# Hydra Home Screen Improvement Opportunity with Dynamic Strip



## MighTiVo (Oct 26, 2000)

I know know the name of this strip, Title should be
*Hydra Home Screen Improvement with Dynamic SmartBar*

I think the SmartBar on the home page is a position of missed opportunity for ease of use.

This is the official description:

_THE SMARTBAR The SmartBar predicts shows to watch based on what your household usually watch at a particular time or day. For example, if you normally watch the previous night's late-night talk show the next morning, you'll see it in the SmartBar when you wake up. If the kids tend to watch shows while dinner's cooking, those shows will be waiting in the SmartBar at that time each day. Use the DOWN arrow on your remote control to move to the SmartBar, then select a show to go to the Series or Movie screen, where you can choose to watch it. See Series, Movie, & Episode screens to learn more_

Instead of a static display dependent only on time of day, I think it could be infinitely more valuable if it was dynamic based on the Home Menu Selection.

*When this top menu choice is highligted*
SmartBar Displays this (right cursor to jump from menu choice to SmartBar)
AND Clicking Play on the Program in the SmartBar should jump to the program and Play it!​--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*My Shows*
AI Selected Recommendations of Programs in My Shows that TiVo thinks you might watch now​*What to Watch*
AI Selected Recommendations of Programs NOT in My Shows that TiVo thinks you might like to watch now​
*Search*
AI and Sponsored placement of Recommendations of Programs to add as a new Recording or One Pass​*Apps*
AI selected/Favorite Apps​
*Optional App Home Shortcuts* (Netflix/Plex/Amazon/HBO/etc.)
Use the API for the App when available to display the Apps recommendations (similar to AppleTV/Samsung TV)​
*Live TV*
AI Selected Recommendations of Programs that are Live Now​
*To Do List*
Next Programs to be recorded​You get the idea....

Also *Devices *should be an option as a Home Shortcut, either as a list of devices in the SmartBar, or individually with the SmartBar displaying an equivalent *My Shows* list from the device.


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## JolDC (Dec 21, 2001)

MighTiVo said:


> ...
> 
> Instead of a static display, I think it could be infinitely more valuable if it was dynamic based on the Home Menu Selection.
> 
> ...


The display isn't static and it is touted as one of the big features of the new interface. That strip is supposed to use the predictive logic TiVo acquired when it bought Digitalsmiths. Overtime it is supposed to learn your household's viewing habits and display what you would normally watch at that time plus suggest similar things available at that time.


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## MighTiVo (Oct 26, 2000)

JolDC said:


> The display isn't static and it is touted as one of the big features of the new interface. That strip is supposed to use the predictive logic TiVo acquired when it bought Digitalsmiths. Overtime it is supposed to learn your household's viewing habits and display what you would normally watch at that time plus suggest similar things available at that time.


Yes it should change over time of day, day of week, etc. but once on the Home page it is static. And unless you browse through it, you only see 5 choices. On my system this moment, browsing though only shows 12 items. Not a lot for $1B
(Ok, I will admit I haven't left it on the home page for hours to see if it ever changes "dynamically")

It is exactly that predictive logic TiVo/Rovi acquired from Digitalsmiths that I think could be much more widely used. Leveraging that investment beyond the current My Shows predictive logic and provide the same artificial intelligence (See use of AI in my comments - AI = Artificial Intelligence = Digitalsmiths Logic) to include the opportunities I described. The intent is to not just use this AI to pick what you already know about, but also use it to find new programming you may not know be aware of in Live and Future programming.

Even if the existing strip is in its infancy and the fact that mine currently only has 8 "Your Shows" and 4 "Recently Recorded" items is misrepresentation of it capabilities, it is very limited in scope showing only 5 items without actively browsing through the list.
By changing the scope of input data when you move up and down the menu it gains a much broader range of program selection assistance.


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

You want it to change just based on the location of the cursor on the main screen? What a waste of computing power and bandwidth.


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## MighTiVo (Oct 26, 2000)

Seriously? I think you may have a misconception on what computing power and bandwidth would be needed....
Most of the content is already on TiVo, and displayed deeper in the system, I am suggesting bringing it forward to the front page and make better use of the SmartBar. For apps getting cover-art as a preview, the bandwidth is minuscule compared to streaming a video, more Rilke a couple images on a web page.

Take a look at the Samsung Smart TV which have a similar smart preview, although it doesn't have the resource of recordings to choose from as well, only preview from apps.

For example in the Samsung SmartHub when I scroll over Netflix, I get a strip of preview recommendations - continue watching, scroll over Pandora, I get a strip of songs/artists, scroll over Plex and I get cover art for movies that are On Deck.


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

Seriously? You don’t know that tivo uses the internet to populate the strips and we’ve all seen sluggishness because of that?


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## MighTiVo (Oct 26, 2000)

TonyD79 said:


> Seriously? You don't know that tivo uses the internet to populate the strips and we've all seen sluggishness because of that?


Seems I understand better than you, you may be confusing bandwidth with latency. Thanks for the contributions you have made here, very helpful.


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## TonyD79 (Jan 4, 2002)

MighTiVo said:


> Seems I understand better than you, you may be confusing bandwidth with latency. Thanks for the contributions you have made here, very helpful.


And latency is never affected by bandwidth. Sure.

Thanks for your attitude. Very nice.


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## adessmith (Oct 5, 2007)

I'm somewhat confused over how you would navigate this? Are you saying up/down would still move you through the menu, but left/right would scroll through the strip?
Select would still select the menu item, but play would play the item in the smart bar?


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## MighTiVo (Oct 26, 2000)

adessmith said:


> I'm somewhat confused over how you would navigate this? Are you saying up/down would still move you through the menu, but left/right would scroll through the strip?
> Select would still select the menu item, but play would play the item in the smart bar?


In my idea here, Navigation would be no no different than it is today. 
The only addition is to improve the Smarts of the Smart bar and have it display more than 12 items that are _based on what your household usually watch at a particular time or day _ and add other Smart items based on the top menu selection.

So to be clear today, Up/Down highlights the top menu and Right jumps to the SmartBar.
In addition today if you go Down below the last item in the top menu this drops you on the SmartBar, this should land you on the same default SmartBar as it is today which would be the My Shows list, again, _based on what your household usually watch at a particular time or day.
_
Now if you had highlighted *What to Watch *then the SmartBar could display the selections that are already using bandwidth and compute power on the What to Watch Page, just brought forward to the Home Page and using Right would jump you to that SmartBar just as it does today.


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## MighTiVo (Oct 26, 2000)

TonyD79 said:


> And latency is never affected by bandwidth. Sure.
> 
> Thanks for your attitude. Very nice.


I think we are talking past each other here and obviously have a different opinion as to the impact to network congestion and performance.

I acknowledge that I am not a TiVo Engineer but I am a Product Development Engineer and design Networks and Cloud infrastructure supporting hundreds of thousands of applications. I understand your concern for the network and compute resources and simply disagree, properly designed this would not be an issue as I have presented.

As empirical evidence may I offer that the suggestion here is very similar to other platforms I have used and tested in very low bandwidth situations such as a 3Mbps DSL connection and the impact to the network was effectively negligible, essentially similar to opening a web page with 12 or so images on it. Yes if there is latency in getting the data from the source this would be an issue, just as an overloaded web server page would be slow delivering a webpage even when the client has the bandwidth to support the image transfer.

Please keep in mind that most of the images for the TiVo related SmartBar improvements are already being displayed on other Hydra pages so there should not be an issue of overloading the source and the images may even be stored locally. Images for other services such as Netflix are also already being accessed by millions of users and the cloud infrastructure is in place to provide that without delays. Keep in mind that even a full page of images is a fraction of what it takes to stream a video.

If you like the SmartBar as it is and it has everything you would ever want to access, that is certainly good feedback. But i personally don't think it is a fair assessment to dismiss the suggestion based on some possibility of slowing down the interface.
However I get the feeling from your posts that you actually prefer all images be removed and limit to a text interface. This leads me to believe that Hydra may not actually be your best choice unless they add an option to disable all the graphic strips just as they have that option for the episode strip.


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## Tony_T (Nov 2, 2017)

I don't see how this is a 'Smart' Bar.
I viewed the final ep in a season 3 days ago, yet it still has the #1 position in the _SmartBar._ Users should have the option to turn it off, but I think a better option would be the down arrow bringing up _My Shows_


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## JayMan747 (Nov 10, 2008)

MighTiVo said:


> *What to Watch*
> AI Selected Recommendations of Programs NOT in My Shows that TiVo thinks you might like to watch now​


This would be great..I would include "Tivo suggestions" as well as selected streaming apps. Even better if it had a Kaleidescape type interface.
www.kaleidescape.com


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## MighTiVo (Oct 26, 2000)

JayMan747 said:


> This would be great..I would include "Tivo suggestions" as well as selected streaming apps. Even better if it had a Kaleidescape type interface.
> www.kaleidescape.com


wow, that sees to be a high priced niche system


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