I’ve posted about software available for US units before, here and here, and on TiVo’s blog, and these apps work with the VM TiVo; but now there is a 3rd party remote control app for Windows .Net specifically for the VM TiVo: VM TiVo Net Remote. It is much more feature-rich than the Python-based TiVoRemote that’s been out for US machines for a while.

I can confirm that it does work with US units, I connected to the Premiere Elite I have for review and it worked as expected. Except for the TV guide, nothing displayed when I selected ‘Show TV Guide’. The window expanded, but it was blank. This is probably hard coded for the UK devices. There is also a default channel list, but that’s stored as a text file that you can edit to match your lineup.

What’s really nice is that anything you type while in the remote window is sent to the TiVo. It makes text entry a breeze. There are also shortcut keys to navigate with:
Following Shortcut keys provide the following functions
CTRL+H - Home
CTRL+T - TV
CTRL+G - TV Guide
CTRL+P - Play
CTRL+S - Stop
CTRL+M - My Shows
CTRL+V - Pause
CTRL+R - Record
CTRL+L - Last Channel
CTRL+I - Info
CTRL+U - Thumbs Up
CTRL+D - Thumbs Down
CTRL+F - Skip
CTRL+B - Skip Back
CTRL+X - Slow
CTRL+LEFT - Rewind
CTRL+RIGHT - Fast Forward
ARROW KEYS - Left/Right/Up/Down
ENTER - OK
DELETE - Clear
+ - Channel Up
- - Channel Down
1 to 9 - Send corresponding Number
A to Z - Send corresponding Key when in a text search (Search TV, YouTube search etc.)

You can click on the image of the TiVo remote in the app to send commands as well, very much like using a Slingbox. The image of the remote is the UK version, but it is close enough that US users shouldn’t have any trouble.

Perhaps some US-based developer could contact the creator, Andy Wheeler, and work with him to create a localized version for the US. What’d really be nice is to see some of the features from the Android TiVo Commander app brought to other platforms. But that’s not to denigrate the work Andy has done. This is a brand new app – version 0.3 was just released on Sunday – and he’s been improving it quickly. He has a thread at TiVoCommunity.com for feedback.

Via the Virgin Media High Definition & TiVo Services blog.

The Virgin Media High Definition & TiVo Services blog (they really need a catchier name, or at least a shorter one…) has a capture of the paper copy of the notice as sent to customers and it contains another bit of news. The Spotify app will be hitting VM TiVo’s on 11/29 under Apps & Games. No word yet on Spotify coming to US TiVos, though TiVo was asking about interest back in July. They also have a summary of review comments posted about the early test release that started last month.

The Virgin Media TiVo Blog mentions a couple of other changes in this release. In the past when you paused VOD content the pause would timeout in 3 minutes. This has been extended to 10 minutes, which is a much more reasonable time. And the tick marks, which have traditionally been set every 15 minutes in a program (used for ‘skip to tick’ and the like) now occur every five minutes. So you have a much finer control over when you jump, though it will take three times as many jumps to get to a given point I suppose.

A video of the update was posted by a user a couple of weeks ago:

Video pick up via The Virgin Media TiVo Blog.