Roku Unveils Customizable Remote

Along with a minor refresh of the Roku Express and Roku Ultra this week, the streaming powerhouse also unveiled a new customizable remote. While it doesn’t do away with the “spam buttons,” as Roku is primarily an advertising delivery company (and Netflix requires it), the enhanced remote control adds two new numbered personalized shortcut buttons … Read more

TiVo Sullies DVR Recordings with Video Ads

As I mentioned a mere 72 hours ago, TiVo’s been trialing additional advertising as part of a broader push to further monetize their platform. And now, andfy of the TiVo Community, has become an inadvertent beta tester of sluggish, lower res pre-roll video ads… that precede his DVR recordings. It looks (and feels) atrocious. See … Read more

TiVo+ Video Streaming Launches Next Month

Looks like the new TiVo Edge line won’t be the only big announcement this fall given Bloomberg’s interview with new CEO Dave Shull: Later this month, TiVo plans to announce new international customers, and in October it will unveil a new product, TiVo Plus, that better integrates new streaming services with the company’s core TV … Read more

TiVo Commercial Auto Skip Has Arrived

As you-know-who broke the news, TiVo has deployed automatic commercial skip capabilities with the latest “Hydra” software update … that has just begun rolling out to Bolt, Roamio, and Mini DVR hardware. When first initiating playback of a TiVo SkipMode-flagged recording, you’ll be prompted to enable “Auto Skip” to automatically zip by commercial interruption. There’s … Read more

The Android TV Interface Has Been Compromised

While Nvidia Shield TV gets the bulk of the attention, and rightfully so, there are a number of other Android TV products out there… including quite a few Sony televisions. And our very own Joel Ward was treated to a rather unpleasant update. Both Joel’s Sony 2016 800D 43″ and 2017 900E 65″ televisions, running … Read more

TiVo GameSkip Returns For Super Bowl LIII

TiVo’s 2018 “Game Skip” experiment appears to have been so successful that the DVR pioneer will once again invert their commercial skip functionality to spotlight Super Bowl ads. As described last year: Everyone knows that [the Super Bowl] commercials are some of the best, highest quality commercials of the year. So, we’re going to tag the … Read more

Hulu To Resurrect TiVo Pause Screen Advertising

Variety reports that streaming service Hulu intends to implement pause screen advertising beginning next year. This isn’t an entirely new development, since TiVo pioneered that “feature” way back in 2009. Given Hulu’s least expensive tier already runs traditional commercials, this appears to be both an additive disruption for users and revenue stream for the company. As … Read more

TiVo Will Redesign Guide (to sell ads)

Although Hydra was just deployed about a year ago and remains a work in progress, TiVo has announced development of yet another new interface — intended to better aggregate linear cable content alongside streaming video… to generate revenue. From the Seeking Alpha transcript of TiVo’s quarterly call: we began investing in a new opportunity that … Read more