TiVo
What To Expect From TiVo At CES
With CES mere days away, it’s time to flex our predictive musculature. Mari’s gone broad with the TV trends, but I’m dialing it down to a single set-top manufacturer we know so well. Unlike years past where TiVo hid themselves at the end of an obscure, dusty hallway for invite-only meetings, TiVo’s invested in a real booth for 2014. Go big, or go home! And their prime Central Hall location will provide a much larger stage to tell the compelling Roamio story. Reinforcing TiVo’s more visible approach, beyond the booth, I’ve counted at least five events TiVo management will be speaking at. While I expect TiVo to make some noise around their analytics group and viewer behavior, a partner announcement or two isn’t out the question, and we’re still awaiting TiVo Roamio upgrade offers, I remain most interested in retail TiVo functionality.
Comcast & TiVo Resume Xfinity On Demand Rollout
After about a 6 month hiatus, Comcast and TiVo are once again expanding Xfinity On Demand services into new regions – Arkansas and Kentucky, to be specific. While we’re not entirely clear on the nature of the pause and had assumed the pair were evaluating perhaps a more efficiently implemented over-the-top app, as seen via Xbox … Read more
TiVo Thumb Buttons To Rate The Voice Finalists
Perhaps another benefit of the TiVo 20.3.8 software update is a framework to tabulate in-show tenor by repurposing those iconic TiVo thumbs up/down remote buttons (versus their original purpose to rate programming as a means of generating suggestions). Classified as an “experiment” by “TiVo Labs”, select customers have been recruited to test this new functionality:
If you’re interested in helping out, here’s what to do:
- Watch The Voice episode “Live Final Performances,” airing Monday, 12/16 at 8 PM/7 Central.
- As you watch the episode, please use the Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down buttons on your TiVo remote throughout the episode to rate the contestants’ performances.
- Really loving it? Press Thumbs Up! Totally hate it? Press Thumbs Down!
- You can use the Thumbs buttons as many times as you want throughout the episode.
- You can use the Thumbs buttons more than once on the same performance.
- Feel free to fast-forward, pause, and rewind as usual.
You don’t have to watch the episode live as it airs, but if possible, please try to watch the episode on Monday night. Sound interesting? Just watch and click — that’s all you have to do. There’s no online survey, just “vote with your remote.”
While TiVo’s collected this sort of behavioral data before,
TiVo Software Update 20.3.8 Rolling Out
TiVo software update 20.3.8 has started rolling out to Premiere, Roamio and Mini boxes, including these notable enhancements:
- new transparency options for Closed Captions
- support for new apps (some of which may start appearing next week)
- support for “low battery” message for new RF remotes
- fixed an issue where the grid Guide didn’t keep its place after scheduling a recording
- now will retry tuning requests after a Tuning Adapter fails to respond
- improved some issues related to transferring shows between Series4 and Series5 DVRs
While this doesn’t ship with the prime billing that the Fall Update did, it’s rather significant in a few ways.
TiVo Founders Reunite, Prep Qplay TV Adapter
Shortly after TiVo co-founder Jim Barton resigned from the DVR maker in 2012, he reunited with his former DVR compatriot Michael Ramsay to found InVisioneer. While the Kleiner-backed company is somewhat shrouded in secrecy, descriptions from their recruitment efforts provide some insight (1, 2):
InVisioneer is building a product that sits at the nexus of exciting trends in video, mobile, and social.
We’re building a compelling new way to discover and play media that will become an integral part of people’s lives.
Scouring the web for clues has turned up a variety of intriguing LinkedIn profiles and other social mentions, including an early survey and what appears to be a test Twitter account… with one very familiar follower. Of course, given the headline and imagery above, you’ve already discerned that InVisioneer sent some hardware through the FCC in the form of a Qplay TV Adapter.