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?

In case you missed it, Galleon 1.9.1 and 1.9.2 were released over the weekend. According to the release notes it looks as though both versions contain mainly bug fixes. Go here to get your copy….

David Zatz has posted an exclusive interview with Leon Nicholls. For those of you who don’t know, Leon is the developer of Galleon which is an award winning TiVo HME media server. I interviewed Leon twice, once in Sept ‘04 and again in Feb. ‘05.

If you are a geek like me, you’re probably wondering what the future of JavaHMO is considering the fact that HME has been released. Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, I noticed that JavaHMO was one of the screenshots shown in the sample apps section of the HME website. Instead of speculating about these different things, I decided to send Leon (the creator of JavaHMO) a set of questions that he was kind enough to answer. What follows are the questions that I asked him. If you remember, I did this once before. If you’re interested in the previous interview, check it out here.

Have you had a chance to look over HME? If yes, what do you think about it?

Yes. HME is a significant improvement over HMO. It provides developers much more freedom and gives them much more control over the kinds of applications they can develop for TiVo. TiVo should be applauded for developing this protocol and making it available to developers for free. The HME SDK also does a very nice job of hiding the technical details of the HME protocol and makes it very easy to get applications up and running. Since the SDK is implemented in Java, it opens up opportunities for developing apps running on many different platforms. HME also makes it possible to develop applications to satisfy many of the frequently requested features made by TiVo users. For example, it would be possible to implement a slideshow viewer that could play music at the same time. TiVo has also indicated that they will be supporting DVR capabilities in the SDK in the future which up
to now could only be done by hacking your TiVo.

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