# Why is Streaming for Android Taking So Long?



## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

This isn't meant to be another rant.

I was just curious why it is taking so long for TiVo to develop steaming for Android?

I'm sure that that it's more difficult to develop this than I am giving them credit for. Is it just that this isn't the limited platform that iOS is? What are some of the other difficulties?

To me it just seems like they are not willing to invest the necessary resources. If they really wanted this done it would be done. (Okay, that was a small rant.)

But seriously, what are the difficulties that I am not aware of? How hard can this be?


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## Grakthis (Oct 4, 2006)

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=501364&page=9


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

I guess that real answer is no one knows. 

Sorry, I thought that thread was more of a rant thread.


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## Grakthis (Oct 4, 2006)

waynomo said:


> I guess that real answer is no one knows.
> 
> Sorry, I thought that thread was more of a rant thread.


There's been moderate speculation and guessing, but yeah, no one knows.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

waynomo said:


> I guess that real answer is no one knows.
> 
> Sorry, I thought that thread was more of a rant thread.


Yeah, while there has developed a fair amount of ranting, it Co gains some logical theories as to the delay of implementation.

The fact is, TiVo wants to provide this to android users, so there must be a pretty good reason why that has not happened yet.


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## ilovedvrs (Oct 21, 2004)

because there engineers are incompetent morons.

just look at my 2013 Roamio interface, I still have screens I saw on my 1999 S1 Tivo in the options... 15 years ago!! WTF.. so many features on the tivo menu that are outdated and need to be removed... there should be ZERO SD menus....


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I'm pretty sure the apps are developed by a 3rd party company. Whereas the UI is developed by in house engineers.


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## Grakthis (Oct 4, 2006)

ilovedvrs said:


> because there engineers are incompetent morons.
> 
> just look at my 2013 Roamio interface, I still have screens I saw on my 1999 S1 Tivo in the options... 15 years ago!! WTF.. so many features on the tivo menu that are outdated and need to be removed... there should be ZERO SD menus....


Why? Why should there be 'ZERO SD menus?' Are they harming something?

Have you ever combed through Google's websites? I do web development, so i spend a lot of time crawling others websites looking for design concepts I like so I can incorporate the ideas into my own code. You'll see that Google has undergone multiple style guides over time, and many many many pages still operate under old style guides.

Does it hurt anything? What's the harm? Do you know how expensive it can be to recode little used UI features?


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## Grakthis (Oct 4, 2006)

i was thinking the other day, though, I bet TiVo could crank out an App for the Kindle Fire quicker than Android as a whole. The OS and hardware are more standardized.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

Grakthis said:


> Why? Why should there be 'ZERO SD menus?' Are they harming something?
> 
> Have you ever combed through Google's websites? I do web development, so i spend a lot of time crawling others websites looking for design concepts I like so I can incorporate the ideas into my own code. You'll see that Google has undergone multiple style guides over time, and many many many pages still operate under old style guides.
> 
> Does it hurt anything? What's the harm? Do you know how expensive it can be to recode little used UI features?


 Adding to this, I actually think updating remaining UI screens would be more of a negative than a positive. In the process of updating screens TiVo broke old functionality, such as channel up/down between show details, and the HDUI Wishlists screens are much inferior to the older SDUI ones as well. Quite honestly I care much more about functionality than aesthetics, and for what is left in the UI not converted to HDUI I can't imagine functionality getting any better, only aesthetics.


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## eboydog (Mar 24, 2006)

Back on subject with regards for Stream supporting Android devices, does anyone know what the Tivo NDA includes if there is a Android Stream beta program active? Can those testers even acknowledge that they are testing yet? 

Just curious as I suspect there are members here that that been involved in past beta testing with Tivo products. If they is any glimmer of hope for a June 2014 projected release date, there has to testing going on right now (or so logic suggests) 

I personally know that NDA's can be rather restricted as I have been a tester for RIM (BlackBerry) and I could not voluntarily offer the fact that that I was a beta tester which then could only do so if explicitly asked and could not state what I was involved with. Even more restrictions were placed on me that I could not release any details of the products I tested even until the final product had been released publicly for one year and can't release my own experiences with the product without a release from RIM. 

So the question might be, are there any Tivo beta testers out there involved in any current projects? Wink wink, nudge, nudge......


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## Grakthis (Oct 4, 2006)

moyekj said:


> Adding to this, I actually think updating remaining UI screens would be more of a negative than a positive. In the process of updating screens TiVo broke old functionality, such as channel up/down between show details, and the HDUI Wishlists screens are much inferior to the older SDUI ones as well. Quite honestly I care much more about functionality than aesthetics, and for what is left in the UI not converted to HDUI I can't imagine functionality getting any better, only aesthetics.


There's actually a very famous and well known developer piece about re-writing code. The gist is, don't do it if you don't absolutely have to because your re-write will produce a bunch of bugs you already fixed in the old code, and now you're refixing them in the new code.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Grakthis said:


> Why? Why should there be 'ZERO SD menus?' Are they harming something?


For people who use the little preview window it can be jarring. The little preview window doesn't work in the SD menus so it goes away when you enter a menu that is SD. Some of the settings are now HD but go through an SD sub menu first, so you end up with a situation where the preview window is there, then goes away, then comes back.

I can understand why some of the more complex settings menus aren't done, but the more basic ones with simple options and the sub menus should really be converted over. Also there is really no reason the Find by Time/Channel menus aren't HD yet. Those are the last two outside of options and should be converted for posterity.


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## Grakthis (Oct 4, 2006)

Dan203 said:


> For people who use the little preview window it can be jarring. The little preview window doesn't work in the SD menus so it goes away when you enter a menu that is SD. Some of the settings are now HD but go through an SD sub menu first, so you end up with a situation where the preview window is there, then goes away, then comes back.
> 
> I can understand why some of the more complex settings menus aren't done, but the more basic ones with simple options and the sub menus should really be converted over. Also there is really no reason the Find by Time/Channel menus aren't HD yet. Those are the last two outside of options and should be converted for posterity.


I get why it's a suboptimal UI experience. But it's functional. The problem is purely cosmetic and may introduce more issues just to fix something cosmetic.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Grakthis said:


> I get why it's a suboptimal UI experience. But it's functional. The problem is purely cosmetic and may introduce more issues just to fix something cosmetic.


But it's not just cosmetic. As I pointed out above it actually effects the functionality of the box. If you like to have the little preview window running then it is quite annoying for it to turn on/off depending on which menu you're in.


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