Zatz Not Funny!

Tablo Enables Surround Sound (with a caveat)

At long last, the Tablo OTA DVR can now optionally provide the frequently requested surround sound. The firmware update, rolling out in waves now, enables owners to toggle AC3 audio encoding… with a potentially significant caveat: not all Tablo clients are currently 5.1-capable. So while your Roku can pump out surround sound, if you also … Read more

TiVo Resurrects Lifetime Service Transfer Deal

TiVo’s got a great offer for those of you still rocking legacy DVRs with Lifetime service. Active* Series 2, Series 3, TiVo HD, and Premiere units can have their Lifetime service transferred to a new TiVo Bolt Vox under the equivalent All-In plan for just $99. As to the fine print, this promotion is only … Read more

TiVo Giveth… and Taketh Away

I’ve got some very good news for owners of legacy TiVo hardware… and a smattering of bad news.

While I had assumed the TiVo Premiere was end-of-life, over 250,000 of you still on the platform recently received the Roamio and Bolt’s highly desirable SkipMode – which enables somewhat automated commercial skipping of most prime time television recordings. Additionally, these 8-year old DVRs have been treated to the recently released Alexa integration for voice control. It’s quite refreshing to see TiVo invest their finite resources in backporting a subset of folks on this older hardware (and I’m guessing those of you on monthly or annual service plans are to be thanked).

On the flip side, the less than 1% of TiVo owners still using dial-up for guide data are about to be cut off due to exorbitant fees:

Amazon Fire TV Cube Reviews

Amazon Fire TV Cube has arrived … and the reviews are in! The streamer essentially mates an Amazon Fire TV with an Echo Dot and some Logitech Harmony-esque IR blasting capabilities. When first announced, I was enticed (especially given the introductory pricing) – but Amazon’s increasingly cluttered presentation and conspicuously missing volume buttons gave me pause. Not to mention, I’m currently down on always-listening voice assistants — whereas the more economical, yet sufficiently powerful, Amazon Fire TV ships with a perfectly suitable Alexa-powered, push-to-talk voice remote. But let’s see what folks who’ve actually put the hardware through its paces have to say:

The Verge: Alexa turns out to be a good match for your living room

The speaker is not as powerful as a standard Echo, but it’s not designed for playing music — the Cube will route any music requests to your TV’s speakers or your soundbar. Most of the time, Alexa’s responses will also route through the TV’s speakers, but it will use the Cube’s speaker if the TV is off or set to another input. […] And in my experience of testing the Fire TV Cube over the past few days, its Alexa-based voice control system works more often than it doesn’t. But I’m not throwing my remotes in the garbage just yet.

I gotta be honest. I’m jst not completely sold on the Fitbit Versa. It’s decidedly less sophisticated and less premium than the similarly priced Apple Watch. Not to mention, Versa band replacement is just awful. Yet, Apple doesn’t natively provide some of the basics I expect from an activity tracker, such as a simple step complication and … Read more

The New Sonos Smart Soundbar with HDMI

As revealed back in April, Sonos is poised to announce a new entry in their home theater lineup. As described in the FCC filings: The model S14 is a high-performance all-in-one home theater smart speaker and part of Sonos’ home sound system. Given the newer hardware like the Sonos Playbase and Sonos One, we might … Read more

TiVo Alexa Voice Control Arrives*

As foreshadowed by yours truly and then announced at CES, Alexa has finally come to TiVo retail boxes. Well, sort of. Over the weekend, a placeholder app appeared – announcing the imminent arrival of Amazon’s voice assistant. Although TiVo has introduced their own native voice remote, it requires an additional purchase, vs those who already own Alexa gear, and is limited to units running the less desirable TiVo Experience 4 (Hydra) on a subset of TiVo hardware. By comparison, Alexa will be made available to a broad swath of devices, dating all the way back to the Premiere and running either Hydra or the HDUI Encore interface.

The TiVo Alexa skill isn’t live yet, but we know it’ll utilize Amazon’s beefed up media api. And, based on some of the documented commands that’ll be available to us, the delay will have been well worth the wait:

Who’s Taking Over TiVo Retail Manufacturing & Sales?

As Rovi foreshadowed, prior to their 2016 TiVo acquisition, the merged company wants out of the retail hardware business. Not consumer services itself, but the manufacturing and distribution. As such, from Seeking Alpha’s transcript of the TiVo quarterly call yesterday: In addition, we have signed on a major device manufacturer as our direct-to-consumer box partner. … Read more