“TiVo Premiere has always offered the best of XFINITY TV channels with the most popular web services, and we are excited to now integrate the XFINITY On Demand library for Boston subscribers, delivering a true one-stop shop for at-home entertainment,” said Doug Bieter, Vice President of Retail Sales for TiVo, Inc. “We are pleased that TiVo Premiere users in the Boston area will have an opportunity to experience this great XFINITY On Demand content and we look forward to additional markets in the near future.”

TiVo states it is available in the ‘greater Boston area’, so it should cover a fairly large geographic area. The TiVo website has a zip code look up to determine if your area has service. I just checked my old Waltham, MA zip code, 02453, and the site reports that service is available. (These days I’m in Worcester, MA, 01606, which is Charter territory. So no XFINITY On Demand for me.)

There is a little bit of bad news though. If you’re one of the few users still clinging to the old ‘soft-TiVo’ (Comcast DVR with TiVo) that Comcast offered way back in 2008 in the area, it is time to give it up and buy a real TiVo. For those who don’t remember, this was a special software image for Comcast’s standard Motorola DVR hardware that gave it the TiVo UI. But it never worked very well as the hardware is under powered and you had the HW running the base OS, with a Java interpreter on top of that, which then ran the TiVo software. It was a great idea in concept, but it never worked well in reality. So I don’t think this is a big loss, and the retail TiVo Premiere unit is far more powerful and feature-rich than those old units.

Now that they’re launching On Demand support for retail TiVo Premiere units, Comcast is discontinuing support for the soft-TiVo units on or around August 1, 2012. So you have until then to pick up a TiVo Premiere unit if you want to continue to have TiVo in your home. Before you run out and buy one at retail – TiVo is offering you one for free! See tivo.com/bostonoffer for details. They’re offering a 320GB TiVo Premiere for free with a monthly rate discounted to $12.95 from the usual $14.99, with a one year commitment. Or product lifetime service is $499.99. This offer is only for users who still have the Comcast DVR with TiVo.

If you’d rather have the 500GB TiVo Premiere, the 1TB TiVo Premiere XL, or the 2TB, four tuner TiVo Premiere XL4 they’re offering $100 off on those. And if you want multiple units they’re offering factory refurbished units for $49.99. (Personally I’d just get the XL4 and wait for the IP STB due later this year for multi-room functionality.) Again, these deals are only for customers who currently have the old Comcast DVR with TiVo and who are looking to switch before their service is turned off on or around August 1st.

If you’re not a Comcast DVR with TiVo users, and you don’t yet have a TiVo Premiere with which to take advantage of this new support, there is a sale on the TiVo Premiere XL and TiVo Premiere Elite on – but it ends today. $50 off a factory-renewed Premiere XL or a new Premiere Elite – $149.99 and $349.99, respectively. And yes, Premiere Elite, not Premiere XL4 – they’re getting rid of the remaining pre-name-change stock, I asked. Same hardware, different badge on the front. Amazon has the 320GB Premiere for $89.99, the 500GB Premiere for $109.75, the Premiere XL for $203.24 (did they miss the memo about list dropping to $199.99?), and the Premiere XL4 for $342.10.

TiVo Premiere subscribers in additional markets across the country are expected to have access to the XFINITY On Demand library in the coming months. Visit www.tivo.com/comcast to learn more or to sign up for notifications when XFINITY On Demand becomes available on TiVo Premiere in additional areas. Boston is the second Comcast service area to receive XFINITY On Demand support, following the SF Bay Area.

Which area will be third? I think Chicago may have a shot. Why? Back in 2008 Chicago looked set to be the next market for the soft-TiVo, after Boston, but the roll out stopped before it launched there. And Chicago is one of two cities where Comcast launched tru2way support as a trial with TV manufacturers, before that effort fizzled as well. (The other city was Denver.) This means they’ve probably already done a lot of work upgrading their head ends there, and they are likely in a good position to take the upgrade for the new service. Plus Chicago is a large market, apparently 2.3 million cable households, so it would have a potential for a large return.

But that’s all speculation of course. Only Comcast knows where they’ll launch the service next.

TiVo will continue to support ATSC in future products, in some way, shape or form. I asked about this because the TiVo Premiere XL4 is a QAM only product, and knowing how hardware development and refresh cycles work I fully expect the Premiere and Premiere XL to be refreshed at some point and migrate to a shared design with the XL4. It is much more cost effective to produce one board and simply populate it differently for different products. The Premiere and Premiere XL will clearly be updated to add MoCA at some point, and it makes sense to go to a shared design. But that had implications for ATSC, hence my query.

TiVo can’t say, probably because at this point they honestly don’t know, what form an ATSC-supporting product might take, but they know there is a solid niche of ATSC users. Clearly the majority of their business comes from cable subscribers, but they do not plan to abandon ATSC users. There are issues with supporting ATSC however. ATSC tuners are more expensive than QAM tuners, and aren’t available in the same densities. We’re seeing single QAM tuner chips with six QAM tuners, even fully integrated SoCs with six, or more, integrated QAM tuners – but not ATSC.

This makes it harder, and more costly, to design and build a product with ATSC support. And the more ATSC tuners you include the higher the cost and complexity. And there are often knock-on costs – additional RAM, ancillary chips, etc. Add to that the effects of economies of scale. There are more QAM-enabled products than ATSC, that means there is more demand for QAM chips. The greater demand drives higher production levels of QAM chips, and the per-unit costs keeps coming down. ATSC components aren’t following the same decline, but remaining at higher price points.

And that’s why we don’t have an ATSC XL4, and probably won’t see one. And also why the bulk of products going forward are likely to be QAM-only, with specific SKUs to address the ATSC market niche.

On a different note, the new TiVo SDK will be released ‘this fall’. TiVo has hired someone who is working full time on running the SDK program and driving it to release. They’re serious about getting it out there and attracting more developers to create apps for TiVo.

TiVo would like to support Amazon Prime Streaming as much as users would like them to, but at this time they have nothing additional to announce.

My own take is that it is in the road map but they need developer support from Amazon to get it done. Remember the situation with Hulu Plus? Same deal. It will almost certainly happen, the question is when, but TiVo isn’t going to announce anything until there is something firmer to stand on. Like I said, that’s my read on the situation.

As for HBO Go – they know there is demand but they have nothing public to announce right now. My take is they will probably do it but won’t be saying anything until there is ink on paper to authorize it.

While I’m on the subject, TiVo says to expect a lot of additions to OTT content and, further out, extensive changes to the UI for selecting OTT content. I’m heartened by this, as the weak support for OTT content has been a pet peeve of mine for some time. For myself, I’d love to see content like NASA TV and Crunchyroll supported. I know others would love sports channels, such as MLB.TV. And the UI for Web Video is very creaky now. Next to something like Roku it is kind of sad.

I think the ’tile’ HD UI for ‘browse’ that TiVo has now could make for a decent web video UI. You could have a tile for a provider, and then tiles for each ‘show’ from the provider within that screen, etc. I think that if TiVo can really enhance the UI and expand the content list, the IP STB could have a secondary life as a general purpose streaming STB even for non-TiVo households.

As I reported back in February, TiVo continues to consider adding support for DLNA/DTCP-IP but doesn’t have anything more to say at this time. However, I have to say that, after talking to many vendors at the show, TiVo will add support for DLNA/DTCP-IP. It is a question of when now, not if.

Why do I say that? Because everyone else is doing it. It is really taking off, it seems like every vendor I talked to had something to say about DLNA/DTCP-IP. Just one example, the Pace XG1 box that runs the TiVo software can also run several other software stacks. On every other stack it uses DLNA/DTCP-IP for whole home streaming – but when running the TiVo software it uses TiVo’s proprietary system. ARRIS’s Moxi DVRs use DLNA/DTCP-IP – and therefore you can use a PS3, DLNA/DTCP-IP-enabled Smart TV, etc., as a client.

The stack is rapidly becoming MoCA+DLNA+DTCP-IP – and with RUI coming on strong as the next likely standard component. Since TiVo is serious about playing in the MSO market, and MSOs all seem to be extremely interested in standardizing on these components, I believe TiVo will simply have to adopt them to remain a player. It is almost painful to say, but the big, legacy players seem to be adopting standards faster than TiVo. You’re going to see DLNA everywhere before long, and TiVo needs to invite themselves to that party or risk being on the outside looking in.

Oh, a little side note. I was in Pace’s booth today, looking at the XG1 (there will be a post eventually), and I got crowded up for a bit by a gaggle of suits who came in for a demo. I noticed they were with Suddenlink, and they were quite interested in the XG1 running the TiVo software. I overheard some generally favorable comments about TiVo as a solution, but they seemed to like the idea of more ‘MSO-friendly’ hardware like the Pace unit. Which is kind of the whole point of TiVo’s partnership with Pace, so that’s a good thing.

Another good thing is that the Pace reps I observed doing the demo for various groups were all pretty gung ho about the TiVo solution. While they had an number of units setup, running different UI stacks (Comcast X1, a few Rovi solutions, etc.), they really stressed the TiVo solution. I head things like “TiVo is the one we’re really excited about” from the reps talking to MSO people dropping by for a demo. So that’s good to see & hear; it is good to see TiVo with an enthusiastic partner.

On a different note, unsurprisingly TiVo wouldn’t comment about future DVR products, aside from indicating it was likely transcoding will be ‘baked in’ to some future box, as I previously reported. But reading between the lines I think we can expect to see more tuners in a future box as well – an XL6 if you will. There are chips available now with six, or more, integrated QAM tuners. And an M-Card supports a maximum of six streams.

In addition there are a growing number of units from other vendors appearing with six tuners, which means competitive pressure on TiVo. Their MSO partners are going to want to “keep up with the Joneses”. While they could do that by using a box like the Pace XG1, those that have based their solutions on TiVo hardware are likely to want commonality.

My speculation is that sometime in 2013 we’ll see an ‘XL6′ using one of the newer chips, such as the BCM7435, with six QAM tuners, MoCA 2.0, and on-board transcoding. It probably will not have built-in WiFi as TiVo is trying to steer users away from WiFi and toward Ethernet or MoCA, to avoid customer experience issues and support headaches with streaming and flaky WiFi networks.

The tablet version of the Android app is actively being worked on. I reported in March that TiVo was saying ‘spring’ for Android tablets, but that’s clearly slipped a little. They recently made changes to the way they handle app development and they’re committed to iOS and Android. When the TiVo Stream is released this fall there will be clients for both, on phones and tablets. The streaming functionality will be incorporated into the existing TiVo apps.

TiVo is aware that the new YouTube and Netflix apps have long start-up times, and they’re working on ways to speed that up. The apps themselves are out of their control, that’s Google & Netflix, but they are working to improve performance, especially the start-up.

TiVo is updating their software more frequently, and we can expect more and more of the UI to migrate to HD with the coming releases. Screens such as the Season Pass Manager, To Do List, and screens from a remote unit (such as when using MRS), will be made HD this year. I think TiVo has made some real progress with the migration over the past couple of releases and I look forward to seeing it continue to progress.

OK, I think that’s it for now – and I really need to get a few hours of sleep before I return for the last day of the show. I have plenty more to write up as posts – such as my visits with Humax, Pace and Arris – but that’ll have to wait.

As they say, a picture is worth 1,000 words, and this one answers some of the questions I had, and that I heard from readers. Note that the photo is from a box running development software, so the screen and/or language therein may change before release, etc. But the underlying logic is what we should expect in the initial release. As you can see, you do not have to give up a tuner on your Premiere XL4 to use the IP STB – if you’re willing to forego Live TV, as I am. Basically you’re reserving one or two tuners in the XL4 for use by IP STB(s) elsewhere in the home. When a tuner is reserved it is not available for anything else. It is not used for recordings, it is only used for Live TV on the IP STB. Period.

Now, one question that occurred to me after I’d left the show today was if a tuner is paired with a single IP STB, or if it can be shared. Say you have one XL4 and three IP STBs – can you reserve just one tuner which would allow any one of the three IP STBs to use Live TV at a time? I’ll need to ask that.

But, that aside, you can see that you have the option to reserve 0, 1, or 2 tuners for use by IP STBs. Personally I’d go with 0 as I never use Live TV and would only want the IP STB to access my recordings or OTT content. I think this will make a number of people happy. Also, this is a settings screen on the XL4 and you can change this whenever you want. So it isn’t something you have to do at setup, etc. So if you know you want to watch Live TV in another room (the game is on, you’re sick in bed, whatever) you can reserve a tuner and then un-reserve it when you no longer need it.

Speaking of setup, there apparently really isn’t much of one on the IP STB. Setup basically involves ‘pairing’ it with the XL4 – and that’s it. There’s nothing else to setup, it pulls all of the settings it needs from the XL4. I’m told there are very few settings local to the IP STB.

I did confirm that the will not pair with the Premiere or Premiere XL at launch, only the Premiere XL4 (aka the Premiere Q for MSOs). So no Live TV on your IP STB if that’s all you have. And this isn’t a ‘soft’ thing where it isn’t officially supported but you can make it work, the software is just not there to support it on those units. However, the IP STB is a standard Multi-Room Streaming (MRS) client. It can stream content of of any Premiere unit in the home. So it does work with the Premiere and Premiere XL in as far as you’ll be able to stream your recordings via MRS. My understanding is that you will not be able to set recordings on the Premiere or Premiere XL, etc., as that requires the pairing that can only be done with the XL4. Basically whatever you can do with MRS between Premieres today you can do from the IP STB, but that’s all – for now at least. (I’m going to double check to make sure that’s accurate.)

As for pricing – again, they haven’t said yet. We don’t know if they’ll be a one-time purchase, or if there will be a subscription required, etc. Personally I expect them both to be one-time purchases with no subscription requirement. But they will need to be activated on the TiVo account so that they get the same MAK and can connect to the TiVo DVR units on the network.

I did have an idea which I suggested to TiVo – parental lock down on the IP STB. Basically ‘KidZone’ on a per-box basis. My idea is that you could put an IP STB in the kids’ room and lock it down so it can only access a wall garden of recordings and channels, just like KidZone did. You’d be able to (dis)allow functions – so the kids couldn’t delete recordings, or cancel them, or setup new recordings, etc. Whatever power you want to give them. Basically they’d have their own Nerfed virtual TiVo.

Enough about the IP STB, how about the TiVo Stream? The Stream will transcode at native resolution. So the 1080i recording remains 1080i as H.264, and the 720p recording remains 720p as H.264, etc. So it isn’t fixed, or limited to 720p, etc. And side-loading happens at better than real time. I was told ’2x’ is a good rule of thumb – so a 30 minute recording will side-load in 15 minutes, etc. But this varies depending on the bit rate of the source material. A 19mbps minimally compressed HD ATSC stream will probably take closer to real time, while a 2mbps highly compressed SD digital cable recording will likely side-load very quickly. In other words, results will vary, but it isn’t stuck with only doing real-time transcodes for side-loading.

Right now the TiVo Stream will only stream content from a TiVo DVR to one of the TiVo client apps on iOS or Android. TiVo hasn’t announced anything for other platforms at this time. I don’t know if we might see an updated version of TiVo Desktop that would support streaming to a PC, though it may make more sense to just add MRS to TiVo Desktop to allow it to stream content to a TiVo as well as from one. And PCs can handle MPEG-2, so I don’t see the need for a TiVo Stream for that.

Hopefully this news makes a few folks happy.

Lastly, this won’t be news to regular readers of this blog, but the Stream is powered by a Zenverge ZN200 chip. I speculated to that effect last year, and TiVo confirmed it for me in February, but today it was officially announced via press release. The release is below:

Zenverge Showcases TransAll™ technology with TiVo’s new TiVo Stream

TiVo Stream to extend TV viewing to mobile devices with the world’s first deployment of multi-screen streaming from a DVR

BOSTON, May 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Zenverge Inc., a leading developer of Advanced Content Networking ICs, and TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in advanced television services including digital video recorders (DVRs), announced TiVo® Stream, a revolutionary product enabling streaming to tablets and smartphones with the same rich TV viewing experience TiVo customers know and love.

Based on the industry leading Zenverge TransAll™ Transcode engine, TiVo Stream will allow a viewer to seamlessly stream or download multiple live or recorded shows from a TiVo Premiere DVR to multiple devices like iPads or iPhones simultaneously. Its unique fast side-load capability is a critical element of a true on-demand experience and allows users to quickly download favorite shows to their tablets for later viewing.

This product takes advantage of the Zenverge TransFormat™, TransRate™, and TransScale™ functions to convert broadcast content into the format supported by tablets and smartphones. TransZip&treade; allows side-loading DVR content at a high speed into mobile devices for sync-n-go. Lastly, TransCrypt&treade; ensures that live and DVR content can be securely distributed in the home.

“Cable MSOs are keen to extend the whole home experience beyond the TV to include mobile devices,” said TiVo’s David Sandford, Vice President and General Manager, Service Provider Business. “Using the unprecedented quad HD transcoding capabilities of the Zenverge ZN200, we are bringing the unique TiVo experience that consumers love to the mobile screens.”

“We’re excited to work with TiVo on extending their premium TV viewing experience to second screens as they pioneer yet another blockbuster entertainment product following their success with the DVR,” said Zenverge’s Raghu Rao, Executive Vice President of Sales and Business Development. “TiVo Stream will enable service providers using TiVo’s innovative advanced TV solutions to create a compelling anywhere, anytime, any device experience for their customers.”

Zenverge’s Advanced Content Networking ICs are the preferred transcoding solution for operators and box manufacturers for devices such as Gateways, DVRs, and IP/Broadcast streaming adapters.

The ‘transcoding box’ is now officially the TiVo Stream, and it will be available to both retail customers and TiVo’s cable MSO partners later this year. The render to the left is the retail version of the box, while the one to the right is the MSO version. They’re pretty much the same except for coloring, and obviously the final labeling will change.

The TiVo Stream will work with the TiVo Premiere, Premiere XL, and Premiere XL4 (formerly known as the Premiere Elite, and known as the Premiere Q for MSOs). It is a very simple device with only two connections – power and Ethernet. The photos below were taken at the show, you can see the simple design and limited connectors.

The TiVo Stream acts like a Multi-Room Streaming (MRS) client on the network, just like another Premiere would. While the hardware is cable of transcoding four streams, it is limited to two per Premiere due to transport throughput limits on the Premiere end. So to use all four transcoding stream simultaneously you would need at least two Premieres on the network. As previously reported, the MPEG-2 streams are transcoded to H.264 for delivery to ‘second screen’ devices within the home.

The Stream supports real-time streaming as well as side-loading of content onto a mobile device for later viewing away from the network. However, copy protection does apply. It is basically Multi-Room Streaming (MRS) vs. Multi-Room Viewing (MRV). If you can stream a problem between Premieres, you’ll be able to streaming it to a second screen. And if you can copy programs between TiVos, or to a PC via TiVoToGo, you’ll be able to side-load it. But if a program is blocked from TiVoToGo it will also be blocked from side-loading. TiVo doesn’t make the rules, they just follow them. So it really depends on how draconian your MSO is.

The Stream can access ‘Live TV’ – kind of. Since it acts just like any other MRS client, and MRS only streams recordings, what happens is it triggers the Premiere to start recording the content. The Stream then accesses that recording in progress and streams it. So in the end there is a recording on the Premiere of the show you streamed ‘live’.

And, as I’ve said previously, right now the intention is to support clients within the home. So place shifting content onto your phone or tablet in another room, but not across the Internet to another location. So this will not be a Slingbox replacement, at least to start. TiVo acknowledges the interest and it is something that might come via a software update. They have looked into it, and interestingly they’ve even talked to Sling Media about remote streaming (possible now that TiVo and EchoStar have kissed and made up), but there is nothing firm at this time.

Jim Denney and I talked a bit about future plans and the transcoding eventually being ‘baked in’, and it is all but certain to happen. It is all a trade off, and right now we’re not quite at the tipping point. SoCs with transcoding baked-in are appearing but are still higher costs parts and there have been performance tradeoffs. We talked about the Broadcom BCM7425, which has dual transcode support, and TiVo has looked at the chip. And there is a newer BCM7435, which just started sampling, which has quad transcode support and a general bump in capabilities, including 8 QAM tuners. (Humax has a demo box at the show using this chip, but they don’t expect it to be available to MSOs until 1Q13.) So TiVo is looking ahead and it is all but a given that this will be baked into a future product, but I wouldn’t expect that until 2013 at the earliest.

The other new set top box is the IP STB – which doesn’t have a snappy name yet, sorry. This is the baby brother to the TiVo Preview and at launch it will only work with the TiVo Premiere XL4/Q – not the TiVo Premiere or Premiere XL. STOP! Before you freak out, there is a reason, and this should change with a future update. Calm? OK. The IP STB does not have a tuner of its own, it uses a tuner from the XL4 for Live TV. In the initial release this requires dedicating a tuner in the XL4 to the IP STB. Yes, that means the tuner is not available for recordings, etc. This is done during setup, you pair the IP STB with a single Premiere XL4 and select one tuner to dedicate.

TiVo knows this is not optimal, but it is a matter of releasing something that is ‘good enough’ for market and then improving it. The plan is to have dynamic tuner allocation in a future release, whereby the IP STB would grab a free tuner for Live TV. But it is a sticky development problem to solve, so for the first release they basically avoided it by going with the dedicated tuner. It is sticky because there are a number of use cases. How can the unit reliably schedule recordings when one (or more if you have multiple IP STBs) can grab a tuner? How do you handle it if all four tuners are in use and someone wants to access Live TV on an IP STB? Etc. I’m sure lots of people have answers, but I’m also sure a lot of those answers will conflict. So TiVo needs time to work on the issue, do their usability testing, and create a good solution.

This need to dedicate a tuner is also why the Premiere and Premiere XL are not supported in the first release. They’d be reduced to single-tuner units. With the XL4 sacrificing a tuner, or even two, isn’t as big a deal. Again, this is temporary and TiVo plans to resolve this in a future update. (And just don’t even start with the “Oh, so when will that be?”, OK?)

I did ask Jim if it might be possible to pair it with an XL4 and *not* assign a tuner at all, which would mean no Live TV on the IP STB. Some users, like myself, never watch Live TV and wouldn’t miss it. I’d rather leave all four tuners free to record and use the IP STB only for watching recordings and accessing OTT content. He didn’t know if that was possible, and he’ll look into it. I think that’d be a nice setup option.

As for the hardware itself, it is a small, square, trapezoidal unit in the same league as the Apple TV or a Roku box. It supports all of the standard TiVo Peanut remotes, including the TiVo Slide remote. I didn’t get the specific model number of the chip inside, but Jim said it is roughly equal in performance to the SoC in the Premiere XL4, and that performance on the IP STB can be even higher because it doesn’t have all of the other work to do with recording, etc.

The back of the box is where you’ll find all of the connectors – coax, a component break-out port, a composite A/V break-out port, HDMI, Ethernet, USB, and power. Component and composite A/V connections are accomplished via break-out cables, similar to some of the Roku models. The coax connection is not for a tuner, it is for MoCA and only MoCA. At this time the USB port is only for the Bluetooth dongle used by the TiVo Slide remote. It will not support the old TiVo 802.11g WiFi adapter as TiVo is actively discouraging the use of WiFi due to the high bandwidth demands of the box. Though there is nothing stopping you from using an external 802.11n, or even a new 802.11ac, bridge.

I did ask if the box could be used as a MoCA bridge, like the XL4, and it cannot. So you can’t use an XL4 and an IP STB to bridge Ethernet over MoCA for another room. I was thinking that if it could act as a bridge you could connect Ethernet to the XL4, use MoCA to feed an IP STB in the bedroom, and then connect other devices, like a Blu-ray player, to the Ethernet on the IP STB. But no such luck, sorry. You’d need another ECB (Ethernet to Coax Bridge).

It is the same UI you know and (probably) love from the TiVo DVR. When you access Live TV it uses the dedicated tuner on the XL4. Recordings are streamed as-is from the XL4 to the box, so they’ll be the same MPEG-2 content. Full quality, there is no transcoding. All OTT IP content, such as Netflix, Hulu Plus, and YouTube, stream directly to the box over the network without touching the XL4. Cable MSO VOD, where supported, would require a tuner on the XL4, as it is delivered today via QAM and not IP.

Now, you probably want to know pricing and availability, right? Yeah, sorry. No pricing details as of yet. And the timeline is ‘in the coming months’. It looks like fall, maybe late summer if we’re lucky.

I think that’s it on these two boxes. I have more photos, if you want to see them check out my Picasa gallery from the show. I’ll be adding more photos as I take them the next couple of days as well.

If there is anything else you want to know, just ask. I may have forgotten to share something, and the show has two more days so I can go back to ask more questions.

EDIT: I did go back, and I did ask more questions, and I’ve posted the new info.

The Press Release is below:

TIVO EXPANDS WHOLE-HOME AND MULTI-SCREEN OFFERINGS

TiVo introduces a low-cost IP set-top box to extend the full TiVo experience to additional televisions in the home

TiVo adds a low-cost transcoding accessory – TiVo Stream – enabling operators to provide streaming of linear content to tablets and mobile devices

BOSTON, MA – May 21, 2012 — TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in advanced television services, including digital video recorders (DVRs), for consumers, content distributors and consumer electronics manufacturers, today announced two major enhancements to its whole-home viewing solution. Its IP set-top box, delivers the TiVo experience on secondary televisions throughout the home. TiVo Stream, provides transcoding to enable content viewing on mobile devices.

Through these new products, operators working with TiVo can give their subscribers the content they want on any screen within the home, including secondary televisions, tablets and smart phones and all through the same easy-to-use TiVo interface. For example, the IP set-top box compliments the home’s primary TiVo DVR by extending the TiVo experience onto secondary TVs including live and recorded television viewing. TiVo Stream delivers content to a customer’s tablet or mobile device, creating a cohesive viewing experience no matter how they choose to watch their programs. Both products are optimized for operator distribution, including automated provisioning and activation, and the low-capital costs that operators demand.

Tom Rogers, President and CEO, TiVo Inc. said, “Consumers not only want an enjoyable TV experience, but now demand choice and the flexibility to watch content on multiple devices and screens within the home. TiVo has worked with our operator customers to create a suite of affordable companion devices that deliver a cohesive experience regardless of the screen the customer wants to use.”

The IP set-top box works with the TiVo Premiere Q, a home’s primary gateway device, to give consumers access to live and recorded TV, operator VOD, plus broadband-delivered content on every TV in the house. This is delivered through the innovative TiVo experience consumers have come to know and love. It includes integrated MoCA to simplify home networking and multi-room applications.

TiVo Stream seamlessly delivers the content available on a consumer’s TiVo Premiere or Premiere Q DVR to alternative screens such as iPads and iPhones. Unlike similar offerings in the market, this is the first product to enable streaming or download of shows simultaneously to multiple portable devices without interrupting what’s playing on the television. The power of TiVo Stream enables users to quickly transfer shows to their mobile device for viewing outside the home.

TiVo will release both products at retail and through select cable operators. Additional details on availability for both the IP set-top box and TiVo Stream will be announced in the coming months.

TiVo unveiled details about both products during the 2012 NCTA Cable Show in Boston. For more information visit the TiVo booth #1859 located in the main exhibit hall.

This actually isn’t a surprise, as I’ve posted a couple of times, a while back Comcast made the comment that New England was high on their list of territories to follow the SF Bay. Why? Well, to quote myself:

New England is where Comcast launched the old ‘soft-TiVo’ project. The software-only Java-based TiVo interface that was downloaded to run on their standard Motorola DVR hardware. Despite several years of effort it just never worked well. The HW was under-powered, and with the TiVo interface running in Java on a virtual machine running on top of the native OS, it wasn’t a great performer. And Comcast never seemed to iron out the issues with the head end that was supposed to allow them to dynamically push the TiVo software to units in the field. While the effort was abandoned when Comcast switched focus to XFINITY support for retail units, the existing deployment of soft-TiVo units are still supported. Comcast is looking to finally phase them out by getting the users to migrate to a TiVo Premiere once they can do so without losing their On Demand. So they have an incentive to prioritize New England.

So they still have a number of those old units in the field that they’d love to stop supporting, and I bet many of the customers would love the added benefits of having a real TiVo to boot. And perhaps Comcast will be able to recycle some of the work they did on the head end for that project to support the new roll out. In any case, TiVo confirmed today via email that Boston is the next market that will see this roll out. They didn’t provide a specific time frame, saying only that Boston would see this ‘soon’.

As always, you can sign up to be notified when this is available in your area at tivo.com/comcast

Remember, Comcast controls when this is rolled out to a new area, not TiVo. TiVo has delivered their part, the software integration on the unit. The other piece is the head end upgrades to support the service, and that’s what Comcast needs to do for each service area where this is deployed. That’s why it wasn’t flipped on for everyone at once, and why it is getting a region by region roll out. So don’t bother TiVo with questions about when it will come to your area. Odds are they don’t know, and even if they do know they can’t speak for Comcast until Comcast is willing to announce their plans. If you need to pester anyone, pester Comcast.

I’ve known this was coming for a while, it was one of the things we discussed during my call with TiVo back in February. I’d heard about it through the grapevine before the call, but TiVo asked me to sit on the news until they made it official – which happened this weekend. They feel the ‘XL4′ branding is more in line with the Premiere and Premiere XL branding, and more clearly indicates where the product sits in the lineup. (Note there has been at least one report out there than the XL is becoming the XL2. I confirmed with TiVo that that is incorrect, the XL remains the XL.)

So nothing changes feature-wise, it is just a change to branding – which includes new, glossy retail packaging, more retail marketing, etc. The Elite was initially sold in a plain brown box, primarily through custom installers and high-end A/V retailers. For example, Best Buy sold the Elite through their Magnolia centers – kind of high-end sub-stores within the Best Buy. But the XL4 looks like it will be on shelves alongside the Premiere and Premiere XL.

So now we have the Premiere for $149.99 – now with 500GB drive and dual cable(analog/digital)/FiOS/antenna tuners, the Premiere XL for $249.99 – with 1TB and dual cable(analog/digital)/FiOS/antenna tuners, and the Premiere XL4 for $399.99 – with 2TB and four cable(digital only)/FiOS tuners. The XL & XL4 are THX Certified and come with Glo backlit remotes, but otherwise the features are the same across the three units.

And since this is kind of a non-event, some entertainment:

Starting with the next software update, 21.x, which is expected in the spring (late-April or early-May), there are a few things TiVo is willing to confirm. (I’ve touched on this release before.) Aside from general polish, more screens being moved into the HD UI, bug fixes – aka the usual – the biggest news is probably the long awaited update to two streaming clients: Netflix and YouTube.

The TiVo Netflix app is getting a complete overhaul – or, rather, a replacement. The new app is actually written by Netflix and integrated by TiVo, using TiVo’s Adobe Air-based SDK. It will provide a completely modern Netflix experience, on par with other devices. TiVo says it will be similar to the Netflix client found on the Insignia Connected TV with TiVo Design, but not exactly the same.

YouTube is also getting a new client, which will be radically different. The new client will implement the YouTube ‘lean back’ style interface, and is probably most similar to the version found on Google TV. YouTube created the ‘lean back’ UI especially for home entertainment implementations, where you ‘lean back’ as opposed to ‘leaning forward’ over your computer keyboard, so this should be a nice improvement.

I did ask about an update for the Amazon app, but it will not be part of the next update. TiVo recognizes there is demand for support of the free Amazon Prime streaming in Amazon Instant Video, but to implement it they need to work with Amazon. Currently they’re in “active discussions” with Amazon about the implementation, but they can’t yet say when it might happen. But know that it is on their radar. They did want to stress that the TiVo app does have access to the complete Amazon Instant Video library via downloads, it is only the streaming that is currently missing.

I also asked about Spotify support for the US. TiVo queried US customers about interest in Spotify last July, and the Virgin Media TiVo units in the UK got Spotify in November, but there is still no sign of it in the US. TiVo doesn’t have an official comment on this at this time, aside from acknowledging the interest. Personally I think it is on the road map but they’re not ready to talk about it yet.

Something else that is coming in the next release is parental controls in the HD UI. Until now customers who wanted to enable parental controls needed to switch to the SD UI, so this is likely a welcome change for parents. This did, unsurprisingly, spark a discussion on TiVo KidZone and the future thereof. At this time there are no plans to bring TiVo KidZone to the HD UI. There are ongoing discussions within TiVo about the future of KidZone in general, and what form it might take, if it remains at all.

I got the impression that KidZone was never a high demand item and the justification for devoting the engineering resources needed to bring it to the HD UI is difficult to make. We may see fancier parental controls instead of a special KidZone implementation. Or perhaps it is something that might be addressed via user-based folders (which we’ve seen teased in screen grabs in the past), by tying access to folders to the parental controls and only allowing the kids access to their own folder. But that’s just speculation on my part.

Looking further out I tried to get some info on the new SDK, but they’re not ready to discuss that just yet. They did confirm that it is Adobe Air with ActionScript 3.0 (at least for the initial release, it seems like other environments may be added in the future), and they are very serious about supporting developers. They’ve hired someone for a new position tied to the SDK, so it will have dedicated attention. I’m hoping it fares better than the old public HME SDK. This time around I think TiVo has more appreciation for the importance of third party apps.

We also discussed Jason Wong’s interview at last September’s IBC show. I’ve already covered the transcoder box and IP STB in previous posts. The other big item, to me at least, that Jason mentioned was DLNA support:“Yes, using DLNA and DLNA approved DRM like DTCP, but yes.” This sparked an interesting discussion. First of all, TiVo clarified that Jason’s comments were within the context of the European audience of the IBC show. European units support DTCP but not the entire DLNA standard.

The discussion was over whether it makes sense for TiVo to support DLNA on the US units. My stance is that yes, it does – especially as a DLNA client. While it would be nice to have TiVo as a DLNA server, I actually don’t see it being as useful for most users. There aren’t currently a lot of devices that would act as a DLNA client for a DTCP-IP protected stream. Down the road a bit I think this will be more useful, as more cable MSOs implement this tech, thereby driving more consumer devices (like smart TVs) to implement the client side.

But going back to my original point, I think it would be useful for TiVo to implement DLNA client capabilities. Right now getting media onto a TiVo from local sources is a bit of a pain in the ass. You have to install TiVo Desktop, or one of the third party tools like kmttg, Streambaby, or pyTiVo, just to get your music, photos, and/or video onto the TiVo for display. But many devices already have built in DLNA server support and it would be plug-and-play if TiVo would only connect to these existing servers.

To me a huge issue is that so many modern smartphones have built in DLNA support. Any of the content you have on your DLNA-enabled smartphone could be streamed wirelessly over the local network to a DLNA-enabled TiVo. No need for HDMI or MHL cables, or docks, etc. Just connect to the local LAN and away you go. This is possible with most connected TVs, but that’s still a small market. TiVo could be the gateway for this content for many consumers; I think that would be very useful. Not to mention making it easier to display content from your PC, NAS, etc.

I think we had a good discussion about DLNA support and I’m hopeful TiVo will give some serious thought toward implementing it, at least as a client to start. But they are interested in gauging the demand from the market in general, so how about it? Is DLNA support, client and/or server, something you’d like to see TiVo add? And why?