Last May, TiVo attempted to muscle in on Roku and Amazon with an HDMI streaming dongle of its own — the $70 TiVo Stream 4K, which traded in the organization’s traditional live TV + DVR functionality for any semblance of Sling TV, Netflix, HBO and YouTube. It presently creates the impression that attempt was so unsuccessful, the organization’s intending to abandon its Android TV dongle efforts completely.
Xperi Holdings CEO Jon Kirchner clarified in an earnings call (through Zatz Not Funny) that it no longer feels it can contend using Android TV — the organization likes to think its differentiator is a content guide that surfaces and allows you to look for shows and films across a variety of apps, however since Google’s now prepared something to that effect into its new “Google TV” layer on top of Android TV and sells it for just $50, TiVo doesn’t see a very remarkable future there.
Instead, says Kirchner, he needs to install TiVo smarts directly in TVs — a procedure that is worked pretty darn well for Roku, and where Amazon has been rivaling Fire TV Edition sets for a few years, as well.
Consider this, however: while the Stream 4K was very much assessed, it wasn’t the UI that reviewers liked. Some of its most glowing reviews called it jumbled or confounding contrasted with the competition, and most inferred that it was okay contrasted with slicker offerings from Roku and Amazon at or under that cost. TiVo dropped the beginning cost of the Stream 4K to $50 at launch, and decreased it to $39 in December after Google’s $50 Chromecast had shown up.