Hey all,
I wanted to give you all a heads-up about a couple of experiments we're working on for this Sunday's big game. We don't usually tag commercial breaks in sporting events, because sporting events are mostly watched live, and many of them are regional by nature.
That said, everyone knows that this Sunday's commercials are some of the best, highest quality commercials of the year. So, we're going to tag the game backwards, with the commercials and the halftime show marked as if it were the program, and the game marked as if it was the commercial.
As usual, the SKIP function will not show up until after the game has finished. But, once the green SKIP icon shows up next to your recording of the game, you can watch the recording and use the SKIP or D button to jump to the commercial segments quickly. Padding the game with extra time at the end of the recording should not be a problem either. We'll keep tagging until the game is done.
This "GameSkip" functionality should work for all TiVo boxes that have SKIP enabled today. However, there are a few things that could go wrong. We use closed-captioning data as a guide to lineup our commercial tag markers with the program. This works great for regular shows, but not all commercials have closed-captioning. Similarly, if there are lots of local/regional commercials that air during the game, that could screw things up as well. If you record the game from NBC and your local station doesn't do anything fancy, we think (fingers crossed) it should work for everyone.
As an added bonus, we're starting to go live with support for IFTTT. IFTTT is an acronym that stands for "if this, then that". They are a free service that provides connections between tons of consumer electronics device and Internet services. We have pre-programmed a few example "Applets" on IFTTT to help you get started. One of them allows you to have IFTTT send a button command to your TiVo box whenever a commercial break is detected. Once you have enabled this Applet, it will send the SKIP / D button to your box every time a commercial airs. Or, when combined with our Big Game experiment, you can use it to watch the game afterwards, and IFTTT will jump you from commercial break to commercial break automatically, stopping only to include the half-time show. If you have a Roamio or BOLT device running TiVo Experience 3 or TiVo Experience 4 (aka Hydra), you will receive a TiVo message and an invite to join IFTTT. These messages will start to go out in the next day or two, along with an App on your TiVo box that gives you a code to pair your TiVo account with your IFTTT account.
For auto-skip to work, you need to be running TiVo Experience 4. We will be enabling IFTTT for all devices running TE4. We are working to support IFTTT on TiVo Experience 3 with all other features, but there are still a lot more boxes running TE3, and we won't be able to activate them all on IFTTT this week, probably only 100,000 or so. The remainder of the boxes will be enabled in waves over the next couple of weeks.
We will have example IFTTT Applets that show you how to trigger the find-my-remote button using your voice from a Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa powered device. We are also working to create a TiVo Skip command so that you can tell your Google or Amazon device to send the skip button command. I'll weigh in with more details in the coming days, but I wanted to make sure you all heard it here first!
This is just the beginning of us enabling the smart home services that we showed at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month. We have lots more coming, and also plan to bring these features back to Premiere customers running TiVo Experience 3 as well. Stay tuned.
-Ted
I wanted to give you all a heads-up about a couple of experiments we're working on for this Sunday's big game. We don't usually tag commercial breaks in sporting events, because sporting events are mostly watched live, and many of them are regional by nature.
That said, everyone knows that this Sunday's commercials are some of the best, highest quality commercials of the year. So, we're going to tag the game backwards, with the commercials and the halftime show marked as if it were the program, and the game marked as if it was the commercial.
As usual, the SKIP function will not show up until after the game has finished. But, once the green SKIP icon shows up next to your recording of the game, you can watch the recording and use the SKIP or D button to jump to the commercial segments quickly. Padding the game with extra time at the end of the recording should not be a problem either. We'll keep tagging until the game is done.
This "GameSkip" functionality should work for all TiVo boxes that have SKIP enabled today. However, there are a few things that could go wrong. We use closed-captioning data as a guide to lineup our commercial tag markers with the program. This works great for regular shows, but not all commercials have closed-captioning. Similarly, if there are lots of local/regional commercials that air during the game, that could screw things up as well. If you record the game from NBC and your local station doesn't do anything fancy, we think (fingers crossed) it should work for everyone.
As an added bonus, we're starting to go live with support for IFTTT. IFTTT is an acronym that stands for "if this, then that". They are a free service that provides connections between tons of consumer electronics device and Internet services. We have pre-programmed a few example "Applets" on IFTTT to help you get started. One of them allows you to have IFTTT send a button command to your TiVo box whenever a commercial break is detected. Once you have enabled this Applet, it will send the SKIP / D button to your box every time a commercial airs. Or, when combined with our Big Game experiment, you can use it to watch the game afterwards, and IFTTT will jump you from commercial break to commercial break automatically, stopping only to include the half-time show. If you have a Roamio or BOLT device running TiVo Experience 3 or TiVo Experience 4 (aka Hydra), you will receive a TiVo message and an invite to join IFTTT. These messages will start to go out in the next day or two, along with an App on your TiVo box that gives you a code to pair your TiVo account with your IFTTT account.
For auto-skip to work, you need to be running TiVo Experience 4. We will be enabling IFTTT for all devices running TE4. We are working to support IFTTT on TiVo Experience 3 with all other features, but there are still a lot more boxes running TE3, and we won't be able to activate them all on IFTTT this week, probably only 100,000 or so. The remainder of the boxes will be enabled in waves over the next couple of weeks.
We will have example IFTTT Applets that show you how to trigger the find-my-remote button using your voice from a Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa powered device. We are also working to create a TiVo Skip command so that you can tell your Google or Amazon device to send the skip button command. I'll weigh in with more details in the coming days, but I wanted to make sure you all heard it here first!
This is just the beginning of us enabling the smart home services that we showed at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month. We have lots more coming, and also plan to bring these features back to Premiere customers running TiVo Experience 3 as well. Stay tuned.
-Ted