Replace the entire UI? Are you nuts? The entire reason I've stuck with Tivo for over a decade is because the UI is bullet proof. Compared to everything else out there, it is very simple, quick, and the layout in intuitive. If they want to just make it look more pretty, go for it, but don't change the functionality, move stuff around, make me get lost, or slow it down any. Otherwise it isn't worth it, and wont be the best DVR anymore.
I disagree. I've been a TiVo owner for seven years now and the UI just hasn't changed much - and that's not a good thing. Even on the Series3 and TiVo HD the UI is still optimized for 4:3 SD TVs. Visually it doesn't look great on HDTV, and functionally it wastes the screen real-estate available on 16:9 HD displays. And it is also lacks visual impact and the use of graphics, which would be very helpful and useful. When designed the UI ran on 66MHz PowerPC processors in the Series1 - the TiVo HD has a 300MHz MIPS core CPU, eight times the RAM, and just generally faster hardware all around. It can handle a graphically more complex UI without any performance loss.
It is time for a forklift upgrade of the UI - dump it and create a new UI that sets a new high water mark. If TiVo doesn't other vendors will. One of the few things I actually like about the Digeo Moxi is the look of their UI. Next to TiVo it makes TiVo look like something out of the 90s - which it is.
“An engineer explained to us that hundreds of ear impressions were gathered in the name of research, and while each one obviously boasted its own unique shape and size, one single characteristic remained uniform across the board: the entrance into the ear canal is not a perfect circle, it's an oval.”
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Replace the entire UI? Are you nuts? The entire reason I've stuck with Tivo for over a decade is because the UI is bullet proof. Compared to everything else out there, it is very simple, quick, and the layout in intuitive. If they want to just make it look more pretty, go for it, but don't change the functionality, move stuff around, make me get lost, or slow it down any. Otherwise it isn't worth it, and wont be the best DVR anymore.
I disagree. I've been a TiVo owner for seven years now and the UI just hasn't changed much - and that's not a good thing. Even on the Series3 and TiVo HD the UI is still optimized for 4:3 SD TVs. Visually it doesn't look great on HDTV, and functionally it wastes the screen real-estate available on 16:9 HD displays. And it is also lacks visual impact and the use of graphics, which would be very helpful and useful. When designed the UI ran on 66MHz PowerPC processors in the Series1 - the TiVo HD has a 300MHz MIPS core CPU, eight times the RAM, and just generally faster hardware all around. It can handle a graphically more complex UI without any performance loss.
It is time for a forklift upgrade of the UI - dump it and create a new UI that sets a new high water mark. If TiVo doesn't other vendors will. One of the few things I actually like about the Digeo Moxi is the look of their UI. Next to TiVo it makes TiVo look like something out of the 90s - which it is.
And functionally this new UI offers a lot more, I already think I'll like it better than the existing one. I posted a lot of screencaps of the UI as I played with it: http://www.gizmolovers.com/2009/01/07/tivo-unveils-an-all-new-search-interface-which-is-familiar/