TiVo President and CEO Tom Rogers will be presenting at the Twenty-Eighth Annual Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Strategic Decisions Conference 2012 on May 31, the day after they announce their 1QFY13 financial results. A webcast of the presentation will be available on TiVo’s investor relations site.

Conference Details:
Twenty-Eighth Annual Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Strategic Decisions Conference 2012
New York, NY
Thursday, May 31, 2012
3:00 PM ET
Tom Rogers, President and CEO

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: dvr, press release, tivo, webcast

I couldn’t get a date earlier this week at The Cable Show, but apparently Comcast knew and just wasn’t saying – Boston gets XFINITY On Demand next week. That means TiVo owners with Series4 Premiere models in Comcast’s Boston service area will be able to access XFINITY VOD content. We don’t know yet just how widespread this is since ‘Boston’ often includes surrounding areas like Cambridge, Arlington, etc. when corporations use it in this way. We’ll probably get more details next week when it launches. You can always check your zipcode or sign up to be notified when it is in your area at www.tivo.com/comcast.

Yeah Boston! MT @ stevegarfield Breaking: Available next week for Boston area Comcast @TiVo customers, XFINITY VOD bit.ly/JEaxLz

— Steve Wymer (@stevewymer) May 24, 2012

For those who don’t know, Steve is TiVo’s Head of Corporate Communications. So this is an ‘official’ source who would know. I suspect Comcast didn’t announce this during The Cable Show because they wanted to keep the attention focused on their X1 product announcements.

Thanks to Brennok for the tip.

EDIT: I originally said ‘Monday’ since Brennok had used that in his comment and it wedged in my brain and when I read Steve’s ‘next week’ I think I mentally filled in ‘next Monday’. I replaced ‘Monday’ with ‘next week’ throughout the post to better reflect what Steve actually said.

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: cable, comcast, dvr, on demand, premiere, tivo, twitter, xfinity

While most of the TiVo news out of The Cable Show revolves around the TiVo Stream and IP STB, and the Pace XG1, I did talk to TiVo about a variety of issues. So this is a bit of a grab bag to collect some interesting bits, in no particular order.

TiVo will continue to support ATSC in future products, in some way, shape or form. I asked about this because the TiVo Premiere XL4 is a QAM only product, and knowing how hardware development and refresh cycles work I fully expect the Premiere and Premiere XL to be refreshed at some point and migrate to a shared design with the XL4. It is much more cost effective to produce one board and simply populate it differently for different products. The Premiere and Premiere XL will clearly be updated to add MoCA at some point, and it makes sense to go to a shared design. But that had implications for ATSC, hence my query.

TiVo can’t say, probably because at this point they honestly don’t know, what form an ATSC-supporting product might take, but they know there is a solid niche of ATSC users. Clearly the majority of their business comes from cable subscribers, but they do not plan to abandon ATSC users. There are issues with supporting ATSC however. ATSC tuners are more expensive than QAM tuners, and aren’t available in the same densities. We’re seeing single QAM tuner chips with six QAM tuners, even fully integrated SoCs with six, or more, integrated QAM tuners – but not ATSC.

This makes it harder, and more costly, to design and build a product with ATSC support. And the more ATSC tuners you include the higher the cost and complexity. And there are often knock-on costs – additional RAM, ancillary chips, etc. Add to that the effects of economies of scale. There are more QAM-enabled products than ATSC, that means there is more demand for QAM chips. The greater demand drives higher production levels of QAM chips, and the per-unit costs keeps coming down. ATSC components aren’t following the same decline, but remaining at higher price points.

And that’s why we don’t have an ATSC XL4, and probably won’t see one. And also why the bulk of products going forward are likely to be QAM-only, with specific SKUs to address the ATSC market niche.

On a different note, the new TiVo SDK will be released ‘this fall’. TiVo has hired someone who is working full time on running the SDK program and driving it to release. They’re serious about getting it out there and attracting more developers to create apps for TiVo.

TiVo would like to support Amazon Prime Streaming as much as users would like them to, but at this time they have nothing additional to announce.

My own take is that it is in the road map but they need developer support from Amazon to get it done. Remember the situation with Hulu Plus? Same deal. It will almost certainly happen, the question is when, but TiVo isn’t going to announce anything until there is something firmer to stand on. Like I said, that’s my read on the situation.

As for HBO Go – they know there is demand but they have nothing public to announce right now. My take is they will probably do it but won’t be saying anything until there is ink on paper to authorize it.

While I’m on the subject, TiVo says to expect a lot of additions to OTT content and, further out, extensive changes to the UI for selecting OTT content. I’m heartened by this, as the weak support for OTT content has been a pet peeve of mine for some time. For myself, I’d love to see content like NASA TV and Crunchyroll supported. I know others would love sports channels, such as MLB.TV. And the UI for Web Video is very creaky now. Next to something like Roku it is kind of sad.

I think the ’tile’ HD UI for ‘browse’ that TiVo has now could make for a decent web video UI. You could have a tile for a provider, and then tiles for each ‘show’ from the provider within that screen, etc. I think that if TiVo can really enhance the UI and expand the content list, the IP STB could have a secondary life as a general purpose streaming STB even for non-TiVo households.

As I reported back in February, TiVo continues to consider adding support for DLNA/DTCP-IP but doesn’t have anything more to say at this time. However, I have to say that, after talking to many vendors at the show, TiVo will add support for DLNA/DTCP-IP. It is a question of when now, not if.

Why do I say that? Because everyone else is doing it. It is really taking off, it seems like every vendor I talked to had something to say about DLNA/DTCP-IP. Just one example, the Pace XG1 box that runs the TiVo software can also run several other software stacks. On every other stack it uses DLNA/DTCP-IP for whole home streaming – but when running the TiVo software it uses TiVo’s proprietary system. ARRIS’s Moxi DVRs use DLNA/DTCP-IP – and therefore you can use a PS3, DLNA/DTCP-IP-enabled Smart TV, etc., as a client.

The stack is rapidly becoming MoCA+DLNA+DTCP-IP – and with RUI coming on strong as the next likely standard component. Since TiVo is serious about playing in the MSO market, and MSOs all seem to be extremely interested in standardizing on these components, I believe TiVo will simply have to adopt them to remain a player. It is almost painful to say, but the big, legacy players seem to be adopting standards faster than TiVo. You’re going to see DLNA everywhere before long, and TiVo needs to invite themselves to that party or risk being on the outside looking in.

Oh, a little side note. I was in Pace’s booth today, looking at the XG1 (there will be a post eventually), and I got crowded up for a bit by a gaggle of suits who came in for a demo. I noticed they were with Suddenlink, and they were quite interested in the XG1 running the TiVo software. I overheard some generally favorable comments about TiVo as a solution, but they seemed to like the idea of more ‘MSO-friendly’ hardware like the Pace unit. Which is kind of the whole point of TiVo’s partnership with Pace, so that’s a good thing.

Another good thing is that the Pace reps I observed doing the demo for various groups were all pretty gung ho about the TiVo solution. While they had an number of units setup, running different UI stacks (Comcast X1, a few Rovi solutions, etc.), they really stressed the TiVo solution. I head things like “TiVo is the one we’re really excited about” from the reps talking to MSO people dropping by for a demo. So that’s good to see & hear; it is good to see TiVo with an enthusiastic partner.

On a different note, unsurprisingly TiVo wouldn’t comment about future DVR products, aside from indicating it was likely transcoding will be ‘baked in’ to some future box, as I previously reported. But reading between the lines I think we can expect to see more tuners in a future box as well – an XL6 if you will. There are chips available now with six, or more, integrated QAM tuners. And an M-Card supports a maximum of six streams.

In addition there are a growing number of units from other vendors appearing with six tuners, which means competitive pressure on TiVo. Their MSO partners are going to want to “keep up with the Joneses”. While they could do that by using a box like the Pace XG1, those that have based their solutions on TiVo hardware are likely to want commonality.

My speculation is that sometime in 2013 we’ll see an ‘XL6′ using one of the newer chips, such as the BCM7435, with six QAM tuners, MoCA 2.0, and on-board transcoding. It probably will not have built-in WiFi as TiVo is trying to steer users away from WiFi and toward Ethernet or MoCA, to avoid customer experience issues and support headaches with streaming and flaky WiFi networks.

The tablet version of the Android app is actively being worked on. I reported in March that TiVo was saying ‘spring’ for Android tablets, but that’s clearly slipped a little. They recently made changes to the way they handle app development and they’re committed to iOS and Android. When the TiVo Stream is released this fall there will be clients for both, on phones and tablets. The streaming functionality will be incorporated into the existing TiVo apps.

TiVo is aware that the new YouTube and Netflix apps have long start-up times, and they’re working on ways to speed that up. The apps themselves are out of their control, that’s Google & Netflix, but they are working to improve performance, especially the start-up.

TiVo is updating their software more frequently, and we can expect more and more of the UI to migrate to HD with the coming releases. Screens such as the Season Pass Manager, To Do List, and screens from a remote unit (such as when using MRS), will be made HD this year. I think TiVo has made some real progress with the migration over the past couple of releases and I look forward to seeing it continue to progress.

OK, I think that’s it for now – and I really need to get a few hours of sleep before I return for the last day of the show. I have plenty more to write up as posts – such as my visits with Humax, Pace and Arris – but that’ll have to wait.

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: android, atsc, dlna, dtcp-ip, dvr, ios, iphone, moca, premiere, premiere xl, premiere xl4, qam, tablet, the cable show, tivo

Since I made my post about the forthcoming TiVo Stream and IP STB last night I’ve been getting a lot of questions, and there were a few things I wondered about myself after I had some time to digest things. So I dropped by TiVo’s booth at The Cable Show again today and gathered some more information – including the photo you see here.

As they say, a picture is worth 1,000 words, and this one answers some of the questions I had, and that I heard from readers. Note that the photo is from a box running development software, so the screen and/or language therein may change before release, etc. But the underlying logic is what we should expect in the initial release. As you can see, you do not have to give up a tuner on your Premiere XL4 to use the IP STB – if you’re willing to forego Live TV, as I am. Basically you’re reserving one or two tuners in the XL4 for use by IP STB(s) elsewhere in the home. When a tuner is reserved it is not available for anything else. It is not used for recordings, it is only used for Live TV on the IP STB. Period.

Now, one question that occurred to me after I’d left the show today was if a tuner is paired with a single IP STB, or if it can be shared. Say you have one XL4 and three IP STBs – can you reserve just one tuner which would allow any one of the three IP STBs to use Live TV at a time? I’ll need to ask that.

But, that aside, you can see that you have the option to reserve 0, 1, or 2 tuners for use by IP STBs. Personally I’d go with 0 as I never use Live TV and would only want the IP STB to access my recordings or OTT content. I think this will make a number of people happy. Also, this is a settings screen on the XL4 and you can change this whenever you want. So it isn’t something you have to do at setup, etc. So if you know you want to watch Live TV in another room (the game is on, you’re sick in bed, whatever) you can reserve a tuner and then un-reserve it when you no longer need it.

Speaking of setup, there apparently really isn’t much of one on the IP STB. Setup basically involves ‘pairing’ it with the XL4 – and that’s it. There’s nothing else to setup, it pulls all of the settings it needs from the XL4. I’m told there are very few settings local to the IP STB.

I did confirm that the will not pair with the Premiere or Premiere XL at launch, only the Premiere XL4 (aka the Premiere Q for MSOs). So no Live TV on your IP STB if that’s all you have. And this isn’t a ‘soft’ thing where it isn’t officially supported but you can make it work, the software is just not there to support it on those units. However, the IP STB is a standard Multi-Room Streaming (MRS) client. It can stream content of of any Premiere unit in the home. So it does work with the Premiere and Premiere XL in as far as you’ll be able to stream your recordings via MRS. My understanding is that you will not be able to set recordings on the Premiere or Premiere XL, etc., as that requires the pairing that can only be done with the XL4. Basically whatever you can do with MRS between Premieres today you can do from the IP STB, but that’s all – for now at least. (I’m going to double check to make sure that’s accurate.)

As for pricing – again, they haven’t said yet. We don’t know if they’ll be a one-time purchase, or if there will be a subscription required, etc. Personally I expect them both to be one-time purchases with no subscription requirement. But they will need to be activated on the TiVo account so that they get the same MAK and can connect to the TiVo DVR units on the network.

I did have an idea which I suggested to TiVo – parental lock down on the IP STB. Basically ‘KidZone’ on a per-box basis. My idea is that you could put an IP STB in the kids’ room and lock it down so it can only access a wall garden of recordings and channels, just like KidZone did. You’d be able to (dis)allow functions – so the kids couldn’t delete recordings, or cancel them, or setup new recordings, etc. Whatever power you want to give them. Basically they’d have their own Nerfed virtual TiVo.

Enough about the IP STB, how about the TiVo Stream? The Stream will transcode at native resolution. So the 1080i recording remains 1080i as H.264, and the 720p recording remains 720p as H.264, etc. So it isn’t fixed, or limited to 720p, etc. And side-loading happens at better than real time. I was told ’2x’ is a good rule of thumb – so a 30 minute recording will side-load in 15 minutes, etc. But this varies depending on the bit rate of the source material. A 19mbps minimally compressed HD ATSC stream will probably take closer to real time, while a 2mbps highly compressed SD digital cable recording will likely side-load very quickly. In other words, results will vary, but it isn’t stuck with only doing real-time transcodes for side-loading.

Right now the TiVo Stream will only stream content from a TiVo DVR to one of the TiVo client apps on iOS or Android. TiVo hasn’t announced anything for other platforms at this time. I don’t know if we might see an updated version of TiVo Desktop that would support streaming to a PC, though it may make more sense to just add MRS to TiVo Desktop to allow it to stream content to a TiVo as well as from one. And PCs can handle MPEG-2, so I don’t see the need for a TiVo Stream for that.

Hopefully this news makes a few folks happy.

Lastly, this won’t be news to regular readers of this blog, but the Stream is powered by a Zenverge ZN200 chip. I speculated to that effect last year, and TiVo confirmed it for me in February, but today it was officially announced via press release. The release is below:

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: dvr, place shifting, premiere, premiere q, premiere xl, premiere xl4, press release, stream, the cable show, tivo, zenverge

Well, that was fast. It was only February when TiVo announced a partnership with Pace to bring TiVo’s software to Pace’s hardware, and today they unveiled the first fruit of that partnership, the Pace XG1 Multi-Tuner Video Gateway. They even have a box on display in their booth, as you can see in the photo I took today.

The Pace XG1 isn’t considered a DVR, but a “Multi-Tuner Video Gateway”. It is really part of a new type of solution, in the same category as Arris’s Moxi Gateway. It is meant as a content ‘gateway’ into the home, feeding client boxes which actually handle the content display. The XG1 has six digital cable tuners as well as a built-in DOCSIS 3.0 modem for data connectivity and IP content delivery, and MoCA for home networking.

Running TiVo’s software it will support TiVo’s whole-home solution, streaming content to traditional STBs as well as IP clients. It is also compatible with TiVo’s phone & tablet apps. It will be available to US operators later this year.

I didn’t make it to Pace’s booth Monday. I’ll try to get there on Tuesday to see what additional info is available.

The Press Release is below:

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: dvr, pace, press release, the cable show, tivo, xg1

It pays to observe carefully, you never know what you might spot. Like this photo that I snapped of something I noticed in TiVo’s booth at The Cable Show 2012 today. It is the kind of thing your eyes might just skim over, just typical booth decoration. But look closely – did you catch it? Well, more specifically, did you notice the two new content partners?

If you spotted EPIX and Aol HD, congratulations. Neither of those have been previously announced – even at this show. After I spotted those I asked Jim Denney about them and he seemed a little surprised that they were on the wall too, but said that since they’re clearly visible they were fair game. He couldn’t tell me much, but did say that the EPIX deal would probably be tied to MSO-provided units as EPIX is similar to HBO Go in that your cable provider has to have a deal with EPIX to enable access. You can see the currently supported providers & devices on their site. I’ll note that Charter & Suddenlink, two MSOs distributing TiVo HW, are on the list. So I think we can guess those are the likely MSOs to receive EPIX on TiVo.

Aol HD on the other hand will be a retail play, joining Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube, et al. Aol HD is currently available on select Sony and Samsung devices, Roku, Google TV, Boxee, DivX TV, and Yahoo! Connected TV devices – and apparently coming soon to TiVo. As one of their recent press releases put it:

AOL HD features high-definition technology, lifestyle, celebrity and entertainment content updated daily from properties across the AOL Huffington Post Media Group, including Engadget, TechCrunch, Translogic, Moviefone and Huffington Post Celebrity.

Expect both of these to be on the TiVo Premiere family, and likely not on earlier models.

I also noticed that Cox is missing from the Operator Partners list, but I don’t read too much into that. TiVo said they’re still working on their VOD support, but since they haven’t launched anything yet I can understand why TiVo wouldn’t be touting them on their booth.

Though I did confirm with TiVo that the deal with Canal Digital in Europe has basically fizzled out, as I previously covered. Nothing official has been announced, and I don’t expect anything to be said – companies generally don’t announce when deals wither on the vine. Like I said before, it is a setback, but nothing earth shaking.

Here’s a gallery of a few photos I shot in and around TiVo’s booth today:

Again, if you have questions you want me to ask TiVo, or any other exhibitor at the show, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: aol hd, broadband, canal digital, cox communications, dvr, epix, the cable show, tivo

Back in February I posted about TiVo’s planned transcoding box and IP STB thin-client, without too many details. Well, The Cable Show is in Boston this week and I’m attending, and today I met with TiVo. I talked mostly with TiVo’s Public Relations Manager, Jessica Loebig, and VP & GM of Product Marketing, Jim Denney, and, along with the official announcements, I have some more info.

The ‘transcoding box’ is now officially the TiVo Stream, and it will be available to both retail customers and TiVo’s cable MSO partners later this year. The render to the left is the retail version of the box, while the one to the right is the MSO version. They’re pretty much the same except for coloring, and obviously the final labeling will change.

The TiVo Stream will work with the TiVo Premiere, Premiere XL, and Premiere XL4 (formerly known as the Premiere Elite, and known as the Premiere Q for MSOs). It is a very simple device with only two connections – power and Ethernet. The photos below were taken at the show, you can see the simple design and limited connectors.

The TiVo Stream acts like a Multi-Room Streaming (MRS) client on the network, just like another Premiere would. While the hardware is cable of transcoding four streams, it is limited to two per Premiere due to transport throughput limits on the Premiere end. So to use all four transcoding stream simultaneously you would need at least two Premieres on the network. As previously reported, the MPEG-2 streams are transcoded to H.264 for delivery to ‘second screen’ devices within the home.

The Stream supports real-time streaming as well as side-loading of content onto a mobile device for later viewing away from the network. However, copy protection does apply. It is basically Multi-Room Streaming (MRS) vs. Multi-Room Viewing (MRV). If you can stream a problem between Premieres, you’ll be able to streaming it to a second screen. And if you can copy programs between TiVos, or to a PC via TiVoToGo, you’ll be able to side-load it. But if a program is blocked from TiVoToGo it will also be blocked from side-loading. TiVo doesn’t make the rules, they just follow them. So it really depends on how draconian your MSO is.

The Stream can access ‘Live TV’ – kind of. Since it acts just like any other MRS client, and MRS only streams recordings, what happens is it triggers the Premiere to start recording the content. The Stream then accesses that recording in progress and streams it. So in the end there is a recording on the Premiere of the show you streamed ‘live’.

And, as I’ve said previously, right now the intention is to support clients within the home. So place shifting content onto your phone or tablet in another room, but not across the Internet to another location. So this will not be a Slingbox replacement, at least to start. TiVo acknowledges the interest and it is something that might come via a software update. They have looked into it, and interestingly they’ve even talked to Sling Media about remote streaming (possible now that TiVo and EchoStar have kissed and made up), but there is nothing firm at this time.

Jim Denney and I talked a bit about future plans and the transcoding eventually being ‘baked in’, and it is all but certain to happen. It is all a trade off, and right now we’re not quite at the tipping point. SoCs with transcoding baked-in are appearing but are still higher costs parts and there have been performance tradeoffs. We talked about the Broadcom BCM7425, which has dual transcode support, and TiVo has looked at the chip. And there is a newer BCM7435, which just started sampling, which has quad transcode support and a general bump in capabilities, including 8 QAM tuners. (Humax has a demo box at the show using this chip, but they don’t expect it to be available to MSOs until 1Q13.) So TiVo is looking ahead and it is all but a given that this will be baked into a future product, but I wouldn’t expect that until 2013 at the earliest.

The other new set top box is the IP STB – which doesn’t have a snappy name yet, sorry. This is the baby brother to the TiVo Preview and at launch it will only work with the TiVo Premiere XL4/Q – not the TiVo Premiere or Premiere XL. STOP! Before you freak out, there is a reason, and this should change with a future update. Calm? OK. The IP STB does not have a tuner of its own, it uses a tuner from the XL4 for Live TV. In the initial release this requires dedicating a tuner in the XL4 to the IP STB. Yes, that means the tuner is not available for recordings, etc. This is done during setup, you pair the IP STB with a single Premiere XL4 and select one tuner to dedicate.

TiVo knows this is not optimal, but it is a matter of releasing something that is ‘good enough’ for market and then improving it. The plan is to have dynamic tuner allocation in a future release, whereby the IP STB would grab a free tuner for Live TV. But it is a sticky development problem to solve, so for the first release they basically avoided it by going with the dedicated tuner. It is sticky because there are a number of use cases. How can the unit reliably schedule recordings when one (or more if you have multiple IP STBs) can grab a tuner? How do you handle it if all four tuners are in use and someone wants to access Live TV on an IP STB? Etc. I’m sure lots of people have answers, but I’m also sure a lot of those answers will conflict. So TiVo needs time to work on the issue, do their usability testing, and create a good solution.

This need to dedicate a tuner is also why the Premiere and Premiere XL are not supported in the first release. They’d be reduced to single-tuner units. With the XL4 sacrificing a tuner, or even two, isn’t as big a deal. Again, this is temporary and TiVo plans to resolve this in a future update. (And just don’t even start with the “Oh, so when will that be?”, OK?)

I did ask Jim if it might be possible to pair it with an XL4 and *not* assign a tuner at all, which would mean no Live TV on the IP STB. Some users, like myself, never watch Live TV and wouldn’t miss it. I’d rather leave all four tuners free to record and use the IP STB only for watching recordings and accessing OTT content. He didn’t know if that was possible, and he’ll look into it. I think that’d be a nice setup option.

As for the hardware itself, it is a small, square, trapezoidal unit in the same league as the Apple TV or a Roku box. It supports all of the standard TiVo Peanut remotes, including the TiVo Slide remote. I didn’t get the specific model number of the chip inside, but Jim said it is roughly equal in performance to the SoC in the Premiere XL4, and that performance on the IP STB can be even higher because it doesn’t have all of the other work to do with recording, etc.

The back of the box is where you’ll find all of the connectors – coax, a component break-out port, a composite A/V break-out port, HDMI, Ethernet, USB, and power. Component and composite A/V connections are accomplished via break-out cables, similar to some of the Roku models. The coax connection is not for a tuner, it is for MoCA and only MoCA. At this time the USB port is only for the Bluetooth dongle used by the TiVo Slide remote. It will not support the old TiVo 802.11g WiFi adapter as TiVo is actively discouraging the use of WiFi due to the high bandwidth demands of the box. Though there is nothing stopping you from using an external 802.11n, or even a new 802.11ac, bridge.

I did ask if the box could be used as a MoCA bridge, like the XL4, and it cannot. So you can’t use an XL4 and an IP STB to bridge Ethernet over MoCA for another room. I was thinking that if it could act as a bridge you could connect Ethernet to the XL4, use MoCA to feed an IP STB in the bedroom, and then connect other devices, like a Blu-ray player, to the Ethernet on the IP STB. But no such luck, sorry. You’d need another ECB (Ethernet to Coax Bridge).

It is the same UI you know and (probably) love from the TiVo DVR. When you access Live TV it uses the dedicated tuner on the XL4. Recordings are streamed as-is from the XL4 to the box, so they’ll be the same MPEG-2 content. Full quality, there is no transcoding. All OTT IP content, such as Netflix, Hulu Plus, and YouTube, stream directly to the box over the network without touching the XL4. Cable MSO VOD, where supported, would require a tuner on the XL4, as it is delivered today via QAM and not IP.

Now, you probably want to know pricing and availability, right? Yeah, sorry. No pricing details as of yet. And the timeline is ‘in the coming months’. It looks like fall, maybe late summer if we’re lucky.

I think that’s it on these two boxes. I have more photos, if you want to see them check out my Picasa gallery from the show. I’ll be adding more photos as I take them the next couple of days as well.

If there is anything else you want to know, just ask. I may have forgotten to share something, and the show has two more days so I can go back to ask more questions.

EDIT: I did go back, and I did ask more questions, and I’ve posted the new info.

The Press Release is below:

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: dvr, place shifting, premiere, premiere q, premiere xl, premiere xl4, press release, stream, the cable show, tivo

Another ad has been released for Virgin Media’s recently launched Collections service offerings, featuring David Tennant as their spokesperson. This one focuses on the high-speed broadband offerings, but all of the Collections feature TiVo as well. Things are going very well indeed for the Virgin Media TiVo. From last quarter’s financial results, at the end of the quarter there were 677,100 VM subscribers with TiVo. That’s an increase of 242,000 subscribers during the quarter. TiVo is now used by 18% of their television subscriber base – and their pay TV user base grew by 50,600, largely on the back of TiVo.

And that was before the Collections service bundle promotions were offered, which kicked off with the current quarter. Virgin Media really seems to be the ideal TiVo would hope all of their MSO deals could be.

Here’s the new ad:

They also put out a shorter version of the previously released ‘Jellyfish’ ad, so I may as well share that while I’m at it:

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: broadband, cable, david tennant, doctor who, dvr, tivo, uk, video, virgin media, youtube

TiVo will announced their financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2013, which ended April 30th, on May 30th. There will be a conference call and webcast at 14:00PT/17:00ET.

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: con call, dvr, tivo, webcast

I’ve been quiet lately, sorry about that. This site is basically a one-man show and a bunch of stuff came together to suck up my time these past couple of weeks. My wife and I traded off illnesses for a while which had both of us laid up for a few days and wiped out for a few more. We had to cancel a weekend trip to NH as I was too sick to get out of bed; I think I slept for 18 hours one day. I was one of the walking dead for a while, just enough energy to do my job and then crash early.

There were familial obligations – Mother’s Day, our nephew’s birthday, stuff that needed to get done around our house, etc. And my day job has kept me pretty busy lately, including a trip down to New Jersey this past week. Just a storm of time sucks and catching up from being laid up took up the rest.

So I have a bit of catching up to do here on recent events, such as TiVo’s latest software update, and a bunch of other stuff. But I think I’m healthy again and feeling as well as I can expect given the pollen levels. So I’m going to try to knock out some posts to catch up. Sorry I’ve been absent, it bugs me when that happens too.

The timing is good since The Cable Show hits Boston this week – Monday through Wednesday. Well, actually, there is a press reception Sunday night at Fenway Park that I’ll be attending as well. This is my first time attending The Cable Show, so I’m not quite sure what to expect. I’ve attended may other trade shows and conferences over the years, both as an exhibitor and as an attendee/blogger, so I know the generalities. But each show is different, so it will be interesting to see what this one is like.

I have a meeting scheduled with TiVo on Monday morning, just after the show floor opens. So if there is anything you really want to know about, leave a comment. Oh, but don’t suggest asking about obvious stuff like the forthcoming transcoder box and IP STB, or the new SDK, as those are already on my list to follow up on, along with the rest of the road map info they previously shared. Being that this is The Cable Show I expect a lot of what TiVo will have to say will relate to their progress in the MSO market with less focus on retail products. This is their show blurb:

Only the TiVo® service brings together the best of TV, VOD and web entertainment together in a single user interface, with one remote and one simple search across everything. And in this environment of increasing over-the-top competition and shifting consumer loyalties, TiVo is uniquely suited to combine over a decade of consumer experience with the ability to integrate with existing infrastructures and the know-how to execute with speed. New this year, TiVo is showcasing its whole-home and TV-everywhere solutions, which offer the same award-winning TiVo experience on every screen, big or small. Come see why more and more cable operators are choosing TiVo for their advanced-television solutions.

Still, let me know what you want to learn.

And if there is anyone else on the exhibitor list you think I really must visit, or anything specific I should ask about, feel free to suggest it. I can’t make any promises, there is only so much time in the day, but I’m always interested in checking out interesting stuff. And if you’re an exhibitor and you think I really need to meet with you, feel free to contact me.

Speaking of contacting me, I’m always interested in meeting up with my fellow bloggers, especially since I haven’t made it to CES in a few years. So if you’re going to be there and want to get together contact me directly if you have my info, or just go through the site. And if you’ve done The Cable Show before and have any pointers, I’m open to suggestions.

Hopefully next week I’ll have some interesting info to share.

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: cable, general, site updates, the cable show, tivo

Today’s Woot! offer is a great deal on a refurbished TiVo Premiere DVR, model TCD746320 – only $44.99 + $5 S&H. This is the 320GB version of the TiVo Premiere, capable of holding up to 45 hours of HD recordings. The Premiere is the latest model in TiVo’s lineup and it has the most features. A TiVo subscription is required to activate the unit – either the $14.99 monthly plan ($12.99 for existing TiVo subscribers) or the $499 product lifetime service ($399 for existing TiVo subscribers). As I’ve said many times, the lifetime plan is the best value.

The Premiere works with antenna, analog & digital cable, and Verizon FiOS. It also supports a number of broadband content services: Amazon Instant Video, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Music Choice, YouTube, Pandora, Rhapsody, Live365, and web videos from a variety of sources such as CNET & Revision3. Stream music from your PC. View photos from your PC, or online via Picasa & Photobucket. You can control the unit via free apps for iOS & Android. Schedule recordings online via TiVo’s website.

Transfer recordings to your PC via TiVo Desktop, or a Mac with Roxio’s Toast or Popcorn. You can also move content to & from the unit, or stream video to the TiVo using third party applications like kmttg, Streambaby, or pyTiVo. And if you’re a Comcast customer, the TiVo Premiere is receiving XFINITY On Demand support. It is available now in the SF Bay Area and coming soon to Boston, with other service areas to come.

There is a reason TiVo is still the gold standard for DVRs, and this is a good deal on the current model.

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: dvr, gifts, premiere, sale, tivo, woot

The roll out of XFINITY On Demand for TiVo customers in the San Francisco Bay Area is now complete and it seems to be a great success. The new feature cleanly integrates XFINITY On Demand into the TiVo UI just like any other video service. And now that the SF Bay roll out is out of the way Comcast & TiVo have turned their sights on the next target market: Boston.

This actually isn’t a surprise, as I’ve posted a couple of times, a while back Comcast made the comment that New England was high on their list of territories to follow the SF Bay. Why? Well, to quote myself:

New England is where Comcast launched the old ‘soft-TiVo’ project. The software-only Java-based TiVo interface that was downloaded to run on their standard Motorola DVR hardware. Despite several years of effort it just never worked well. The HW was under-powered, and with the TiVo interface running in Java on a virtual machine running on top of the native OS, it wasn’t a great performer. And Comcast never seemed to iron out the issues with the head end that was supposed to allow them to dynamically push the TiVo software to units in the field. While the effort was abandoned when Comcast switched focus to XFINITY support for retail units, the existing deployment of soft-TiVo units are still supported. Comcast is looking to finally phase them out by getting the users to migrate to a TiVo Premiere once they can do so without losing their On Demand. So they have an incentive to prioritize New England.

So they still have a number of those old units in the field that they’d love to stop supporting, and I bet many of the customers would love the added benefits of having a real TiVo to boot. And perhaps Comcast will be able to recycle some of the work they did on the head end for that project to support the new roll out. In any case, TiVo confirmed today via email that Boston is the next market that will see this roll out. They didn’t provide a specific time frame, saying only that Boston would see this ‘soon’.

As always, you can sign up to be notified when this is available in your area at tivo.com/comcast

Remember, Comcast controls when this is rolled out to a new area, not TiVo. TiVo has delivered their part, the software integration on the unit. The other piece is the head end upgrades to support the service, and that’s what Comcast needs to do for each service area where this is deployed. That’s why it wasn’t flipped on for everyone at once, and why it is getting a region by region roll out. So don’t bother TiVo with questions about when it will come to your area. Odds are they don’t know, and even if they do know they can’t speak for Comcast until Comcast is willing to announce their plans. If you need to pester anyone, pester Comcast.

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: cable, comcast, dvr, on demand, premiere, premiere xl, premiere xl4, tivo, xfinity

Along with the launch of their new ‘Collections’, Virgin Media also adopted a new pitchman – David Tennant. They’d already released several videos, and now there’s another one. This one highlights the ‘Catch Up TV’ feature.

I’d love to see this integrated into the US units. As in the UK, keep the back-dated guide data going back a week or so. While we don’t have the dedicated catch up services like they have in the UK, we do have Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, and MSO On Demand services where supported. So the guide could link directly to the available service(s).

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: broadband, cable, david tennant, doctor who, dvr, tivo, uk, video, virgin media, youtube

We learned back in February that things were not going well for Aria, EchoStar’s effort to produce a CableCARD DVR for the US market. CableOne, who have been trialing the system, was reported to have given up on it and had turned their attention toward TiVo instead. Well, that may have been the last straw as Multichannel News reports that EchoStar has terminated Aria completely:

With the change, the company said in a statement provided to Multichannel News, it will shift resources to support “EchoStar’s unique intellectual property and advanced content-delivery technologies.” The company owns Sling Media, developer of the Slingbox device, and acquired the adaptive bit-rate technology of Move Technologies last year for $45 million.

However, EchoStar said it “remains firmly committed to supplying advanced hardware, software, and system solutions to its global cable, satellite, and telecom customers outside of the U.S. cable set top box market.”

“EchoStar recognizes that the highly demanding and competitive nature of the U.S. set-top market is very cost-competitive,” the company said. “After considerable review of the market and EchoStar’s sales/product development efforts, EchoStar has concluded the U.S. cable market offers insufficient revenue return opportunities to the company and our investors.”

That’s good news for TiVo, as Aria had the potential to be a serious competitor, especially with small-to-medium MSOs, if EchoStar was able to execute. EchoStar certainly knows how to make DVRs; something like a CableCARD version of DISH Network’s Hopper could’ve been quite a strong whole-home product. The death of Aria removes a potential competitor from the field, and really effectively leaves only ARRIS’s Moxi lineup to compete with TiVo for the small-to-medium market. The larger MSO market is dominated by traditional players like Motorola and Cisco, though TiVo has made inroads there with the likes of Charter.

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: aria, arris, cable, cablecard, digeo moxi, dvr, echostar, moxi, multichannel news, sling media, tivo

Last month I posted about TiVo’s apparent effort to promote their Stop||Watch ratings service to the industry. Well, it looks like the effort is ongoing. On Monday Alex Petrilli, senior manager of audience research at TiVo, blogged over at MediaBizBloggers.com.

The post seems designed to cast further doubt on the value of Nielsen’s C3 (Live+3 days) data, the mainstay of today’s ad buying. It does this by raising questions seemingly designed to generate a little fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the mind of the reader:

Changing Channels In 2008, according to Nielsen, the average TV household received 130.1 channels. Today, a midrange DirecTV package includes 225+ channels. Is the C3 metric and the Nielsen sample size equipped to handle this increased fragmentation?

Tablet Time In April of 2010 the first iPad was released and second screen viewing began to accelerate at a rapid pace. In fact, according to a recent study commissioned by Viacom, tablets have surpassed computers for full length TV show viewing and now account for 15% of all viewing. The industry doesn’t currently have a viable way to measure data for second screen viewing so where is it going to come from in the future? Nielsen’s cross-platform measurement plan cuts their NTI sample in half leaving approximately ten thousand homes to interpret what is occurring on the second screen, hardly a robust sample size.

DVR Domination And then there’s the DVR: According to a number of research studies, DVR penetration has more than doubled since 2007, going from 22% to over 45% today. The C3 metric was produced in an attempt to assuage the affect DVRs had on viewing in the home. C3 measures average viewership during the specific times when commercials are aired on a minute-by-minute basis. There are a couple of flaws in this formula, the most prevalent of which is minute-by-minute analysis. If a commercial break during Modern Family begins at 9:14:46, as I understand it, 9:14 is included in the C3 calculation. Bucketing this way can cause data which doesn’t paint the real picture of viewing. Let me show you what I mean.

He then goes on to highlight the increased accuracy of TiVo’s own Stop||Watch service. And they continue to pick on poor Modern Family as their example show:

At TiVo, our Stop||Watch rating service tracks viewing on a second-by-second basis and when analyzing a top rated show such as Modern Family, the time-shifted ratings in DVR homes can drop as much as 60% over a 14-second interval in the moments after a commercial break begins. 60%! Including those 46 seconds into the C3 calculation inflates the viewership levels for almost half of all U.S. homes. There are other factors that further complicate the equation – pod busters, commercial-program integrated spots, network promos, etc. – none of which were contemplated in the construction of the C3 metric.

TiVo really seems to be gunning hard for Nielsen’s spot as the ratings provider used as the basis for ad buying. Of course, they do seem to have a superior offering that provides much more accurate data to ad buyers.

Via MediaBizBloggers.

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: blogs, dvr, mediabizbloggers, stop||watch, tivo

A couple of weeks ago XFINITY On Demand support finally started rolling out on the TiVo Premiere for Comcast customers in the SF Bay Area. Today TiVo released a video look at the new feature. There are no surprises here, it works just like any other video provider – Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, etc. XFINITY is integrated into the UI, search results, etc., just like the others.

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: cable, comcast, dvr, on demand, tivo, video, xfinity, youtube

What’s in a name? That which we call an Elite by any other name would still be a killer DVR. Drama aside, the TiVo Premiere Elite is no more. It has been replaced by the TiVo Premiere XL4. Which has an identical feature set. And model number. OK, so all that has changed is the branding. The XL4 is simply the Elite with a new badge.

I’ve known this was coming for a while, it was one of the things we discussed during my call with TiVo back in February. I’d heard about it through the grapevine before the call, but TiVo asked me to sit on the news until they made it official – which happened this weekend. They feel the ‘XL4′ branding is more in line with the Premiere and Premiere XL branding, and more clearly indicates where the product sits in the lineup. (Note there has been at least one report out there than the XL is becoming the XL2. I confirmed with TiVo that that is incorrect, the XL remains the XL.)

So nothing changes feature-wise, it is just a change to branding – which includes new, glossy retail packaging, more retail marketing, etc. The Elite was initially sold in a plain brown box, primarily through custom installers and high-end A/V retailers. For example, Best Buy sold the Elite through their Magnolia centers – kind of high-end sub-stores within the Best Buy. But the XL4 looks like it will be on shelves alongside the Premiere and Premiere XL.

So now we have the Premiere for $149.99 – now with 500GB drive and dual cable(analog/digital)/FiOS/antenna tuners, the Premiere XL for $249.99 – with 1TB and dual cable(analog/digital)/FiOS/antenna tuners, and the Premiere XL4 for $399.99 – with 2TB and four cable(digital only)/FiOS tuners. The XL & XL4 are THX Certified and come with Glo backlit remotes, but otherwise the features are the same across the three units.

And since this is kind of a non-event, some entertainment:

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: dvr, premiere elite, premiere xl4, tivo

TiVo is running another sweepstakes, this one is dubbed TiVo’s Big Gas Sweepstakes. You can enter the sweepstakes via TiVo’s Facebook page, but it is probably easier to just do it through sweeps.tivo.com. The sweepstakes began on 4/17/12 at 12:00:00 PT and ends on 5/17/12 at 20:59:59 PT.

As you might expect, this time around they’re giving away gas – or, rather, $1000 in gas cards. Four people will each win ten $100 Chevron gift cards. It looks like they’ll work at Texaco as well, as Chevron and Texaco are sister companies. Which would be good for me if I win; there are no Chevron stations in my area, but there are a few Texaco stations.

In connection with the sweepstakes, TiVo is also running a promotion – purchase a new $149.99 TiVo Premiere with $499.99 product lifetime service or a one-year commitment to $14.99 monthly service, and receive a TiVo 802.11n WiFi adapter free. See www.tivo.com/freeadapter for details. TiVo calls it an $89.99 value, but that’s the full MSRP. Amazon has them for $64.50.

The sweepstakes is open to everyone, so you may as well enter. Even if you don’t have a car you can always sell the cards to someone else for less than face value. Selling them for 75 cents on the dollar still nets you $750, and the buyer saves 25% on gas.

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: sweepstakes, tivo

I’m a little behind the times on this one – last week was busy, my apologies. But better late than never with good news like this.

It has been a long time coming, but TiVo Premiere using Comcast customers in the San Francisco Bay Area now have access to XFINITY On Demand content. Well, at least some of them. It started rolling out on April 9th and should be rolled out across Comcast’s SF Bay service area by the end of the month. So if you’re a Comcast customer in the SF Bay Area and you don’t have XFINITY On Demand on your TiVo Premiere yet – give it some more time. You can check for current availability in your zip code, and sign up for notification of future availability, at tivo.com/comcast.

As for Comcast customers outside of the SF Bay Area – you’ll just have to keep waiting. Comcast hasn’t announced any definite plans or schedules for expansion of XFINITY On Demand support for TiVo to other service areas. And this is 100% in their hands. TiVo has delivered their end, but Comcast needs to update their head-end systems in each service area before they can enable this. The only indication we’ve had is that New England is high up on the list to get this after the SF Bay roll out is complete.

New England is where Comcast launched the old ‘soft-TiVo’ project. The software-only Java-based TiVo interface that was downloaded to run on their standard Motorola DVR hardware. Despite several years of effort it just never worked well. The HW was under-powered, and with the TiVo interface running in Java on a virtual machine running on top of the native OS, it wasn’t a great performer. And Comcast never seemed to iron out the issues with the head end that was supposed to allow them to dynamically push the TiVo software to units in the field. While the effort was abandoned when Comcast switched focus to XFINITY support for retail units, the existing deployment of soft-TiVo units are still supported. Comcast is looking to finally phase them out by getting the users to migrate to a TiVo Premiere once they can do so without losing their On Demand. So they have an incentive to prioritize New England.

Beyond that all we’ve heard is that other service areas will see support “in the coming months”. You’d have to ask Comcast for more details – not that they’re talking just yet.

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: cable, comcast, dvr, on demand, premiere, premiere elite, premiere xl, tivo, xfinity

Margret Schmidt, TiVo’s VP of User Experience, tweeted that the Software Priority Request for the Spring Update. I’ve covered the planned features before, but in short the highlights are new Netflix and YouTube clients, continued migration to HD screens, and general improvements.

You are eligible for an early upgrade if:

• You have a TiVo Premiere series DVR (TiVo Premiere, Premiere XL, Premiere Elite)
• You are a TiVo retail customer (e.g., you did not get your TiVo box through your cable company.

The software isn’t being deployed just yet, but you can reserve your spot in the queue now.

Mirrored from Gizmo Lovers Blog.

Tags: dvr, premiere, premiere elite, premiere xl, software, tivo