TiVo Premiere Officially Revealed

The day finally arrived and we got details on TiVo’s new promoted DVR. Was it worth all the hype? In a word: no.

“Inventing the DVR was just a start” was the tagline used to promote TiVo’s new reveal. I noted before that this is a statement that carries a lot of weight. Sure, the consumer electronics industry is ripe with hyperbole. But when a company calls out the product that made them famous as something of the past, we tend to expect a bit of an evolution.

The TiVo Premiere isn’t a bad piece of hardware by any means. The XL has a full terabyte of storage, while the standard Premiere sports a 320GB drive. The two new models are faster than old TiVo versions and boast an entirely new user interface.

As far as new and exciting features go, there’s not much to be seen. The new user interface is nice looking and uses good ol’ Flash, and is exclusive to the Premiere. TiVo 3.0 models, as well as TiVo Premiere models will be getting Pandora and FrameChannel.

One of the coolest additions to the TiVo Premiere doesn’t come bundled with it. Available separately are a Wireless N adapter and a very nice looking remote that slides open to reveal a QWERTY keyboard.

Source: TiVo (PDF)