TiVo had a surprisingly good fourth quarter, gaining 234K subscribers in that time period. Those numbers were the best they have been in six years. Hidden within those results was a statement from the company's CEO that there will be two new set-top boxes coming from TiVo by the "end of summer."
TiVo has made the full press release with their fourth quarter results and various statements available online. CEO Tom Rogers said,
"And we continue to make strides to bring the look and feel of the TiVo user interface to other platforms beyond the DVR. To that end, we plan to launch a product later this year that we previewed at CES, which allows a viewer to seamlessly take recorded content to 2nd screens such as iPads, iPhones or Android devices on either a streaming or side-loaded basis. Its four-stream/fast side-load capability is something that other offerings don’t provide today and we believe is a critical element of a true on-demand whole home experience. Today, TiVo’s industry-leading whole home solution includes a 4-tuner DVR, a 2-tuner DVR, and an HD-STB. By the end of the summer, we’ll further that lead with the addition of the four-stream transcoder and an IP-STB.”
The first new box TiVo will be introducing this year will include a four-stream transcoder that will allow the user to stream content from their TiVo DVR to an iPad, iPhone, or Android device. The other thing it will support is wirelessly side loading any of that content to the tablet for later viewing. This box was previewed at CES but there was no release window for the product at the time.
The second box mentioned, the IP-STB, is essentially a TiVo without a hard drive. This box is meant to serve as a multiroom extender. Essentially this is a retail version of the TiVo Preview. The box should also support things like Hulu and Netflix, so it comes across like a TiVo/Roku hybrid device. A box like this makes TiVo's ridiculous four tuner Premier Elite seem a little less insane because that box could serve as the central DVR and push content out to the cheaper Previews that would live in other rooms of your home.
Neither box was given a specific price or a release date beyond "end of summer."
Are any of you still TiVo users? Do you have an interest in secondary boxes like this that extend the content on your TiVo to either other rooms in your home or other devices? Let us know what you think of these boxes in the comments.
