Future of TiVo Developer Support (Reliable Source)

[davidblackledge]

Same source as before... here is a subset of notes taken at a meeting with TiVo at CES:

Changing how they support 3rd parties
Fading out HME and moving to flash stagecraft 1.2 which is flashlite.

Don't have a formal developer program but are investigating it.
They built Pandora app.
Music is important.
They have usability guidelines which emphasize 10 foot experience not a web site.

TiVo is in a resource crunch

Later he said June / July time frame should have more structure around a developer program.

Not building an application store because they "don't believe people need 1000 apps on their TV"

Instead they want to provide a dozen or 2 more polished applications.

Pushed hard for us to build stagecraft app. Said they are no longer promoting HME apps although he said the Amazon app they offer is a HME app.

He said they have 250-500k boxes in the market place.

He emphasized that Vizio, LG, SAMSUNG are all stagecraft based so development for Tivo could be leveraged elsewhere.

[davidblackledge]

Some initial thoughts on the information:

I can certainly believe the push for stagecraft since they're pushing the Series 4 Premiere product more than they've ever pushed any of their products that I've seen. Stagecraft is certainly a sensible path for the future, anyhow. However, Series 3 and Series 2 boxes will never get Stagecraft support (and despite all their marketing, people don't appear to be trashing their Series 3 systems to buy a TiVo Premiere. I wonder what percent of the 250-500k boxes are not Premiere.)

I certainly understand their position on the app store considering those of us still developing have very few people who actually use the apps. If they provided the Stagecraft apps access to some TiVo features like using it over live TV or the ability to change the ToDo list then an app store might be useful, but the current a-couple-of-layers-down model of getting to apps that don't interact with the rest of the TiVo at all makes the apps seem pretty uninteresting unless they are a significant end in themselves.

[gonzotek]

Not building an application store because they "don't believe people need 1000 apps on their TV"

Instead they want to provide a dozen or 2 more polished applications.

My initial reaction to that is:
A) People don't 'NEED' tv, tivo, or apps. It's something they (potentially) WANT.
B) It's short-sighted. What if the content they want isn't provided by a TiVo app, but is provided by a Roku channel or AppleTV app(assuming ATV gets third party apps at some point). Roku seems to be growing nicely on a platform of an open sdk with many third-party apps.

For the record, I've been advocating that TiVo provide an 'app store' since before Apple opened theirs. I'm ok with a semi-walled garden approach where apps are reviewed for quality and such, but come on, if someone does develop a great app, help them find an audience by giving users some kind of app discovery mechanism

[wmcbrine]

Said they are no longer promoting HME apps although he said the Amazon app they offer is a HME app.

That rather understates the situation -- all of the Video on Demand stuff is HME -- Netflix, Blockbuster, YouTube, Music Choice -- plus Rhapsody, FrameChannel, etc.

I've come to like the HME system, but it lends itself best to running apps within a LAN. Over the Internet, there's too much latency, as well as too much bandwidth used (since all the graphics etc. have to be reloaded when an app is restarted). Having some programmability on the box itself, and maybe the ability to store apps on the TiVo's disk (?), should be a big plus.