If you follow TiVo news like I do, you probably already know that a lot of sites are talking about TiVo’s HME app release. Site after site mentions how cool these new apps are. In my opinion, most of these sites are missing the real story behind the news. As a matter of fact, I don’t even think that the apps that TiVo has released are all that impressive (thus far). After all, do we really need another HME app to check the weather? How about another way to listen to podcasts on our TiVo? The functionality that these apps provide has been around for a long time. For example, Galleon has been providing weather checking and podcasting functionality for a long time.
The real news behind this release is that TiVo has opened up a new way for you to get digital content on our DVRs. Other platforms have tried to connect the internet to our TV however, in my opinion; these previous endeavors were a failure. With the release of these HME apps, TiVo has truly made it easy for us to get internet content onto our TV screen. No longer do we need to install a separate piece of software on a PC that essentially scrapes the internet for podcasts or weather updates. As a matter of fact, with HME, you don’t even need to have a PC in the house to enjoy internet content! Now with HME your TiVo has the ability to act as a full-fledge PC and consume content off of the internet.
To sum it up, I think that the real news behind the HME app release isn’t the fact that TiVo released a couple of HME apps. Instead, I feel as though people should concentrate on the fact that TiVo now has the ability to deliver internet content to your TV! This is the reason why I’m excited about the HME app release. How about you?
[...] Dave Zatz has alerted me to the fact that TiVo has partnered up with Rocketboom to provide daily Rocketboom broadcast downloads. Now do you see what I mean when I talked about the real importance of TiVo’s HME app release? [...]
I agree 100% with your comments!
HME will be a great boost for Tivo and for people who own Series 2 Tivos
Can’t wait for more content to be available.
By the way……
All of my itunes audio podcasts are now available on my Tivo. Does anyone have any suggestions as to an easy way to get video podcasts, such as dl.tv, on my Tivo? I can do this now, but it takes to much manual intervention/conversion. Is someone working on a Galleon application that will make this seamless?
Thanks,
Alan
[...] There are a number of ways to listen to a podcast on your TiVo. Each technique has its’ drawbacks. If you want, you could use TiVo’s new HME app that was released in November ‘05. One of the problems with this app is that if you want to listen to a podcast that isn’t in the list of available podcasts, you will be required to “type” the podcast’s feed url using your remote. If you’ve ever tried this before, you know what a pain this can be. Not to mention the fact that the feed url is not saved so, if you exit the app and then return later, the feed will no longer be available! In my opinion, this renders the TiVo’s HME podcast app useless. [...]