CE Pro: TiVo Enhances Broadband Delivery
TiVo.com
Hot on the heels of my commentary last week about TiVo facing grave challenges in a market that they once completely dominated, the pioneers of personal content management have announced five new features that will keep their service and hardware relevant.
Unified Search -- TiVo unveiled "unified search," launching next year, whereby consumers can search across broadcast, cable and broadband content sources through an approach that seamlessly integrates all video for easy access, menuing, searching, recording, and viewing. Consumers want content from many different sources and with unified search they won't need to visit multiple devices to view that content — it can all be easily accessed in one place from the TiVo "Now Playing" list.
Translation: surfing forty-six million channels is now a lot easier.
Home Movies Service -- Working in partnership with One True Media, TiVo is offering a breakthrough new service feature which will provide friends and families scattered across the country with an easy way to share their home videos, by sending them directly to the television set. Rather than burning and mailing DVDs, friends and family will now be able to set-up their own private channel to send home videos directly to a TiVo subscriber's TV set.
Translation: YouTube is a good idea. Let's make our own!
Autotranscode -- TiVo subscribers who upgrade to this new PC software will be able to easily browse, transfer, and watch a vast amount of Web video, right on their TV sets, using the Emmy Award-winning TiVo service, even if the content is not originally in a format that televisions can display, by autotranscoding that video through their PCs.
Translation: now you can watch YouTube on your television. Practical and ironic, I like it!
New TiVoCast Service Programming Partners -- A fresh group of media companies, including CBS Interactive, Forbes and specialized health content, will deliver broadband programming directly to the television through TiVo's revolutionary TiVoCast service. Launched earlier this year, the TiVoCast service delivers broadband video directly to the television sets of TiVo subscribers, turning Web video into television by bringing powerful broadband content previously available only on the PC.
Translation: with all the talk of Web 2.0, it was only a matter of time before someone took a stab at WebTV 2.0 *cough*
ICM -- With broadband video choices, the number of TV options available became overwhelming, and celebrity talent became critical "key words" for viewers finding what they want. TiVo and International Creative Management (ICM) have teamed up to provide TiVo subscribers with TV show and film recommendations personally selected by some of the most well-known Hollywood actors and directors. These celebrity Guru Guides will offer subscribers the ability to have this content automatically recorded on their TiVo boxes.
Translation: Jerry MacGuire's real-life counterparts have followed the smell of money:
- Saving Private Ryan downloads automatically to five million TiVos
- residual cheque written to Mr. Hanks
- ICM gets 30% (or whatever). Clever.
So, with TiVo hemmed in by smart PC media centers cropping up like mushrooms, the rise of YouTube as the new Prime Time, and network TV falling all over themselves to get on board the IPTV train, will these initiatives keep TiVo in the race? We'll have to wait and see.
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