The pre-release buzz around a new product from TiVo
The sizzle and the steak
Best Buy
The new goodies, known as TiVo Premiere and Premiere XL, are a big upgrade over the aging Series 3 and TiVo HD set-top boxes. With up to a terabyte of storage space, a lot more memory, and a modern central processor from Broadcom
That interface runs on the Adobe Systems
All those horses under the hood and the revamped software make the TiVo Premiere a serious contender for the all-in-one media center throne. Full-length movie streaming services like Amazon
Who needs it?
In short, the Premiere boxes want to be the only box next to your TV. This thing pulls together content from a myriad of sources and presents it all in a unified format that should be easy to browse or search. There's even a remote with a QWERTY keyboard coming soon after the boxes hit retail shelves at Best Buy and Amazon. This is what Microsoft
The delayed payoff
TiVo is hoping to have this hardware replace the high-end digital cable boxes your cable provider would install, and already has regional cable provider RCN signed up for an early rollout. If a major player like Comcast
That doesn't mean you should triple-mortgage your house to buy TiVo stock today, though. If TiVo's lofty ambitions ever become reality, the cable partners will fall in line one by one and give you plenty of time to get your ducks in a row. For now, TiVo has some nifty new hardware that could become a launching pad to greater heights, but the proof-packed pudding hasn't been served yet. Best Buy's marketing muscle might be the biggest thing the TiVo premiere has going for it.
Is this the first cannonade of the digital media revolution or just another ho-hum product update? Discuss in the comment box below.