TiVo Premiere First Hands On [TiVo]

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets...x_a17c4273.jpgTiVo's Premiere is here, and, well, it's a TiVo. (With internet things!) But what is the new interface like to use? How does the new box look? The remote? And the dongles? What about the dongles?
TiVo's Series 4 box is superficially, well, just another TiVo box. The array of accessories—the dreaded dongles for Wi-Fi, and now, the Bluetooth remote—are still here. Anyway, not the point—all set-top boxes are boxes, and if they were anything else, they wouldn't be set-top boxes. It's what's inside that counts, and that's where the Premiere's newness is.
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The new TiVo interface is recognizably TiVo (and almost exactly like what was previewed back in 2008), and just as recognizably fresher—there are fewer tacky shine effects, and more soft gradients. It's kind of a natural progression for the original interface, which was designed with SDTVs in mind, to a more HD-ready take on the same concept. It's based on Flash, and while you can't really tell now, Tivo's hinted that the platform is extensible. TiVo apps could be a gamechanger. Could.
In terms of content, TiVo's taken a hard turn online: as Mark put it, it's as if "TiVo and IMDB made a baby," which is to say any TV show or movie you're watching now has context and metadata, pulled from online. A tiny feature which is actually kind of huge is that if you look up a film or show, the Premiere plants icons for the integrated streaming services—Netflix, Blockbuster, Amazon, etc—to help see if a download or play option is available. Overall, the integration is smooth, and the concept natural. But groundbreaking? Not so much.
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The QWERTY remote will be very familiar to anyone who's used TiVo for more than five minutes, excepting the giant freakin' keyboard that slides out of the side. It's more merciful than generous, though, since asking users to navigating any amount of text-oriented web content with the regular ol' peanut is mildy hellish. I suspect a lot of folks will spring for this one, even if the necessary Bluetooth dongle (not to mention the remote itself) costs
What's most striking about TiVo's Next Big Thing is that it doesn't do a whole lot that other DVRs and set-top boxes couldn't, probably for a lower price. Granted, a lot of people are going to end up with a Series 4 DVR subsidized by their TV provider, and then, yeah, it's going to be a nice step up from whatever terrible TI genero-box they would have had otherwise. But TiVo's breathless invite to this launch (Inventing the DVR was just a warmup!) doesn't ring true. Is there's something else on the way? Is everyone missing something? mean, I'm glad TiVo discovered the internet and all, but this kind of stuff is baseline nowadays.


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