TiVo Premiere gives glimpse of Virgin plans

TiVo has unveiled its new Premiere cable set-top box widely thought to be the basis for the new Virgin Media device, slated to make its debut before the end of the year.

“It has never been this easy to get all your entertainment in one place, on the big screen, in HD, right at your fingertips. And the beauty of TiVo Premiere is that finding what to watch is just as fun as the watching the TV shows themselves. We accomplished it by using pictures and graphics to make the whole television guide experience come alive in a way that it never has before,” said TiVo’s President and CEO Tom Rogers.

TiVo Premiere combines a high definition cable tuner with the ability to pull in web-based video content. In the United States this includes YouTube and other broadband sources that include Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, or Blockbuster On Demand all accessed through a single user interface.

Each programme, whatever its source, is organized by category and topic. A full screen menu displays movie posters and TV show logos. Content discovery features include the ability to view lists based on a particular actor and access full cast lists on a particular show. The EPG is built on two and three column layouts.

The set-top box is built on the Adobe Flash Platform, an option also understood to be an option for the UK’s Canvas project.

In partnership with FrameChannel , TiVo is offering consumers access to some 300 widgets to enable personalised content including news, sports, stocks and shares, and Tweets.