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
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
Variety reports that streaming service Hulu intends to implement pause screen advertising beginning next year. This isn’t an entirely new development, since TiVo pioneered that “feature” way back in 2009. Given Hulu’s least expensive tier already runs traditional commercials, this appears to be both an additive disruption for users and revenue stream for the company. As … Read more
What the what?! A new TiVo “Android” voice remote with Google Assistant button just passed through the FCC. Is the TiVo experience intended to run on top of the Android TV platform, similar to DirecTV NOW’s beta box? Might the company lean on Android’s native DVR functionality or would something like this function as a … Read more
Roku has announced they’ll no longer charge for themes. Over the years, many have been free, including a small but random sampling to get started and some to commemorate the periodic holiday. While others have been sponsorships, such as my preferred Subaru National Parks presentation. But a few were Roku Store purchases. And I so wish … Read more
