My Top Two Disappointments from CES 2010: Sling Media and TiVo
CES has come and gone. The two dominating themes of this year’s show appear to be tablets and 3D televisions. I am interested in neither. Unless Steve Jobs shows me something amazing in two weeks, I don’t see the need for a tablet in my life. Not one bit. And I have ZERO desire to put on 3D glasses just to watch Modern Family or the Lakers beating pretty much anyone. However, I DO have the desire to have an updated HD TiVo. I have a TiVo HD with a 1TB hard drive upgrade, and while it works great, I really wish it did a better job of integrating internet media. There were leaks of a TiVo Premiere, and I really thought CES would be the time and place for TiVo to introduce a new line of DVRs. Oh well. I’m a sad Panda. And as for Sling, I would have loved to see some innovation on the consumer end of things. Show us a Slingcatcher that ACTUALLY can sling HD. Show us a better iPhone client. Just give us something cooler than all of the boring OEM crap you released! So anyhow, big lumps of coal for TiVo and Sling Media. I was hoping to see neat products from both!
Hey Kev-
Try out SNAPSTREAM BEYOND TV. I’ve been using it for 6 or 7 years and it’s great. It will automatically convert to iPod/iPhone, it automatically compresses things after recording them so you don’t have huge mpeg2 files lying around, and it auto-skips commercials with the push of 1 button on your remote. It allows LOTS of tuners. I had an HD PVR that recorded 1080i from encrypted cable/satellite as one of my tuners. Also had an ATSC and an NTSC in the same box.
http://www.snapstream.com
I agree – Tivo needs to take out sling. Sling’s service is so bad and their recent releases have crippled their device. Tivo should provide the service as an extra feature and then add premier content services after the have tackled the tv anywhere problem.