Tape It Off The Internet

When I began some simple research into this post, I'd reckoned about a 10 minute exercise to review one of my favourite iPhone Apps would be just around the corner. I was wrong! As I'm increasingly finding with so much of the content available to the iPhone from the App Store, what I've been happily using on my phone appears only to scratch the surface of what's available when taken in a wider concept. 

In a nutshell, and according to their own site, Tioti is...

...a social media aggregator for television - what does that mean? We use the web to put together all sorts of information about TV shows, and let you the audience edit and add to that. We let you see what's hot, what other people like and where you can get it from.

However if you'd asked me a couple of days ago what TIOTI was, I'd have raved about the TIOTI TV+ application for the iPhone which lets you remote record onto your Sky+ box! For the past year now Sky has provided a free service (TIOTI TV+ is £1.79 from the App Store) to remote record TV programmes onto your Sky+ box through text messaging or the Internet. There's a bit of faff involved with registering your mobile and then making sure you have a username and password for the Sky website but after that it's plain sailing! (the service is limited to 10 remote records a day and has been very stable, even from day one).

My only criticism of Sky's service is that it won't work with Google Chrome (Sky's web-based TV guide seems to think it's an old Safari browser! I read a Lifehacker blog that noted Google having to pretend Chrome is a Safari browser in order to access Hotmail, so maybe it's related!). For me, this is where TIOTI TV+ came in! As it's a dedicated iPhone app, it's much quicker to find the programme you're after and record them than opening up another web browser and starting the process all over again. The major benefit it brings as you might suspect is the ability to remote record anywhere!  

Being able to record at will for me is all part of the Sky+ revolution! Had I been blogging when I first got Sky+ then I think all entries would simple proclaim 'Sky+ has changed my life'. Incidentally my only topic of conversation for the following months was just that! I find with Sky+ that you become less governed by TV (in particular TV scheduling) and having Sky+ promoted the transition to watching quality TV at anytime, from watching crap just because it's on right now!

The simple, user-friendly experience with TIOTI for recording programmes, saving favourites and customising the application to feed channels and programmes that appeal to you is the cornerstone of why I like TIOTI TV+. It's clear from my little google-based research that there's more to TIOTI than that, so perhaps I'll go away and spend some time on the website looking at the social networking and TV downloading aspects that are discussed in the Guardian and Mashable to name but a few. I'm not sure in my own mind yet where I stand with regards to Social Networking on the whole so I'm not sure what I'll get out the web version. I like Facebook and Twitter but tend to arrive late to the party. It's not necessarily the technology I'm wary of, as much maybe the people you interact with. I like imdb.com but find the social networking features primitive and discussions often childish! The same I would probably say for YouTube too!

The one thing that I can't really get away from, and that has started to bug me a little, is that from a branding perspective TIOTI is about taping from the internet [grammar please!], which is the main purpose of the iPhone App. However taping from the internet seems a lost concept on the TIOTI website.  

Maybe I should just look with an open mind and report back!