TiVo, today, is making one of its CES 2018 announcements public, and that is its new Next-Gen Platform. The company will be showcasing this at CES next week in Las Vegas. Basically, this new platform is aiming to bring cable and streaming services together in a single location, and it’ll work with most other set-top boxes, like Android TV, Amazon Fire TV and even Apple TV. So it is truly customizable and will work across virtually all platforms. That includes smartphones as well as your PC (through the web browser).
For customers, this announcement won’t actually mean a whole lot, as this announcement is mostly background changes. Before customers see any huge changes, they’ll need to convince cable companies and streaming companies that they need to support this new platform. And that could take some time. TiVo says that it is telling operators that if they do integrate its tech into their products, that it’ll provide a better user experience as well as remaining “relevant amid growing competition”. And that is indeed important, with just about everyone coming out with its own streaming service or even a streaming TV service. That should convince cable operators and streaming providers to jump on board, but it may take a bit more convincing for the bigger companies like Comcast, Time Warner, Netflix and others to jump on.
If this Next-Gen Platform works out the way that TiVo wants it too, it could be a very big deal in the very near future. Let’s face it, right now, many of us are paying for more than one “TV service” whether that’s Cable and Netflix, or Netflix and a bunch of other streaming providers. All of which use different apps. But with this new platform from TiVo, you’ll be able to watch everything from the TiVo app, making it much easier to watch different programs that might be on different services without wondering if it is on Netflix, HBO NOW, or something else. It’s still the early days, but it’s looking pretty positive for TiVo and its Next-Gen Platform. We’ll definitely hear more about this in Las Vegas next week, when TiVo should be giving out more details as well as ways to utilize this platform.