TiVo Will Abandon Android TV; Roku Calls Google an "Unchecked Monopolist" Over YouTube TV Move

takyon writes:

TiVo will ditch Android TV HDMI streaming dongles in favor of integrating its software directly into smart TVs:

Last May, TiVo attempted to muscle in on Roku and Amazon with an HDMI streaming dongle of its own - the $70 TiVo Stream 4K, which traded in the company's traditional live TV + DVR functionality for the likes of Sling TV, Netflix, HBO and YouTube. It now appears that attempt was so unsuccessful, the company's planning to abandon its Android TV dongle efforts entirely.

Xperi Holdings CEO Jon Kirchner explained in an earnings call (via Zatz Not Funny) that it no longer feels it can compete using Android TV - the company likes to think its differentiator is a content guide that surfaces and lets you search for shows and movies across a variety of apps, but now that Google's already baked something like that into its new "Google TV" layer on top of Android TV and sells it for just $50, TiVo doesn't see much of a future there.

Meanwhile, Google has essentially backdoored its YouTube TV subscription service onto the Roku streaming platform:

A week after their broken-down negotiations spilled into the public, Google and Roku still haven't been able to reach a deal to renew YouTube TV's presence on the huge streaming platform. But Google has come up with something of a workaround in the meantime: it's going to let people access YouTube TV directly from the main YouTube app.

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