TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO) used the 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to debut its new TiVo OnePass service that offers users the ability to track and record every episode of a show regardless of the source (live, recorded TV, VOD or streaming) … ideal for binge-watching.
OnePass is available on all TiVo units, including the Roamio Pro unit targeted at the custom installation channel, and presumably will be in the still-to-come Mega, the monster-sized DVR device announced last fall with 24TB of storage.
OnePass is available on a home TV or via TiVo mobile apps. It finds every episode of a show and puts them in a My Shows folder. Episodes are organized by season, and if an episode or a season is not available as a recording, OnePass will include episodes from the users’ on-demand library or streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and Hulu Plus.
Jim Denney, vice president of product marketing at TiVo, succinctly describes OnePass, which replaces the previous SeasonPass, as “all your episodes in one place. With OnePass, we can shorten the time to get users to the content to which they subscribe much easier than needing to search individual services. OnePass is a significant step in our continued efforts to simplify and organize the exploding amount of great content available today – a solution we know becomes even more important as individual TV shows, movies and videos are spread throughout an increasing number of entertainment services.”
Other features include the ability to remember which recording you last watched and bookmark the next episode, and sort by “newest” or by “season.” OnePass will be available in February
What’s Up with Mega?
When TiVo first announced it was working on the Mega, a DVR with an incredible 24TB of storage, some people thought it was a joke. But it’s not. Denney told CE Pro that development work is still continuing on the Mega, which would hold a mind-blowing 26,000 hours of SD video and 4,000 hours of HD content, or the equivalent of three years worth of normal TV viewing.
“We are still developing it with a target for it to be out in the first half of 2015,” says Denney. He says he would not “encourage or discourage” integrators to start spec’ing the Mega on projects, but clearly it shouldn’t be spec’ed on anything until the second half of the year.
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