The deal Tivo has struck with Nero to bring its DVR interface and software to the PC sounds like a logical step for a service that has been stuck in a box under the television.
But freeing Tivo from the confines of the living room makes less sense when everyone else – Apple, Netflix, Amazon etc - seems to be heading the opposite way towards that prime location.
In addition, taking the Tivo service out of a dedicated appliance and subjecting its software to the vagaries of PC performance is also a big gamble.
When I tried Nero LiquidTV with Tivo on a fairly new dual-core laptop, I suffered slow response times and stuttering video. The application also crashed repeatedly trying to update a programme guide.
Nero told me the product was optimised for quad-core PCs and the crash was probably due to a firewall problem. I was eventually able to get it working and liked the familiar Tivo interface and its superior usability, but my experience shows the problems that can be encountered when Tivo is taken out of the safe environment of its own hardware.
However, the Nero deal should give Tivo more exposure in Europe, where the German company can help to promote it beyond its UK beachhead.
Nero itself is looking for a boost from the partnership by expanding its reputation beyond that of being a leading provider of reliable CD and DVD-burning software.
Nero dukes it out with Roxio in that department, but the LiquidTV launch and that of another product – Move It - represents a major breakout from its category by the company.
Move It allows users to connect an iPod, digital camera, phone, portable console or any kind of MP3 player to a computer and seamlessly transfer content between all of the different devices, with Nero taking care of the different transcoding requirements in the background.
Unfortunately, while Nero’s demo was impressive, I was not able to get the program to recognise any of my devices when plugged into my own PC. Nero said it would provide free updates that would allow Move It to recognise the latest iPods and other devices, but the software is hard to recommend in its current state, despite offering a much needed solution for multi-device households wanting to share their photos, music and video.
