# TiVo and SMART TV's ... play friendly?



## jingalls23 (Dec 12, 2010)

Ok, so I'm going to be upgrading my TV from the old caveman set to a new SMART TV. I was wondering if there are any issues using TiVo on SMART TV's? This might be hard to answer since it may vary from manufacturer to manufacturer but if anybody has any ideas I'd much appreciate it. Do you know if you lose the functionality of smart tv's if you use the TiVo?

Thanks for your help!


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

The Smart TV has nothing to do with TiVo and doesn't know anything about TiVo unless you want it to. A Google TV, maybe other Smart TVs, can be told you use a TiVo and it will integrate channel guide and some information with its guide but whether or not you find that advantageous is up to you. All TiVo will use of the smart TV is one of the HDMI inputs and the TiVo and Smart TV will connected to your network using separate connections and will be completely separate devices in a typical setup. There will be some redundancy and you can decide which version of the internet TV application you prefer, like Netflix, YouTube, and possibly a few others depending on which Smart TV you buy and which TiVo you own.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

Chris Gerhard said:


> A Google TV ... can be told you use a TiVo and it will integrate channel guide and some information with its guide


Could you elaborate on this?


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## gweempose (Mar 23, 2003)

wmcbrine said:


> Could you elaborate on this?


I was confused by this as well. How exactly does it "integrate channel guide and some information with its guide ..."?


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

wmcbrine said:


> Could you elaborate on this?


The TiVo HDMI output is connected to the Google TV HDMI input, Google TV has an overlay when playing TiVo through Google with information from Google TV. During setup the Google TV is informed of what TV source is used and the channel lineup and it obtains guide data information from the internet. When using Google TV and decide to check what is on TV, you can hit the guide and the channel lineup with programming information is available. The Google TV will include information about internet TV and whatever TV source is being passed through the HDMI input. There is also a free app in Google Play market called Buddy TV which provides a program guide with information about what's on TV. It looks like it might be pretty cool.

The most useful thing to me in this regard is to use it with an unsubscribed TiVo, the Google TV will provide guide information and of course nothing is available on the unsubscribed TiVo itself. Load the Google TV guide by hitting guide on the Google TV control and sellect a program, the Google TV will change the TiVo channel, switch the HDMI output from Google TV to TiVo and now you can watch the selected TiVo channel. I have a Google TV box for each of three TiVoHDs in my household, one of the three is unsubscribed. Google TV is desinged to supplement a TV service, cable, satellite or OTA. Dish Network actually has additional features when Google TV is used with some Dish Network receivers. I don't use a pay service, only OTA and Google TV is part of my solution to avoid a pay TV service.

Here are most of the streaming sources I use Google TV with. Hit the lower right link to advance to the next page, I think there are about 9 pages of links in total

http://www.symbaloo.com/mix/googletvcontent

I also use PlayOn with a broken screen laptop accessible by Google TV as client so the PC can access streaming sites only availabe to a PC, meaning that block Google TV such as Hulu and most of the major networks. Google TV is clunky to use, it isn't pretty and requires effort and knowing how to deal with it. In my opinion, after having looked for a streaming box to help with my cord cutting, there isn't a close second to Google TV for the things I wanted.


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