# M card alternative



## kendq (Jan 12, 2005)

My condo assoc is renewing their contract with Spectrum, in the new proposal they charge rental per box or card, but they do go on to say;
"Another option Residents may choose is to not use our equipment, and stream on their own. Our Spectrum TV app can be assessed on Roku, Roku TV or a Samsung Smart TV." Wouldn't it be nice if Tivo would include those apps so we could save the monthly M card fee ? It would also take away the worry of them not supporting M cards.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

Well... An app is never going to replace a cablecard.

1. First, you can't record from an app -- they only allow live streaming.* Now, TiVo has already come up with a way to deal with this, partly, that works with some of the existing apps (Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, at least): You can create a OnePass that includes streaming, and links to the streams appear alongside recordings in the Now Playing List, or whatever it's called these days. This is some kind of mix of elegant and kludgy that I won't elaborate on now, but let's give them credit for this one.

2. Second and more problematically, there's no standard for apps (or rather, there are many standards). If you want the Spectrum app to run on a TiVo, then TiVo Inc. and/or Spectrum have to write a version of the app for the TiVo. This is probably not trivial, and what's worse, TiVo Inc. doesn't make it particularly easy -- they don't provide an open platform for apps, the way Roku, Apple and others do. So they negotiate deals with (a few) providers, vs. the providers just writing the app on their own and submitting it to the relevant app store. You can see which model works better by counting the apps available for each platform... part of that is down to the sheer popularity of the different brands, but part of it is the open vs. closed development processes.

* This isn't inherent to the nature of apps, but it's how everyone's chosen to implement them. This is the only (possible?) exception I know of.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

Seems you should be asking Spectrum to write a TiVo app.


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## halx (Jul 6, 2018)

That's the problem at Tivo, a lack of Steve Jobs tripping on some primo LSD and saying some outlandish futuristic view for the company. 

What if they just kept the UI / new UI built it was on-top of android? Not very creative thought Apple did it with their OS/UI. However; the upside is application like HULU TV, ROKU, DIRECTV and 1 million more are in reach. Recording challenge could be solved by a HS kid who rips movies off his laptop. Only question is can you make the m-card i/o work on android. Sure googles failed venture with AndroidTV would love to help. 

Tivo call me if you need someone to make that into call, in any case my last Tivo auction end on ebay in two hours. It's been a long strange but good trip, I'll check back in a year.


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