivo’s subscriber numbers, cablecard nightmares, but the answers were sort of sterile and uninformative.
With all due respect I’m sure Jim is a good guy but where’s the passion? Good lord. Didn’t feel like there was much strategizin’ going on from the VP of product strategy.
It was disappointing like all TiVo interviews.
It felt more like a promotional piece/infomercial rather than an interview.
You’re not the only one… saw this Tweet over the weekend:
Was listening to a TiVo infomercial/podcast disguised as a CNET podcast…What is going on at cnet??
I knew as soon as Rafe said he used the TiVo HD and I believe said he had yet to use a Premiere there wasn’t going to be much said in the fluff piece.
On Sunday, I finally got around setting up my new Premiere XL that I got during one of those huge discounts at Electronics Expo. I’m using it to record HD OTA while leaving my U-Verse record HD cable (limited to 1 HD / 3 SD in my house).
I actually don’t find HD interface that slow. It’s pretty much on par with, if not quicker than, U-Verse DVR and seems a little bit quicker than my Series 2 DT unit (well, except Season Pass stuff — that is still bafflingly slow).
Now, I haven’t tried to use Amazon, Netflix, or YouTube, and those might be slower (at least, on S2 units, non-TiVo stuff was slow as heck).
Having said that, I’m absolutely puzzled by the fact that HD UI isn’t done yet. Look, no one is asking for those fancy graphics up top or what not — just render existing screens in HD and apply the new color theme!
TiVo, I love you and all, but every time I go from HD UI to upscaled blurry SD UI, I’m questioning what your engineers do with their time :(
Rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. I’m just not seeing much innovation (or even follow-through) from TiVo these days. I’d guess all the excitement left for Hulu or Roku or Google TV or Apple TV. TiVo used to be the only ones who “got it.” Now I’m afraid they are stumbling around as if looking for their dropped contact lens in the carpet.
Tivo has a very long list of good upgrade requests from users… If they poot 2 programers on each of the top 10 requests we would be seeing a lot better tivo every few months.
Being able to manage Tivo from your computer rather from the remote control should not be that hard.
Adding a web server to the uint should take less than a month to intagrate. Even if they expanded Tvio Desktop to do the management rather than adding a webserver they could be a lot better.
Adding full wish list suport to the on line management should not take long.
If Tivo really opened up their system to casual developers so I could add my own code to do the things I want to do the list of items would be done in a few months.