Slashdot Mirror

Would you dispute that Cobalt Networks and TiVo are the two biggest Linux success stories? These two companies have just one thing in common -- they leveraged the abilities of Linux systems with technologies that make them available to the masses. You already know how it was done -- they wrote graphical interfaces as abstractors to the chaos beneath.

Have fun using lynx and vi, if you even think that those are legitmate uses of Linux.

--

...I can't think of what.

On PowerPC, Linux isn't "threatened" by OS X. Look at the vast array of devices running Linux/PPC. There's the TiVo, Total Imact's briQ, and Apple machines ranging from the Power Mac 7200 (PowerPC 601 @ 75 MHz) to the PowerBook G4 (PPC 7410 @ 400/500 MHz).

OS X is targeted at very specific audiences, most of whom are different than Linux's audience. You can't run OS X on a TiVo. It might be made to run on the briQ (somehow). And you can't run it on any Apple machine prior to the Power Mac G3.

If OS X was released for Intel, it'd find a home (possibly a small home), but it wouldn't totally annihilate Linux. It also won't do that on PowerPC.

People aren't looking at what OS X could do for LinuxPPC. Instead, they're obsessing over what it may do to Linux. And that is not what we should be obsessing over.

Haaz: Co-founder, LinuxPPC Inc., making Linux for PowerPC since 1996.

Of course, what I really want is somethat that scans TV listings and tells me when something interesting is going to be on. Or something that records off the radio, but only archives music it thinks I'll like.

It only does TV, though...if it also did radio, that would be the sh*t. (The problem is that radio schedules often aren't published in the same manner as TV schedules. A radio station's website might have a listing of what it's playing (here's a local example), but I've never seen a schedule for all of the local radio stations, compiled in one publication, anywhere in the States. They probably figure that someone who listens mainly to stuff like Nine Inch Nails or Stone Temple Pilots doesn't give a rat's ass about what's playing on a station that plays the Backdoor^H^H^H^Hstreet Boys or Britney Spears, or something like that.)

From TiVo's Privacy Policy (on page 2):

We use Anonymous Viewing Information to develop reports and analyses about what programs, advertisements, and types of programming our subscribers (as a whole or in subgroups) watch or skip, or for other programming or advertising research.

(For the paranoid, you may opt out of the information collection. However, my personal take on the matter is that something that improves the likelyhood of the shows that I watch staying on the air can't be that bad.)

From TiVo's Privacy Policy (on page 2):

We use Anonymous Viewing Information to develop reports and analyses about what programs, advertisements, and types of programming our subscribers (as a whole or in subgroups) watch or skip, or for other programming or advertising research.

(For the paranoid, you may opt out of the information collection. However, my personal take on the matter is that something that improves the likelyhood of the shows that I watch staying on the air can't be that bad.)

I'd disagree with you if you had said that GNU/Linux just can't be your grandmother's OS because I think it can, but that's just something we'll have to wait and see.

I do disagree with you when you say that Linux just can't be your grandmother's OS. Linux can drive embedded systems and Linux can drive VCRs, and soon Linux will drive a game console. I have confidence enough in your grandmother that she could opperate any of these (well, depends on the embedded system) easier than any Mac or Windows PC. Just because it's Linux doesn't mean there's a console.

Basically, there's no reason your grandmother needs to know what kernel she's using, and whoever can show me that the Linux kernel is missing something needed to make a easy interface, i'll buy that person a beer.

Now, whether your grandmother will be recompiling her patched kernel source anytime soon, may be a different matter.

-ben.c

TiVo runs linux also.
It started off as that.
Now there are lots of hacks that improve the TiVo (bigger harddrives, etc...). Figuring out that something runs Linux means that it can and will be hacked, mostly to improve the item.
I agree with you, though, that a toaster running linux is pointless, and that /. freaks out when something runs linux, but sometimes it is worth it...

--

Perhaps I should read the article before commenting (naaah), but I realized one thing: how can an OS that runs only on Apple's G3/G4 hardware outnumber Linux's growing installed base?

My thoughts:

1. OS X will only run on Apple PMAC hardware.
2. Linux can run on devices as small as a cell phone or PDA, or be as transparent as it is in the TiVo, a PowerPC Linux-based appliance.
3. The number of users of all these various devices (cell phones, PDAs, TiVos, etc.) may be hard to count, it may eventually outnumber the number of PMacs.

OS X may outnumber us for a while. But then again, it's not something I'm worried about. So what if it does? That means the PowerPC will get more attention, and everything from BSD to Linux should benefit from that.

A side note: I have played with OS X beta, and was surprised at how slow it was, even on a G4. I figure you can credit the Mach microkernel for that.

BTW, we're giving CmdrTaco the "Comment of the Year" award. ;-) Congrats, Rob...

Haaz: Co-founder, LinuxPPC Inc., making Linux for PowerPC since 1996.

TiVo hired a Chief Privacy Officer about two months ago. TiVo may or may not have been the first (I don't know), but IBM was not the first as seems to be the implication here. It's good to see a big company picking up on this, though.

Just looking at the prices you are charged in America for a TiVo makes me sick. From the TiVo UK Site...Lifetime Subscription for £199 or for a Monthly Subscription of £10. .... The TiVo recorder costs £399 direct from Sky. On current exchange rates (1.41805) this equates to: TiVo Recorder - $565.80 Montly fee - $14.18 or Lifetime fee - $282.19

Anyhow, the point I wanted to make is that Tivo and Sony now have a combo box that does both satellite reception and the Tivo service in one box. You can view the specs right here.

What's black, white and wears lots of gold? Find out at The Linux Pimp

I got my TiVo about two weeks ago. It's absolutely fantastic. I hope that this means that TiVo is doing well. If you'd like to get a TiVo for free, they've got an essay contest going on right now, just write 250 words at this site, they give away at least 10 per day. I know four people who have won.

If you're interested, you can also read my review of my TiVo. I'm seriously thinking about putting in a bigger drive, my weenie 14 hour model simply isn't big enough to cover me being gone for 4 days at a time. Everyone who I've let play with my TiVo said "This is cool, I have to get one". It's one of those devices that is hard to explain in 30 seconds to a non-technical user, but let them play with it for a bit, and they realize the possibilities.
---

The DirecTV receiver with TiVo has been available for a few weeks now. It also has 2 tuners, although the 2nd tuner is currently disabled until the software is ready. There is no mpeg encoder since it records directly from the digital DirecTV feed.

It is interesting that www.thinkgeek.com (another andover.net property) just proudly gave away three of these heavily Macromediaized Panasonic Showstoppers, as well as featuring it proudly on the front of their most recent mailing.

You would think they would be promoting and selling Tivo's since they run Linux, and are much more hacker friendly. Eh, a foolish consistancy is the hobgoblin of little minds... or so says Ralph Waldo Emerson.

It says blatantly right here that If you don't want even your anonymous viewing information (information that does not identify you or your household) used in any way, simply tell us by calling our toll-free telephone number (1-877-FOR-TiVo).

This also means that there are no quality settings on the DirecTivo box: it's always "Best" quality, since the signal is always digital. The recording time is still 35 hours (I'm told). Sounds pretty cool. The downside is that you can't record cable or off-air TV into it as well, since there is no MPEG encoding capability.

Check out Tivo's page on it.

(Speaking for myself, a TiVo user, personally, not for Compaq. And I'm in the process of adding a second disk to my TiVo to get 108 hours of recording time.)

Steve Lionel

< $300: Palm m100 or IIIxe. I thought I was indulging myself when I bought my IIIx. It didn't take me long to realize that it was the most truly useful thing I've ever owned. Besides, I can laugh at people who struggle with the upkeep of FiloFaxes that look like George Costanza's wallet.

$300 - $1500: TiVo. If only the shows were as intelligent.... :-) If you need more motivation, there's now a $100 rebate coupon on their web site.

> $1500: Nissan Skyline GT-R. Grey-marketed in the US by MotoRex. 1999 R34 models start at $85,500, but it is most certainly not what everyone else is driving.

Every day we're standing in a wind tunnel/Facing down the future coming fast - Rush

Steps to the perfect gift. 1) Buy a TiVo ( http://www.tivo.com ) 2) Upgrade it with the instructios at http://www.tivofaq.com/hack/faq.html; 3) Buy the parts for the upgrade at http://www.9thtee.com/TiVoUpgrades.htm

Don't know if this has been posted yet or not, but TiVo Linux nuggets can be found at http://www.tivo.com/linux. Quite sparse if you ask me, but hey, what's not to love about getting gcc for your TiVo box???

However, they released their kernel modifications here.

They are running a contest right now. Write an essay and win a TiVo (14 hour model). A guy a work with wrote 100 words and got one. They pick 10 winners a day.
Click here

So, if you've wanted one, but are too cheap to get one, here's your chance.

If you don't want even your anonymous viewing information (information that does not identify you or your household) used in any way, simply tell us by calling our toll-free telephone number and it will not be.

Sounds like you can decide whether or not to participate.

Please Note: Our privacy policy may change over time. In addition to posting any changes on our web site, www.tivo.com, we will provide or send a notice to each TiVo customer before any changes are implemented. You have our commitment that, regardless of any changes that might be made in the future, you will remain in complete control of your personal viewing information.

Linux does have some userland-uses. Five or six stories ago on slashdot, they mentioned that IBM's working on a Linux-based wristwatch. On top of my TV is a consumer electronics device running Linux. Linux may not be to the point of being able to pander to the point-click-drool crowd, but it's certainly more than just a server OS.

A digital copy of a work (DVD, and even MP3 for the RIAA) is an exact copy. Quality is not degraded through the copying process.

Maybe you haven't heard, but MP3 is what's called a lossy compression format. That's why they're so small. (This is the same reason why JPEGs are smaller than GIFs.) Yes, most of the time you won't notice, but I have several tracks that despite tweaking of bitrates and trying different encoders, don't come out sounding quite like the original once converted to an MP3.

But now... Have any of you watched a video recording recently? I taped a TV program just last night (hope the MPAA doesn't find out about it!) and watched it this morning; the quality compared to even regular TV, much less DVDs, was terrible. Even if the feeds are coming in through digital means, VHS tapes are a horrible representation of the original.

I'd bet that they're more concerned about the digital recording devices like TiVo and the set-top boxes you can get with services like Dish Network. Those can get you very high quality digital capture, and when it's from a digital source, the results are excellent. A computer savvy user could easily set up such a system to capture a bunch of programming, and later spool it off to a machine that compresses it with DivX and uploads it or re-formats it to be burned onto VCDs. They have good reason to be scared about that (although they won't be able to stop it).

ReplayTV is a nice idea, however there is already competition from companies like TIVO, not to mention Videotron's Videoway which has been avaliable for years. (at least in Canada)
However, we are lucky enough to live in Capitalism where competition is vital to encourage companies for perfection in order to attract customers. Therefore the introduction of ReplayTV is not only necessary but vital to the industry in order to prevent monopolistic gorillas like Microsoft from appearing.

--
Kiro

• So the machine gets the new information every night over a modem. Is the download-format of this information open? Could you get the information from somebody else, or could you use the information in other ('open') hard- or software?
• Since it only gets the information once a day, how does it know exactly when a program starts? In the Netherlands, the TV guide times should be taken as a guideline, there is basically a 5 minute area around this time as to when the program actually starts, are the US networks more timely?
• And how about the ads, do networks really give the times to TiVo as to when their commercials start and end?? I could not imagine they would give away this information that would cost them money?
• In the Netherlands there is a system called PDC, which allows VCRs to know when programs start later or earlier, e.g. to adjust for when an unscheduled news-bulletin happens; the PDC-signal is sent along with the normal television signal. Do the TiVo-machines make use of these kind of extra information-signals?

Thanks in advance to anyone taking out the time to answer me.

Are you trying to tell me it costs 25$ to make a CD? Umm, CD-R's are about 1$US; it takes 5 minutes (if that) to burn one; and USPS Priority Mail is about 3$ to anywhere in the TiVo serviced area. CD mastering houses make CDs for pennies -- I know because I've ordered custom pressed CDs.

So, please justify the 25$ "media cost"? Just how much is that intern being paid to burn CDs?

Last time I checked, the FSF was charging a small fortune for media packs. It's one of the ways they make the money they need to stay afloat. Remember, "free software" only implies free as in "free speech," not necessarily "free beer" (though the free-beer part is handled by dozens of FTP sites and websites).

If you don't want to fork over $25 for the TiVo CD, the same stuff is available on their website.

_/_
/ v \
(IIGS( Scott Alfter (remove Voyager's hull # to send mail)
\_^_/

I had the same problem until I found that the FAQ at tivocommunity actually points to another FAQ at www.tivo.com:

(From the faq:)
"TiVo is the most advanced and easy-to-use personal TV service available. But don't take our word for it. Our approach has won thumbs up approval by reviewers from major business, technology, consumer electronics, and home entertainment publications. TiVo digitally records television shows, without videotape, so you can watch what you want, when you want. The TiVo service allows you to control your TV viewing in ways never before possible-now you can pause, slow motion, or instant replay live TV. Or, with the simple click of a button, you can tell TiVo to automatically find and record your favorite programs every time they air-so you won't ever miss a moment of great TV again. You can even tell TiVo what you like and don't like, so it can suggest other shows you may want to record and watch, based on your interests."

This whole story should be marked Redundant.......

Tivo Hacking is nothing new, Slashdot it recycling old news articles, man - what is with this place lately?!

A quick search of "Tivo + Hacking" found the following on slashdot (the June 22nd article is nearly a duplicate of this current one) *sigh*:

More Tivo Hacking by CmdrTaco on Friday August 04, @08:45AM EDT

Hacking The Tivo by CmdrTaco on Thursday June 22, @09:37AM EDT

Tivo Hacking? by Cliff on Monday April 24, @09:32AM EDT

I own a Tivo and LOVE it! I did not really truely understand nor appreciate the full benefit and goodness a Tivo can provide until I owned one myself (for nearly a year now). I would not want to watch TV again without it.

Buy one (*buy from a place that has a money back guarantee - I think Tivo may have a 30 day MBG) and see for yourself.

For those of you who want to know more about Tivo go here:
http://www.tivo.com/

and here:
http://www.avsforum.com/ubbcgitivo/Ultimate.cgi

You will find alot more useful information at these places than on /. [And that includes HACKING it]

Enjoy!

http://www.tivo.com/what/intro.html

Here's a link to the actual Tivo FAQ instead of that crap they linked to...

I think the *only* reason for this device would be to hack it; after all, there isn't anything decent on TV anymore. ...and I can watch "Survivor" every Wednesday all by myself. :)

Actually, I need a device that notifies me if there's *ever* anything worth watching on TV. If that happens, I'll drop everything, see what it is, and run back home. Beating the end of the world by about 3 seconds, I'm sure.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

http://www.tivo.com/linux/

The rest of TiVo is userland--they can license in any way they desire, much like the packages included with Linux distributions.

You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.

--

You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.

--

I have been told that they are considering the edition of ethernet support. Please contact them and let them know you are interested in this. I really want this feature too so we need let them know how many of us there are. I plan on upgrading my current 14 hour machine (which I love) whenever they add ethernet support, HDTV support, or support for user expandable storage.

I recently read that TiVo plans to offer on-demand movies and found that interesting. I'm curious how this will work though! One hour of video in respectable quality requires about 3Gb (!) of space. An average two-hour movie would take about 1 DAY to download through my 640Kbps ADSL connection (assuming it was working at full capacity)! Now imagine a few hudnred thousand people doing that on the net at the same time...!

Obviously, broadband is not up to this and I do not think it will be up to this for quite some time. I believe the way TiVo will be doing this is by using some of the few hundreds of PPV channels to schedule essentialy multicasting of the movies. So, you say you want a movie in the evening. That movie is scheduled to be multicast (in analog form) at some point during the night and the TiVo wakes up and records it (with MacroVision enabled, if the distributor chooses, BTW) and you can watch it the next day. This is somewhat better than NetFlix (overnight, instead of 2-3 days for delivery)... However, you get no extras and no 5.1 surround like with a DVD (and I think fully digital transmission of video and 5.1 surround will take some time, mostly because of legal reasons -- watch what happened with poor MP3 and imagine how happy companies would be with Dolby Digital... ;-)

BTW, if you do a search for multicast file transfer you might be surprised with the volume of results... This seems to me the only viable way to do things (if company lawyers allow it, of course! ;-).

It may be possible to determine, on your own, what TiVo really sends out. It runs Linux (2.1.42? that's what the README sez), and GNU tools were used in the development, so the source code for the modified kernel and the tools is available under the GPL. It *might* be possible to figure out exactly what's being sent using the tools...or, you can tap the phone line, record what goes through, do some black magic and see what's being sent.

On another subject...I think it's pretty cool that TiVo runs Linux, but doesn't trumpet their connection to the heavens like a lot of cash- and attention-starved operations are doing now. Also cool that they follow the GPL (I think).

As for ReplayTV, I can't dig up anything on what software it runs, but I'm willing to bet it's all proprietary and closed-source, based on their Technical Overview page. It pretty much says they "can't reveal everything."

C'est la vie, I suppose.

the unit tracks what shows you like (through thumbs up and down buttons on your remote) and then tapes other shows it "thinks" you might be interested in while you are away

Actually, I have a Tivo and that feature is pretty cool. Sometimes it records really bizarre stuff that doesn't make sense, but sometimes it catches a movie or show that I end up enjoying.

Also, if you'd bother to read their privacy policy you'd see that won't use this info without your consent.

The scariest thing to me is that I suddenly seem to have a subscription for a year to Soap Opera Digest Magazine. I sure as hell don't watch soap operas, and can only guess that I got it after signing up for the Tivo service since they started to arrive shortly thereafter.

Personally I think the Tivo (and the Replay) are great ideas and well worth the price. Actually I need to get myself a 30 hour one now.. 14 just doesn't cut it when you try to save up shows like the X-Files to watch in one sitting. :)

I agree, Max Headroom kicked ass and indeed is very relevant to this discussion.

Up until a few months ago, they would occasionally run the episodes on a cable channel called Bravo. However a quick search reveals they aren't running any episodes currently. I believe the original UK pilot film used to be available on home video, I've seen it in rental stores. However it doesn't show up online currently so it must be out of print.

Incidentally, finding stuff like this is an excellent use for Tivo or ReplayTV. I have a Replay, and if I wanted to see Max Headroom I merely need to key that in as a keyword search, limit it to the title of the program, and the next time Max comes on my Replay will catch it for me with no intervention.

No one outside your home, not even the TiVo staff or any of TiVo's computer systems, will ever have access to any of your personal viewing information without your prior consent.

The suggestions that it gives you based on your ratings is apparently all done locally. TiVo has done an excellent job, IMO, of addressing privacy concerns.

The other features mentioned in that press release, like 'Wish List' and 'Teach Tivo' sound like Tivo will have something equivalent to Replay's keyword searching (or 'themes') soon.

The 'Tivomatic Recording' feature, which is what we were discussing, is definitely not yet supported in Replay. I imagine they will move to offer something like it. I can't imagine the broadcast networks doing something like that but offering it exclusively to one vendor. At the very least, unless Tivo patented it, Replay could make their device compatible with it.

The 'Overtime Scheduler' feature is also something that Replay needs badly. It's my number one request currently. Not just for sports events, but for some channels (like Fox) that are constantly starting programs 30 seconds before the hour. Used to be you could literally set a clock by when a TV program started, currently some networks are up to 2 minutes off when they start programs. This is somewhat easy to compensate for in a VCR (I always started taping the Simpsons 2 minutes early and left 5 extra minutes on the end) but with Tivo/Replay they deliberately don't give you control of the start end times---to make it EASIER.

One thing I'm getting out of this is: isn't competition great? Its obvious to me that the existence of two products in this category is driving these constant improvements to both services.

can record a show when you see a preview

I'm curious, how does that work? Do you mean to say that when an advertisement for a show comes on the network, you can click a button and Tivo knows which show to tape based on the ad? That's pretty damn cool. No, Replay can't do that.

That's the idea. I know some channels can broadcast other information outside the audio/video signal, PBS sends the current date/time which some VCRs can use to set their clock. This press release says they partnered with NBC, Showtime and Encore (to start) to implement this. I don't have Showtime/Encore, but I haven't seen it happen on my NBC channel yet.

First they insult us Canucks by including the offensive "Blame Canada" in the oscars, then they refuse to sell TiVo here, what next, steal our top comedians and pass them off as Americans??

Ok, so I'm just jealous. I've looked at both ReplayTV and TiVo and want TiVo. It seems to have a slightly better feature set, and it runs Linux. Now I'm not saying that's a reason because I'm a rabid Linux fan, but that makes it much more likely that eventually:

1. Someone will be able to hack it, and so TiVO users might be able to customize it and get it to do all the things it doesn't currently do
2. TiVO may give away more of the source or open up more of the system
3. The Linux community will benefit from having Linux used in this interesting way, GPLed changes already exist, etc.

But I can't get TiVO here!!. At first the reasons TiVO gave why they weren't selling the units in Canada was the lack of available TV schedule information here and that some encryption built into the system made the things illegal to export. None of these reasons really seemed to hold up, so I recently asked again. Last I've heard they can't expand into new markets because they're having enough trouble keeping up with demand in current markets. Argh!

The good news is that Sony is apparently coming out with their own TiVO unit soon (April was the last date I've heard), which is supposed to be far cheaper than the current Philips TiVO units. This price competition should make it easier to get any of these units (ReplayTV or TiVO) and should drop the prices for all PTV products.

Anyhow, a good website for information on ReplayTV and TiVo is AV Science Forum (and yeah the flash intro sucks).

Anyhow, any other Canadians out there, eh? Do you want your TiVo, eh? Any ideas how we can get it, eh? Any rumours on when it'll arrive, eh?

First they insult us Canucks by including the offensive "Blame Canada" in the oscars, then they refuse to sell TiVo here, what next, steal our top comedians and pass them off as Americans??

Ok, so I'm just jealous. I've looked at both ReplayTV and TiVo and want TiVo. It seems to have a slightly better feature set, and it runs Linux. Now I'm not saying that's a reason because I'm a rabid Linux fan, but that makes it much more likely that eventually:

1. Someone will be able to hack it, and so TiVO users might be able to customize it and get it to do all the things it doesn't currently do
2. TiVO may give away more of the source or open up more of the system
3. The Linux community will benefit from having Linux used in this interesting way, GPLed changes already exist, etc.

But I can't get TiVO here!!. At first the reasons TiVO gave why they weren't selling the units in Canada was the lack of available TV schedule information here and that some encryption built into the system made the things illegal to export. None of these reasons really seemed to hold up, so I recently asked again. Last I've heard they can't expand into new markets because they're having enough trouble keeping up with demand in current markets. Argh!

The good news is that Sony is apparently coming out with their own TiVO unit soon (April was the last date I've heard), which is supposed to be far cheaper than the current Philips TiVO units. This price competition should make it easier to get any of these units (ReplayTV or TiVO) and should drop the prices for all PTV products.

Anyhow, a good website for information on ReplayTV and TiVo is AV Science Forum (and yeah the flash intro sucks).

Anyhow, any other Canadians out there, eh? Do you want your TiVo, eh? Any ideas how we can get it, eh? Any rumours on when it'll arrive, eh?

If you're worried about your privacy, why not check out the source code of the modded Linux OS they're using:
http://www.tivo.com/linux/
:)

The Tivo site has a very good faq that will answer a ton of the speculation that's going on in this discussion:
http://www.tivo.com/what/faq.html

You do not need the service, apparently.
http://www.tivo.com/what/faq_sub.html#q25

--john