March 09, 2018

Time's up for TiVo?

Multichannel.com is reporting that Virgin Media’s TiVo platform. Here's what they say:
Speaking at this week’s Cable Congress event in Dublin, Tom Mockridge, Virgin Media’s CEO, reportedly dropped a hint that the operator has plans to transition over to the “Horizon” user interface used by parent company, Liberty Global, but stressed that TiVo’s technology will remain in the picture.
“It’s no secret that Liberty Global has its own Horizon UI at the moment and you can expect that we will transition to that on the V6 box and we’ll do that in co-operation with TiVo,” he said, according to Broadband TV News. “They are very understanding of our desire to do that and will help us do that.”
A Virgin Media official said the company had nothing to add beyond Mockridge’s comments about using the Horizon UI. “There’s no changes to announce at this time and all UK set-top boxes continue to use the TiVo platform today,” the official said in an email.
Nothing concrete, nothing imminent. More can be seen at Multichannel.com's website 

7 comments:

Matty Smith said...

If this is happens I’ll be a very happy chap. Although the V6 is a vast improvement to their previous set top box, the user interface does need a good overhaul as we haven’t had any interface changes since 2014 when Virgin media rebranded with the purple menu screen/mini guide and from what I’ve seen online the horizon platform looks quite good.

Unknown said...

I thort horizon got scrapped by virgin media ireland? Why would virgin media bring horizonin the uk if they scrapoed it in ireland? It dont make sence

Chris said...

TiVo is maybe not flashy but it is easy to use and extremely reliable. So if they do switch, they need to make sure it can live up to the same standards in those areas.

Richard said...

It will take time to transition.
1.not everyone has a v6 box, there are many Samsung and Cisco tivo boxes out there.
2. Each firmware realise from tivo goes under testing at takes around 4 to 6 months before it is rolled out.
Even if they wanted to roll it out, they will have to test it on the v6 box and it will be at least a year before it is seen.

I wonder if they will do a joint venture and use the horizon interface with a tivo core! No idea if it is even possible because I’ve only see promo videos of horizon, no idea about the tech behind it, but that might be an interesting concept.

Unknown said...

I personally like the TiVo software, I saw some clips of Horrizon on YouTube and it looks tacky and clunky.

Irishmanc said...

From what I've read Horizon is based around the Xbmc/Kodi media player.

Virgin Media Ireland only stopped using the Horizon platform to bring it in line with the UK it was not cost effective to run 2 different platforms. As Horizon is used in all other Liberty Global territories it will have continued to be developed.

Unknown said...

I'd image what we are going to see is a customised interface on the v6 boxes.
Tivo already have a new UI for the current boxes and they are more focused on software development than hardware now.
I think we will still have Tivo software underneath, but the UI will be brought inline across the Liberty platforms.