If your TiVo-loving heart was crushed last week when we found out the new Premiere Q DVR was only for cable companies with no plans for retail sales, allow us to put the pieces back together. Zatz Not Funny has dug up an FCC filing, dated June 7th, indicating TiVo will bring the quad tuner Premiere Elite DVR with 2TB of hard drive space to retail. The purpose of the filing? To get the FCC to waive requirements that the Elite — which is designed for digital cable reception only — contain an analog tuner that it claims would increase costs by – 0. There’s no word on price or timing but it’s clearly intended as a high end product that TiVo plans to offer online, through custom installers or specialty outlets like Best Buy’s Magnolia stores. If it gets approved we could still see the Elite set-top box this year, assuming the FCC has its approval stamp ready and inked.

TiVo’s retail plans for quad-tuner Premiere DVR revealed in FCC filing originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jun 2011 16:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Monsoon Multimedia is pushing its Vulkano line of set-top boxes to the forefront once again by offering a feature not found on competition from Sling, TiVo or Roku, by adding the ability to make DVR recordings directly to iPad, iPhone or Android devices. While users can still watch TV from anywhere in the world using the Vulkano, the new DVR-to-mobile feature is restricted to WiFi and will only work with the new Blast model. Sure you could store your shows on its internal 160GB hard drive, but this way fans of The Killing on AMC can be disappointed by the season finale later on even while offline. Updates for the platform-appropriate apps should arrive shortly, while Blackberry users are assured the feature is on the way soon for them too.

Continue reading Monsoon Vulkano Blast launches DVR-to-mobile feature for iPhone, iPad and Android

Monsoon Vulkano Blast launches DVR-to-mobile feature for iPhone, iPad and Android originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Jun 2011 03:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

This January, Vizio became the second major TV manufacturer to announce its support for Google TV at CES 2011. Samsung and LG also rallied behind the idea of “smart TV,” with the former announcing results of a “Free the TV” competition designed to encourage television app development. After years of serving mostly as a display for other development platforms such as video game consoles and TiVo, it seems the TV is ready to serve as a connected platform of its own, not wholly unlike the PC and smartphone.

However, there are two things standing in the way of the television as a platform to lead interactivity in the home — a lack of access to the core video assets, and the separation of user interface from display.

Continue reading Switched On: A screen too far

Switched On: A screen too far originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Mar 2011 22:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You know there’s going to be a showdown over some communications technology issue when Google, Best Buy, Mitsubishi, Sony, TiVo and two other big companies start a new group with the word ‘alliance’ in it.

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