ti

Maybe TiVo has its groove back

TiVo seems to have finally found its groove again, as the company saw its first increase in total subscriptions in four years.

Specifically, the total number of added subscriptions reached approximately 117,000 by the end of Q3 2011 -- drastically different from the 33,000 subscription losses during the second quarter of this year.

Basically, the key takeaway point is that TiVo stopped focusing heavily on retail sales and is distributing more through cable companies -- a strategy that appears to have worked.

For example, DirecTV intends to launch TiVo in select markets in December, and Comcast is offering … Read more

TI owns inside of Amazon Kindle Fire

Aside from a couple hulking memory chips, Texas Instruments owns the interiors of Amazon's Kindle Fire.

iFixit's teardown shows an abundance of TI silicon, with flash memory storage and system memory from Samsung and Hynix, respectively.

Keep in mind that a system-on-a-chip (SoC) like TI's OMAP 4430 already packs many of the core device features onto one piece of silicon. But the Kindle Fire also attaches a number of less glamorous TI chips to the SoC for things like power management and audio. … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1547: Calm down: Netflix stream limits are just a bug! (They say.) (Podcast)

Carol Bartz is out at Yahoo and the stock is up, which has got to hurt. They're still raking in the cash, but shareholders hate nothing more than a plateau. Plus, Netflix swears that at least this time, its jerk move (restricting users to only one stream at a time) was a total accident, and they're definitely not doing that. Promise. Plus, Groupon's IPO roadshow is off and the IPO itself may be off for good, and the Droid Bionic has finally arrived. Hooray!

TiVo quad-tuner Premiere Elite on its way

TiVo officially announced, today, the eventual retail arrival of a four-tuner TiVo, the Premiere Elite. The existence of the Elite was exposed in June after being mentioned in an FCC filing; a service-provider-only version called the Premiere Q was announced earlier that month. So, yeah, not exactly a secret surprise, but it's always nice to have an actual announcement.

The main reason to care about the Elite is that it has four tuners allowing you to record four programs at once and still watch something previously recorded to its 2TB of storage--twice the room of the TiVo Premiere XL. It'll hold up to 300 hours of HD programming. … Read more

Adobe shows off Edge HTML5 tool

Vimeo launches a new Pro service for $199 a year that offers a large amount of video storage and streams, Logitech drops the price of its Google TV-powered Revue to $99, and Adobe releases a preview of a new HTML5 design tool called Edge.

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

It lives: TiVo-powered Best Buy Insignia HDTV coming soon

It appears a Best Buy Insignia-connected HDTV blessed with TiVo's HD interface may actually be available by the end of July.

The relationship between the retailer and DVR manufacturer started more than two years ago. Then there was an announcement last year that development had started to integrate TiVo's software and services into broadband-connected Insignia TVs. And now it looks like there's an actual product.

Arriving July 31, the new Insignia cTVs (presumably "c" is for connected) will be available in two sizes--32 and 42 inches--and have built-in Wi-Fi for accessing broadband content from Netflix, … Read more

TiVo iPhone app works with TiVo HD, Series 3 DVRs

TiVo's iPad app has been around since late last year, and despite a few holes in the experience, it's a great companion for controlling your TiVo Premiere. Today, TiVo rolled out the iPhone/iPod Touch version of the app, which is essentially the iPad app reworked for a smaller screen. Perhaps what's more important is that both the iPhone and iPad apps now work with TiVo HD/Series 3 boxes, too, though all features aren't supported. … Read more

Four-tuner TiVo coming soon to retail?

A couple of weeks ago, TiVo announced the Premiere Q, a quad-tuner DVR available only through cable service providers. According to a recent FCC filing by TiVo, though, it might be headed to retail soon, too.

Gleaned from the filing is a new retail name, the Premiere Elite, and that it'll have "increased recording capability, increased capacity (300 HD hours), reduced power consumption, and a space-saving design."… Read more

How to get free HDTV

If you bought your TV within the past few years, and you live anywhere close to a city, chances are you can get better HDTV than you've ever seen, for free.

The key, of course, is you need one little thing that you probably already have.… Read more

TiVo unveils Premiere Q quad-tuner DVR

TiVo has unveiled two new hardware products to bolster its appeal to service providers.

Dubbed the Premiere Q, TiVo's latest DVR is the first from the company that can record up to four programs at the same time. In addition, the device comes with support for streaming content when connected to the Web via Ethernet or home-entertainment networking standard MoCA (Multimedia over Coax Alliance). Up to three HD streams can be accommodated over those connections.

According to TiVo, the Premiere Q will support a full range of services from cable and satellite providers, including video on demand, pay-per-view, and … Read more