Items tagged with TiVo
It's been a while since we visited the ongoing feud between Google and Roku. When we last broached the topic, we were hopeful that the two companies could work out their differences over YouTube TV on the Roku platform. Unfortunately, over a month later, the two companies are further entrenched in their positions on YouTube TV access. Now, Google is offering YouTube TV customers with Roku TVs free hardware to ease their pain. Google sent the following message to select YouTube TV customers: To ensure our loyal YouTube TV members have a great watch experience (including the ability to watch 4K content on our optional new add-on service coming soon!), we want to offer you a free TiVo® Stream...
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TiVo fans will be getting a new app later in 2019 that will expand the capabilities of its ecosystem. At CES 2019 TiVo showed off new apps for Apple TV, Fire TV, and Roku devices that will allow users with TiVo boxes to view live and recorded content on multiple TVs in their home. The cool part about that feature is that it uses the customer's existing hardware and doesn't require them to purchase additional TiVo set-top boxes, like the recently announced Bolt, or the currently available TiVo Mini. TiVo has stated that it expects to launch the apps during Q2 and Q3 of 2019. The first app to launch will be for Fire TV users, the Roku app will come next, with the Apple TV app being last. The way...
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TiVo is making an aggressive pitch to cord cutters and would-be cord cutters alike, saying its new Bolt OTA set-top box can save them hundreds of dollars a year "while still enjoying the best TV experience of your life." In three years time, TiVo says the savings can add up to more than $800, a not insignificant amount of money. "TiVo Bolt OTA is the perfect solution for a broad range of passionate TV viewers, including those considering cutting their cable TV subscriptions or those who might’ve already cut the cord but are unhappy with their limited HD antenna tuner," the company says. The Bolt OTA is a 4K set-top box for pulling in signals from just about any high-definition antenna....
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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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TiVo's Rovi Corporation and Comcast are wrapped up in another legal battle with TiVo claiming that Comcast is violating patents that are held by Rovi and related affiliates. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. In the suits, TiVo alleges that the Comcast X1 platform is infringing on patents that Rovi holds that have to do with the capability for a viewer to pause a show and resume playback on different devices. Rovi also claims that Comcast is infringing on patents that have to do with restarting live programming in progress, advanced DVR recording features and advanced search and...
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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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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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You’ve had a long day at work and have been looking forward to watching the season finale of your favorite show. Problem is, during the middle of the episode, you fell asleep and forgot to set your DVR to record it. Sure, you can wait to watch it on Netflix or wait an eternity until the re-run, but now a wearable wristband called KipstR, in conjunction with a TiVo box, will record whatever you are watching when you fall asleep. The wristband was designed by Ryan Oliver, 15, and Jonathan Kingsley, 14, who attend Manchester Creative Studio and were commissioned by Virgin Media to develop the 3D printed device. As part of Virgin’s Switched on Futures initiative, the two teens created...
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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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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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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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Like it or not, the cloud is the future. So, you best get an Internet connection (and perhaps a data plan) to deal with it. While local storage will always have its place, being instantly accessible anywhere where there's an Internet connection obviously has its benefits. Now, the biggest name in recording television has debuted its Network PVR. The project will bring TiVo Roamio's DVR experience to the cloud. TiVo's Network PVR extends the TiVo Service and consistent user experience while enabling consumers to easily find, consume and socially share cloud delivered content through the TiVo user interface. In addition to moving the Roamio experience to the cloud, TiVo would be enabling operators...
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The television industry could use a swift kick in the rear, or at least a revolution in terms of the UI used to access pay-TV content. But until then, it looks as if the second screen is the only place where innovation is ongoing. TiVo's latest efforts on this front is in the app world, where its mobile companion software is being used to power cable operators' second screen experiences. Thomas Elam, Vice President and General Manager Service Provider Business, TiVo, said, "TiVo's operator solutions help the provider's subscribers realize the full value of their subscription and enhance content related transactions. We are excited to provide the full power of our mobile applications 'powered...
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TiVo has won more than its share of patent disputes pertaining to its DVR technology over the last few years, winning settlements from AT&T ($215 million), Dish Network and EchoStar ($500 million total), and Verizon ($250.4 million). The latest companies to lose against TiVo are Cisco and Google-owned Motorola Mobility. (Motorola made lots of set-top boxes for the likes of Time Warner Cable.) According to BusinessWeek, Cisco and Google (which inherited Motorola’s legal troubles when it bought the company) will have to fork over a combined total of $490 million to TiVo, with Cisco being responsible for $294 million of that amount. In the wake of the settlements, TiVo enters licensing...
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At long last, it's finally over. The long running patent dispute between Verizon and TiVo is finally over, and TiVo has to be smiling. The companies have entered into a license agreement, and according to those terms, Verizon will provide TiVo total compensation worth at least $250.4 million. The payments from Verizon to TiVo shall be comprised of a $100 million initial cash payment followed by recurring quarterly payments totaling an additional $150.4 million through July 2018. If the companies pursue certain commercial initiatives prior to December 21, 2012, up to $29.4 million of the payments made by Verizon would be subject to a credit of an equal amount. In addition to the guaranteed compensation,...
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The DVR is the best thing to happen to television since the advent of color, and TiVo quickly became the proprietary eponym (or genericized trademark, or synecdoche, or whatever you want to call it) for the technology. Tomorrow, TiVo is launching a new 500GB version of its TiVo Premiere product that will hold 75 hours of HD programming, can record two shows at once, and will shake up the cost and monthly pricing of the whole TiVo Premiere line. The new TiVo Premiere will cost $149.99 (up from $99 for the old version), and the monthly service fee (for the first year, with a one-year commitment) will drop from $19.99 to $14.99. The multi-service deal will be $12.99 monthly with a one-year commitment,...
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TiVo. What a brand. Everyone with a DVR has probably slipped up and called their generic DVR a "TiVo" at some point, and now the company's hoping to replace some of those black boxes with genuine TiVo boxes courtesy of a deal with DirecTV. The company announced this week the nationwide availability of the TiVo HD DVR from DirecTV, better known as DirecTiVo. "DIRECTV customers nationwide can now experience the TiVo HD DVR from DIRECTV, which combines TiVo's award-winning user interface with DIRECTV's great lineup of HD programming," said David Sandford, Vice President, General Manager of TiVo's service provider business. "With the introduction of this product, DIRECTV customers can again experience...
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Remember when TiVo decided to offer on-demand Domino's Pizza in 2008? Feels like forever ago, but the famed pizza chain is stepping keeping up with technological changes. While online pizza ordering has been around for years now, this new iPad app is a sight to behold. The Domino's Pizza Hero for iPad app is an iPad-only affair, but the capabilities are just insane. You can use the app to build your own pie, but where the fun really starts is that "Order" button. Whatever pie you dream up, you can actually order from a nearby Domino's store. And a real human will deliver it. It's the future, and it's here, now. If you have an iPad, we doubt you'll ever order pizza the "normal" way ever again....
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Today, TiVo announced a partnership with Best Buy's in-house label Insignia to ship a Connected TV with TiVo. That's right; an Insignia TV with TiVo technology within. Pretty crazy to see that name instead of Sony or Samsung or LG, but Best Buy has some pretty serious pull in the supply chain. Insignia Connected TV customers can enjoy broadcast and online movies, shows, and music, but they'll have access to a TiVo guide. There's no built-in DVR, so users can't actually store shows on the TV for watching later, but it's certainly a bold start. The new Insignia Connected TV will be available in 32- and 42-inch models for $499 and $699 respectively, on BestBuy.com and at Best Buy stores nationwide....
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Hulu Plus continues to expand to additional Internet-connected devices. Now, the Hulu Plus subscription service is available on TiVo Premiere retail boxes. With this announcement, TiVo Premiere users will be able to access Hulu Plus content for a subscription fee of $7.99 per month. Until August 30, TiVo is offering a 6-month free trial of the new Hulu Plus offering to those who purchase a TiVo Premiere from a retailer or Tivo.com. For TiVo subscribers who already have a subscription to Hulu Plus, you'll be able to access your account right away for no additional charges. Hulu Plus Now Available on TiVo Premiere May 23rd, 2011 by Rob Wong Director, Product Management I love delivering good news....
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Well, it's not exactly the ideal way to add cash to the coffers, but given TiVo's struggles, they'll take it. A release was put out this week noting that TiVo would soon be taking home $500 million courtesy of Dish Network and EchoStar, who have agreed to pony up half a billion dollars to settle ongoing patent litigation. Under the terms of the settlement, DISH Network and EchoStar agreed to pay TiVo $500 million, including an initial payment of $300 million with the remaining $200 million distributed in six equal annual installments between 2012 and 2017. As part of the deal, TiVo, DISH Network and EchoStar agreed to dismiss all pending litigation between the companies with prejudice and to...
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