TiVo Completely Changes Their Interface Design

Posted on Friday, April 18, 2008 by MegaZone

A number of people have been asking for it, and TiVo has finally made drastic changes to the interface design – of their website. (Gotcha.) Sometime overnight TiVo appears to have launched a new corporate website design. Last night when I went to check on something it was the same design it has been for a long time, and just now I loaded it to find a completely different site design. If you remember way back at CES 2007, TiVo was showing off a prototype for what was going to be their new corporate website. But it never materialized. The new site is not the same design they were showing back then, but it is heavily Flash driven like the prototype.

At first blush the new design is nice, but it is going to take a while to get used to it. The old design was in place for so long that I new how to navigate it quickly to get to the pages I commonly used. Everything is moved around now, so I’ll have to get used to the new navigation. It looks like the whole site hasn’t been updated, if you poke around you’ll sometimes find yourself on pages with the old style, such as TiVo Rewards. Though it could be since the current TiVo Rewards program is being phased out anyway, they just didn’t bother to update that area of the site to the new style.

Overall, it is a dramatic change to the site, and I like it.

About MegaZone

MegaZone is the Editor of Gizmo Lovers and the chief contributor. He's been online since 1989 and active in several generations of 'social media' - mailing lists, USENet groups, web forums, and since 2003, blogging.    MegaZone has a presence on several social platforms: Google+ / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / LiveJournal / Web.    You can also follow Gizmo Lovers on other sites: Blog / Google+ / Facebook / Twitter.
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  • http://www.autoworksphoto.com Jay

    Looks nice from the main page, and is great for people considering buying a TiVo. But for those of us who have them, they really need to turn their attention to TCO. The guide/interface is so outdated, and is in desperate need of modernization. Ajax based guides, the ability to set preferred DVRs, a TRUE keep me logged in function (why the heck does it think I’m on the east coast every time I come back from a saved login?!?!), just to name a few. Oh, and an iPhone optimized TCO would be WONDERFUL. These are all things that shouldn’t cause any drastic changes in the TiVo software itself – just the site. Of course, there’s a whole heck of a lot of things that would be great improvements if we included that as well :)

  • http://hdtivo.wordpress.com hdtivo

    Does the new design include a product lots more people will want to buy?

    Is this really more important than m-mode-card support on the S3? Well, ok, maybe. :)

  • http://www.gizmolovers.com/ MegaZone

    HDTiVo – Actually, I’d have to say yes. Since the S3 has been discontinued, adding M-Card support really isn’t going to sell more boxes. While the site was pretty stale and the new site is more inviting to new customers trying to decide if they want to buy this TiVo thing. I think the site update will do more for business than M-Card support would.

    And, personally, I don’t think the S3 will ever get M-Card support. I suspect the problem is the chipset vendor not providing M-Card support for TiVo to build on, which is probably one of the reasons they switched to an XCode chip in the TiVo HD. That chip includes M-Card support. I believe TiVo always intended to provide M-Card support, and perhaps had a promise from their vendor to provide support, and then it fell through and TiVo was left hanging.

  • Cassidy

    @HDTiVo – Hope their web development team is not the same group as their STB programming team ;) .

    @Mega – I seem to remember a video of Jim Denney saying that the m-card support was actually already under CableLabs certification. I could be wrong. It’d be at least 6 months old.

  • Glenn

    Very nice. I like it! As you say, when you go to some pages like “My Account” (or “My Account” then “My Acccount”) you get the old style which is a little jarring. I assume they’ll clean this up eventually. I love the Tivo sound on the main page…

  • http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ Gryphon

    You joke, but they did finally reorder the Find Programs menu so that the To Do List is all the way at the bottom again. (Now, if only they’d do the same with the main menu, so that even when they’re shilling something at me, the Setup/Standby menu is still at the bottom.)

  • Glenn

    Gryphon–I’m not clear. You think this is good?

    I liked it better where it was. If they’d just put red spots on the things that are going to record in the Program Guide I guess I wouldn’t need to refer to to it so often, but right now…

  • http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ Gryphon

    Yeah, I do. I have no use whatever for Guru Guides and whatever else was added to the list, and found it very annoying when a single page-down and click right would no longer take me to the To Do List, as I had become accustomed to do. So I’m pretty pleased that the maneuver works again.

  • http://www.gizmolovers.com/ MegaZone

    Personally I noticed the menu re-order, but don’t care – because I use the shortcuts. I always use TiVo+2 to get to To Do List, so I don’t card where it is in the menus. Same with TiVo+4 to search for something, TiVo+3 for Wishlists, and TiVo+1 for Season Pass Manager. I never use 5, 6, 7, or 9, can’t even remember which is which off the top of my head. I do use 8 (Suggestions) now and then.

    And for putting it into Standby I use TiVo+Slow to get to the menu, then ChanDown Select.

  • http://hdtivo.wordpress.com hdtivo

    Weren´t we talkin´about the web site???? :o

    I really was kidding about m-card, but I really do hope TiVo accomplished something useful for this effort. Maybe I´ll blog it if I ever visit the site. :)

    Interesting angle on the m-card problem, though.

  • http://hdtivo.wordpress.com hdtivo

    As long as we are talking about the TiVo+ codes, wasn´t it annoying that TiVo+slow was gone for so many versions?

    I often don´t understand TiVo´s interface moves. Often I just figure the barbarians are maintaining the empire.

  • urwathrtz

    WOW, I was just saying to my self the other day about how the TiVo web site needed a face lift. It looks great.

  • FiftyNinth

    It’s about time for a new website, although TCO doesn’t look that different so far. But it’s fun to see how links take you back and forth between new and old sections of the site.

  • Janol

    Nice new website, but search engines don’t really like Flash, and it is now quite hard to bookmark a specific page on the site.

  • http://www.gizmolovers.com/ MegaZone

    Search engines are getting better about handling interactive content. But anything that doesn’t grok Flash gets a straight HTML version. You can force it by tacking ?showHomeHTML=true on the URL, like so.