New Service by TiVo Will Build Bridges From Internet to the TV
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I think this is a fairly obvious thing to do. They’ve have a central demo server for music and photos since HMO came out. And, if you didn’t know, you can put a TiVo server online *anywhere* and then point any HMO-enabled unit at it from anywhere else on the net. It doesn’t have to be within the home – as long as the bandwidth is sufficient for the MP3s to stream it works. (You need to expose port 2190 (TiVo Beacon) and 8080 (the default server port).)
Back when the Series2 units were first announced with USB and network support I talked about Internet VOD. Then when Home Media Option was announced it was obvious that if you could share content between units on a LAN you could do it over the net – just slower. And since it is a copy and not a stream, it doesn’t matter – it just takes a bit longer.
Remember when the S2 first came out, before TiVo changed plans, they were talking about deals with Real Networks, JellyVisioon, and Radiance to supply audio, video, and gaming content to the platform. That was when they were still pitching TiVo as the hub for a home media network. But they switched to pushing it as a peer, which I think was a better plan anyway.
