IceTV Tries To Give TiVo The Finger With New Features
A war is brewing. The war for your television viewing habits.
It started with TiVo. Channel 7 wants to take over your lounge room with a decent PVR, full of cool functions like SeasonPass and IP Video. Then Foxtel decided to crank it up a notch with the iQ2 - adding HD to their already impressive digital box. The other day, Sony decided to join the fray by announcing the PlayTV add-on for the PS3, turning your console into a PVR.
So many warriors. Such a large battle looming. And on the side, slightly out of sight but no less a threat to the other champions, is IceTV.
Before the battle begins, they've launched their first wave of attacks - adding functionality to their EPG service to give and device running their software even more features. The biggest of which is IceTV Recommendations.
It started with TiVo. Channel 7 wants to take over your lounge room with a decent PVR, full of cool functions like SeasonPass and IP Video. Then Foxtel decided to crank it up a notch with the iQ2 - adding HD to their already impressive digital box. The other day, Sony decided to join the fray by announcing the PlayTV add-on for the PS3, turning your console into a PVR.
So many warriors. Such a large battle looming. And on the side, slightly out of sight but no less a threat to the other champions, is IceTV.
Before the battle begins, they've launched their first wave of attacks - adding functionality to their EPG service to give and device running their software even more features. The biggest of which is IceTV Recommendations.
Recommendations is a service that will intelligently recommend programs based upon your favourite TV shows, series recordings and other recording data. IceTV partnered with Perth-based startup Recommendation Ventures for the service.
Recommended programs are illustrated in the EPG with a green star. From there, you can either select to record the recommended program, or remove it if it doesn't interest you.
Here's a video of how the whole thing works:
IceTV Recommendations from Richard Giles on Vimeo.
And considering that IceTV is compatible with pretty much any PC, Mac, laptop or PVR with a TV tuner built-in, this advance really does mean that the PVR battle for Australia could be a long and bloody one.
[IceTV via CNet AU]
Haha! "Recommendations" is hardly a new feature - Tivo has had Tivo "Suggestions" for years! It sounds like the same technology, just rebranded a different way. Hmmm... Didn't EchoStar do something similar to that?! I don't think it worked out too well for that company...
Wow! That's a great new idea! Oh, wait. TiVo has had that for a loooong time.
No arguments from me, but TiVo still isn't commercially available in Australia, so technically over here they're ahead of the pack.
While TiVo has had recommendations for quite some time and other websites have had this too (Amazon, iTunes etc), this is the first time such a service has been available in Australia for TV recording.
Another thing worth noting is that the recommendation (and entire interface shown here for recording) is web, widget or mobile phone based... so you can use it from anywhere, not just in front of your TV.
It's not a giant leap forward, but I hope you'll agree that it is very handy anyway.