Content remains king, with television programming and mobile device interaction converging at a rapid pace. So-called “second screen” apps were everywhere at CES, integrating all sorts of functionality. And companies are clearly pumped. Heck, Cisco & Cox invited Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman in to witness the unveiling of their upcoming iPad app.
In conjunction with CES festivities, I was invited to the 2nd Screen Summit — “a deep-dive into the latest business opportunities, creative case studies and technology innovations related to the creation of supplementary, synchronized and social TV content featuring speakers from Hollywood, Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley.” Given a tight schedule, I was only able to attend the keynote and a discussion of content discovery via the second screen… which quite frequently wandered well beyond the confines of a tablet device, once again reinforcing content consumption interconnectedness. And, with my somewhat irreverent style, I fired off several “second screen” tweets of my own from the sessions (reproduced below).
I’m told the Mini contains 2GB of local storage dedicated to hosting the TiVo OS/experience and handling whatever caching may be necessary. Performance seemed pretty sprightly over their in-suite MoCA connection, but I’d expect at least a little lag when changing channels or queuing up content. Interestingly, I get the sense that the apps available to TiVo Premiere DVRs may not be fully duplicated onto the Mini. Assuming I’m reading the tea leaves correctly, I wonder if that’d be a contractual or technical issue. The remote mated with the Mini looked a whole lot like