TiVo's Home Media Engine launched

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TiVo's Home Media Engine launched

As reported at CES earlier this month, TiVo's new developer-friendly package, dubbed Home Media Engine (HME), launches today. I got to chat with Howard Look, VP of TiVo Application Software and User Experience a couple days ago about it, and here are the main points about today's rollout:

Developer Toolkit available at Sourceforge starting today: http://tivohme.sourceforge.net/
Toolkit includes a sandbox TiVo emulator app you can run on your desktop to test applications against
Developer backdoor password that enables HME (will require that you have the new TiVo 7.1 OS)
You can now code simple games, audio applications, video applications, and utilities in Java that will run on your computer and communicate with any TiVo with the backdoor enabled on your network (you can share your code with others if they want to run the apps too)
Developer contest announced, to award the best apps developed in the next few months
Included sample apps include a simple game, a RSS reader, and a weather app

Not much that they didn't allude to at CES, but great to see it out just a couple weeks later. As I've said before, I believe embracing developers and letting them extend TiVo is one of the ways to keep TiVo ahead of the PVR pack. I see an explosion of cool apps coming really soon that will tie the web closer into every TiVo.

Keep in mind this is a developer release, and the first apps will probably be buggy and slow, but I'm sure the best apps will eventually migrate to everyone's TiVo. They're launching with the audio and photo app support (no video for now, but will come soon and may support transcoding any video to your tivo). The audio and photo demo apps I saw at CES were full blown custom interfaces, and I can't wait to see audio clients for Shoutcast streams, Live365, and the Internet Archive, and photo apps for Flickr and Ofoto someday soon.

This new package should open up a whole new world of cool apps for TiVos. Record labels could have showcases for their bands, photographers could show off their best work to friends, and someday soon, folks will be able to stream video on demand, over the net, to their TiVos. A few months from now, I'm sure there will be hundreds if not thousands of HME apps for your TiVo -- I predict some exciting times ahead for TiVo owners.

Update: We've launched hme.pvrblog.com!

by Matt Haughey January 31, 2005 in News, TiVo

Comments

Indeed, from what I saw and heard at CES, this should be very interesting. I'm really looking forward to what Leon Nicholls, of JavaHMO fame, does with this. There is one screenshot in the gallery with his name on it, and you have to think he'd be one of the people they tapped to preview this. Given what he accomplished with the limited M&P interface, what will he be able to do with the full SDK? I can't wait for the video support, that should change a lot of things.

Posted by: MegaZone at Jan 31, 2005 6:14:17 AM

Nice to see a little good news in the TiVo camp after weeks of hearing doom & gloom predictions. I'll be trying some of this stuff out tonight when I get home

Posted by: Vince A. at Jan 31, 2005 7:16:04 AM

Great, now that huge install base of standalone, series 2 Tivo owners with PC's will be able to run some possibly cool utilities. This is good news, but the overwhelming number of Tivo sales have been through DirecTV and this means nothing to them.

Posted by: Adam at Jan 31, 2005 7:35:03 AM

Pardon my French, but...

HOLY COW!

I just downloaded the application and gave the simulator a spin on my Mac. It works wonderfully and if this is part of the 7.1 upgrade, I'm going to be very impatient waiting for it. Given the nice Tivo remote and nice developer toolkit, I can see a thousand TV-hosted apps flourishing.

This is seriously very slick and I can't wait to start writing code.

Also, Matt, it may make sense to do another PVR spinoff where developers can chat and showcase their new apps. I'd do it myself, but I think you have the credentials to really foster a great community around these things.

Posted by: Chris at Jan 31, 2005 8:05:25 AM

Slashdot picks up the thread here:

http://slashdot.org/articles/05/01/31/1323218.shtml?tid=129

As typical with most slashdottings, the comments range from the infomrative to the insightul to the innane to the wity.

Someone actually suggested that the game they were coming out with was Pong. bleep blip. bleep blip.

Posted by: Thomas Hawk at Jan 31, 2005 8:53:09 AM

Right now, it looks to be nothing more than a slightly souped-up JavaHMO... which I have running but I only rarely use.

When it streams video, it will get interesting. The question is whether that will be available prior to the NextFlix-TiVo Launch. I am thinking that is unlikely.

Posted by: Michael Pate at Jan 31, 2005 9:20:52 AM

Whoa... if I had a TiVo I would be hacking it right now with this stuff. Cant wait for video; although with how the networks are hounding TiVo I could understand if they were to put some closed-source DRM over the video.

Stupid copyright making everyone need a legal department bigger than R+D...

Posted by: KirbyMeister at Jan 31, 2005 11:25:57 AM

I think a cool app to be ported would be iRate Radio, a collaborative filtering smart radio app. Its already in Java so I imagine it would be relatively easy to port.

http://irate.sf.net/

Posted by: akb at Jan 31, 2005 2:53:30 PM

I really like the idea of allowing developers to extend the function of the TiVo. The JavaHMO program is an excellent addition for those with computers and broadband connections.

The only thing I don't like about this direction is that it requires a PC constantly running and connected to your network. I would rather see TiVo finding ways to get developers to create applications that can be hosted on the TiVo itself!

Take two simple applications: Weather and Movies. I want an interface on my TiVo that allows me to plug in my Zip Code and get this information directly! This could even be supported through dial-up if the info was cached each night. This could even be a possible revenue stream for TiVo by integrating unobtrusive advertising targeted at that Area Code. And I bet that DirectTV wouldn't have as much of an issue with these features as they do with HMO/HME.

The more TiVo can support "Out of the Box" the more compelling of a purchase it is for the masses!

Posted by: Ted at Jan 31, 2005 3:28:03 PM

Ted, I think the big drawback to adding apps on the TiVo box itself are that it's already busy doing stuff like record live TV and play old recordings. When you move the apps onto deskop PCs with their 2.8Ghz P4 chips or their 1.5Ghz G5 chips, you have tons of processing that can be done there, and just sent over to a networked TiVo for display.

So yeah, while it does have drawbacks of needing to keep a computer running, it definitely increases what you can do in terms of program complexity.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Jan 31, 2005 3:54:45 PM

I guess I need to wait for the video. The obvious killer app would be to tie together an RSS media aggregator w/ BitTorrent turbo charged downloads. The next killer app after that would be the reverse with anything on your TiVO.

I don't see how anything could top that.

Posted by: Thomas Winningham at Jan 31, 2005 4:57:05 PM

Thomas W:
Can you explain why you think sending content stored on the TiVo (back) across the internet in a distributed fashion would be a killer app? Presumably, everything you want to watch is already stored on your TiVo...

Posted by: New York at Jan 31, 2005 6:45:29 PM

But everything I missed or everything that other people like is all stuff on their machines.

What if I can't pick up the same stations they do? What if I just didn't program my TiVO to get that one cool thing?

Posted by: Thomas Winningham at Feb 1, 2005 7:59:55 AM

I would love to see a bittorent client for Tivo, imagine a community of Tivo's sharing each others playlists....

Tivo would never be able to introduce this, think of the poor content providers, DRM and all that other counter productive stuff!

But thier users could opt to use this via the SDK! Genius!

Posted by: Gianni at Feb 1, 2005 11:56:08 AM

Fair points Thomas.
Ive always liked the idea of being able to have my brother or friend send me a program I somehow missed, but I dont think its a killer app.

I would think integrated Netflix downloads would have more potential (assuming the content rights issue gets solved).

Posted by: New York at Feb 1, 2005 9:27:24 PM

I've been happy with my Tivo Series 1 for the past 4 years, but now I'm really thinking of upgrading to TiVo series II since there will be lots of applications and widgets to play with.

Besides this, are there any other great reasons to upgrade? Is the home media option really that compelling? My Series I has been working great without any problems, but with Good Guys selling TiVo II's for $69.00 right now, it's making me think again.

Of course my I is registered for life, and I'd have to pay the lifetime AGAIN, or do the monthly which I'm not so fond of...

Thoughts?

Posted by: wired-dude at Feb 3, 2005 1:53:21 PM

New York - With the second TiVo monthly subscription at $6.95 a month, rather than $12.95, it is an easier pill to swallow. Payback versus lifetime stretches from 23 months to 40+.

Jim

Posted by: Jim at Feb 6, 2005 10:36:55 AM

All this talk about sharing video programs over the internet, and stuff.... Well, with JavaHMO and the server we already have - you can already stream music off other peoples boxes, even from Shoutcast.com

ReplayTV has had internet video sharing for a LONG time now - with the ability to write our own apps, the worrying about a "watered down" IVS may be long gone now with the TiVo, we can share whatever we want!

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Posted by: baltimore oriole at Jul 2, 2005 4:07:07 AM

Maybe someone could make an app to stream/download video from the tivo to your laptop from anywhere over the internet or lan.
Also I app that can use tivo to go or just videos from tivo with mac.
I am using a ibook and want tivo to go bad!!!!!!!
Also if you have a wireless network maybe a app could let you watch live tv anywhere with your laptop.
Omg this is sweet.
Also it would be cool if you could display your computer screen via tivo.
Then world of warcraft on the tv

Some really sweet ideas

A nes emulator
A web browser
A flash player
A port of scummvm
some other emulators
ports of older games like..
doom and doom 2
quake

Posted by: tgcujo at Aug 4, 2006 8:21:23 PM

TiVo's Home Media Engine launched

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