TiVo on Tuesday set out to reinvent itself with DVRs that blend television and Internet viewing experiences. The TiVo Premiere and TV Premiere XL combine access to cable programming, movies, web videos, and music.
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TiVo is positioning the new devices as a one-stop shop for entertainment, offering viewers broadband and broadcast integration that lets them search for YouTube clips, Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand and Blockbuster On Demand libraries, and more from one interface. The new offering uses pictures and graphics to make the television guide more interactive as users search through millions of pieces of content.
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TiVo has advanced the state of the art in DVR appliances. There’s no question about that, said Phil Leigh, a senior analyst at Inside Digital Media. But whether it’s enough to motivate existing owners of TiVo to spend money on a new box is more debatable. If I didn’t have a DVR, it certainly gives me a material added reason to buy TiVo. But if I just bought a TiVo a year or two ago, I’m not ready to spend more money just to get a newer interface.
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Next-Gen Surfing
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TiVo Premiere encourages browsing by organizing every show by category and topic. A full-screen menu displays movie posters and TV-show logos to speed browsing. Clicking on a show or actor pulls up entertainment resumes and cast lists so viewers can watch other programming containing the same stars.
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TiVo promises easier navigation by making the most of the extra room HD offers to slash the number of screens viewers need to visit. Because the set-top boxes are built on the Adobe Flash platform, it opens the door to more third-party applications that can further enhance the viewing experience.
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Premiere also offers an on-screen disk-space meter that shows consumers how much room they have left to record, a built-in 30-second…