New TiVo DVRs Blend TV and Internet Viewing

March 5th, 2010

TiVo on Tuesday set out to reinvent itself with DVRs that blend television and Internet viewing experiences. The TiVo Premiere and TV Premiere XL combine access to cable programming, movies, web videos, and music.

TiVo is positioning the new devices as a one-stop shop for entertainment, offering viewers broadband and broadcast integration that lets them search for YouTube clips, Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand and Blockbuster On Demand libraries, and more from one interface. The new offering uses pictures and graphics to make the television guide more interactive as users search through millions of pieces of content.

“TiVo has advanced the state of the art in DVR appliances. There’s no question about that,” said Phil Leigh, a senior analyst at Inside Digital Media. “But whether it’s enough to motivate existing owners of TiVo to spend money on a new box is more debatable. If I didn’t have a DVR, it certainly gives me a material added reason to buy TiVo. But if I just bought a TiVo a year or two ago, I’m not ready to spend more money just to get a newer interface.”

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