Dave Zatz 
Aereo may be long gone, but the dream of streaming affordable local television (without an antenna) lives on. And a Stanford University research project has answered the call with Puffer. We enjoy some television on-the-house and they use machine learning to improve video streaming algorithms: We are trying to figure out how to teach a … Read more
TechHive held quite the conversation with TiVo at CES. And one of the most promising revelations was TiVo contemplating a service similar to HDHomeRun Premium, to commingle streaming “cable” channels alongside OTA antenna television. Essentially, cable content without the cable company. But unlike, say, a walled garden Sling TV app, TiVo would would merge these … Read more
TiVo’s 2018 “Game Skip” experiment appears to have been so successful that the DVR pioneer will once again invert their commercial skip functionality to spotlight Super Bowl ads. As described last year: Everyone knows that [the Super Bowl] commercials are some of the best, highest quality commercials of the year. So, we’re going to tag the … Read more
TiVo has never taken the Mini wireless for television programming due to MPEG2 bandwidth considerations … and the resultant experience, which would be highly variable dependent upon ones home network. Of course, I told you how to take matters into your own hands (five years ago!). But for those still looking to something other than … Read more
As Sonos looks to expand its market footprint, the company hit a number of customers today with a survey that describes potential products — each listed at various price points to gauge interest. Most interesting are Sonos One-esque speakers with enhanced bass and Dolby Atmos in addition to (finally) a more affordable Subwoofer, penciled in as … Read more
At long last, TiVo is publicly committing to a soft client streamer apps for retail DVRs, such as the newly released Bolt OTA. So instead of investing in a TiVo Mini at each television, we can leverage our existing Apple TV, Fire TV, and Roku boxes to receive both live television and DVR-ed content. Unlike … Read more
Nice! Come March, Tablo DVR owners will be able to automatically skip commercials while playing back television recordings. Unlike TiVo’s somewhat kneecapped SkipMode that only indexes popular, primetime programming and requires manual intervention at each break, Tablo’s solution should index just about everything* and will be automated: Tablo’s commercial-skipping magic is a cloud-based hybrid of digital signal … Read more
Ikea Smartshades are here! Well “here” as in some European stores with broader availability expected February 2nd — hopefully that includes the US, although prior reports indicated our availability would come later in the spring. In any event, we now know sizes, prices, and mechanics. There are two lines of grey Ikea smart shades, one … Read more