TiVo announced at CES 2019 a feature that sports fans are going to love! Recording sports on TiVo is getting a whole lot smarter with Smart Extend. It can automatically continue to record a sporting event even if it runs longer than expected.
For as much as we love to watch sports live, sometimes life just gets in the way. Recording television shows that we’re going to miss is one of the main reasons we have DVRs like TiVo though. The problem is, sometimes games don’t finish when the TV listings say they will. Whether a game takes a few minutes longer or a dozen, you never want to miss a moment of the action. TiVo is planning to launch a new feature that will automatically extend scheduled recordings to include the end of sporting events.
Smart Extend is an amazing feature that needs intelligence that can’t be provided simply by guide data. That information isn’t updated frequently or quickly enough to handle long-running events. Instead, TiVo turned to their partner Thuuz. If you’ve ever noticed the excitement ratings in TiVo’s guide listings, that data comes from Thuuz. If you’re a very close observer then you’ll have noticed that those ratings change as games progress. Because Thuuz knows what’s going on at every moment of many of the most popular sporting events in the world, they also know when the games actually complete.
Now that TiVo, through notifications from Thuuz, knows when a game is running long, and when it completes, they can automatically extend the recording. Never again will you miss the end of a Stanley Cup Playoffs game just because it went into double overtime! If you want to catch all the post-game analysis you’ll also be able to tell recordings to finish at “End of Game + 15 minutes” and other similar increments.
Thuuz currently provides rating information for the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS, and NCAA football and men’s basketball in the United States. In Europe they cover EPL, Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1, UEFA Champions/Europa. Globally they cover PGA Tour golf and ATP tennis. We’re waiting on official response from TiVo, but we presume Smart Extend will work for the same leagues.
TiVo is very close to releasing Smart Extend. They told us they expect it to launch in the first quarter. This wasn’t all TiVo had to announce. They also are bringing apps to streaming devices and a USB WiFi adapter for the TiVo Mini VOX.
Keep an eye on The Digital Media Zone for all of our CES 2019 coverage.
