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
Fellow site contributor Adam Miarka has cycled through a ton a television technology in the years I’ve known him and I thought it’d be beneficial to share his current configuration. TL;DR: HDHomeRun Quatro, Mohu Leaf, Channels DVR, Synology DS218+, Infuse, Apple TV, iDevices I’d call Adam something of an inadvertent cord cutter, as he didn’t … Read more
In a first for TiVo, the DVR pioneer is testing a familiar-looking upgrade program. Apple recently offered me $250 for my iPhone 7 in the form of credit off the purchase price of a new iPhone XR. My old phone will be refurbished or responsibly recycled and I get a nice discount on a significant … Read more
Beta testers, such as a well-connected associate, have begun receiving AT&T’s DirecTV Now Android TV streaming box. Both the packaging and startup sequence prominently display that “beta” designation – and with good reason. While DirecTV Now fires up fast, a subset of cloud DVR programming is conspicuously unavailable. As full-on Android TV, the Google Assistant … Read more
One of the more favorable deals of the season has been Hulu’s 99 cent offer. Yeah, it’s not the ad-free tier, but $12 for an entire year of their fairly extensive catalog is quite amazing. We generally use it for the shows we didn’t know we should be DVR-ing — plus it’s the only streaming … Read more