Items tagged with DVR
Well, this is disturbing. Russian security researcher Vladislav Yarmak is warning of a backdoor that exists in firmware for digital video recorder (DVR) and network video recorder (NVR) powered by HiSilicon system-on-chip (SoC) hardware. This is a zero-day vulnerability that could allow an attacker to gain root access to a compromised device, thereby giving them full control of the gadget. Yarmak says he discovered the vulnerability in firmware made by Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology, a Chinese firm based in Hangzhou. This is an unsettling trend with Xiongmai—back in late 2018, it was reported that over 9 million cameras and DVRs built by Xiongmail (and rebranded by several other companies)...
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Each year for the big game, hordes of people around the U.S. that care nothing about football watch the teams fight it out. The people aren’t watching out of some fascination with which team will win; they watch for the commercials. The big game is probably the only time people want to see commercials when watching TV. If you fall into the camp that cares nothing for the football game but want to see the commercials and you have a TiVo with SKIP enabled, you will love this. TiVo has a feature called GameSkip that will let you playback the recorded game and skip the actual game and only watch the commercials. GameSkip won’t show up until the game is finished and when watching that...
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Plex has confirmed a new feature has been added to its DVR system that cord cutters will really appreciate. The new feature allows the watcher to skip over all the commercials in a TV program and sounds very similar to the Dish AutoHop feature that drew rage and legal action when it debuted back in 2012. Plex's solution to end commercials can completely remove the commercials from the recorded program. Plex TV is big for cord cutters, but it isn’t eating up all the internet bandwidth in your home. The TV content is captured by an external antenna and the content is recorded via Plex and then fed out to your devices. That means you can watch free OTA content from broadcast channels in your...
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There has been an explosion of set-top boxes, streaming sticks, and media casting dongles over the past few years. To keep up with the times (and an ever growing field of competitors), TiVo has gone and refreshed its product lineup with a couple new DVR products, the Bolt Vox and Mini Vox, and a new TiVo Vox Remote with baked-in voice search functionality for looking up live TV, DVR, video-on-demand, and online streaming programs. The TiVo Bolt Vox comes with the new remote control. It is the flagship DVR in TiVo's lineup and combines the company's most powerful DVR with the popular online streaming services. Both it and the TiVo Vox Mini are largely unchanged from their non-Vox predecessors,...
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If you have FiOS service from Verizon, things just got a bit more interesting when it comes to your DVR content. Customers that have both Quantum TV and FiOS Internet service will have the capability to watch all of their received content outside of their home (as long as you have an active Internet connection). This is made possible thanks to recent updates to the FiOS Mobile App for Android and iOS. Verizon says that “nearly all” of your DVR content is available to stream outside the home, so we don’t know exactly in what circumstances that the company would forbid you you accessing certain reordered content. "The latest innovations of the FiOS Mobile app are how today's consumers want to watch...
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Attention binge watchers, TiVo invites you to "give commercials the finger" with its new Bolt set-top DVR. It's a play on words that describes Bolt's ability to skip entire commercial breaks with the single press of a button, at least in some cases. It's part of TiVo's new "SkipMode" feature, which allows Bolt to distinguish commercials during "certain recorded shows" from everything else. Combined with TiVo's new QuickMode, a feature that speeds up slow-moving programs, the Bolt allows for 30 percent overall faster viewing of recorded content. When engaged, QuickMode adjusts the pitch of audio so that voices and other sounds still sound natural. TiVo reckons QuickMode will come in handy during...
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Game consoles sure have evolved over the years. My earliest console was the Atari 2600, a comparatively simple machine to today's game systems with even simpler controls -- a joystick and a single red button. That's all you needed to play titles like Pitfall and Asteroids. Now we have consoles that not only play games, but purport to be in charge of the entire living room experience. That's fine and dandy, and while I love my Xbox One (second to my gaming PC, of course), it's missing one key function -- the ability to record video. Home consumers have been recording live TV on a mass scale since the advent of the VCR, so this isn't groundbreaking territory we're talking about here. And if current...
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Finally, there's a DVR to pair with that 100-inch television you've been eyeballing. It's the TiVo Mega and it matches the TV's obscene nature by serving up a massive 24 terabytes of storage space in a hot swappable RAID 5 configuration. There's enough storage in the TiVo Mega to record 26,000 hours of standard definition television, which would take you nearly three years to watch. Of course, why waste such copious storage on standard definition? If you just want to record your high definition shows and movies, the TiVo Mega will allow you to store 4,000 hours worth of HD content before needing to make some tough choices, such as whether to delete that show you recorded 166 days ago or the new...
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It’s hard to imagine what else the CEO of a company that makes streaming media boxes would say, but Roku CEO Anthony Wood boldly claimed that it’s just a matter of time before DVRs become a thing of the past. “To me, it's pretty clear that all TV is going to be streamed. It's either going to be streamed to a smart TV, a gaming console or a streaming player,” said Wood In a Q&A with the AP. “Things like DVD players are going to go away. Cable boxes are obviously going away, too. DVRs are just a stepping stone technology.” Roku streaming boxes He also said that he ditched the DVR when his broke--five years ago. He says in his house, all of their TV watching...
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Just yesterday, a report emerged that TiVo was laying off much of its hardware design team, leaving only a skeleton crew to support existing devices, and getting out of the hardware business altogether to focus on the cloud. According to comments made by TiVo VP of corporate communications Steve Wymer to The Verge, the notion that TiVo is abandoning hardware is false. “It's not right to say that TiVo's out of the hardware business. We're just as fired up as consumers are about the Roamio and we expect to deliver on that for years to come. It's one of our core businesses and our shining jewel." He did, however, confirm the layoffs, and those would indicate that something is changing dramatically...
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TiVo has been high on cloud technology lately, enabling its Roamio Pro and Roamio Plus DVRs to stream to mobile devices, talking up an initiative to put its Roamio DVR in the cloud with a Network PVR, and demonstrating its TiVo nDVR network DVR prototype at CES, and accordingly, its time as a hardware maker may be coming to an end. According to a Wired report, TiVo has laid off five of its industrial design team members, leaving just two people to man the division and lend support to current products and future third-party hardware. The source of the report also said that TiVo is moving away from making any hardware at all. That nDVR device, which is obviously technically hardware, won’t...
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This summer, Comcast announced a plan to run trials of a cloud-based DVR service called X2, which it is now doing, and there’s also a tweener option at play with the X1 mobile app. The app, which is available in the iTunes store, allows those with access to the X1 cloud DVR trial to watch their recorded content on their iPhones or iPads. According to Multichannel News, the app version of the cloud DVR service will officially launch next month and be called Xfinity TV. The service will allow users to stream live TV, DVR-ed content, and on-demand content to mobile devices. Presumably, the service will be available to more than just iOS device, although the timeline for that is unclear. When...
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Of all the wonderful entertainment-related technology that has emerged in recent years, perhaps none is better than the DVR. Being able to record and watch your favorite shows whenever you want without having to sit through commercials is a true game-changer, but TiVo, often the proprietary eponym for “DVR”, is pushing things further by letting iOS users enjoy their recorded content while on the go. Those with TiVo Roamio Pro and Tivo Roamio Plus DVRs can both stream and download content stored at home to iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches from anywhere with a capable Internet connection. TiVo Roamio "Now with a TiVo Roamio DVR, whether it's a hotel in Denmark, the waiting room at the...
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It only makes sense, really. Netflix has taken over the content world in many ways, even going so far as to fund original programming of its own and buck the usual trend by making entire seasons available at once. That journey has led it to an enviable position, but to date, getting to Netflix still requires something that many American households don't simply have by default. You either need a computer, a tablet, a game console, or a standalone set-top box. We're guessing that executives within Netflix have been asking themselves this question for a long while: "What would happen if Netflix access was built straight into an everyday DVR?" According to a new Wall Street Journal report, that's...
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