Zatz Not Funny!

ACA President Matthew Polka with FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai You know how a lot of consumers are fed up with rising cable bills, excessive program bundling, and limited access to TV shows? It turns out independent cable operators feels the same way. Over and over and over at today’s American Cable Association Summit – a [...]

TiVo’s been talking up their DVR extender over a year, since it was first introduced last February as the IP-STB. And, while we didn’t get the 2012 retail launch we were hoping for, the TiVo Mini ($100, plus service) has finally arrived. But is it everything we’d hoped for? Instead of sprinkling a number of DVRs [...]

TiVo hasn’t yet gotten around to officially launching the TiVo Mini, but that didn’t inhibit at least one retailer from selling a unit today. And while cmonroe didn’t exactly out the “big box” store, we’ll go ahead and assume it’s Best Buy. There’s probably not much left to learn at this point in regards to [...]

Multiple data points had indicated a TiVo Mini launch this week… yet here we are, Miniless. As to the shifting announcement, one can only guess – perhaps TiVo’s still getting the device’s technical or marketing ducks in a row. Better yet, maybe they’re taking time to reevaluate the TiVo tax. Regardless, TiVo support seems to have [...]

As we’d previously reported, the new Roku 3 has indeed launched with a refreshed UI and audio-capable remote control. The 3 takes over the Roku 2 XS‘s top slot in their lineup, running a competitive $100. In fact, the Roku 2 XS is no longer present in the company’s model comparison chart. Like its predecessor, [...]

As promised back at CES, Time Warner Cable’s newest set-top box is a Roku… and the free “Channel”, comprised of up to 300 channels, is now available to all currently shipping Roku devices – which start a mere $50. As you might expect, access to TWC on Roku requires a traditional cable subscription – and supposedly [...]

We’re massive fans of the TiVo Stream. While imperfect, it truly offers the best way to beam your live and recorded television around the home…. assuming you have both a TiVo Premiere of some sort and an iDevice end-point. And so it shall remain for Android owners in the foreseeable future. RCN, a TiVo MSO partner, [...]

While the new Slingboxes are here, we can’t help but wonder if there’s room in Sling’s lineup for an additional model. We really do appreciate the (partial) HDMI pass-thru and 802.11n capabilities of the Slingbox 500, but we’re not quite certain it lives up to its $300 price tag… yet. Further down the line, we [...]

Sadly, I’ve got no imagery to share (at this time). But we believe our intel to be rock solid… and have learned the incoming Roku 3 remote control includes a headphone jack that “makes it easy for anyone to enjoy a private listening experience.” While I contemplate if that innovative feature is actually useful, let me also [...]

Leading up to the official TiVo Mini retail announcement next week, TiVo’s gone ahead and launched a promotional page that confirms both functionality and pricing. As you can see above, the $100 hardware will be accompanied by either a $6 monthly service fee or a $150 one-time charge. On the functionality front, there’s not much [...]

People think of Aereo as a cable competitor, but the company’s real fight is with OTA broadcasters who don’t want to lose retransmission revenue. And if Aereo were to win its war in court, some pay-TV providers might very well decide to partner with the company rather than battle against it. Jeff Baumgartner reports that [...]

Roku’s been updating their website this week… and just accidentally spilled the beans on the Roku 3, given this new support site. We presume the new model is the same 4200x Engadget turned up via the FCC a few weeks back. Of course, beyond a name and model number, we’re most interested in new functionality. [...]

While there wasn’t much consumer-related news to come out of TiVo’s quarterly call, they did drop a single nugget of bloggable intel with indications that MLB is headed to the Premiere platform. While they referred to the offering as MLB.com, we’ve confirmed with TiVo that we’re talking MLB.TV – baseball’s subscription-based online streaming service. It’s no [...]

While I can’t vouch for the source, one TiVo Community forum member indicates he attended “dealer training” — where he came away with the final pieces of the TiVo Mini puzzle. And we’re purportedly looking at a March 6th retail launch, with hardware running $100. As expected, assuming this pans out, the TiVo Mini will [...]

File this one under Left Field. LG just announced a deal to acquire the remnants of webOS. If you’ll recall, webOS sprung to life as Palm’s next generation smartphone platform and answer to the iPhone… before being snapped up by HP. While HP had grand intentions of webOS powering mobile devices, printers, and PCs (!), [...]

There’s something of a glut in the media streamer space, with most new entrants falling into the “unmemorable” category – and we regularly pass on covering the parade of derivative boxes. However, Western Digital’s no stranger to this market and we’ve often recommended their solutions over the years. And, with WDTV Play, they bring a compelling new approach… along with [...]

TiVo Mini extenders have begun to arrive in Suddenlink customer homes. And, thanks to numerous contributions by TiVo Community forum member spotterman26, retail launch functionality has been clarified. While true dynamic tuner allocation remains out of reach, and pushed back on TiVo’s roadmap according to sources, the situation isn’t as dire as it appeared at first [...]

I love ESPN. I am entirely willing to spend gobs of money on my cable bill just to get it. Even so, my jaw dropped when I read that the licensing fee for ESPN programming is set to go above $7 per month in 2017. That’s the amount pay-TV operators have to spend per subscriber to [...]

  The DirecTV C41 next gen “advanced whole home client” made a brief appearance at the FCC. And it really is a limited engagement, as there’s not much to contemplate beyond the label above and reference to the 2.4GHz RF. However, last month Pace fired off a press release announcing DirecTV’s hardware successors: Pace (LSE: [...]

TiVo subscribers looking to offload DVR recordings today were caught by surprise when TiVo Desktop and other methods of transfer inexplicably failed. As it turns out, TiVoToGo has been crippled by an expired server-side cookie of some sort. Of course, you probably aren’t so concerned with the reason and are more interested in a resolution. [...]