pa rel=”lytebox” href=”http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2010/03/a17c4273.jpg”img src=”http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2010/03/500x_a17c4273.jpg” class=”left image500″ width=”500″ title=”TiVo the Dinosaur Just Got a New Jetpack”//aThe a href=”http://gizmodo.com/5484003/tivo-premiere-details-and-first-hands-on-like-imdb-on-tv”new TiVo Premiere/a is like dinosaurs who got upgraded with laser jetpacks: Fancier, but potentially outmoded in a world populated by tons of ninjas with nuclear shuriken./p
pI saved up enough money to buy the first-generation TiVomdash;one of the Philips models, I thinkmdash;when I was still in high school, and mostly used it to record episodes of emBuffy/em and emBatman the Animated Series/em scattered all over the vast expanse of cable television. Oh yeah, and skip commercials. No commercials, and Batman whenever I wanted? This is the future of TV, I was pretty sure./p
pWhich turned out to be true. Now, cable companies (or FiOS or U-Verse) offer DVR services built right into your set-top box, for free, or for a few bucks a month. While the interface and experience they offer isn’t as nice as TiVo’s, most people aren’t willing to drop $300 to $500 on a box with an emadditional/em monthly fee for a slightly prettier, more robust experience. They’re happy with the (nearly free) basics: fast-forwarding through commercials, and saving shows to watch them later. That’s 90 percent of what most people want out of DVR, so for them the TiVo price is too high: Another box, another wad of cash, another subscription./p
pHaving convinced the entire industry that its original idea was a really good one, the burden on TiVo this time around was to show us what came next. What could it be? A new cable tuner that embraced technology for cableco-provided VOD and other services? A multi-room system with a big box and many skinny satellite boxes connected by Wi-Fi? Perhaps a box with integrated Wi-Fi or maybe even integrated Powerline networking?/p
pThough TiVo ducked these possibilitiesmdash;in some cases because the tech just isn’t ready, in some cases because the cost would go upmdash;they did overhaul the user interface. Video remains visible while you are poking around all the menus, rich metadata is now available at the touch of a button while you’re watching, and searches for a single show now list multiple sources including Netflix and other third-party VOD services that come with the system. There’s also a new remote with a QWERTY keyboard./p
pThough these steps make the Premiere a much improved experience over its predecessors, it only demonstrates the point: Netflix streaming, Amazon VOD, even a QWERTY remote, are all being commoditized. Samsung, a href=”http://gizmodo.com/5125554/vizio-connected-hdtvs-built+in-80211n-for-amazon-and-netflix-vod”Vizio/a and others are building software right into their TVs or Blu-ray players that tap all of those services, delivering video, photos and news from a multitude of sources (and at least in Vizio’s case) in a pretty damn good interface. Free. LG’s a href=”http://gizmodo.com/5441239/lg-bd590-is-the-first-blu+ray-player-with-an-integrated-hard-drive”got a Blu-ray player with a hard drive/a now. Where do you think that’s going? Combined with that free DVR from the cable company, there’s not a lot of room for TiVo there. Hell, the TVs even have built-in Wi-Fi./p
pThat’s not to mention the ultimate DVR: the internet. TiVo is freeing users more and more from the constraints of network programming schedule, the ability to watch the shows whenever I want to. But it’s freedom inside the box. With Hulu, FanCast, or BitTorrent, I can watch shows on just about any emscreen/em I want to. My laptop, TV, or my phone. And even the ability to search one show and get multiple sources is a hallmark of Boxee, another free app for PCs, Macs and certain Linux boxes like Apple TV./p
pSure, the catalogs of many services aren’t as complete, the “listings” can get messy and Hulu a href=”http://gizmodo.com/5484190/viacom-pulling-the-daily-show-and-the-colbert-report-from-hulu”yanks down shows I like/a on occasion, but this is where the future of television really is. Any screen, any time. Without significant development in the box-free world, TiVo can only be a stopgap, really./p
pThe new TiVo’s a href=”http://gizmodo.com/5484003/tivo-premiere-details-and-first-hands-on-like-imdb-on-tv”billing itself/a as the one true set-top box, and it does embrace the internet in some waysmdash;the overture made to third-party apps development shows that TiVo knows the position its in. But it’s fundamentally a href=”http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2010-03/the-tivo-premiere-is-here/”the same TiVo it’s always been/a. That’s painfully clear when you check out the site a href=”http://www.tivo.com/what-is-premiere/premiere-is/index.html”for Premiere/a, and then watch this video a href=”http://vimeo.com/8599559″demoing the latest Boxee/a, which is emfundamentally/em tied to the internet. Which one emlooks/em more like the present to you (annoying narrator aside)?/p
pTiVo isn’t going anywhere yet, just like the dinosaurs who hung around after that meteor threw a bunch of dust into the sky. They couldn’t figure out how to use their laser jetbacks to clear out the debris, so their days were just numbered./pbr clear=”both” style=”clear: both;”/
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