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TiVo returning to the UK thanks to partnership with Virgin Media
It looks like TiVo's freshly minted Premiere hardware will soon be setting sail eastwards as The Daily Telegraph is reporting Virgin Media's next generation set-top box will be built around it. Loyal readers of Engadget HD will already be aware that TiVo and Virgin hooked up last November and this latest news relates to the first hardware to be spawned from that relationship. According to TiVo CEO Tom Rogers, the Premiere will "heavily inspire the development work" going into Virgin's next TV appendage, which may or may not mean that the cable company will simply rebadge the well-received new boxes. What's assured though is much greater integration with online content, with search linking you out to Amazon, BBC's iPlayer, YouTube or good old standard broadcast channels. The whole thing's about unlimited choice, apparently, and should be showing up on the Queen's isles by the end of this year. We can wait, but we'd rather we didn't have to.
New DirecTV TiVo will be based on the old TiVo interface
Well isn't this a kick in the head -- first TiVo fans who subscribe to DirecTV were left high and dry years ago and now if it is actually released this Spring it'll have been almost two years since the two companies announced they'd join forces once again. As if all that waiting wasn't bad enough, these same fans were probably excited to see the new TiVo user interface -- even if they weren't excited about anything else -- only to hear Tom Rogers tell Light Reading that "Their [DirecTV's] next implementation of us is not going to have this look and feel. It's based on the classic TiVo." Oh man are you kidding? Rogers did say that a new tru2way version of the new look would be available in the future and that Comcast has already shown interest. And for those who think $300 is still too much for a DVR, Rogers confirms that "We don't make money on hardware. Hardware is really a way for us to get out our user experience."
TiVo's Tom Rogers speaks of "whole home model"
During his sit-down at D6, TiVo's head honcho Tom Rogers was grilled with a flurry of questions. Aside from a lengthy back-and-forth over the DVR's ability to skip through ads, we finally got to some real meat. First off, Mr. Rogers noted that he was "hopeful" that TiVo would be launched in the UK "soon." Secondly -- and probably most interestingly -- was the notion that TiVo was working up a "whole home model" in order to solve the problem of needing multiple boxes to service an entire house. Sadly, that snippet is all Tom uttered, so we're left to ponder what's really going on behind the tightly sealed doors at TiVo. Here's to hoping we know more by the time CEDIA rolls around -- you listening, Mr. Rogers? [Via Electronista]
TiVo moving towards being a media-services company?
There's been a definite trend towards service integration at TiVo lately, with quite a string of partnerships to show for it: the company's gotten in bed with Music Choice, Picasa / Photobucket and Nero in the past couple weeks, not to mention the finally-happening Comcast rollout, Amazon Unbox and Rhapsody offerings. On top of that, the company is also finally capitalizing on its vast stores of aggregate viewer data, having entered into a deal with NBC to provide Nielsen-esque ratings data on a second-by-second basis. Given all the wheeling and dealing, it's not at all surprising that CEO Tom Rogers told the New York Times that TiVo has "substantially moved in the direction of becoming a media company," but it's definitely a big shift for the DVR company, which until recently was something of an outsider. That's all changed now, apparently -- according to Rogers, "all the networks" are in talks to land similar ratings deals, and that the company is "aggressively" trying to partner with the media industry. That sounds about right to us -- we haven't mentioned the deathwatch in a while, after all -- but we're just hoping all of this doesn't lead to even more targeted ads.
TiVo Series 3 Lite pics and specs revealed
Falling right in line with the news TiVo CEO Tom Rogers hinted at back in March, the struggling company is readying the highly anticipated HD Series 3 "Lite," which will target a much wider range of consumer with a price point of around $299. Some tenacious (and possibly connected) fans posted specs and pics on the TiVo Community forums, much to the delight of broke DVR users across the globe. The new model will axe the OLED display and THX certification, and swap the deluxe remote for a standard model, but the specs remain fairly close otherwise. Here's a geeked-out rundown to keep everyone psyched: BCM740x DVR CPU with integrated MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoders, 1x dual MPEG-2 encoder, 2x Samsung S5H1411-based tuners, 128Mb DDR SDRAM, and a 160Gb SATA HD (down from the Series 3's 250GB drive). All in all, a pretty attractive package when you don't have a lot of cash to burn.