While you can’t get your hands on the TiVo Stream just yet, I have. And I can tell you it’s pretty killer. Of course, it helps to understand my perspective — This site exists because of my interest in mobile video, having launched with the TiVoToGo tutorials and leading to a stint with the Slingbox folks. So I’m all about watching television on my terms… which doesn’t always involve a TV.
The TiVo Stream ($130) is essentially a small network-connected companion box that relays video from a wired TiVo Premiere DVR to an iPad or iPhone. An (upcoming) update to the already highly functional and attractive TiVo iOS app enables Stream connectivity and playback — making for some seemless integration via new “Watch on iDevice” and “Download” buttons. And setup is pretty trivial… Once the Stream is hardwired, the iOS TiVo app will discover it on the network and prompt for a personal media access key to link everything up.
After configuration, merely clicking on a show from the guide or your bucket of DVR recordings brings up the ability to stream that content to your iPad. I found the 720p video streaming to be very smooth and of nice quality. So while Verizon has yet to deliver an app to stream my FiOS “cable” content around the home and providers like TWC don’t offer your full channel lineup, the TiVo Stream provides a CableLabs-blessed end-around to view all the programming I pay for in any room of my new house. Basically, my iPad is my TV. In the kitchen, in the bathroom, and in the garage.
In addition to streaming content, the Stream also enables video downloads to take on the road (or in the air). Unfortunately, only “copy freely” tagged digital cable (or OTA) shows can be moved to your iDevice. Which means HBO subscribers and TWC customers may not find the Stream quite as compelling. However, these are the same anti-consumer limitations that impact multi-room viewing and TiVoToGo. On FiOS and having foregone HBO, I don’t find myself limited. And it took me about 22 minutes to download a “high” quality 64 minute Breaking Bad episode. A “standard” quality recording (lower resolution, lesser bitrate) could be conceivably downloaded in less than 1/4 real-time. Although, as efficient as the transfers are, the app must remain open to continue downloading.
In addition to controlling video playback via an iOS app scrub bar, TiVo has also kindly provided thirty second skip ahead and 8 second replay buttons – with corresponding swipe right/left gestures. Obviously, the experience is a smoother on downloaded, versus streamed, content as the Stream has to adjust on the fly. But it’s (mostly) quite polished given its duties, potentially transcoding and streaming four simultaneous streams. As to the “mostly”, I did encounter a few connectivity errors… running pre-release TiVo software on an unsupported version of iOS (v6b4). Pulling the plug on the Stream resolved them and I expect these anomalies to be ironed out in short order.
The TiVo Stream goes on sale next week, but you can probably order yours right now for $130, plus tax and possibly shipping. If you have an iPad and any variant of the TiVo Premiere, I can’t think of a reason why you wouldn’t. In terms of price, the Stream is equivalent to the Slingbox SOLO placeshifter — which streams content both within and beyond the home. Yet, for TiVo owners, the Stream experience is way more more unified and polished. And for you Android owners, TiVo tells me they’ve got something in the pipeline…
@Jon brings up some interesting edge cases, any idea what happens in those situations Dave?
Great idea, but another box? Uggh. Why not integrate this function into the next model of TiVo?
Jon, Bakk, If the tuners are in use I believe you’ll see an alert like the false positive I snapped above about all tuners being in use. I’ll test this weekend before returning the Stream.
Greg, a few months back TiVo alluded that is the plan… to integrate this into future DVR hardware. Of course, there could also be business reasons to keep it separate. It’ll be interesting to see the uptake. Not that TiVo actually shares specific breakdown of sales.
Thanks Dave. Thinking a bit more, I guess the reason not to integrate it is to keep the cost of the main (Premiere) box as low as possible; adding more components would raise its cost.
@Greg It also seems likely that many of their cable distributors wouldn’t want the feature enabled, so if they built it in they could be wasting money on a feature that might only be enabled in retail and certain accounts. That said, at some point the hardware required to do this will be cheap enough or integrated into other chips they’re already putting on the board that it’ll happen anyway.
I don’t understand this product. So the content lives on the TiVo or goes through the TiVo over ethernet to this stream device. It then goes back through the ethernet to my Wifi and then to my iOS device. Why not just allow the iOS device to stream DIRECTLY from the TiVo? It seems like a lot of shipping bits around.
bbock, the Tivo itself isn’t powerful enough to transcode mpeg2 video into h.264 video (something portable devices support). It’s actually a very computationally intense process, especially considering the Stream transcodes up to 4 HD videos simultaneously in real-time. That’s a lot of horsepower that the Tivo DVR lacks. Hence the Stream… But they have hinted at possibly building the ability into future boxes to remove the middleman.
Didn’t TiVo purchase or partner with the company that owned the technology that the stream uses?
Didn’t TiVo purchase or partner with the company that owned the technology that the stream uses?
There was a PR put out by Zenverge after they were selected by TiVo. Its an interesting group of investors including Moto (Google) and Verizon.
http://zenverge.com/company-investors.html
Hope this hasn’t already been asked…. I have Time Warner and see that #52 & #53 imply I can’t download Time Warner shows. So is streaming possible with Time Warner?
My understanding is streaming of copy protected content will work for any operator similar to MRS.
The update is here!
The app won’t work with a jailbroken device
“The app won’t work with a jailbroken device “
See post #5 above.
Was so excited about how seamless the Stream set up and worked that I became a TiVo shareowner for the first time. The fully integrated Tivo App has been the best feauture of the Premiere platform and this takes it to a new level. Think one football game on your lap and one on the TV and switching back and forth with ease. Hopefully, the Virgin experience takes off here in the states with a larger provider.
If I have have multiple TiVo Premieres will I need multiple TiVo Streams, or can the TiVo Stream connect to multiple TiVos?