TiVo's Unreleased Roku and Apple TV Apps Are 'In Limbo'

Although TiVo has an exciting new product at CES with the TiVo Stream 4K media player, it also has some bad news for DVR owners: The promised ability to stream live and recorded video from TiVo to other streaming players in the home won't happen any time soon. From a report: TiVo's vice president of consumer products and services Ted Malone said in an interview at CES that the company's Roku and Apple TV apps in particular are "in limbo." Malone wouldn't say definitively that the apps have cancelled, and he believes Android TV support may arrive at some point as a tie-in to the TiVo Stream 4K, which runs Android TV. From there, adding Fire TV support wouldn't be difficult because Fire TV apps are based on Android as well. Still, he didn't give a timeline for either. "My bet is we'll get Android, and because of that we'll get the Fire TV, because it's the same app, just different qualifications," Malone said. "I think Roku and Apple are in limbo."

TIVO - the windows into what could have been.

[pecosdave]

I built a DVR many years ago using a PCI TV-Tuner card and MythTV.

I considered TIVO the commercial version of that - I've always been a roll-your-own type.

Tivo would be king of the living room right now had Clear-QAM taken the place of NTSC inside of every cable provider rolling their own, or doing encryption everything without supporting the legally required bring your own device standard (Cable Card). It was a good product, always shaking up the industry, until the industry worked around it and tuned it out.

Fear of piracy lead to shitty standards, shitty standards lead to massive amounts of cord cutting. I'll argue had Tivo been allowed to thrive the way it wanted people would have simply asked their Tivo's to record their shows using the old media standard instead of paying an additional fee for each streaming service they now use.

Cable companies dug their own graves by ignoring what people wanted. It will be interesting to see if the streaming services they fled to will do the same. Based on this article it looks like they will. Personally my household just killed our Netflix subscription since we got pretty much everything we wanted elsewhere and Netflix is promoting pedophilia and racial division in their original shows.

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[crow]

Well, I had a ReplayTV 2020, and I upgraded the hard drive at one point, before moving to MythTV, which we still use today. MythTV works great with a HDHR Prime, a networked cablecard tuner. We're lucky that FiOS only restricts recording on premium channels (so we don't get them) and maybe one or two others. I love knowing that once we record something, it's ours, even if we wait years to get around to watching it.

Still, we're likely going to drop cable soon in favor of streaming, as streaming is where t

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[Dan667]

My mythtv build is 15 years old we loved it for years and years, especially the automatic commercial skipping, but its main purpose just came to an end in our house. We just canceled our cable subscription and stopped all recording (except maybe OTA). It is just a media streaming box now.

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[crow]

That's exactly where we are heading. We do have an antenna, so my plan is to keep it for broadcast TV, and we have a huge backlog of shows already recorded.

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[pecosdave]

I switched from Myth to Kodi (well XBMC originally) when my focus changed. I originally used MythTV for storage and playback of my own media I transferred to hard drive, but Kodi is easier for that. I no longer have a need for recording live stuff, I've completely quit live stuff.

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[slack_justyb]

I considered TIVO the commercial version of that - I've always been a roll-your-own type.

Oh yes, pretty much a lot of Slashdotters went roll your own. Always good to see another.

Tivo would be king of the living room right now had Clear-QAM taken the place of NTSC inside of every cable provider rolling their own, or doing encryption everything without supporting the legally required bring your own device standard (Cable Card).

I don't think A clear-QAM would have saved anything. But honestly the boat has sailed. Yes, I agree that the complexity that companies added to getting an actual CableCard absolutely hurt them.

Fear of piracy lead to shitty standards, shitty standards lead to massive amounts of cord cutting.

Yes, but also not taking five seconds to listen to their customers hurt them a ton. If it was just shitty standards alone, I don't think we would have had the massive exodus that we actually saw. People weren't just tired of

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[pecosdave]

Hulu is an interesting one to me.

I had a Hulu free trial years ago and canceled the free trial. I thought it was stupid they wouldn't let me play back certain shows on a device they could tell was hooked up to a TV, the inability to get rid of commercials even if you paid was an insult, and the way they cycled older content by blacking out seemingly random episodes this week and different ones next week were obnoxious. Top it off with not being able to find a full episode of anything without them trying t

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[crow]

I found that Cable Card with an HDHR Prime works just as well as Clear-QAM provided the cable company doesn't set copy restrictions on the channels. I hear some companies put lots of restrictions on, but FiOS in my area doesn't, or I would drop it. I'm only aware of one channel (National Geographic) that I'm supposed to get that has copy restrictions, breaking recording with MythTV.

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[speedlaw]

Clear QAM was the enemy. You didn't require a cable box to get it so you could buy the service and hook up all the sets in the house. The cable cos got the FCC to allow them to encrypt, so now you had to rent a box in perpetuity ($11 per month) to watch on every single set. There was some horse trading, the FCC required that the companies give two years of free boxes before charging, and required that Broadcast Basic service not be encrypted. Even today, if I hook up my broadband only service, I'll stil

Ended up with a mini

[tmshort]

I've been a TiVo user for years. I had heard about the AppleTV app... but then nothing. Finally got a TiVo Mini as a gift, but I would've preferred to use my AppleTV.

Remember TiVo is merging with Xperi

[williamyf]

So, a review of product roadmaps, headcounts and licensing agreements is in order. Android/Amazon is the low hanging fruit and will get done. But they need to figure out what is most economical: Fire the Roku and Apple programmenrs and not pay licensing fees or support costs, or if the extra income from those apps will offset costs and still leave interesting money on the bottom line...

So, it all boils down to the Merger and and customary revisions that come with it...

Streaming to phone but not TV

[ardmhacha]

I can stream the stuff I have recorded to my Android phone using the Tivo app https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]

But if I want to stream to a second TV I need to buy a $180 Tivo Mini https://www.tivo.com/shop/mini [tivo.com]

I have a Fire TV stick and there is no good reason why they can't make the app linked above work on that.

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[tmshort]

You can stream to an iPad, iPhone and laptop... so yeah... what's the delay converting the iDevice app to support AppleTV?

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[bobbied]

Is it strictly for broadcast, or can you capture video from Netflix and Apple TV and Disney+ etc so that when they remove a movie or a series you can still keep it on your TiVo? That would be great.

Most streaming services don't allow you to keep a copy of their material and go to great lengths to encrypt it so you cannot easily capture it. Most (but not all) Cable providers set the "do not copy" flag on their encrypted signals, so your cable card tuner won't be able to capture that stuff either. Over the Air, is sometimes marked "do not copy" but that's not as likely. But why does this matter?

It matters because TiVo cannot violate the Cable Card certification rules (for your Cable Tuner) or they w

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[whoever57]

Most streaming services don't allow you to keep a copy of their material

I can download from both Netflix and Amazon Prime video (via their apps) to my Android phone for offline viewing.

TiVo offers streaming apps. These use the network connection and are not reliant on the Cablecard.

My phone can download and store content from Netflix and Prime Video. I see no reason that TiVO could not do the same, inside their Netflix and Prime Video apps, since the CableCard isn't involved in the process.

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[bobbied]

The downloads you get are encrypted and the provider retains control of the decryption keys and thus controls the playback options you have. My guess is that when the provider (say Netflix) pulls the material from their site, they will also remove your access to the decryption key and even if you retained the file, you won't be able to play it.

TiVo isn't going to knowingly let you violate the license terms for your streaming services, bypass their encryption or make unauthorized and playable copies of the

Don't understand why...

[speedlaw]

I have had Tivo for cable for years....and prior to that, the Sony HDD 250, so I never suffered the Cable Box and Cable Remote for very long, and saved thousands over time. I currently have two Tivos for OTA only. The Roamio has some streaming, but it is slow and the sources limited. The Premiere streams Netflix only and is so slow as to be useless. Mama wanted HGTV, and after rejecting the cable co solution with required boxes and "fees", ($1400 per year ? yikes !) went with a Roku and a $20 Philo subs

TiVo is a zombie company

[GoRK]

I hacked my gen1 tivo to the hilt. Added a network card, big huge hard drives, etc. That 40mhz cpu was pushed to its limit, but you know what else it could do? Stream a recording to any other device. It took a very dedicated community to do the hardware and software work necessary to hack that stuff in. The demand was clearly there.

The failure of TiVo to deliver such a basic and simple feature over many years is just ridiculous. They have known exactly what people wanted from day 1 of delivering their firs

Fat and lazy, like Blockbuster

[Tony Isaac]

TiVo grew fat on profits from cable customers, who mostly got TiVos with their service and paid for it monthly, thinking it was "free." The money was too easy, they have had no motivation to innovate. Now that cable is starting to be disrupted, TiVo is struggling to remain relevant...just like Blockbuster Video when Netflix came along.

Competition

[DriveDog]

One of the reasons I chose Tablo over Tivo last year—device support. Not supporting everything they reasonably can is a giant mistake.