When I came back to “Team TiVo” about 9 months ago I was looking for something and found Dave Zatz’ blog. It’s not all-TiVo all the time, but it covers both popular and obscure video tech that I’m curious about, so I’ve become a regular reader. Yesterday I saw Dave tweet the following:
Speaking of cranky tech, Comcast still hates Roku – no HBO GO. Another reason to stick with FiOS when my contract is up in two weeks.
— Dave Zatz (@davezatz) July 31, 2014
HBO GO on Roku trumps TiVo Xfinity On Demand (with clunky interface and commercial interruption).
— Dave Zatz (@davezatz) July 31, 2014
I don’t know if that’s a great reason to stick w/FiOS (I think 50Mbps upload is maybe a better reason!) but it’s undeniably true that Comcast and Roku aren’t pals and that the HBO Go interface is certainly better than the not very pretty (unless you’re talking “pretty clunky”) Xfinity On Demand interface.
But it doesn’t bother me much primarily because I can find stuff in the TiVo interface and bypass most of the Comcast clunkiness. Also, while the Comcast interface is definitely still clunky on the Roamio, it is at least much faster than my experiences on Comcast’s old Motorola set top box.
I tried to find a video showcasing access both through TiVo’s integrated search and through the clunky menus, but I couldn’t so I made a screen recording myself showing both.
I did the recording via Slingbox, but I went into the living room to perform the tasks so I wouldn’t be setback by the Slingbox’s remote lag. I did use Tivo remote’s page down at least once and fast-forwarding through most of the HBO ads at the begnning of the video. Other than editing out ~10 seconds it took me to get to the living room once I started the recording, no edits were made to make things look speedier than they actually are.
TiVo sound effects are off and there’s no narration, but it’s pretty straightforward.