Philips announces new TiVo-like DVRs at IFA

by Joshua Topolsky, posted Sep 4th 2007 at 7:50PM

Word on the street is that Philips has decided to dip its collective toes into the DVR world with a new line of products that appear, at least ostensibly, to compete with TiVo. Like the "TiVo Suggestions" feature that the recorder-company offers, Philips' new devices tout user preference tracking, which will "learn" different user's likes and dislikes, and create custom sets of programming geared towards those tastes. The new line will also be able to access and download YouTube and other internet video, as well as podcast content. Advertising on the new boxes will also follow user's watching habits, thus ensuring a steady flow of laser-targeted ads beamed directly at your face. Apparently the new products will begin their lifecycle as software for PCs, but will eventually become set-top boxes for the living room. What's really interesting here is that Philips used to manufacture TiVo hardware, which increases the chances of cross-pollination (and lawsuits) oh... about tenfold.

Filed under: DVRs, Philips

Tags: berlin, digital video recordings, DigitalVideoRecordings, dvr, ifa, philips, pvr, recorders, television recording, TelevisionRecording, tivo, tv recording, TvRecording

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

cromag9 @ Sep 4th 2007 9:06PM

Hmmm, sounds like Tivo's business model, without maintaining all those pesky phoneline call in centers for the legacy customers. As long as I have a 30 sec skip ahead button, you can "laser target" all the ads you want at me, I can keep pressing the button...

Neutral

hiimcliff @ Sep 5th 2007 11:30AM

as long as they dont charge stupid subscriptions and it can record and play back 1080 ill buy it. chances are lawsuits will never let the product see the light of day.

Neutral

Blaq @ Sep 5th 2007 11:41AM

Longer versions of the article state that "TiVo offers a similar feature, TiVo Suggestions, but users must tell the system explicitly whether they like a program, and it learns and makes guesses about what else they could like based on that."

This is false. Any show you record automatically gets one thumbs-up, without user intervention. You can optionally improve TiVo's suggestions by manually rating shows from 1-3 thumbs up/down, but that's not required.

Neutral

horngreen @ Sep 5th 2007 3:23PM

SET-TOP DVR WITH NO SUBSCRIPTION. WHAT A CONCEPT!!!

Neutral

The Blotch @ Sep 5th 2007 10:42PM

MythTV, perhaps?

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