Roku Wants To Sell You HBO

As we’re seeing from Apple and Amazon, Roku intends to generate incremental revenue and streamline the end-user experience by offering premium video subscriptions directly within their interface. Although, Roku’s not quite there yet and is directing folks into The Roku Channel app to seek out Premium Subscriptions… now featuring HBO, just in time for Game … Read more

Ecobee To Expand Smart Home Capabilities With Video Camera

ecobee intends to round out their smart home lineup with an indoor camera. While details are light, given Amazon investment and the existing product line, we can assume the ecobee camera will feature Alexa integration … if not outright control via its own mic, as those amber lights pictured in the company render up top … Read more

The Android TV Interface Has Been Compromised

While Nvidia Shield TV gets the bulk of the attention, and rightfully so, there are a number of other Android TV products out there… including quite a few Sony televisions. And our very own Joel Ward was treated to a rather unpleasant update. Both Joel’s Sony 2016 800D 43″ and 2017 900E 65″ televisions, running … Read more

How “TiVo” Came To Be

As we continue our TiVo retrospective, including their mysterious technological origins and 20th anniversary of shipping the first DVR, I thought it’d be fun to surface an ancient PVRBlog post featuring Michael Cronan, the guy who created the “TiVo” name and mascot. Quite a few fascinating nuggets to be had, including the company’s original intent … Read more

TiVo Automatic Commercial Skipping Debuts This Spring

An eagle-eyed TiVo Community Forum member caught a TiVo employee’s Facebook post that has revealed automated commercial skip will soon be available (pictured below). And, after reviewing with a source, I can confirm TiVo’s existing SkipMode will be expanded to include an “Auto Skip” option. Once upgraded, DVR owners may be prompted to enable automatic … Read more

Anker Preps Nebula Gaming Controller

By way of the FCC, we learn that Anker is prepping a Nebula-branded gaming controller to be used with their Android TV-based Nebula Capsule 2 projector (duh) in addition to any number of iOS and Android devices. The gamepad appears to be a fairly standard affair with dual analog sticks, charged via microUSB. However, the … Read more

Reflecting On 20 Years Of DVR

As TiVo reflects upon 20 years of DVR, and pitches it continued relevance, we too shall do the same. While there’s some debate as to whether it was TiVo or Replay TV that “invented” DVR, they essentially launched at the same time in television history (and the underlying concept of a hard-drive recorder to advance … Read more