TiVo Adds OnePass Feature to Facilitate Content Discovery in 'Consumption Mode'

service. Jim Denney, vice president-product marketing, TiVo, called the feature a “next-generation Season Pass” designed to get users all episodes of a program “no matter where they’re coming from.” Over the past few years, TiVo has had integrated search, which searched for programs whether by live TV or video on demand service. What’s changed in the OnePass software update, Denney told us during a booth demo, is “how it’s presented to the user” in the My Shows section. Amazon has for a while shown users the various channel or on-demand options for a particular program. New in the update is an option for users to include recordings and streaming videos from services including Amazon, Hulu Plus, Netflix and Vudu. Users can specify by season for on-demand shows and specify whether shows involving a rental or purchase are included in the search results. The software would know whether a program available on Amazon Prime would be free to the viewer, and shows with a per-viewing rental or purchase fee would be indicated. At the time of viewing, subscribers would activate the purchase for VOD programming, Denney said. In the past TiVo Season Pass recordings have been available by channel, and with the update to OnePass, that feature will extend to all channels showing a program, Denney said. “If you’re watching a show that’s both syndicated and new, it would pick it up on the syndicated channel” -- CW in the case of The Simpsons -- as well as on the current season on Fox, he said. Also new is the ability for users to specify quality of recordings such as HD only, HD never to save space, or HD when possible, he said. Users will be able to see in the My Shows section whether shows are recorded or available by streaming, with the latter designated by an icon for a radio signal. “We’ve consolidated streaming and live TV for six years,” he said. What’s different now is presenting the consolidated content to consumers in “consumption mode,” he said. Later this year, TiVo will add the ability to transcode and download premium content to a mobile device. The capability is currently available only on unprotected content, he said. The update will go out to set-top boxes and the TiVo app, he said. When the content is “side-loaded,” he said, it goes to a tablet and disappears from the hard drive on the set-top box. “The key is you can have one copy,” he said.