# I know this had been hashed before but...



## PCurry57 (Feb 27, 2012)

Just wondering if there was any word on Android support. With the AEREO SCOTUS decision AEREO pulled the plug Saturday at 11:30am. I was ok using it as a substitute, now that it's gone I'm back to needing a TiVo Stream Android support.

My tablet is 4.2.2 my phone is 4.4.2, perhaps Chromecast support would be off the chain.


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## BigJimOutlaw (Mar 21, 2004)

The last rumor said June. Even if it's not simultaneous with the impending summer update, I still believe we're close.

One of Tivo's cable partners is saying:


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## PCurry57 (Feb 27, 2012)

Thank you


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Viva la iOS!!!!!


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

BigJimOutlaw said:


> The last rumor said June. Even if it's not simultaneous with the impending summer update, I still believe we're close.
> 
> One of Tivo's cable partners is saying:


Did they mean June 2015? At this point it would not be a surprise if it was.


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## eboydog (Mar 24, 2006)

Come on Tivo, Android please!


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

I am guessing when it does come out, it will be for Kit Kat only...


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## eboydog (Mar 24, 2006)

bradleys said:


> I am guessing when it does come out, it will be for Kit Kat only...


Na, If there is a cutoff, 4.2 Jelly bean would be it.

As much as version might be a issue I stand behind the reason for delay is legal and political with no bearing if any being technical.

TiVo new business plan is providing cable company TiVo services and the cable companies have no desire to offer additional services such as mobile streaming. Such as my cable companies TiVo service doesn't include many of the traditional TiVo services such as internet streaming (netflix, hulu) or even MRV such as TiVo desktop/pytivo. Now that MSO's don't have to support cable cards in their own boxes, the days of cable card and retail TiVo services are coming to an end.

We are headed back to the dark ages were a cable company provided box will be required and they (the cable company) will be the only ones who have the final say in how you watch TV. TiVo was no need to expand an infrastructure that will not be around in five-ten years.


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) support was first offered in 4.2, and updated to the more modern version in 4.4...

It is possible it could work with 4.2, but I am betting Android streaming will be limited to version 4.4 - and since the cell providers are stingy on their software updates for Android - only the newest phones and tablets will see the functionality.


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## Austin Bike (Feb 9, 2003)

I was talking to a friend of mine who is a developer. He said that the combination of device and OS proliferation makes android development a mess. While he could create android versions of his apps, it just never makes sense. The extra fly in the ointment is the carriers who have all types of restrictions on what you can/cannot load/change.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

If they stick with HLS then I agree 4.4 is likely going to be the target. From what I've read HLS on 4.2 is a nightmare and really unstable.

However if they switch to MPEG-DASH then they could go back even further and even add support for Windows. DASH is based on the MP4 format so it's supported on almost all OSes. It wasn't a standard back when the Stream was released, but it is now and it's got way better compatibility then HLS.


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## bradleys (Oct 31, 2007)

MPEG-DASH is an interesting read...


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Just reading something that said Apple requires all video streaming apps on the App Store to use HLS, which means the Stream would need to continue to use HLS for iOS and DASH for other devices. If these stupid companies would just agree on a standard they'd make it a lot easier for all of us.


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## Austin Bike (Feb 9, 2003)

It's actually not the technology companies driving these decisions, it is the media companies. They are the ones driving encryption.


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## FROD (Jan 26, 2005)

My Nexus 7 would so love some sweet TiVo Stream. TiVo says soon...are they to be believed? Or are they just holding out till Apple acquires them and folds them into some sort of new Apple TV? Apple just bought Beats. TiVo has the best DVR, hands down, and are in a position to be bought. Apple with TiVo technology would be another game changer for Apple. Looks at how seamless TiVo Stream works on iOS. Apple wouldn't have to do much. TiVo's hardware design team was cut. Hmmmmmm....

Forum bombs flying in three, two, one...


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Apple is never going to buy TiVo. If they wanted a DVR they'd just make their own.

As for whether or not their "soon" can be trusted... at this point I'd say no. They've been saying "soon" for way to long. At this point it could be days away or it could be years, we honestly have no idea.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Boy I hope Apple never buys TiVo. I have not owned any Apple Hardware going back to the 70's. I have no desire to start anytime soon.


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## JWhites (May 15, 2013)

Pretty interesting stuff now that TiVo announced they'll support Android for streaming in September. Tech support already told me there's gonna be major overhauls to everything so hope it's good


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## JWhites (May 15, 2013)

Came across this if anyone was interested http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=515861


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

JWhites said:


> Came across this if anyone was interested http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=515861


 This one is where all the Plex for TiVo activity is currently:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=512505


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## JWhites (May 15, 2013)

moyekj said:


> This one is where all the Plex for TiVo activity is currently:
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=512505


I still don't understand just how much better using MPEG-DASH is compared to whatever TiVo uses now. How much better will the picture and audio quality be and will this finally allow me to stream both inside and outside the home at full 1080i/p HD?


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

There will be no change in quality. They're basically just two ways of packaging the stream, neither has an effect on the audio/video quality. DASH is just an industry standard so it has better support across devices. HLS, which is what TiVo uses now, is an Apple standard that they opened up to the public but was not well documented. Plus Apple added features to HLS on their own devices that they did not release as part of the open document. That's why the industry decided to create DASH as an alternative.

DASH is basically using the MP4 format. The major difference is that it forgoes the MOOV atom, which can only be generated once the entire file is encoded, in favor of an alternative atom that is inserted into every segment. This way the file can be encoded live and played back from an point in the stream without the need for it to be complete.

HLS is based on Transport Streams which have a similar mechanism where they insert a PMT (aka program map) every few hundred milliseconds so that the stream can be encoded live and played from any point.

The actual audio/video data inside both streams could be identical.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

JWhites said:


> I still don't understand just how much better using MPEG-DASH is compared to whatever TiVo uses now. How much better will the picture and audio quality be and will this finally allow me to stream both inside and outside the home at full 1080i/p HD?


 The main advantage of that solution is that it's actually true streaming. To date HME based tools such as "streambaby" are basically just copying data back to the TiVo, and with a limited buffer size. Hence no HME streaming solution works with TiVo Mini, for example, which doesn't have any video storage. Obviously the Mini doesn't work with pyTivo either. PlexTiVo is using html5 and the built in TiVo Opera browser which can play both HLS and MPEG-DASH streams (as well as just straight mp4 and TS containers with H.264 video and AAC audio) and works fine with TiVo Mini and allows easy arbitrary seeking to any point in the video.

The down side to the above solution is the TiVo Opera browser has very limited video and audio codec support, so if the source video isn't H.264 and/or the source audio is not AAC or MP3 then the source video needs to be transcoded on the fly to be played and thus be lower quality than the source. I don't know how smart the Plex transcoder is in terms of only re-encoding what is necessary and in some cases simply just re-muxing, but the client should have some control over defining that.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I didn't realize you guys had made some much progress with that Plex app. I thought we had determined early on that the Opera browser did not support HLS or DASH on the TiVo. Did a recent update change that? Is there actually a way to launch the app on the TiVo? I thought they had closed that loop hole too?


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

Dan203 said:


> I didn't realize you guys had made some much progress with that Plex app. I thought we had determined early on that the Opera browser did not support HLS or DASH on the TiVo. Did a recent update change that? Is there actually a way to launch the app on the TiVo? I thought they had closed that loop hole too?


The RPC backdoor is still slammed shut by TiVo. However if you sign up as an Opera TV developer (pretty easy to do) then you can setup 1 or more of your TiVos to be a developer platform which gives you an official URL Launcher from which you can launch your own pages.
See OperaTV Store Backdoor thread for details on that.

The issue of how you can get other people to actually use the app once it's been finished is still up in the air. Probably the cleanest way is to submit as an official app to Opera TV, but that sounds like may be painful. In the PlexTivo thread we discussed other possibilities such as DNS spoofing to "steal" an existing launch point on the TiVo, but that's not a good long term solution. Anyway, for now the number of interested participants is limited, so signing up as an Opera TV developer is the easiest way to go.


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## JWhites (May 15, 2013)

Dan203 said:


> There will be no change in quality. They're basically just two ways of packaging the stream, neither has an effect on the audio/video quality. DASH is just an industry standard so it has better support across devices. HLS, which is what TiVo uses now, is an Apple standard that they opened up to the public but was not well documented. Plus Apple added features to HLS on their own devices that they did not release as part of the open document. That's why the industry decided to create DASH as an alternative.
> 
> DASH is basically using the MP4 format. The major difference is that it forgoes the MOOV atom, which can only be generated once the entire file is encoded, in favor of an alternative atom that is inserted into every segment. This way the file can be encoded live and played back from an point in the stream without the need for it to be complete.
> 
> ...


Sounds awesome in theory but how likely is it that the atom or PMT could become "screwed up" causing "unknown error" messages to occur? What will the benefits be in being able to stream MPEG4 or H.264 programs such as those from cable providers that encode channels in that format?


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