The ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime is the hottest Android tablet out there right now. It is the first tablet with the quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor, and it looks like it may be the first tablet to officially receive Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. ASUS released a couple of videos featuring ICS on the Prime, and it looks very good. Mine is on back-order. I’d love to have it before I leave for my wedding and honeymoon, but it is looking unlikely at this point.
In a blog post today Google offered a peak into the near future of Google TV. They listed some of the partners they’re working with for the next generation of Google TV products, some returning and some new.
- LG – We’re thrilled to welcome global consumer electronics leader LG to the Google TV family. LG will showcase a new line of TVs powered by Google TV running on their own L9 chipset at CES.
- Marvell – Also new to the Google TV family this year is Marvell, an innovative worldwide leader in chipsets. Marvell will be showcasing a new generation of Google TV solutions which will help bring more products across more price points to consumers.
- MediaTek – We’re also excited to partner with MediaTek, the leading Taiwanese chipset designer. MediaTek chipsets will power yet another wave of Google TV devices.
- Samsung – We’re excited to work closely with Samsung to bring Google-TV powered Samsung devices to market in 2012.
- Sony – We’re happy to build on our partnership with Sony. At CES, Sony will unveil new devices for the US and plans to offer Google TV powered products in several countries around the world in 2012.
- Vizio – Last year we announced our partnership with Vizio at CES. This year we’re excited to join Vizio as they hold private demos at CES showcasing their new line of Google TV-powered products.
The shift to ARM based processors has been widely anticipated, though the specific partnerships with Marvell and MediaTek is new info. It is a little surprising as you might expect well known chip vendors from the mobile industry, such as NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, and Samsung, to be involved but perhaps Google feels the requirements for Google TV are different enough from mobile Android systems that alternate chip designs are better.
Sony is the only vendor who brought first generation products to market to return to this list. Samsung and Vizio both talked about Google TV at the last CES, but held off on shipping products. Which was probably for the best, given the multitude of issues with Google TV 1.0. Now that Google TV 2.0 is out, and is vastly improved over its predecessor, it is much more viable as a connected TV platform. With the addition of LG, if all four vendors really execute on Google TV in their new models, we may well see Google make good on their bold claims of Google TV being in the majority of new TVs this year.
Via the Google TV Blog.
Edit: I see in my YouTube feeds that they’ve also posted a video preview of what’s to come:
The Boeing B787 Dreamliner recently completed a round-the-world flight, setting two world records for its class in the process. The first is a distance record of 10,337 nautical miles for the first leg of the flight. The second is time for eastbound round-the-world flight of 42 hours 27 minutes.
TiVo released more than a software update for the TiVo Premier tonight, they also released the long-awaited official TiVo Android App! That may explain why they recently had the 3rd party TiVo Commander app pulled from the Android Market, to eliminate any potential confusion with this official app. I now have both installed on my Galaxy Nexus and the icons are nearly identical. While TiVo Commander was a great app as a stopgap the official app is simply superior in every way, as far as I can tell.
The Android app looks much like the most recent update of the iOS version, and includes pretty much the same functionality. The app works with TiVo Series4 (Premiere family) and Series3 (S3/HD) units, though some of the features only work with the Premiere:
If you have an Android device running 2.1 Froyo or later, grab it now.
Note that this only works with TiVo Series3 (S3/HD) and Series4 (Premiere) units. It does not work with the old Series1 or Series2 units, nor any DirecTV TiVo model. The description does explicitly state that it works with RCN & Suddenlink provided TiVo units – and I’d guess it also works for Grande Communications and Charter customers, but it’d be good to have confirmation of that. Also, you must enable the Network Remote Control feature under Settings & Messages -> Settings -> Remote, CableCard, & Devices -> Network Remote Control. Or whatever the path is on your specific model and software revision – just look for it under Settings. If you don’t have it enabled, the app cannot connect to your box.
On thing I want to call out, the app description says this is for your“Android phone or 7inch tablet”. That’s oddly specific. I don’t know why I wouldn’t work on a larger tablet, even if it isn’t fully optimized for them. Just as there are different versions of the iOS app for the iPhone/iPod Touch and the iPad there is probably a tablet-optimized version of the Android app. If you have a larger tablet and you give this a try, leave a comment about how it works for you. I’d also love to hear from Virgin Media TiVo users on whether this app works for you.
Some screenshots:
EDIT: TiVo published a video overview today:
In a surprise move tonight TiVo began rolling out a new software version for the TiVo Premiere family (Premiere, Premiere XL, and Premiere Elite), jumping all the way from version 14.9.2 to 20.2! While I’m sure the new version includes performance improvements and bug fixes under the covers, the big changes are to the UI – and there are several. Margret Schmidt, TiVo’s Vice President, User Experience, has been teasing followers on Twitter with images of some of the screens uploaded to TwitPic. As of this writing she’s uploaded six images, which I grabbed and included in the gallery below.
The TiVo Premiere Elite I have for review was flagged to be one of the first units to receive the update, and I forced a call and a reboot to install it a couple of hours ago. This update does take a while to install. I didn’t time it, but it took at least half and hour to complete.
I’ve been playing with it to get a feel before making this post, and overall I have to say it is a nice improvement. It will take some getting used to since some of the UI behaviors changed. For example, with the old Info Banner at the top of the screen you could press ‘Right’ to toggle through three different sizes. With the new, smaller Info Banner, which appears just over the playback back that is no longer the case.
In fact, the small version of the banner only seems to appear when you first enter a video or Live TV, or change the channel. Pressing ‘Right’ or ‘Info’ calls up a medium sized banner that takes up about half of the screen and includes four ‘tabs’ on the left – the first showing the current program info, the second a listing on what is on each tuner (all four tuners on the Elite) and allowing you to jump to another tuner, the third controls closed captions, and the fourth the audio track. These options used to be on the right of the old banner.
The Guide has changed in a major way. Instead of the TiVo Guide we’ve had, well, forever, it is now a fully HD Guide that occupies the entire screen with the current programming pushed up into a window in the upper right. No longer is it overlaid on top of the programming. I have to say it looks very good, and I really like this change. I hate the ‘Spoiler Window’ (thanks to Ben Drawbaugh for that name) in the TiVo menus, and it is the first thing I disable, but it is perfect for the guide called up while watching a program. You still have the choice of a TiVo or Grid guide style, and you can sort the listings by channel number or name.
Oh, but UI changes are not all TiVo has packed into this update – they’ve also enabled Multi-Room Streaming (MRS) between TiVo Premiere units. So if you have multiple TiVo Premiere units in your home you’ll be able to stream content between them once you receive the 20.2 update. And, unlike MRV (Multi-Room Viewing), streaming doesn’t create a copy, so you should be able to stream even copy protected content. Unfortunately, I only have the one Premiere unit, so I can’t test this myself.
In fact, TiVo emailed me a list of the features users can expect in 20.2:
Hulu Plus search integration means that when you search for content it will now show you if that program is available from Hulu Plus, just as it has for TV, Netflix, Amazon, and Blockbuster in previous releases. The discovery bar now includes labels under each entry such as “Top Pick”, “In My Shows”, “Suggestion”, “Top Pick Today”, etc. The other thing I noticed is that the discovery bar now only contains six entries (four if you have the Spoiler Window enabled), all the same size. It is no longer scrollable left or right. What you see is what you get. The clock is a small time display in the upper right of the HD menu screens, which is a nice touch.
So how do you get your hands on the awesomeness? Well, you can wait patiently for your number to come up as TiVo gradually rolls it out. However, if you’re reading this blog I suspect your not the type who likes to wait patiently for the latest and greatest. In that case Margret offered this to her Twitter followers:
If you follow me on twitter and have a Premiere, email me your TiVo Service Number I’ll do my best to get you a priority update…
I’m not going to post her email address, I’m not evil. But it is easy enough to find for anyone who reads her Twitter feed.
Edit: Three more images were uploaded, I’ve added them here.
So far I’ve only found one downside to this update, and it is something that most users will probably never notice. But it is something that causes me pain deep in my heart. The on-screen clock and elapsed time indicator is unusable in HD now! *sobs* It is still there, but instead of being unobtrusively down in the lower-right corner of the screen, at a nicely readable size, if you enable this hidden feature now it appears almost dead center on the screen, and in a tiny font. If you switch to SD menus it is still as it has been, it is only when using the HD menus that this happens.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, entering Select-Play-Select-9-Select has long turned on a clock and recording playback elapsed time indicator overlay. It has never been an official feature, just a nifty backdoor. I’ve been using it for many years and I already miss it. It just looks wrong not to have it there, and it has been my main (and only) clock in my living room for ages. I’m sure I’ll get used to the loss, and the improvements are worth it, but I’m still sad to see it go.
