Spyglass to Deliver Internet Enabling Technology for Tivo’s Personal TV Service
Naperville, Ill. - Thursday, June 29, 2000 - Internet pioneer Spyglass Inc.
(NASDAQ: SPYG) and personal television creator TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ:TIVO)
announced today that TiVo licensed Spyglass Device Mosaic 4.0 for use in its
next-generation software platform and service. Spyglass Professional
Services, a strategic Internet consulting group focused on planning,
designing and implementing Internet solutions for interactive television,
will work to port Spyglass Device Mosaic to the Linux operating system and
assist in the integration of the technology with TiVo’s Linux-based
platform. This integration will further allow multiple service offerings to
run on the TiVo platform, including the ability for TiVo and its partners to
author content for the TiVo service using standard protocols such as HTML
and JavaScript.
“A whole new viewing experience is coming,” said Anup Murarka, Spyglass vice
president of interactive television. “Spyglass Device Mosaic is enabling
device manufacturers to build applications that enhance how we watch the
television today. It is not just about browsing with your television, it is
about how we can leverage Internet technologies to more quickly provide the
viewer with a truly enhanced television experience.”
This latest version of Spyglass Device Mosaic adds broad support for the
latest Internet standards within an extensible, customizable architecture.
Spyglass Device Mosaic also includes an Advanced Television Enhancement
Forum (ATVEF) compliant client. ATVEF 1.0 support enables the delivery of
interactive television programming, in the form of synchronized broadcast
and Internet content, over both analog and digital video systems using
terrestrial, cable, satellite and Internet networks.
“Our relationship with Spyglass will help TiVo further its goal to provide
multiple service offerings to both our current and future customers. The
addition of Device Mosaic 4.0 as an enabling technology on our
standards-based platform ultimately brings more choice to our partners and
consumers,” said James Barton, TiVo’s CTO and senior vice president,
research and development. “Spyglass’ technology, combined with their
supporting integration services will allow TiVo to focus on building our
brand, adding capabilities to the Personal TV Service, and creating the best
overall consumer experience.”
TiVo is the most advanced and easy-to-use Personal TV service available
today. It records television shows, without video tape, so you can watch
what you want, when you want to watch it. The TiVo Service was designed to
make it easy for consumers to find and record the programs they want, with
new service capabilities and enhancements delivered automatically. With
TiVo, viewers have full control of live television programs, with the
ability to pause, instant replay, rewind, fast forward and playback in
normal speed, slow motion or frame-by-frame, backward and forward. TiVo
allows viewers to easily and automatically find and record favorite shows,
and can suggest and record other programs that match viewer preferences
(likes and dislikes). All programming is recorded digitally, so that
content retrieval and playback is fast, easy and convenient.
“The feature set found in Spyglass Device Mosaic makes it the only
state-of-the-art embedded browser technology of its kind in the marketplace
today,” Murarka added. “The combination of the latest Internet technologies
and the addition of ATVEF support, will revolutionize the way TiVo provides
interactive television solutions to their customers.”