TiVo announces new developer tools

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TiVo announces new developer tools

The TiVo news just won't stop, and frankly I'm starting to get a little giddy. The latest bit of information to come out is that TiVo is going to be opening up more to developers. The three new tools are TiVo Video Publisher, TiVo Multimedia Web Services API and TiVo Service Integration.

TiVo Video Publisher will allow video creators to provide downloadable content for TiVo. They talk about how content providers will be able to package and protect their video, but I hope that the amateurs won't be left out of the party. It would be great to be able to pull up my mom's vacation video as easily as a movie from the big studios. If they play their cards right they could make a killing off of long tail videos.

TiVo Multimedia Web Services API is a way for web publishers to put their content on the TiVo, the most exciting for me being support for RSS. Podcasting and videoblogging are starting to get some attention, the TiVo could become the platform of choice for personal media publishing.

TiVo Service Integration is a way for 3rd parties to provide and charge for content on the TiVo. TiVo users would be able to "purchase/subscribe to" content using their remotes, TiVo would handle billing and customer support. This opens up a huge market for 3rd party developers to use the TiVo as a platform.

TiVo previously opened up their Home Media Option to allow 3rd party developers to publish media to the TiVo over the LAN. The most successful project for the Home Media Option is JavaHMO, which many users prefer to the official TiVo Desktop.

by George Hotelling January 7, 2005 in News, TiVo

Comments

Any idea how long it will take to produce some documentation of these features? I'm definitely interested in this and if Tivo provides some real APIs for doing development, this would be great.

Not to bash HMO too much, but adding functionality to the Tivo via that route was akin to stuffing square things in round holes. The Tic-Tac-Toe image and caption at

http://javahmo.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html

is a good illustration of the deficiency in HMO.

If anyone from Tivo (or with pull with someone in Tivo) is reading this, please give developers a real API to use to develop on the device!

Posted by: Chris at Jan 7, 2005 8:51:43 AM

I assume this won't be available for DirectTivos like nearly any other Tivo innovation?

Posted by: Adam at Jan 7, 2005 9:36:44 AM

too little, too late.

they should have worried about getting a working standalone cable card box out before this- the comcast 6412 crushes anything tivo has.

tivo to go is might be neat, if they would ever actually roll it out, but most people can do this much easier with a 100$ hauppage card or USB tuner and Snapstream, without DRM i might add.

i recently cancelled my subscription for my standalone series 2, for the enhanced functionality of the comcast/motorola 6412.

not to be the voice of doom, because pretty much everyone is these days about tivo- but i don't think they'll be around in two years.

what saddens and puzzles me is how they dropped the ball so badly...what kind of cr@ppy bus dev or sales people did they have trying to close deals for the past three years? clearly the writing was on the wall with directTV- so how could they have not CLOSED a single cable partnership or OEM/embed deal? utter stupidity.

and what about strangeberry? what about the miraculous home networking technology that was going to earn my 12.95 a month?

i don't get it- they're not going to differentiate with value added features like "tahiti"- which i can basically get already from comcast with video on demand.

hopefully ramsay reads some of these blogs and decides to hire some more engineers so he can release an innovative, differentiated product, along the lines of the slingbox, or at least get the hd standalone box out sooner before tivo bleeds to death.

Posted by: theevaluator at Jan 7, 2005 1:29:50 PM

My guess is that Tivo Service Integration and Video Publisher are the byproducts of their Strangeberry acquisition.

Posted by: Dan at Jan 8, 2005 12:01:07 PM

TiVo announces new developer tools

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