# Where is this forum going?



## mcvfloyd (May 29, 2008)

Given all the hoopla about Samsung/Vizio SmartTV apps, I'm wondering whether Tivo itself is "treading water" in comparison... and what "rogue" HME developers can do about it. 

I thought I'd figure out what you guys are up to by visiting this forum, but the number of threads is alarmingly small.

I understand that the focus these days is on streaming video content, but personally being bored of video offerings on Crackle/Hulu/the like, I'm wondering if anyone is working on newer renditions of elegant "web-clipping" software like Galleon, or resurrecting last.fm access, or creating an elegant front-end to streaming radio that doesn't require the work it takes to get things working in pyTivo?

Is the lack of info about planned "home-brewed" HME apps because the "players" are worried about hurting their hopes (probably delusional) of a big pot of gold from their efforts? If not, could you let this "wanna-be-power-user" know what's brewing?

Thanks for your time, highly appreciate your programming efforts!


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

I'd be surprised if any potential HME developers have delusional hopes about a pot of gold. But I guess if they did, they wouldn't be tipping their hand here, would they?


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## davidblackledge (Sep 9, 2008)

With no pot of gold, we have to use our spare time. With no support at all form TiVo with new technology, our spare time gets spread too thin to accomplish anything with the few of us there are. I think we're pretty much giving up and concentrating on a few utilitarian things to get our desired video from various sources.

I've actually got the potential of a pot of pennies with the mp3tunes interface they asked me to work on, except it so happens there isn't a good way to associate my referral id to new accounts, so I am not making one of those pennies. Even worse, the company has also been blocked from TiVo (complaining about their own "resource crunch") , preventing any on-TiVo advertising and causing mp3tunes to practically abandon the project... understandable since I hit a terrible snag that appears to be a problem with the TiVo and I can't get any help from TiVo.

The biggest problem is HME applications are buried so deep down that nobody uses them unless they're a significant and valuable destination themselves. Before our family had an iPad, some of my own apps were a good destination (calendar, etc) but it's more trouble than getting out the iPad... especially since half the time something dies and the apps don't show up.

I have tons of ideas of things I'd like to write that I think would be useful, but I haven't worked on them due to the lack of personal time to do it combined with the fact that I know the usefulness is so badly reduced by the ability to get to it.
If I had some belief that anybody gave a rat's behind about the stuff I have done, I might be energized to continue the work. The only thing that really got any significant interest was the Google Maps browser... which is more of a novelty than a destination. You know what's weird? If we charged for these things, we'd have some idea of how much they're used, but we can't really even tell that unless you're running it on a server like wmcbrine's reversi. I can get an idea of how many downloads I've had, but that doesn't mean it wasn't deleted 24 hours later.

I have a Roku now that I don't really use much, but the fact that it a) is nothing-but-apps and b) has a proper delivery system for apps, and even the option to make money with it, means I've been thinking more about spending my hobby time with that than with HME stuff. I'm not finished researching its interface and it might not have the capabilities to do some of the things I want to do, but I'm certain the new version does.
I'm also thinking I should take that time to get ramped up for iPad or Android apps.

I really enjoy the platform, and love owning the TiVos I have, but the effort related to the benefit (even just personal benefit) is too large.
The only hope I've got left for HME is to a) start writing for the Perl(? I think or php or something) SDK that I could run from my own website and get listed on apps.tv, or b) start writing for the python version that I could run from my NAS (I love always having my video library, pictures, and music running via pyTiVo and always having the web page to download to my video library - I just wish I had a python HME app for the download function running). Too bad my provider doesn't support Java and my NAS can't handle full Java apps, since that's my language of choice.


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