After a mere two years, the TiVo Slide QWERTY remote is on the way out. I’ve been quite fond of this stubby little fellow, despite its high price ($90) at launch, and it’s arguably TiVo’s finest accessory prior to the Stream. Not that they’ve produced many non-DVR products over the years. My knee jerk reaction was that a Bluetooth QWERTY remote is gone for good, given the of saturation of smartphones and virtual keyboard-toting TiVo apps (iOS, Android). But TiVo’s always produced top notch remotes, so perhaps we’ll see a compelling replacement. Who knows, maybe they’ll even take a page from their upcoming Pique initiative and unveil something a bit more agnostic… and universal.
(Thanks Steve and brennok!)
I’m so used to my Slide Remote (perfect size, quick response), that I don’t think I could go back to an older remote and a phone app isn’t really a good replacement.
I actually have a Harmony universal remote and I still use the Slide.
I hope TiVo comes up with something, even if it’s simply a device that has built in WiFi and uses WiFi for controlling the box.
“Not that they’ve produced many non-DVR products over the years.”
Is your memory so short that you’ve forgotten TiVo Cola, TiVo mustard, and the TiVo wet/dry mop?
I feel the same way Morac. I will be really disappointed if they don’t replace it with something better. I still think it should have been the default remote for the XL4 and Elite.
I will probably pick up some before they go out of stock completely just to have backups on hand. I can’t imagine going back to the original remote.
I got one for participating in a tivo beta, and found it a huge improvement over the IR remote.
I use a universal remote, so I gave it to a friend of mine, who loves it.
It was (obviously) always way overpriced, though.
Who uses a TiVo remote? I use a Harmony, and the iOS app for TiVo is much better for searching, rearranging season passes (in the background!), etc. TiVo realized there was no money to be made here.
You’re posting to this blog, which is even more techie than tech-specific sites like the verge, gizmodo, etc. Obviously you don’t use the tivo remote, and neither do I. But all my friends do.
You have friends that actually have a Tivo? Lucky!
I use two of the slide remotes instead of my Harmony remotes. Since the prices have gone up alot now(It’s around $68 at Amazon while it used to be under$40) I think I’ll pick up one at BestBuy tomorrow for my bedroom while they are still in stock. I can use my reward zone dollars so I won’t have to pay any taxes on it.
I do wish I would have picked up a third one a few months ago when it was around $35. I was waiting to get one below $30 but I guess I waited to long. I certainly did not expect them to be discontinued.
Yes, my friends have had TiVos ever since… oh… under a week after I bought my series1 in 1999. We were hooked.
Am I the only one who could never get the Tivo slide remote to respond well? I’ve got a Premiere XL4. I ordered the slide and set it up, but it’s just so unresponsive. There’ll be many times I press a button, and nothing happens, so I press a button again. Then, after a few seconds, it’s like my commands were queued up, and they fire off in rapid succession.
The remote just sits on a shelf now, and I use the IR one as its much more responsive.
I have two slide remotes. I’m a huge fan although I did have some responsiveness issues on my Elite/XL4. I attributed the issues to the distance between the remote and the XL4 but it may have been processing / multitasking issues with the 4-tuners.
I expect we will see new TiVo universal remote(s) launched from a vendor like UEI. Some of these may be WiFi or RF. UEI signed an agreement with TiVo last September to supply peanut remotes to Virgin Media and Com Hem.
TiVo’s best accessory is the TiVo Premiere app for tablets, not this useless remote that obviously I wasn’t alone in not getting.
I do like TiVo’s physical remote, but wish TiVo would leverage HDMI-CEC to control devices instead of monkeying around with a programable remote. This way not only could the included remote control your TV/AVR/etc, but so could the TiVo Premiere App.
If TiVo does come out with another physical remote, I hope it’s a smaller, simpler physical remote that is optimized for the basics because it expects people to use the Apps for the heavy hitting (scheduling, managing, etc).
@bjdraw,
Interesting comments which I pretty much agree with. Based on the TiVo Adviser Survey a couple of months ago it appears that TiVo was taking a hard look at their physical remotes. Their latest update further leverages the A,B,C,D buttons on the remote and continues to use pretty much all of the buttons that are included on the front of the TiVo Slide Remote. With that said, the TiVo Slide Remote was very small and compact. I thought the slide mechanism associated with the QWERTY keyboard worked very well.
Regarding HDMI-CEC, can you comment on the state of compatibility between the various implementations of HDMI-CEC between Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, etc…?
Eh, I don’t care for using tablets or phones as remotes and prefer the tactile interaction of a physical remote. And Logitech’s Harmony remotes, while still functional, haven’t done much to move the space forward in recent years… there could be an opportunity here. But I will say managing Season Passes via tablet has been a godsend.
Sam, a manufacturing deal (specific to overseas markets for now?) doesn’t say much about functionality, look, or feel. TiVo could still hook up with say Hillcrest Labs for Wii-esque motion control or make good on some of their crazier patent applications related to RFID and/or identifying specific users.
I never had a problem with reception/connectivity in using the TiVo Slide. Well, other than Bluetooth not actually being integrated into the DVR and requiring a dongle. And maybe that keyboard would have been more handy if Amazon actually updated their app. ;)
I like the slide remote. I also have the TiVo app.
For me, it really depends on what’s in my hand or near me as to which I use.
If I’m flipping around and someone says, or I think of, a show I want to record I just go right into the menu, do a search, and type away.
If I have an iPhone in my hand then I’ll just do a quick search there.
I find them both to be useful.
I remember reading about issues people had with the slide remotes on Amazon but I never experienced it. It’s generally very responsive. The only lag I notice is when I’m using the keyboard to search. You can tell that it’s doing that, “You pressed “L” now it’s trying to search for all of the shows that begin with “L””- deal.
Other than that, it just works for me.
I always thought that the black glow remote the best TiVo remote out there. That was until I picked up the Slide remote. The compact size makes all the buttons easier to access without any effort (I know, the height of laziness). It’s also the most responsive TiVo remote. My wife actually doesn’t like it because she says it’s too sensitive.
Even if they did away with the keyboard part (which I do use) they would have a really great remote at the smaller size. And removing the slide mechanism and keyboard would cut down on cost making it a bit more affordable.
As for tablet and phone text entry instead of the Slide, the connection from the various iOSs and Android devices I’ve used with TiVo is not really that great. The app often doesn’t connect to the TiVo and sometimes the only way to fix that is to reboot TiVo. If they perfected having the app stay consistently connected to the TiVo that might make text entry through the app a more realistic solution.
I just got my third Slide remote from BestBuy. Just like my other two, I get great reception from a good distance by using the supplied usb extension. It’s extremely responsive like my other two.
I guess if a new model comes out soon I might be covered since I have a sixty day return window. But I should have picked a third one up along time ago. Since I got my first slide remote I did not like using the larger TiVo remotes any more.
And I kept putting it off for the TiVo I have in my bedroom.
Now if the TiVo Mini would just hurry up and get released. I wish it would have come out this year.
I have had several of these. They’ve never worked right, either with two different TiVo HD units, or my latest Elite. The Bluetooth always unpairs after a while, and since I have to spend 5 minutes sliding the TV out from its cubby hole to get access to the dongle, this is not a good situation. And when the Bluetooth is working, it would often act just like Tim P suggests above–ignore you for a while, then repeat the last key like crazy, etc. I’ve stopped using them as a result. And now that it looks like TiVo won’t be working to fix these issues, they’re going in the trash…
That said, I loved the physical size of the remotes, the button layout, and yes the slide mechanism. If they’d worked properly I would have preferred these to all of TiVo’s other remotes.
BTW, while I *love* the TiVo app on the iPad, using it as a continuous remote on my iPhone? Hah. It takes many seconds to connect to my TiVo. Sometimes it fails and you have to try again. And every time you switch to another app, which yes I’m wont to do while watching TV for some reason, you have to go through this again the next time you want to hit a button. No thanks.
I’ve been using two of the slide remotes for almost a year now. One on an Elite the entire time and one on a Premiere XL for around five months and then around 7 months on an Elite. I have never had an issue where the Slide remote became unpaired. Even if I unplugged the TiVo to take it with me to my GFs house, when I came back and plugged it in, the Slide remote was still fine. I have not run into any button press issues either. And so far the third slide remote I got this past weekend has been performing as well as my first two have been,
I suspect the slide was discontinued because people were using their smartphones or tablets to input searches on their tivos. I know that’s what I do.
“I suspect the slide was discontinued because people were using their smartphones or tablets to input searches on their tivos. I know that’s what I do.”
That was my exact reaction too.
But it does seem that a fringe of folks really dug the Slide…
I share my living room TiVo Premiere with my bedroom TV. After years of frustration and finickiness with various IR solutions to control it in the bedroom (wireless pyramid, IR over coax, etc.) I was overjoyed to discover that the TIVo Slide works great via Bluetooth. The ergonomics and tactile feedback makes it more useful to me than the iOS apps (I have both iPad and iPhone.) Don’t get me wrong, I really love the iPad app, but for bedtime viewing when all I want to do is zone out and FF or pause, a physical remote (that works) is the best.
So now I guess I’ll have to hope my Slide remote keeps working. Or pick up another (hopefully cheaper than $50 or so!) as a backup. Or hope that TiVo comes out with a new Bluetooth (or WiFi?) replacement. Or, lastly, finally comes out with the TiVo Mini, prices that appropriately with no monthly fee, and I’ll be able to use that in the bedroom instead.
For some reason I never used the remote keyboard since I first purchased this remote.. Ironically, I just set it up to use in my office today because I use Netflix a lot and wanted to use the keyboard.
I also just purchased my new favorite TiVo accessory for our living room TV. I always needed to reach up high to use the remote but for $15 the TiVo USB IR remote adapter saves my arm muscles.
It beats using an IR extender pair. Any device using a remote should have the ability for this kind of remote extender.