“TiVo on Tuesday announced its first major update to its line of digital video recorders in three years, giving buyers the opportunity to stream content from a DVR to an iOS-powered device such as an iPhone or iPad,” Kevin Bostic reports for AppleInsider.
“The new line of Roamio DVRs are now stepping onto turf previously occupied by devices such as the Slingbox, though TiVo’s new lineup has a wider feature set than does the Slingbox,” Bostic reports. “In adding streaming to mobile functionality, the new DVRs subsume the features of a pre-existing TiVo device, the TiVo Stream add-on box. That device paired with TiVo Premiere DVRs to stream to iOS devices.”
Bostic reports, “Most of the Roamio DVRs will be able to stream live and recorded content to iOS devices outside of the home, but that functionality will not be available until some months after the Roamio line launches. That capability will likely come in the form of a firmware update.”
Read more in the full article here.
I have a Western Digital NAS in which I store my videos that are encoded to QuickTime format. I have no problems streaming the video to my HDTV via AirPlay over Apple TV using the WD2Go app (there’s a maximum file limit of 4GB) or 8player movie streaming app (paid app for file sizes that are larger than 4GB). If I’m in another room, say the bathroom, I can play the video on my iPad or iPhone directly. Storing video on a NAS offers more flexibility in my opinion.
That’s an interesting setup for personal video distribution – but where do these encoded videos come actually from? You see, TiVo has a whole system for finding and recording movies and TV shows that’s very easy to use and completely legal. Your video setup doesn’t qualify as a TiVo replacement if you still need to do things like download videos over the web or rip DVDs.
I use Plex to store all my ripped DVDs. I can then stream from my media server (hosted directly on my NAS with my media) to any of the plex clients in my house (Roku, iOS/Android devices, etc.) and then relay that along to my aTV via airplay (since it doesn’t yet support native apps and I don’t want to use the trailer app hack).
Plex is smart enough to transcode when necessary and on the fly. Granted, it doesn’t (yet) have a “LiveTV Option”, but for media center goodness, it’s quite top notch.
Cutting the cord has never been happier 🙂
IOW who cares…?
Interesting way to innovate in the DVR space. They have an add-on box too for older DVR’s. I’m not going to be buying one soon though because I have a TiVo that’s only a couple of years old.
Damn. I just bought my TiVo premier 4 hd receiver. I have the of the TiVo remote slaves for my whole home DVD solution but I did not opt for the TiVo stream because it’s another $5/month. If the Romio can stream without paying extra I would replace my current TiVo.
It’s a pretty sad day when TiVo more fully involves iDevices in watching useful video content than Apple. How many more companies have to pass Apple standing before they start selling machines like this??
No, ‘Sorry’ says Cook. ‘We have to keep trying to make deals with the very companies that would like nothing more than for us to disappear off the face of the Earth, then pass along the obscene costs to you – it’s AMAAAAZING!’
JHC! Make AppleTV RECORD OTA, PUSH TO iOS & MAC, STORE CONTENT LOCALLY, and oh i don’t know PLAY A DVD!
This is not hard, nor illegal, but it seems so totally beyond the people running Apple Inc. that I have to wonder if their collective brains just seized up when Jobs died.
First major update in 3 years? Why isn’t this company dead yet? TIVO is great but you can NOT afford to slack like this.