(Quick) Hands-on with New TiVo Features

TiVo held a small press conference to show off its latest announcements, which Dory details in her earlier post. CEO Tom Rogers gave a demo of the new features. After a brief Q&A, we all got to play around with the new services more closely.

Here's what I think of the announcements, based on a quick hands-on:

Unified Search: This lets me search for broadcast, cable/satellite, and the broadband offerings from CNET, iVillage, Heavy.com, and, soon, CBS Interactive and Reuters, among other new content partners. (See "New TiVoCast Content Partners" below). Okay, so now I can get Katie Couric's Eye to Eye podcast every time I enter "Katie" into the search field, but otherwise, not a big deal.

TiVo-recording lists by Hollywood directors and actors: Thanks to a deal TiVo struck up with Hollywood talent agency ICM, celebs will be providing lists of their favorite movies, which can be set to automatically record to TiVo set-top boxes, Season-Pass-style. This is more of a minor content announcement than anything earth-shattering. Do I really want to see Halle Berry's favorite movies? Or would I rather just enter "Halle Berry" and watch my favorite movies (and Eye to Eye appearances!) starring Halle Berry?

(TiVo made no specific talent announcements for this feature, but Halle Berry is an ICM client, which is why I use her as a hypothetical example.)

Autotranscode: This means you can now download non-copy-protected MPEG-4, Windows Media, and Quicktime videos onto your TiVo and watch them on your TV (the "transcoding" process makes the various file formats TiVo-friendly). But, as Dory points out, you won't be able to watch movies from Movielink, CinemaNow, iTunes, or any of the other online video stores and services.

New TiVoCast content partners: These include Reuters, CBS Interactive, PlumTV, and others. Unfortunately, this content won't be available as part of the TiVo-to-Go service, so you're stuck watching it on your television.

Home Movies Service: Of all the new features on display, I thought this was the coolest. Essentially you upload your home movie(s) to your "channel" on the One True Media web site. The site then gives you a code, which is essentially a password to your channel. You give this code to family or friends, who enter it into their TiVo. Then every time you upload a movie to your One True Media "channel," your family or friends will automatically get a download of that movie to their TiVos. So I could create, say, "Tom's Channel," upload movies to it, and then any of my friends who subscribe to my channel would be able to access my latest videos in the "Now Playing" lineup on the TiVo interface.

All in all, these are all perfectly cool additions to the TiVo, but nothing to stop the presses about (which is why I'm writing about it for the web, I guess!)

Still, my quick look-see-feel clearly revealed one thing: All of the new functions are made a bit sweeter by their seamless integration with the famously smooth TiVo interface. With TiVo, it's all about the interface and smooth-running software. Unlike my cable box and my PC, my TiVo frickin' works every time. Now if only TiVo could get itself into my cablebox, then I'd have something to stop the proverbial presses for.

Would you rather watch web content via your TiVo or are you okay with watching it on the web? On a similar note, do you even care what movies INSERT CELEBRITY HERE likes?

Related links:

Tivo Offers More Than TV