Tivo strays; audience sighs

Another foray into interactivity on your television appears to have gone awry… TiVo’s attempt to branch into new functions has drawn some scorn from a well-publicized AP review.  The main challenge is really user interface:

The rest of TiVo’s online features struck me as spare, less
user-friendly imitations of tasks that seem better suited to a computer.

When you have a machine designed for a single purpose and stray from that task, your executives should be shouting “Danger! Danger!”  I understand the need for TiVo to add functions and revenue options, but why not aim more like Apple’s iTV possibilities and make your service something that leverages what you do best – television?  After all, you never want a user to say:

I soon found it pretty tedious to enter information like usernames and
passwords into an on-screen keyboard with the up-down, right-left
buttons on my TiVo remote.

That spells doom, no matter how you enter the text.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Leave a Reply