AllThingsD » TiVo

Nintendo Says TV Services Are Coming to Wii U December 20

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 17:11:54 +0000

I wonder how long this software update will take? A month after launch, Nintendo is finally launching its TVii service, which lets customers access their TV guide from the GamePad controller. The TVii service is launching Dec. 20 in the U.S. and Canada, and will support various cable and satellite providers, as well as Amazon Instant Video and Hulu Plus. Integration with Netflix and TiVo have been delayed to early 2013. (Answer: Nintendo says it won’t take any time at all since the service was included in the original software update and just has to be turned on.)

TiVo Stream Gets Viewers Off the Couch

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 04:08:45 +0000

With my time limited, I’m continuously working to chip away at the ever-growing list of programs and movies on my TiVo.

[ See post to watch video ]

For the past week, I’ve been testing a device that solves a lot of my problems: TiVo Stream. The $130 box, available Sept. 6 from TiVo.com and in Best Buy soon after that, streams content from your TiVo to up to four mobile devices in your home at high-definition quality. That lets me watch prerecorded shows while doing other things, like cooking or getting ready for work.

Stream also turns mobile devices into TVs of their own: You can scan the channel guide, select a show and watch it live. It also lets people wirelessly download content to their mobile devices for watching anytime, like on planes or during road trips.

TiVo Stream works with the iPad, iPhone and newer iPod touch models. A TiVo spokesman said an Android-compatible app is in the works.

TiVo Stream sends content to mobile devices

To use the Stream, you need one of TiVo’s Premiere models. The overall cost may be prohibitive for TiVo newcomers: Getting a TiVo Premiere box can cost $150, $250 or $400, depending on the model. In addition, the monthly service fee for TiVo is $15 for a single DVR or $13 for multiple DVRs; lifetime service is offered to existing users for $400 or to new users for $500.

If you have a Premiere box, Stream is just $130. Users only pay for the cost of the box; there’s no added service fee. More than half of TiVo’s current subscribers use the company’s Premiere boxes. TiVo had 2.5 million subscribers at its last report in May, up from two million in April 2011.

Apps from cable companies, generally free to cable subscribers who log in, also provide some TV-watching options on mobile devices and work in various Wi-Fi network, not just at home. These services vary, and are generally more limited than TiVo Stream. Some only allow viewers to watch specific programming, rather than all live channels and prerecorded content like TiVo Stream. And Stream enables downloading files directly onto devices.

After using TiVo Stream in my home, I’m dreading sending it back after this column publishes, as is my policy for returning products. Without calling the cable company or buying new televisions, I was suddenly able to watch TV in several rooms of my house. As I chopped vegetables in the kitchen, I watched a streaming episode of the Food Network’s “Barefoot Contessa” for inspiration. I watched the ending to an old favorite movie, “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” from the comfort of my bed rather than from the living room. I even played live U.S. Open tennis matches in the bathroom while doing my makeup so as not to miss a minute of my favorite tennis tournament. At one point, I had a Kim Clijsters tennis match simultaneously playing on my TV, on two iPads and on an iPhone.

Its corresponding app shows what programs are downloaded to an iPad.

Live shows took about eight seconds to buffer when I first tapped a button to play them on my iPad or iPhone, then played smoothly without stuttering. Prerecorded shows played immediately when I tapped a button to play them on my iPhone or iPad. Though downloading shows and watching streamed shows on my iPad and iPhone used up a serious chunk in battery life, I was using them at home for most of the time and could plug them in for more juice.

When I wanted to take a show with me on my iPad or iPhone, I tapped a button in the TiVo Stream’s corresponding app to wirelessly download it. A 30-minute, standard-definition (305-megabyte) episode took 13 minutes to download to an iPhone, and a similar episode took just 14 minutes to download in “Best” definition (537 megabytes). A one-hour show took 18 minutes to download in standard definition (616 megabytes), while another one-hour episode took 28 minutes to download onto my iPad in “Best” definition (one gigabyte). “Standard” looked great on the iPad and iPhone, and for purposes other than testing, I wouldn’t bother downloading “Best” in the future.

To seasoned TiVo fans, the content-downloading model might sound familiar. TiVo already offers TiVoToGo, but this is a slow, wired option that uses a computer.

The TiVo Stream was a no-brainer to set up. I usually use a Wi-Fi dongle to wirelessly connect my TiVo to the Internet, but the Stream requires a wired connection. I used two Ethernet cords to plug the Stream device — a box about the size of a piece of toast and just over an inch thick — into my wireless router and the back of the TiVo. A small, white light on the box blinked for less than a minute before steadily glowing, which indicated that it was ready to use. I opened the TiVo app on my third-generation iPad, tapped a button to select my TiVo Premiere box, and entered its multimedia code, found in the TiVo settings menu. A four-step test appeared on the iPad screen and confirmed its connection to the TiVo. The whole process took less than five minutes and I repeated it with an iPhone and a first-generation iPad.

With the new TiVo Stream app, two columns clearly show what’s recorded on the TiVo and what’s downloaded on the device (iPad or iPhone, in my case). Watching shows was a lot like using my regular TV: I paused live programming to let it get a few minutes ahead, and then used a 30-second-skip button to fly past commercials. With a left or right swiping gesture, I could quickly fast forward or rewind.

Whenever I watched a live show on my iPad or iPhone, it automatically started recording back on my TiVo Premiere box, so if you have two shows already recording, you’ll be out of luck. Two Premiere models offer four tuners each, which avoids this problem.

Write to Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

TiVo Partners With PayPal for Shopping Via Commercials

Victoria Stilwell — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 19:20:18 +0000

TiVo Inc. is joining with the PayPal payment service to offer an on-the-spot way for TV watchers to buy products featured in interactive advertisements.

The digital-video-recorder company is working with advertisers and agencies to develop PayPal-enabled advertisements, which are expected to begin airing during the fall 2012 television season.

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Halo 4 Players Will Get Free Weekly "TV" Episodes on the Xbox

Tricia Duryee — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 15:09:18 +0000

As one of the biggest videogame franchises in history, the Halo series has sold more than 42 million copies to date, generating nearly $3 billion in total sales.

The game has been so successful it has inspired books, graphic novels and so-called “strategy guides” that have sold more than nine million copies. What’s more, eight of the 10 novels have made the New York Times best seller list.

And now, with the launch of Halo 4 on Nov. 6, the developers of the game are trying their hand at TV.

Well, sort of.

Frank O’Connor, franchise development director at 343 Industries, said this week at E3 that they wanted to create a narrative surrounding the game which would prompt players to talk about it on a regular basis, similar to how co-workers chat about the latest “Game of Thrones” around the water cooler the day after it airs.

He said the game studio asked the question, “How do we create these shared experiences?”

The answer was something they are calling Spartan Ops, which will deliver free “episodic” content on a weekly basis to anyone who buys the regular or limited edition of the game for $60. The episodes are actually not TV shows, but mini-missions that tell a side story to the main Halo game.

It’s different from the main game because players will cooperate with one another rather than compete in order to finish the mission.

In an interview with the The Guardian, O’Connor provided more of an explanation.

“People will typically buy a new game, they’ll talk about the big set-pieces in that game, and then they’ll move on to the multiplayer component, and often just stop talking about it,” he said. “We wanted gamers to have a continual water cooler conversation that revolves around shared gameplay experiences.”

The content won’t be shipped with the DVD, but rather will be delivered weekly through Xbox Live.

During a demonstration on Thursday at the Xbox booth on the floor of the Los Angeles Convention Center, O’Connor said the computer graphics for the first episode aren’t done yet, making the process very similar to a TV show that produces content just in time.

He also said if players don’t get around to playing the content, “they will stack up on your Xbox, like TiVo, and you can play them later.”

O’Connor declined to say how many episodes would be developed in all, but did say that the weekly series will continue on for “months, not weeks.” Each episode will take about 15 minutes for four players to complete — and longer if there are fewer players. In all, he says the weekly episodes will nearly double the amount of game play in Halo 4.

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You Really Can Blame the Web for Shrinking TV Ratings -- But You Have to Credit It for Boosting TV, Too

Peter Kafka — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:40:42 +0000

Why are lots of TV networks’ ratings down? The most obvious answer is that people are watching stuff on the Web instead.

But people are still watching a whole lot of TV — perhaps as much as ever. So the more nuanced answer is that some people are swapping out the Web for TV, some of the time. And other times Web video consumption may end up leading to more TV-watching.

Here’s some evidence supporting that idea: New data from Bernstein Research that tracks TV viewing habits for Netflix streaming subscribers. It shows a drop in kids’ TV viewing — but an increase for networks like AMC and FX. Presumably that’s because Netflix users are discovering old episodes of shows like “Mad Men” and “Sons of Anarchy” on Netflix, which is prompting them to watch new episodes of those shows on cable.

This chart shows a dropoff for programming on kids’ networks like Disney and Nickelodeon:

And this chart shows spikes for AMC whenever the network shows new episodes of shows that have old episodes on Netflix:

Bernstein put its research together using data from TiVo users. So on the one hand the numbers are pinpoint accurate, since they’re tracking actual TV usage. And, on the other hand, it may not be representative of the entire country.

Still, it makes intuitive sense, and certainly syncs up with the way the Web gets used in our house: Our kids are unaware you can do anything with an iPad other than watch “Backyardigans” and “Dinosaur Train.”

Meanwhile, I just plowed through the first four seasons of “Breaking Bad” on Netflix (and iTunes) last month — and am going out of my mind waiting for the fifth season to start on AMC this summer. Let’s cook!

AT&T Agrees to Pay TiVo at Least $215 Million for Patents

Drew FitzGerald — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:36:44 +0000

TiVo Inc. on Tuesday said it reached a settlement with AT&T Inc. that gives the set-top box maker at least $215 million for its technology.

TiVo shares initially leaped 15 percent to $10.27 after hours Tuesday, while AT&T rose 6 cents to $30.44.

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TiVo Q3 Loss Widens; Subscriptions Return to Growth

Drew FitzGerald — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 23:10:36 +0000

TiVo Inc.’s fiscal third-quarter loss widened as the cost of gaining new subscriptions climbed, though the effort appeared to pay off as the company broke a four-year streak of declining subscriber numbers.

Shares rose 4 percent to $9.95 after hours on the stronger-than-expected results. The stock had climbed 11 percent this year through the close.

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Dish, EchoStar Settle TiVo Patent Fight For $500 Million

Peter Kafka — Mon, 02 May 2011 12:25:39 +0000

Dish and EchoStar are paying TiVo half a billion dollars to settle a long-running patent fight over DVR technology. The two satellite TV companies will pay TiVo $300 million up front, and the remainder over 6 years, to settle suits that started in 2004. The settlement follows an April 20 legal victory for TiVo.

TiVo Soars on Ruling in Dish Network Case

David B. Wilkerson — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 19:12:27 +0000

TiVo Inc. stock was up 35 percent in afternoon trading Wednesday after a federal appeals court upheld a ruling that would force satellite broadcaster Dish Network to shut down millions of digital video recorders because they were found to have infringed upon TiVo Inc. patents.

The two sides have battled for more than six years over Dish’s alleged infringement of TiVo’s patents on its digital video recording technology.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, sitting en banc, upheld a district court finding of contempt and award of sanctions against Dish parent EchoStar Communications Corp. for failing to comply with an injunction.

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Breach Brings Scrutiny

Ben Worthen — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 07:49:41 +0000

A data breach at a little-known entity that affected companies from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. to TiVo Inc. is shining a light on the outsourcing of email marketing campaigns, a practice that has grown steadily over the past decade as consumers become less responsive to commercial pitches.

Epsilon Data Management LLC, a division of Alliance Data Systems Corp., said last week that hackers had accessed names and email addresses in its systems. In the days that followed, more than 40 companies—including J.P. Morgan Chase, TiVo and others—have said that their customers were among the victims.

The companies had hired Epsilon to manage marketing campaigns. When retailers such as Best Buy Co. and Target Corp. email promotions to customers, the likely buyers are often identified by and the messages are sent by firms such as Epsilon. Managing bulk mailings can be time-consuming and the technology to sort through customer information to come up with targeted promotions is often changing too quickly for businesses to do it on their own, experts say.

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TiVo Shares Sink as It Dials Back Expectations

Voices — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 23:29:42 +0000

Shares in DVR pioneer TiVo moved lower in after-hours trading today after the company posted a loss of $0.30 cents per share–two cents worse than analysts were expecting–and offered a disappointing picture of the current quarter. The fast-forward version: Service and technology revenue, down; subscription rate, down; churn, up; expenses, up; legal fees, substantial.

Motorola Sues TiVo

Joan E. Solsman — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 00:31:50 +0000

Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. filed a suit against TiVo Inc. in Texas Friday claiming infringement of its patents for digital video recorders.

In the complaint, Motorola says it owns multiple patents related to DVRs, including some from the mid-1990s by a group of engineers whose company was later purchased by a Motorola subsidiary. It claimed TiVo willfully infringed those patents, which were filed more than two years before TiVo’s founding.

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Redpoint's Geoff Yang Prefers Early-Stage Risk to Late-Stage Valuations (Video)

Liz Gannes — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 13:32:35 +0000

“I’m willing to take a lot of risk,” said Redpoint Ventures founding partner Geoff Yang in a recent interview. In addition to trying to find consumer Internet platforms that appeal to broad-based markets, he said, “I’m looking for novel experiences.”

That’s in part how Yang explained recent bets on Formspring, which he described as a “more engaged” version of Twitter; Scribd, which he said is evolving into a digital publishing platform; and the gamer video producer Machinima.com, which has already become “much more mainstream than people think.” Yang is also an investor in Clicker, Bluefin Labs and Oodle.

Yang, who previously backed hits such as TiVo, Myspace, Ask.com and Excite, talked to NetworkEffect about what he’s looking for now. The three big categories are social media, gaming and the digital living room. Yang said he’d love to see a good social music start-up (he deeply regrets not investing in Pandora), as well as a set-top box that’s a viable “combination of broadcast and broadband.”

Here’s a video from our interview last week of Yang talking about potential investment prospects:

[ See post to watch video ]

Yang and I also spoke about the frothy funding environment, which he said is driving up the amount Redpoint pays to be involved in any one deal.

To some extent, venture capitalists have less control than ever over the early-stage consumer Internet start-up market. Companies are cheaper to build; accelerators, angels and online resources get entrepreneurs through the early days; late-stage investors pick off companies increasingly sooner; and secondary markets wreak havoc with traditional concepts of liquidity.

With Demand Media and LinkedIn filing to go public, it might seem like a return to a situation where VC expertise is valuable, but Yang said he doesn’t expect those two IPOs to have a significant effect on what he does. “The most exciting companies are still private,” he said.

Yang said that despite discussion internally, Redpoint has not invested in shares of private Internet companies traded on secondary markets, or participated in the recent massive late-stage deals for companies like Twitter and Groupon. Redpoint competitors like Kleiner Perkins, Greylock Partners and Andreessen Horowitz jumped into those rounds despite multibillion-dollar valuations.

VCs have actually become the largest single category of buyers on SecondMarket, accounting for about 40 percent of transactions in the fourth quarter, according to the marketplace’s recent stats.

Yang is skeptical. “What do venture capitalists know about being a momentum hedge fund?” he said.

Plus, despite his interest in the sector, Yang thinks social media ads will be worth only around $50 billion by 2020, which doesn’t seem like enough to support current valuations for companies like Facebook.

Yang did sound a bit wistful, saying Redpoint had at various points declined to invest in many of the consumer Internet start-ups that are today’s heavyweights. “We passed along the way because we thought valuations were out of reach,” he said, “and it turns out we weren’t right.”

Exclusive: TMS Acquires Online Video Guide CastTV

Liz Gannes — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 17:37:02 +0000

Online video search start-up CastTV has been acquired by Tribune Media Services, the widely used entertainment guide metadata provider.

CastTV was founded in 2006 by a husband and wife team, and had raised $3.1 million from investors including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Ron Conway and Marc Andreessen.

Though she wouldn’t comment on the terms of the deal, CastTV co-founder and President Alex Vikati said, “CastTV was profitable so we weren’t forced to make any decisions.” She, CastTV’s co-founder and CEO Edwin Ong, and their three employees will make up TMS’s Silicon Valley office, rather than moving to join TMS at its Chicago headquarters.

CastTV had stayed relatively under the radar compared to newcomers like Clicker.com, but it still has four million monthly uniques. Unlike Clicker, which has focused on curation and personalization, CastTV takes more of a pure search and aggregation approach. It historically did not exclude unauthorized content streams (though when I checked this morning, this no longer seemed to be the case). CastTV has also focused on detail-oriented features such as device awareness, so it will filter video results to only the formats playable on a certain device.

TMS will combine CastTV’s databases with its metadata service, and operate CastTV.com in conjunction with its own entertainment guide Zap2it.com, which has about double the audience.

TMS counts just about every content provider and guide service as a customer, including Microsoft, Google, TiVo, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, IMDb and the New York Times.

TiVo's Q3 Isn't a Pretty Picture

Voices — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 22:20:21 +0000

Analysts were expecting bad news out of TiVo’s third-quarter results today, and the company delivered. Citing higher operating expenses, the DVR pioneer posted a loss of of $20.6 million, or 18 cents a share (three times the loss of a year ago), on revenue of $41.3 million. Consensus estimates were looking for a loss of 17 cents a share on $41.4 million in revenue. CEO Tom Rogers said the company’s distribution deals will start paying off in subscriber growth eventually, but for now, the fourth-quarter forecast was for more of the same.

Exclusive: Comcast's Top Digital Exec Amy Banse to Open New Silicon Valley Equity Fund for Cable Giant and NBC

Kara Swisher — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 08:09:04 +0000

Amy Banse, currently the president of Comcast Interactive Media, is shifting into a job as head of a new Silicon Valley-based equity fund aimed at making digital investments for the television cable giant, as well as its new NBC Universal unit, according to sources with knowledge of the plans.

While most of the attention related to the soon-to-be-completed merger of Comcast with NBC U has been on the musical chairs of its high-profile news and entertainment divisions, this move is potentially significant for the companies by putting a stake in the ground–and a presence–for it on the West Coast.

As part of the shift, sources said, Banse will be charged with combining two existing corporate investment funds: NBC U’s Peacock Equity and Comcast Interactive Capital.

The New York-based Peacock Equity is a $250 million fund that was founded as a joint venture in 2007 by GE Capital and NBC U.

Its investments have ranged from $3 million to $25 million each, including a lot of online advertising start-ups such as Adify and the Rubicon Project.

Comcast Interactive Capital–founded in 1999 and based in Philadelphia, where Comcast’s HQ is–has $500 million under management.

It has focused on broadband, interactive and enterprise businesses.

According to its Web site, “early successful investments” include About.com, CitySearch, Half.com, TiVo, and VeriSign.”

Current investments include SB Nation, BlackArrow and JiWire.

It is not clear how much more money the new still-unnamed equity fund will raise, but it will be aimed at early-stage companies, said sources.

The combined fund will debut by the end of the year or early next year.

Banse’s shift to become a VC comes after many years of leading Comcast’s online strategy, which has included the acquisition of the Fandango movie ticketing site and Daily Candy, an email newsletter.

She has also been in charge of the development and management of Comcast’s many Web sites, including Comcast.net, Xfinity.com and Fancast.

MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka recently reported that the high-profile Banse was moving out of her post, which was being split up into two jobs.

Many thought she would likely depart the company, but it appears she will stay for a while longer at least.

As it happens, Banse will be in San Francisco this week for the Web 2.0 conference, so please be sure to give her a warm welcome and explain “Fear the Beard” to a likely Phillies fan-atic.

And just to get acquainted in advance, here is her bio from the Comcast Web site:

Amy Banse serves as President of Comcast Interactive Media (CIM), a division of Comcast Corporation that is responsible for developing and operating online tools and businesses focused on entertainment, information and communication.

Since founding CIM in December of 2005, Ms. Banse has led Comcast’s online strategy, overseeing the acquisition of Fandango (the movie ticketing site), Daily Candy (the popular email newsletter), Plaxo (the smart contacts site), and thePlatform (the industry-leading provider of digital media publishing solutions) as well as the in-house development and management of, Comcast.net and xFinity.com(Comcast’s portals), Fancast, (a leading tv entertainment site), xFinitytv (Comcast ‘s online video portal), and Swirl (Daily Candy’s sample sales site). In this role, she has grown CIM into an 800 person team with significant digital capabilities and has played a key part in the industry’s development of its TV Everywhere strategy and in Comcast’s execution of that strategy, Fancast/xFinitytv.

Ms. Banse joined Comcast in 1991 as an in-house attorney responsible for programming acquisition. Most recently she served as Executive Vice President of Content Development where she oversaw the development of Comcast’s cable network portfolio including the company’s investments in E! Entertainment Television, The Golf Channel, and VERSUS and the development and launch of G4, PBS KIDS Sprout, TV One and Comcast’s sports networks.

Ms. Banse has represented CIM and Comcast as a featured speaker in venues around the country discussing the rapid evolution of content consumption in a digital world and the opportunities and challenges facing the cable and entertainment industries. She has been named among the “Most Powerful Women in Cable” and the “Top Programmers to Watch” by CableWorld magazine. She has also been named among the Cable 100 by Multichannel News and the Digital Power list, by The Hollywood Reporter. She was honored as a “Wonder Woman” by Multichannel News and Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) in 2004, received WICT’s Geraldine B. Laybourne Fearless Award in 2009 and ProMax’s Brand Builder Award in 2010 Ms. Banse sits on the Board of The Morris Arboretum and Springside School for Girls. In 2007 she received “The Distinguished Alumni Award” from Springside School, and in 2006 she was honored by Girls, Inc. as an outstanding role model for girls during their annual Celebration Luncheon. Ms. Banse is also a member of The Forum of Executive Women, the Philadelphia region’s premier women’s organization.

Ms. Banse received a BA from Harvard University and a JD from Temple University Law School. She and her husband and their four children live in Philadelphia.

Kno Hires Fancy CFO, as It Preps Tablet Launch (And Possible New Funding Search)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:00:51 +0000

Kno, the start-up attempting to make and market a student-aimed tablet and learning platform, has hired Stuart West as its new CFO.

West (pictured here) has worked at Yahoo, InfoSpace, TiVo and J.P. Morgan.

Kno is continuing to make key hires as it prepares to ship the product by the end of the year, after recently raising another $46 million in funding to add to a $10 million round.

Sources said that the Santa Clara, Calif., company could be back out raising even more money early next year.

Its current backers include prominent venture players like Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital, along with investors Mike Maples and Ron Conway.

Patent Office Backs TiVo's DVR Claims

Kathy Shwiff and Ian Sherr — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 21:55:01 +0000

TiVo Inc. said the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has reaffirmed the validity of all its patent claims for its “time-warp” digital video recorder technology in the second re-examination of the patent at EchoStar Corp.’s request.

TiVo’s shares jumped 9.7 percent to $10.08 in 4 p.m. Nasdaq trading, while EchoStar slid 1.1 percent to $19.30 and sister company Dish Network Corp. (DISH) fell 2.7 percent to $19.10.

“This decision by the PTO is final and not appealable by EchoStar,” TiVo said. It also expressed confidence a federal appeals court will uphold and enforce an injunction against EchoStar’s “ongoing willful infringement of the time-warp patent.”

EchoStar had no immediate comment Wednesday. Dish didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Shaping Ads for Web-Connected TV

Jessica E. Vascellaro and Suzanne Vranica — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 22:51:26 +0000

Technology companies racing to deliver video to the living room over the Web are exploring the idea of offering ads on their services, seeking to capture some of the billions of ad dollars that flow to television.

A few companies, including TiVo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), have released ad products tied to broadband-video services designed to be accessed on television sets, not computers. They include ads that can take a viewer to a movie trailer on YouTube when the viewer pauses a TiVo-recorded TV program, as well as ads that can be accessed by clicking a tile on the navigation menu of Xbox Live, the online gaming and video service for Microsoft’s Xbox game console.

Other efforts are also afoot. Google Inc. (GOOG) has been meeting with some of Madison Avenue’s biggest media-buying firms, exploring ways to sell ads through its Google TV software due out this fall. Sony Corp. (SNE) and other hardware makers are launching TVs and set-top boxes equipped with the software, which allows users to search and watch Internet programming.

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New TiVo Remote Tackles Clunky Text-Entry

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 23:49:09 +0000

TiVo owners are a proud bunch. Give them a few minutes to tell you why they adore their digital video recorder, and they might get googly-eyed talking about their favorite WishList that auto-records every George Clooney appearance on TV. Or they’ll wax on about a time when TiVo made the perfect suggestion of a new show to record, or the way its trademark bubble popping sound effects make them smile after a long day at work.

[ See post to watch video ]

What they won’t tell you are the things that drive them crazy about TiVo. Chief among them is the arcane text-entry system, which requires hitting directional arrows to move a cursor around a screen of letters and numbers, selecting one and then repeating again and again to spell out an entire word. Letter by letter, this hunt-and-peck process is enough to leave users yearning for a real keyboard.

This week, TiVo Inc. (TIVO) solved that problem with the $90 Slide, which the company says is the first remote control with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The Slide is shorter than normal TiVo remotes and is a bit chunkier for housing the slide-out keyboard. But it’s a pleasure to use and takes away the particularly painful process of typing text on a TiVo screen.

It’s currently available at TiVo.com and will be in Best Buy Co. (BBY) stores starting this weekend.

The Slide works with TiVo Premiere and Premiere XL, TiVo Series 3, TiVo HD and TiVo HD XL models, but it doesn’t come with any of these devices in place of the regular TiVo remote; rather, it’s a stand-alone accessory.

Until now, the next most expensive TiVo remote was the $50 TiVo Glo, so named because of its backlit buttons. The Slide remote also has buttons that glow in the dark, but its real selling point is its slide-out keyboard.

I tested the Slide with a TiVo Series 3 and found that its keyboard greatly eased the process of entering text in TiVo apps, as well as services like YouTube, Amazon Video on Demand, Netflix, TiVo search, WishList and Season Pass Manager. It even comes in handy when programming the remote: Rather than scrolling through hundreds of alphabetized TV models, I typed P-I-O and instantly jumped to Pioneer.

Unfortunately, this same trick doesn’t apply to other spots in TiVo. For example, I opened my Now Playing list and wanted to jump right to “Mad Men” by typing “M-A-D M-E-N.” Nothing happened. This list of recorded shows stays put and isn’t searchable by using the Slide remote’s full keyboard. A representative from TiVo said that the company is aware of the other opportunities to use the Slide QWERTY, such as for shortcuts like the one I tried, and that it is working on upgrades.

Instead of using infrared, the Slide communicates with a TiVo using Bluetooth technology. I was told by a TiVo representative that infrared isn’t reliable enough for sending text entries to the TiVo box, and that Bluetooth is a stronger, more reliable technology for this QWERTY remote. Another reason the Slide uses Bluetooth is that infrared needs a direct line of sight, and using the Slide’s QWERTY keyboard requires turning the remote sideways before sliding the keyboard out, meaning that the infrared blaster doesn’t face the TiVo when used.

TiVo’s new $90 Slide remote control has a keyboard that slides out from under the device when it’s rotated horizontally.

I plugged the remote’s included Bluetooth receiver into one of the TiVo’s USB ports, and my Slide remote instantly paired with the TiVo. Though many buttons worked automatically, including the TiVo, playback and channel buttons, other functions had to be programmed, including power, input, volume and mute. So I followed simple instructions to enter the correct four-digit code for the Pioneer Elite I was using, and seconds later, my Slide remote was fully functional with the TV and TiVo.

A symbol button on the Slide’s QWERTY keyboard can be held down to type the second function of each key, like hitting Alt on a BlackBerry. Other helpful keys include a back arrow that deletes letters and a clear button that erases text in the entry box. Without the Slide, users would have to slowly navigate to a delete icon on the screen and select it for each letter you wanted to erase.

Along with its full keyboard, the Slide also has a number panel on its far right side. Its left side offers a set of four directional arrows built around a select button, and I used these to navigate through TiVo screens.

If you tire of the Slide’s glow-in-the-dark buttons, hold the TiVo and thumbs down buttons together for five seconds to turn this feature off; holding TiVo and thumbs up turns it on again.

If you dread using your TiVo for text-entry searches and you’d like a better way of doing so, the Slide remote—while pricey—will save you from struggling with the old text-entry style. But it’s a shame that TiVo Inc. hasn’t yet created more smart shortcuts for this slide-out keyboard.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Rumored $99 iTV Could Pave Way for $2,000 Apple-Connected Television

John Paczkowski — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:27:04 +0000

“The problem with innovation in the TV industry is the go-to-market strategy. The TV industry has a subsidized model that gives everyone a set-top box for free. So no one wants to buy a box. Ask TiVo, ask Roku, ask us…or ask Google (GOOG) in a few months.”

That was how Apple CEO Steve Jobs answered a question about Apple TV and the future of the television interface at D8. “The television industry fundamentally has a subsidized business model that gives everyone a set-top box, and that pretty much undermines innovation in the sector,” he said. “The only way this is going to change is if you start from scratch, tear up the box, redesign and get it to the consumer in a way that they want to buy it.”

And who better to do this than Apple (AAPL)? The company has arguably already done it for the personal computer, the portable music player and the cell phone. Why not the TV as well?

In a Monday note to clients, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster suggests the company will do just that in the next two to four years, but only after it launches a new cloud-centric version of Apple TV.

“Apple has recently developed a data center in Maiden, N.C., that we believe could serve as the hub of a cloud-based service for iTunes video,” Munster wrote. “With Apple’s growing family of connected devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV and Macs) it only makes sense that Apple would deliver a cloud-based media service to leverage its competitive advantage in the space: devices. As part of this, we expect Apple to update the Apple TV product in the coming months with limited storage, a lower price, an app store and a focus on accessing content over the Internet.”

Munster believes this device, the rumored $99 iTV, will be a stepping stone toward an all-in-one connected television, something Apple could position as a replacement for the typical home entertainment system and for which it could charge a premium–$1,800 to $2,000.

That might seem like a daunting price at first, but keep in mind that paying it would allow you to replace an entire entertainment system with a single TV. Add to that an App Store that would enhance it with games and other apps, as well as an iTunes TV subscription offering, and you’ve got a pretty compelling device. Says Munster, “We believe an all-in-one Apple Television solution would provide an ease of use that many consumers are looking for. Apple could also bring its software expertise to the television market and provide for themselves an immediate advantage against its competition (primarily hardware makers). As connected TVs gain traction, we believe software will be a critical selling point, and Apple could offer best-in-class software on an Apple Television.”

The All-In-One Remote

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 02:09:27 +0000

One of the first technology products I tested for my job here at the Journal was a universal remote. It was a giant eyesore and its dense instruction book had about as many pages as the remote had buttons. It controlled most anything from lights to automatic shades to entertainment systems.

[ See post to watch video ]

My, how times have changed. This week, almost exactly eight years later, I tested two different infrared sensors that plug into your iPhone or iPod touch and turn it into a universal remote that controls a myriad of devices. The setup for these took just a few minutes and was so intuitive I didn’t need to consult any directions.

I tried the $50 L5 Remote (www.L5remote.com) from L5 Technology and the $80 FLPR (www.newpotatotech.com) from New Potato Technologies; both work with hundreds of thousands of electronic devices. I plugged each of these infrared sensors into the dock connector of an iPhone 4 and downloaded free apps to remotely control two TVs, including an old Sony in my office as well as a TiVo Series 2. Other devices can also be controlled, like MP3 docks, speakers or DVD players.

The FLPR costs more but automatically creates a customized remote control screen with pre-coded buttons for each of your devices; you simply enter the device type and brand. The L5 Remote requires manually training each button to match the function of a button on the physical remote.

The L5 Remote

The new devices offer an obvious convenience: An iPhone or iPod touch that doubles as a universal remote means you’ll often have it with you. But that could be a problem if you want the remote and someone else has left home with the iPhone or iPod touch. And if someone wants to use one of your remotely-controlled electronics while you’re on the phone, you’ll have to interrupt your conversation to switch between apps (on the new iOS 4 operating system).

These infrared dongles are tiny and could easily be misplaced, yet aren’t small enough to keep on your iPhone or iPod touch all day.

Another problem is that the touch screens on the iPhone and iPod touch don’t give tactile feedback like remote controls with physical buttons, forcing you to look down while pressing buttons.

To get started with the L5 and FLPR, I plugged each into an iPhone 4 and a shortcut message appeared, sending me to a screen for installing each gadget’s free app. Since the infrared remote plugs into the bottom of the iPhone, each app’s screen automatically flipped upside down, forcing me to also flip the iPhone and point it at my devices.

The FLPR

The FLPR’s simple setup made it a breeze to use, and each electronic device’s coded buttons appeared on the screen seconds after I selected the type of device and brand name. I chose icons to represent each device, like a TiVo-looking icon for my TiVo remote. FLPR used fun backgrounds (called skins) for each remote, including tie-dyed designs.

Though the L5 Remote is a bit more tedious to set up because each button must be manually assigned, the app does a great job of showing you what’s happening on the screen, using green progress bars to display when each button is assigned a task.

Both companies’ products will work with—but aren’t optimized for—the iPad. I successfully tried the L5 Remote’s iPhone app with my iPad and it worked without a hitch. An L5 representative said an iPad app is due out by the end of the year. FLPR says it will release its iPad app in August.

If you don’t share a remote control with many other people and want a simple way to control your electronics on a gadget you already carry all the time, FLPR will be your best bet. But the infrared pieces needed to work both the FLPR and L5 Remote are a pain to take on and off.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

The Summer to Go on a Power Diet

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:40:45 +0000

As temperatures climb to their highest levels, so, too, do the cost of home utilities bills. So how do you at least keep your energy-sucking electronics in check?

[ See post to watch video ]

Summer months are the most expensive electricity usage months of the year, according to a study from the U.S. Energy Information Association, a government agency. So whether you’re trying to save money or attempting to live a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, several technologies can make the task a bit easier. This week, I’ve prepared a run down of some of the many devices and websites that can help you to reduce power consumption.

Intelligent Power Strips

Call it standby power, vampire power or phantom power: When your appliances are plugged into the wall and not in use, they’re still sucking up energy. To solve this problem, some people go around their house unplugging electronics, but then they have to go around plugging these in again when they need to use them. And certain machines, like TiVos (TIVO), for example, will reboot every time they’re unplugged and plugged, which takes significantly more time than turning on a lamp after plugging it in again.

Smart strips like the HP Monster Digital PowerCenter let you choose which plugged-in devices stay on.

A number of special power strips have come out within the year that are designed to simplify this process by ensuring devices don’t draw power while plugged in. The $40 Smart Strip Power Strip from Bits Ltd. (bitsltd.net) has either seven or 10 outlets, depending on the model. These include three red outlets for products you never want to turn off and one blue “control” outlet. Electronics plugged into the remaining white outlets stay on or shut down depending on what’s plugged into the blue outlet. So if your computer is plugged into a blue outlet and you shut it down, your speakers, scanner, printer and monitor would also turn off as long as they’re plugged into the Smart Strip’s white outlets.

A similar product, in which plugged-in electronics take their cue from a control outlet, is the $50 HP (HPQ) Monster Digital PowerCenter with GreenPower (http://3.ly/3hXF). This strip, which has six three-pronged outlets, also includes two surge-protected phone connections for fax lines or modems.

The iGo Green Power Smart Tower.

The $80 Power Smart Tower with iGo Green Technology (http://3.ly/C7ce) includes four outlets that are always on and four that power down when anything that’s plugged in turns off. It also has two built-in USB power ports for charging via USB.

Track More, Waste Less

When people go on diets, they’re often told to write down everything they eat so they’re more conscious of what they’re ingesting every day. A study by the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford showed a 5% to 15% reduction in power consumption just by providing energy information to consumers.

One tool that could help you trace your electricity usage is the Consumer Electronics Association’s Energy Calculator (http://3.ly/gp2M). People fill in data on how much they use specific devices—like “digital television, 21 to 39 inches” or “notebook PC”— in their home per day or per month. The site calculates typical watts per device and figures out the energy-consumption costs for each over the period of a month and over a year, and then adds up the totals for each device. The idea is to let people see how small usage adjustments can have a big monetary impact over time.

If you’d rather not do the work of inputting data on your power usage, the Google PowerMeter (google.com/powermeter) might be up your alley. It digitally tracks your usage patterns using meter data supplied by your utility company and its results can be accessed from any Web browser or your iGoogle homepage. A Google representative says this service is gradually rolling out in tests with utility companies. Currently, 10 utilities are partnered with PowerMeter in five countries, including the U.S.

If your utility company isn’t one of the 10 that work with Google’s (GOOG) PowerMeter, you can buy a special gadget that monitors consumption, including some that physically hook into your fuse box. A list can be found here (http://3.ly/Un3h). One relatively less expensive device from Current Cost is $169.

Before You Buy

If you’re buying new electronics soon, you may want to consider a product’s energy efficiency before buying it.

The U.S. Department of Energy has a Web database of Energy Star compliant products, which meet requirements set by the DOE and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (http://3.ly/SSsy).

Information on the Consumer Electronics Association website (http://3.ly/4x9P) helps people decide whether to replace or repair a product, from an efficiency standpoint.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com.

"Hulu for Magazines" Gets a CEO: Good Luck, Morgan Guenther!

Peter Kafka — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:46:22 +0000

Remember Next Issue Media, the “Hulu for magazines” joint venture that was supposed to help the big publishers negotiate with the likes of Apple and Amazon in the e-reader market? It has been awfully quiet for a long time, but there has been at least one good reason for that: It hasn’t had a CEO.

Now it does. The JV has appointed Morgan Guenther to the post. Who?

From the press release:

Mr. Guenther served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AirPlay, a wireless entertainment services company. Prior to this position, he was with TiVo Inc., as President from 2001 through 2003 and before that as Senior Vice President of Business Development and Revenue Operations. Mr. Guenther sits on several other technology company boards and is also a former partner at Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker LLP.

John Squires, the Time Warner (TWX) executive who helped spearhead the JV last year, had openly campaigned for the job. But outside of his former colleagues at Time Inc., most magazine executives assumed he wouldn’t get the gig, for whatever reason.

Bob Sauerberg, the Condé Nast distribution exec tasked with speaking on behalf of the JV partners–Condé, Time Inc., News Corp. (NWS), Meredith (MDP), Hearst–explains the group’s choice with…delicacy. Squires brought “huge enthusiasm” to the job as an interim leader, he says. But “as we now head into execution, and working through how to do it, we felt that Morgan…was the right guy.” Etc.

It is worth noting that Guenther will be based in San Francisco, which is on the other side of the continent from his corporate backers, but is presumably next door to all the tech companies the JV will have to deal with. So that’s encouraging.

The discouraging part: The market for this stuff is moving very quickly, and the JV doesn’t seem to have moved at all for the past six months.

Not true! says Sauerberg: Squires, along with consulting firm Oliver Wyman, has been studying the market, and those findings are supposed to be presented at an industry conference tomorrow. Publishing sources also tell me that the JV has done some actual technical work as well, though it’s unclear if we’ll ever see it.

Okay. Here’s the bigger issue: Even in the best-case scenario, this kind of media joint venture works only if the partners behind it try really, really hard to make it work. Hulu itself is a great product, but that JV is now struggling to balance the competing interests of its network TV owners.

And in this case, it’s unclear whether Next Issue Media’s owners really believe they need a single aggregator to market and distribute their stuff, a la iTunes in music and Hulu and YouTube for video.

Most telling point: Next Issue Media doesn’t have exclusive rights to distribute its partners’ stuff, as Hulu does. That is: Any publisher is free to set up its own deals with Apple (AAPL) or Amazon (AMZN) or anyone else.

So you can very easily imagine a scenario where Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos applies leverage to cut a separate deal with Time or Condé, etc. And once that starts happening…well, you can see how this one could play out.

Perhaps Squires was lucky not to get the gig.

D8 Video: Steve Jobs on Why Apple TV Is a Hobby

John Paczkowski — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 06:49:50 +0000

Three years ago at D5, Apple CEO Steve Jobs described Apple TV as a hobby. And since then, the company has continued to describe the digital media receiver that way. Indeed, COO Tim Cook referred to it that way at a Goldman Sachs (GS) conference in February.

Today Jobs told us why: Apple (AAPL) has no interest in a market that precludes it from rolling out a viable go-to-market strategy.

Below, a video of the anecdote.

[ See post to watch video ]

More Coverage on the Steve Jobs D8 Speaker Page »