Pandora Arrives on TiVo Today

First announced at the Premiere launch, Pandora’s music streaming service has (finally) launched on TiVo. Well, supposedly. The press release indicates it’s live, but I’ve yet to see hit my TiVo units this AM. While Pandora is a nice-to-have app, and compares favorably to Rhapsody in terms of pricing, I’d rather not manage or pipe … Read more

Question of the Day: TiVo Premiere + Slingbox?

tivo-premiere-slingbox

Today’s question comes our way from Stephen M:

Has anyone been successful at getting SlingPlayer or SlingPlayerWeb to control a Tivo Premiere? In the player setup, there are no choices for Tivo Premiere or Tivo Series 4.

This should have been a trivial question to answer, even though Sling hasn’t yet published an official virtual remote for the Premiere. Because TiVo’s IR codes and general remote layout are pretty consistent amongst their hardware lineup, classifying the Premiere as a TiVo Series3 or HD for the Slingbox should have handled just about everything other than the four OCAP shortcut buttons. However, after perusing Stephen’s lengthy transcript with Sling Media’s tech support, I realized something was amiss. And, unfortunately, Christina wasn’t able to deviate much from her script to identify that Sling has a problem on their end.

As it turns out, Sling’s online database of IR codes and remote skins has been corrupted or rolled back in some way. Perhaps related to their horribly botched data center migration that resulted in a week or so of downtime for many. Basically, in attempts to set up the AV source via Sling.com as two different TiVo models the remote skins were blanked out and non-functional in several ways/places.

What I did to resolve this problem was to set up the DVR (as a Series 3) in Sling’s stand-alone OS X software client. Once done, I headed back to Sling.com where the remote renders and works properly as seen below.

web-sling-tivo

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The TiVo Updates of the Week (Samsung, MoCA)

I’m not sure either of the recent TiVo (pre)announcements warrant an independent post, given the company’s typical long lead between partnership revelations and tangible products. However, given the pings and forum chatter, they’re probably worth touching on briefly as part of a larger ‘week in TiVo’ post. First, at IBC TiVo and Samsung announced that … Read more

TiVo Fiddles With Premiere Pricing ($0!)

I thought TiVo had moved on from variable pricing schemes, but recent visits to tivo.com suggest otherwise. Traditionally, you’d buy your TiVo hardware and subscribe to monthly service at a single rate ($12.95). Yet, in what I assume is an effort to ease the barrier of entry, TiVo is now offering multiple pricing permutations. Buy … Read more

Catching Up With TiVo v DISH

We’ve been covering TiVo’s patent dispute with DISH/EchoStar for, literally, years. Heck, I even trekked down to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 2007 to catch some argument/testimony. However, I’ve grown bored of the topic. And, as neither an investor in TiVo nor DISH/Echo, I’ve got no skin in the game. … Read more

The TiVo Slide QWERTY Remote Giveaway

TiVo has produced arguably the best dual purpose QWERTY-capable remote in the Slide. Granted, there’s not much competition (yet) in this burgeoning space. But TiVo has introduced something special — I expect its utility will only grow as they modernize and expand their online apps. Not only does the shrunken “peanut” allow you to type via Bluetooth … Read more

Delayed DirecTV TiVo Manufacturer Revealed

TiVo, Inc held their quarterly earnings call yesterday. As expected, it was mostly more of the same – revenue down with a net loss (~$15m), subscriber count down (~2.4m), but plenty of cash in the bank ($240m). However, TiVo did answer a long standing question I’ve had regarding the upcoming but delayed DirecTV TiVo. Who’s … Read more

Hands On with the TiVo Slide QWERTY Remote

Unveiled along with the Premiere, the TiVo Slide Bluetooth QWERTY remote ($90) is finally ready for its close up and now shipping. Of course, the primary selling point and key differentiator is the well concealed QWERTY keyboard to facilitate text entry as Search and other broadband apps become regular elements of our daily television viewing … Read more