CmdrTaco's Week with Tivo

Over the last few weeks I've been playing with a piece of consumer electronics that has the potential to alter the way that we think of television. Its step between the inevitable future of on-demand television, and todays "ya better be home sunday at 8pm tuned in to channel 11 or you'll miss The Simpsons. Although you'd never guess it (except from the diffs on the website) it runs Linux. The device is the TiVo, and you can click below to read my review of whats good and whats bad about this thing. What is it?

The TiVo is supposed to be a Digital VCR. Instead of inserting tapes and programming your box to capture channel 11 from 9-10, you say program it to 'Record the X-Files'. And if you opt for a "Season Pass", the device will record The X-Files whenever its on: syndication on FX? The official sunday night show on Fox? It doesn't matter: the TiVo allows you to forget what channel you're watching and what time your show is on.

I'm a fairly busy person, and to me this sounded like a godsend: I could tape shows that aired while I was at work or away on business or asleep, and stockpile them... then I could watch them (fast forwarding through commercials and deleting the rerunrs) when it fit my schedule. No more channel surfing. No more reruns. Less wasted time. I must say its pretty amazing to turn on your TV and see "Whats On" and see a half dozen shows I wanted to see from the last few days, but missed.

As you use the TiVo it gets smarter. It remembers what you've recorded (and with a simple 'Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down' option on the remote, you can tell it what you like and don't like) and attempts to guess what programming you might enjoy. I don't have any comments on how well this works, but since I had selected DragonBall Z and The Simpsons, it was essentially taping virtually any piece of animated crap being broadcasted on nickelodean (No offense to Rocko, Ren & Stimpy, and Angry Beavers, all of which are excellent) . Supposedly it'll get smarter with usage.

Its also pretty useful for watching TV in real time: the device is always recording whatever you are watching. You can pause/slo-mo/or rewind whatever you're watching. This allowed my girlfriend to catch a joke she missed during the Simpsons while running upstairs for a glass of water. And it allows me to slow-mo the gratuitous Sculley Cleavage from this weeks X-Files.

<RANTA>Anyone who bought a Dish knows that the consumer is being royally screwed by the FCC and the powerful television lobbyists who are fighting to keep broadcast TV off the dish. If I want local programming, I'll get it, but I don't, so why do I have to have to install cable just to watch the handful of network programs that don't suck? I don't want local news or weather, so why should I be forced to have 2 sets of wires. 2 Bills. 2 User Interfaces. 2 Boxes. It makes me want to go Goku on somebody. This is being resolved in larger markets, but it'll never get out to me in the middle of nowhere. </RANT> As a very nice side bonus, the TiVo tuner encapsulates both the Dish and the Cable's tuner functionality into a single interface: no need to change devices and interfaces simply to flash between FOX and Comedy Central.

Cost/Installation/Privacy

Installation is easy, although somewhat time consuming. In my case I plugged it in, feeding an input from the DirecTV box (RCA jacks) and the cable (Coax) One output into my receiver and the other into the VCR (for "Archiving"). Also a cable connects to the DirecTV's serial port input which allows the TiVo to tune the dish. Power. Phone Jack. Done.

After that the box makes a few phone calls and indexes programming. This takes several hours. Plus, if you have a dish, it thinks you have every single channel! I had to go through 999 channels and turn off hundreds of pay-per-view channels (to say nothing of the sports channels and crap I'll never watch).

You purchase a box based on the amount of video you want to store. (15 or 30 hour version: I paid $699 for the 30) The hours is at the lowest compression. High quality gets me 9 hours out of the 30 hour box. Thats enough except when I leave town for a week. It is definitely pricey: A high end VCR would cost half this, but it seems pretty reasonable considering what it all does.

You also pay for a subscription so the unit can download TV listings. from each night. The fee ranges from like $10 a month to $200 for a "Lifetime Subscription". I'm kinda curious if I can use 1 subscription on 2 TiVo's if I chose to hook one up to a second TV.

The documentation and the tivo website both have extensive commentary on privacy. They basically say all the right things. I have no reason to believe that they're lying, but just the same, my tivo knows what I watch, when I watched it. The service subscription knows my units serial number and my name. Putting 2 and 2 together wouldn't be that difficult. They claim this will never be an issue.

I have no problem with them using information and making a truckload of money off it. A million TiVo's are gonna generate excellent, accurate ratings someday. And relationships between programs and viewing habits: "People who like The Simpsons don't like Veronica's Closet" type information. Hopefully someday this will mean that the TiVo will be capable of more accurately guessing programming choices tailored to me. The big scary question is will this be done anonymously. I don't want to start getting FOX spam because Philips sold my email address to FOX because I watch The Simpsons every sunday.

And now the problems... Technical Stuffs

First off, my unit was screwed. It crashes regularly. It goes anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 hours, but it always freezes up: it made it for like 6 hours on saturday, but crashed twice during the X-Files on sunday. I called TiVo tech support and a very nice representative named Kendra was quite helpful (this was thursday). On friday I got another call to confirm some problems from another techie. I was told that I might get a third call from a top level specialist, or else a guy to coordinate the replacement of my defective unit.

It quite clearly was a bad harddrive. I assumed that after the second or third time it happened. It took a bit of time to get it replaced, but they did it. They shipped me a spare unit, and although it obviously forgot my preferences, I was back up and running.

Interface/Problems/Suggestions

As a whole, it works great. It is very intuitive. I didn't need to look in the manual to get anything done, however it was very slow at times. I suspect that this might have had something to do with the hardware problems, but on several occasions, generating menus would take 5 minutes or more: particularly long ones like the 'Whats on Live TV' but occasionally in the menu where you search for programs to record. A status indicator would be nice any time its gonna take more than a few seconds to do something, however I figure this was pretty abnormal since most of the time these thigns all happened instantly.

The Powerpuff Girls Problem Powerpuff girls have an eratic schedule. Because of this, it overlaps frequently with other programs. The "Season Pass" feature refuses to ever allow 2 season passes to overlap... therefore, if any episode of The Powerpuff girls overlaps with anything else I want to record, I have to choose one or the other. The Simpsons Problem The Simpsons airs every day twice on fox in my area. It also airs a "New" episode sunday evenings. Selecting a "Season Pass" treats all 11 episodes identically. I select all 11 showings as a unit, even though they most definitely aren't. I can tell it to record only The Simpsons on sunday, but it should be able to tell syndication from the prime-time showing. The South Park Problem South Park airs several times a week: during a week, the episode is the same. By selecting a Season Pass, it records each and every showing: so I get 4 copies of the same episode. A simple scan of the plot summaries would be helpful. Dragonball Z suffers from the same problem: 5:30 and 12:30 are both the same episode. I get both. The TiVo should save plot summaries (when available. Its gonna be tougher when no summary is available. It seems like at least an episode number should be possible tho) of shows it records, and have a user definable time frame during which 'reruns' should not be taped. That way I could say "Don't tape the same episode of south park for 30 days" and be much happier. Precedence Basically there needs to be a set of rules that allows me to select a precedence for overlapping programs. Rules like "I've seen this episode in the last 30 days" or "This is prime time" or "This is syndication" need to be defined in order to help clarify what should and shouldn't be recorded. Then again, when these things can hold 200 hours of footage, it won't be as big of a deal.

The future will be interesting: it would be cool if I could email shows to a friend. Obviously today bandwidth is to restricted, but if this thing was hooked up to say a cable modem instead of a phone line, it would be reasonably feasible. Its pretty obvious that in the future programming will be stored on mammoth servers and streamed to viewers rather then mass broadcasted and then stored locally. Then we could effectively pass the equivalent of URLs about instead of the actual streams, although in the future, a gig or so for a television program won't be the end of the world. Just don't expect that one tomorrow.

Summary

I got a bum unit, but despite that and a few significant problems, its clear that this thing is gonna change the way people watch TV. This version still has shortcomings, in hardware, service, and software. And there is definitely a looming possibility of some sort of security problem. But with all that aside, until the internet has the bandwidth to allow us to watch programming on demand, this is best thing out there. If you're tight on time, it will make television more enjoyable and more efficient.

The strangest part is the realization that you're not watching TV: you can pause whenever you want. You can fastforward through commercials, or if the phone rings, you can back up to where you left off. But I still found myself thinking "I need a commercial so I can go to the bathroom". Some things never change.

Comments

Part GPL, part GPL workaround

[slim]

I recall from a previous /. discussion on this matter that although the TiVo guys GPLd the bits they had to (changes to the kernel), they worked around having to GPL the difficult bit:

They wanted a filesystem suitable for direct-to-disk video recording: after all you don't want garbage collection or on-the-fly defragging to kick in while you're recording the Simpsons. They used some proprietary technology to achieve this. Filesystems generally involve a kernel change.

Instead, they implemented an NFS-like filesystem, with the TCP/IP bit taken out: i.e. the kernel communicates with a userland process, which in turn does the HDD management.

Their userland process is *not* GPLd, and I understand it's protected by some patents.

--

CmdrTaco needs to research his rants.

[dieman]

Uh. The FCC is no longer screwing. As of sometime last year the proper laws were passed to allow for local TV on DBS systems. Problem is, DBS is too much of a narrowband communication to handle *everyones* local shows. Get a decent antenna or get cable again if your gonna beef about it. Mediaone out here is better than dish anyhow since the digital services are on.

So, the moral is, slashdot needs to research. IMAGINE THAT!

Re:Notes from a TiVo user

[wopr]

A few more comments... I have had a Tivo for a few months now, and satellite / antenna integration is suprisingly one of the best features. However, you quickly get used to never watching crap on tv (that includes not watching commercials). I rarely even watch live tv anymore.

As far as crashing, I have never had my unit (the smaller of the two) crash on me. However, I have had a few problems where my satellite receiver stops responding to the serial input and I need to restart that.

A few things that are missing from the Tivo:

CT mentioned how you can rewind live tv. That is because the Tivo is constantly recording into a half hour buffer. This is a great feature, but there is no way to save this buffer. If I'm 10 minutes into a good show that I didn't tell the Tivo to tape, and I want to save it to show my fiancee, too bad. If I hit the record button, it starts the recording starting at the time I hit the button, not at the beginning of the show (which I could rewind and watch).

A couple of extra navigation buttons. ReplayTV has a 30 second fast forward button. Press it and you instantly move forward 30s. Since most commercials come in 30s blocks, it would be nice to just hit the button 3-5 times (depending on the network) and be back at the show, rather than using the fast forward button. Also a button that would take you to the start of the recording buffer would be useful (there is already one to go to the end).

Tivo records things that it thinks you may like on tv. It records these at the default quality setting (which in my case is Best). These shows are deleted first if the unit needs more recording space. It is possible to save these programs for longer, but you can't lower the quality setting (if it is using the Best quality for a cartoon it is wasting a lot of space). I don't know how they compress the video, so this may not be easily possible.

An expansion port. ReplayTV used to have (but no longer does) a firewire port that you could hook up an expansion hard drive to. This would be great. Hook up a hard drive to the firewire, tivo sees that it needs to be formatted to "Tivo" (whatever format that is), and offers to do it. At the end you get a message saying you now have 30 more hours of recording time.

This has been mentioned before, but I would also like to be able to give priority to certain shows in season passes.

If you like any of these suggesions, send them to Tivo (info@tivo.com) and tell them that you would like them implemented. Several of these require hardware changes, but some of them could be implemented on the units that already are in use, with a software upgrade during the dialin process.

Also, if you are getting shows like cartoons you don't want after asking the Tivo to record a cartoon or two, all you need to do is go to the show you asked it to record originally and give it a Thumbs-Down. When you record a show it automatically gives it one Thumbs-Up. If that is the only program you've rated then it only thinks that you like cartoons. This will get rid of the cartoon "preference" from the Tivo. That reminds me -- another feature I would like is to be able to get a list of all the Thumbs-Up and Thumbs-Down preferences that have been given. At one point I actually reset my Tivo, because my father-in-law had given Thumbs-Up to all kinds of old western movies and that was all the Tivo was recording. It would have been nicer just to let me see all the shows that have been rated, so I could re-rate them.

All in all, the Tivo is a wonderful gadget and I find it indispensable simply for its ability to merge satellite and antenna tv. It would be nice to one day have one that didn't have visible compression on the lower settings and supported things like an optical dolby digital connection, but we will probably have to wait for much larger hard drives.

Some xtra features could be handy...

[Atilla]

This box could definetely use another feature -
Remote programming and scheduling. It already has a modem - why not enable dial-in capabilities? Say, you're in hawaii and your unit is somewhere in upper michigan... And you forgot to program the darn thing to record your favorite show!

Just think how cool it would be to have a terminal window open to your VCR...

v1.3.0 released this week

[whoop]

I got an email yesterday that the next version of the software was released. It is now supposed to be able to mark a show for recording when a preview comes up. Further making things easier for lazy folk like myself. I just have to find a channel that has this feature now. :) The most useful thing I've used so far is the automatic pause. So many times I accidently hit the Tivo button on the remote during a show, and then had to fast-forward in the recording to get back to where I was...

And sometime this year there's supposed to be another update to fix the season pass overlap issue. You will give a season pass a ranking, then the higher ranking pass gets recorded when there are overlaps.

Notes from a TiVo user

[dzawitz]

I have a Tivo in my home, and I can tell you a few things about it...

Firstly, regarding the crashing, it DOES crash occasionally, but not nearly as often as what Rob said. I agree that he had a bad unit. My unit needs restarting probably once every two or three weeks (hey, at least it's better than a windoze machine, right?). This is a concern, but realize that the product was just rolled out, and the software supplied for it is in early stages. Rob brings up some great ideas for future features, perhaps he should email TiVo about it so they could consider developing some of these things?

Regarding privacy, all of your preferences are left on your own TiVo, and although it is possible for TiVo to get this information and sell it, they have promised over and over again that they won't. It uses the phone line every night to download programming information--it keeps a program schedule for about two weeks! That's about 13 days more than my DSS dish keeps, and of course regular cable only keeps what's on right now.

Also, keep in mind that while Philips manufactures the machine itself, there is a seperate company called "The TiVo Service" that actually provides the programming stuff. (That's who you pay your subscription fee to.) So if anyone is doing anything sketchy, it's TiVo, not Philips. I don't think they are anyway.

The best feature, IMHO, of the TiVo is ability to pause/rewind/slowmo live TV. I use this constantly during sports programming. A huge play in the NCAA tournament, but no replay on CBS? Make your own replay. Want to see if Keyshawn stepped out of bounds? Do a frame-by-frame. On several occasions I have been watching sports, and by using the TiVo have determined that the referees have made a bad call. And, like Rob said, it's great for if you get a phone call or something, or have to go to the bathroom during a program. Also, if you use TiVo for this reason, you can fast forward through commercials later, a definite plus.

TiVo is expensive, but if you watch a lot of TV then it's definitely something you should consider getting. Video quality ranges from excellent to average (depending on how much HDD space you want to take up). I'm confident that new features are forthcoming--the nightly modem call can also update the software, a good feature.

Got 500 bucks to spare? Like TV? Thinking about buying a new gadget? Get a Tivo. They rule.

Problem #1

[zyqqh]

You can fastforward through commercials, or if the phone rings, you can back up to where you left off.

And just how happy do you think advertisers will be about this idea? True, you can turn off your normal TV during commercials, or tape it and fastforward through it -- but this box makes it so much easier! Then, I'm guessing it won't be another 2 years before someone comes along with a plugin to automatically filter commercials out. Hey, I'm all for it, of course -- no one likes commercials anyway, right? Well, we tend to forget that commercial money is what fuels the TV networks. As commercials become much easier to screen out, the money is going to drift off, and, inevitably, program quality will go (further) down. Not that I blame TiVo for this phenomenon -- it's most likely coming no matter what, but it's a concern nevertheless.