TiVo Stream 4K Now Bundled by Cable Companies RCN, Grande and Wave

Just saw the same news over at Light Reading. This is good news for TS4K owners as it increases the likelihood that the product will survive and TiVo will continue to support and improve it.

This practice of MSOs offering a streaming device to their standalone broadband customers is increasing. Comcast of course has their free Flex (X1) streamer (and Cox offers it too, but charges $5/mo to rent it). Verizon sells their Stream TV (Android TV) box and gives it away free to certain new customers. And now some of the smaller MSOs that have been traditional TiVo partners are offering the TS4K.

Wondering if we'll see the two missing big players, Charter Spectrum and AT&T Fiber, join this trend. Charter already sells the Apple TV 4K at full price but with the cost spread out at $7.50/mo for 24 months. It's rumored that they've been talking to Google about embracing Android TV/Google TV.

 

Will the cable company's dvr be integrated into the ts4k? What a slap in the face to tivo dvr owners...if that was the case.

 

I would bet that this was the initial purpose of the TS4k all along. The consumers are just Guinea pigs for it and it keeps them relevant in the consumer market.

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It's more like palm and windows mobile not able to adapt to new touch technology while supporting old legacy OS's and Apple and Android coming in to move things forward.

Except they probably had opportunities to adapt and move forward for dvr owners, but they probably just wanted to be done with the headache and move on. Would think knowing you're in the top two for running future cable boxes as cable companies adapt is much easier than dealing with consumers... Haha. You guys are pain in the ass... My guide is wrong. My box keeps restarting. I'm frozen on the tivo guy. My hard drive died. My remote died. You guys are a headache... Haha

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There's no mention of it in the article. In fact, it states that these cable companies intend to distribute the TS4K to their standalone broadband subs, so those folks don't have a regular TiVo DVR anyhow. (That said, I can see them also offering it to some of their cable TV subs who want an easy way to access the HBO Max app that they're already paying for but can only get half the content via the HBO linear channels on their cableco-provided TiVo DVR.)

 

I think he meant for the cable company's dvr. Like right now I think the xfinity stream app works with their cloud dvr, but it doesn't work with their dvr boxes. So I'm assuming they're bundling it so they have one master box in the house, and the TS4k's are the slaves with the company's app on it as well as access to the play store. Then as the Stream app becomes more mature, there would be complete integration between cable company content and streaming content which is pretty much what we all wanted on our Dvr's all along.

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Yeah, but the "cable company DVR" from those three MSOs (RCN, Grande, Wave) is a TiVo. For instance:
RCN + TiVo® | Voice Control Your TV, DVR Shows, & More!

 

Not to sound snide, but please show me where they mention, show or talk about an actual traditional Tivo DVR. Tivo's cable setup is based on Android TV with Tivo Stream at its heart, not their traditional DVR software or boxes that we've been familiar with for ages.

See pics. The new Tivo Experience powered by Android TV.

And god forbid Tivo just adapted that to a consumer box and made that the Edge, ditched the newest iteration of the Mini and just made a more beefy TS4k, somewhere between it and the Shield.

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<sigh> Various cable companies (including RCN, Atlantic Broadband and several others) have been deploying traditional TiVo DVRs containing CableCARDs for use with their QAM-based cable TV service for a long time now. In some cases, the versions deployed by those cablcos have looked and been branded the same as retail TiVos. In other cases, they have had different outer cases but contained pretty much the same internals.

Here's just one of many bits of evidence you could have turned up with a simple Google search. It's a story from 2014 by TiVo blogger Dave Zatz telling about how RCN had begun offering their customers a rebadged version of the Series 5 Roamio DVR, branded as "T6" for TiVo's cableco partners:

https://zatznotfunny.com/2014-05/rcn-tivo-t6/

You can see that it looks just like the retail Roamio Pro except it has the RCN logo on it.

A year or two back, TiVo got out of the business of manufacturing their hardware. In the traditional CableCARD line of TiVo boxes, it's Arris/Commscope who makes and brands those now. Their "MG2 Cable Media Gateway" is, I think, about at the same level as the retail Bolt for Cable DVR, with 6 QAM tuners, a 1 TB hard drive, and support for 4K and HDR10:

MG2 Cable Media Gateway | CommScope

The pics that you posted are from TiVo's new line of solutions for IPTV operators, which they brand as the "TiVo Next-Gen Platform". Those are the boxes (sans hard drives, QAM tuners or CableCARDs) that run either Android TV Operator Tier or Linux. In either case, the UI is basically the same Hydra UI that's deployed on modern TiVo retail CableCARD DVRs, but with the operator's logo appearing. And, of course, the app selection varies. The version running Android TV Operator Tier has the Google Play Store app, giving users access to all kinds of apps that aren't available on other TiVo boxes.

What we're seeing in the story cited in the OP here is that three cable companies that have a long history of working with TiVo by provisioning their CableCARD DVRs to their cable TV customers have extended that relationship by now offering the completely separate TiVo Stream 4K device as an OTT streaming video solution for their standalone broadband customers. (In addition, RCN launched an IPTV service a year or two ago and they use the TiVo Next-Gen Platform for those customers. That's the thing cited in the first graphic you posted. I think RCN only offers IPTV on their new fiber-to-the-home network, which mainly serves MDUs, i.e. condo and apartment buildings. AFAIK, they still only offer traditional QAM-based cable TV on their traditional hybrid fiber/coax network, and still deploy traditional CableCARD-based TiVo DVRs there.)

 

Ahh... Sorry. Didn't know these small cable companies were still doling out ancient tivo dvr's, especially with most cable companies making it more difficult to work with cable cards.

Was figuring it was incentive to move into the future, not cling to the past.

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