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ReplayTV Quits Hardware Biz, Licenses Technology
crazyj writes: "According to this article, Digital Video Recorder maker ReplayTV is calling it quits in the hardware business. Instead, they plan to cut staff and license their technology. Apparently, the competition from TiVo was too much."
Actually, in October, the $300.00 14-hour Philips TiVo had a $100 Philips Rebate, and a $100 TiVo rebate, making it only $100. Not to mention that they had a TiVo-a-day (or was it 10 or 30 a day?) giveaway all October (is it still going on??). So there isn't much to complain about as far as price is concerned... You just have to find the deals.
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Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
There is another big feature Replay has that TiVo doesn't. On a Replay you can setup a keyword search to record shows based on title, description, actor (and director I think). If I remember correctly, the TiVo will let you do searches, but only to pick shows out that you can mark to record. It won't setup a regular search that records stuff it finds that matches. Personally I love this feature- it's very useful for finding stuff that is on rarely and erratically, and for categories of stuff (like I have it set to record gymnastics meets whenever it finds them).
I also won one on the essay contest. I had my TiVo within a week of winning. I was TOTALLY amazed!
And my life, too, has totally changed since I got a TiVo. I can't imagine a life of feeling I had to be home at 8pm on mondays to watch Ally! And before this, I *never* got to watch the Simpsons, Futurama, or Family Guy. Of course Family Guy seems to have gone off the air.. grrrr..
I don't know, I got a sneak peak at the first UltimateTV box (soon to be released) and the overall impression is: it's so slllloooooooowwwww.
The UI was so slow to respond that I constantly found myself in the wrong place and backing out my choices. It took about 5 seconds for guides to show up, for example, enough to make you wonder if it actually registered your choice and try again. It was even slower while it recorded. Very frustrating.
Hope you don't have cable TV with a cable box, or a satellite dish, then. They have even more ability to track your viewing habits.
Not gonna happen. If you can record the show to an archive (read: removable) media then you can schlepp it to your PC and email it to your buddy. If you thought Napster pissed off the suits, just wait for this....
Be interesting to see someone hack their TiVo for a removable hard drive tho. Haven't yet got a TiVo 'cuz I don't like them collecting info on my viewing habits; but if I were to hack one I'd be sorely tempted to try a removable hard drive, or an IDE-USB-HDD setup. Now that I'm thinking it through it would probably just confuse the software, it's expecting Simpsons and Battlebots but in reality Jerry Springer and Oprah are in those files.
The 30-second skip is a MAJOR feature, and almost 100% of the reason I bought a Replay. It should not be underestimated, because it gives you
a resource more valuable than gold: TIME.
When I watch programs on Replay and a commercial comes on, I just hit the skip button 5 times (occaisionally 7 times), and whammo - I'm at the show again. No overshooting, no FF or RW, you're just there - bingo. Now I can easily watch an hour-long show in 40 minutes without ever futzing around with FF and overshoots.
It's no accident that Tivo will never have this capability - they're too much in bed with the "force you to watch commercials and sell all your private data while charging you for the priviledge" crowd.
Hmm, let's see...
Tivo: No 30-second skip, commercials are still a PITA.
Tivo: seeling your private data to marketers
Tivo: Making you pay for the priviledge, a *minimum* of $200
Replay: 3-second skips saves scads of timeand frustration
Replay: Doesn't (yet) sell individually-identifiable data to 3rd parties
Replay: NO extra fees, ever.
To me it's a no-brainer.
My largest difficulty with these pieces of equipment is that they are unable to control the channel of a digital box... they can access the 'lower' (ie, normal) channels in my cable area, but the high channels (all premiums, and many of the better channels like Discovery, Noggin, etc) are digital only, and cannot be accessed unless the cable-co provided Digital Box is on that station.
This means that two of the major benefits of these systems... the ability to automatically record stuff you want to see, and the ability to record one thing while you watch another... are simply not possible.
However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Charter (my local cableco, owned by one of the bigwig Microsoft rats that fled the sinking ship) is building and testing integrated Digital/TiVo Boxes that perform the dual task of acting as a complete TiVo system along with being a digital decoding box. The TiVo service fees may even be non-existent, as the TiVo data may be fed directly over the digital cable instead of accessed via dialup. Test systems are expected Spring 2001, with full rollout by Summer. So I wait.
I hate waiting.
Raven
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
anyone know what happent to RCA's TiVo?
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
The problem with this technology, is that the TV market is overlapping the Computer market.
This portion between computer and TV has been a battlefield for quite a few years. I think that this battle has already be won by IT companies like Microsoft or AOL.
No wonder that RealPlayTV is quiting the hardware business because it hadn't enough technology backup to be competitive, while others were doing interactivity stuff for ages.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent - Salvor Hardin
TiVo is a great name. It's a melding of TV and I/O. Ti(nput)Vo(utput)
--
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
I have a UK tivo and it's excellent.
The 30 skip feature would be nice but after a couple of weeks my reactions have been trained enough that I can hit fast forward three times, wait the right number of seconds and hit play again to within a second or two of the start of the next program without even thinking about it.
Sig is taking a break!
A while back, Echostar joined forces with ReplayTV shortly after the MS WebTV DishPlayer was released. This may just be a sign that things are going well enough for ReplayTV on a new sat recorder, and they don't need the consumer side on the table anymore. I love my 40GB DishPlayer (Upgraded with no hacks, just swapped the drive), and would love to see an even more stable Replay based Dish system.
And Tivo's don't have a 30 second skip? Wow, After using that on my DishPlayer for the past year, it would take a while to get used to another way of commercial skipping.
Actually, I don't--broadcast TV only, and not much of that. Most of TV is complete and utter crap and not worth the investment of time. If I watched more of it, though, I sure wouldn't use any technology that reported back what I was watching.
The point wasn't whether I thought TiVo would sell the data, use the data, or whatever. The statement was made that they would not be able to. That statement was not correct. There is a world of difference between can not and will not. I would only be comfortable with the "can not" type system, and don't trust any entity whose sole motivation is to "maximize shareholder value" to have the integrity not to change their minds later. Mind you, nothing specific about TiVo--I wouldn't place my trust in any corporation.
Wow, thanks a crapload for that link... I had no idea they gave so many away. I just won a TiVo from the contest, this really makes my day. Thanks!
I hope that this means that TiVo is doing well.
Doesn't look like it. Their financials are not looking pretty. I think it is too expensive, they cannot get critical mass because of this. We will see.
Q.
They only do this to a limited extent (i.e. no one can personally identify you from the data), and only to give you personalized features, namely having them guess what kind of shows you'd like. You can always turn this feature off, or even just leave the unit unconnected to the phone line.
--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Did they quit the .biz?
If I can record onto SuperVHS, what's the problem with recording to disk from a digital source?
Once it's digital, it can be transferred over the internet. Apparently the concept that a video capture card could do the same thing to the NTSC output (presumably macrovisioned, but that's disableable) doesn't seem to have entered the MPAA's collective semi-consciousness yet.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
So if they're no longer going to be in the hardware business, does that mean that they will let consumers upgrade their own units by adding new drives?
...the technology with the worse name wins.
Consumers would rather pay $400 and $10 a month than pay $600-700 all at once. I can do the math, and I KNOW I'm paying more, but the convenience of not paying all at once is VERY nice. Plus, if TiVo were to go under in the next year, I'm not out the entire amount. And if I like the service, I don't mind paying an extra $10 a month to make sure I don't lose it.
Also, TiVo reportedly has a better UI. Take that for what it's worth.
On a side note, this Sony DirecTV with TiVo unit is pretty damn slick. It records the satellite feed, so you get the same quality as the feed all the time. No additional compression. I haven't played with it too much yet, but I gotta tell ya, it's pretty awesome.
This seems to be another classic case of the marketing for a product determining it's destiny rather than technical specs. ReplayTV had that 30 second skip button that they weren't advertising properly, and as a result it seems Tivo's catchy campaigns have done the damage.
Does anyone know what the health of Tivo is in comparison? Does this failure speak at all of the health of this type of product? I'd like to get a Tivo but would be pissed if I got stranded.
Don't forget the most important pieces, namely the IR interface, and the show listings. The IR interface is the easiest part, since it already exists with linux support.
I've said it before, though, that the best deal would probably be to make some sort of deal with TV Guide to get listings in something simpler than the HTML Tables, perhaps by showing a TV Guide logo on your application whenever someone is in the guide.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you only look at the upfront price, yes, they are quite expensive. However, at least TiVo has been pushing their product (and still are) with all sorts of deals and rebates. I got mine from Circuit City in August: a 14h unit (upgraded since to 52h) for $299, which came with 2 rebates: a $100 rebate from CC, plus a $100 rebate from TiVo. So my final price was $99 - now, that's in VCR range. Of course, there was also the $100 I paid later for the HD I used to upgrade, but that's a different story.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
or was that someone else who got slimed by the hollywood scumbags?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Well, you could get the 14 Hour model for $99, plus $10/month (or $200 for lifetime). Adding another disk was pretty easy and relatively cheap, since I found a 60GB drive at Staples for ~$160.
The real reason I got my TiVo was that I found myself wanting to vege at the end of the day, and there'd be nothing but crap on cable. I'd waste an hour or two channel surfing trying to find stuff I wanted to watch.
Now with the tivo I come home and can decide to watch an hour or two of the practice, or some Simpsons, or part of the BattleBot marathon that it picked up while we were gone over Thanksgiving.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
how do you convert the buffering to recording? mine doesn't do this?????
For those of you who want something similar, but have TV cards in your computer, check out Snapstream PVS. Its a great product: http://www.snapstream.com no, I dont work for them.
--matt Cowger
the comparison chart listed it as available in version 2.0....
this thread on the TiVo forums discuss the dates as to when 2.0 will be out. appears i mis-posted that this was an available feature, but it does appear that it is on the horizon.
my apologies for the confusion.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
We both get what we want.
No, this has nothing to do with socialism; what you are describing is a barter system. There's a quid pro quo in barter, which doesn't exist in a Communist (not socialist, as you wrongly stated) system. For Communism, it's from each according to their means to each according to their needs. You would just go yard to yard, fixing up people's gardens if they needed it. I, on the other hand, would go from house to house, installing video cards as desired. If you happened to fix my garden and I your PC, it's just a happy coincidence as we were both self-motivated to do this because we are good Communist folk. Needless to say, trying to find 2 people to do things out of the goodness of their hearts is hard; getting an entire country (much less an entire planet) to do so is impossible. So, Communist countries have tended to resort to force to make those selfish individuals do what's best for everyone, which somehow misses the original point, but it keeps the ruling class happy.
Socialism, as it is usually implemented, has a third party redistributing goods and services. So if enough people thought they deserved nice gardens, the government would decide what a "nice" garden is, hires a bunch of people to work as gardeners as per the spec, and then taxes other people to fund it.
The difference between barter and capitalism is that we both agree to price our goods (your gardening skills, my pc installation knowledge) against a third standard. We call that third standard money. The motivation is the same (greed, improving your personal situation) in barter as in capitalism, just the medium for trade is better, as I am able to get gardening done even if I cannot provide any good or service to the gardener; I give him money.
The bosses control the means to production, we do all the work, and they get rich.
If you want to control the means of production, form your own company. In the US, the vast majority of people are employed by companies with fewer than 25 employees. Relative to most other places on the planet, it's easy to start a company and join the rich ruling class. Of course, your company could suck, and you could end up broke. The greater the risks you take, the greater the rewards and penalites. If you don't like it, stay a peon. But don't bitch about it, because no one is forcing you to be one. If your country's implementation of capitalism sucks, don't blame the US and don't blame capitalism.
So, now that you know something about econ, maybe you can make an intelligent argument. But I doubt you will.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Another possibility may be what I used for my VCRs. I'm using a Universal remote with macro capability, and I just made a macro that FF a number of times before hitting play again. I get about a 30 second or so skip this way. . .
-Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
TiVo charges $200 for a lifetime subscription.
Neither unit is useful without a subscription.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
There are two, maybe three companies that are the only sources for full listing information for upcoming shows. All others (Replay, TiVo, etc) just license the information from these sources.
One of the biggest attractions of the TiVo is that while they license the same Tribune Media Services data as everybody else, they make a novel use of the information in the Thumbs Up/Down preferences and automatic "Suggestions" of similar shows to what you already watch.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
they've learned : Macrovision == shoddy product.
maybe there's hope they can wise up about video and music formats too
Here is a comparison between the two. i have a TiVO and have been going over the details of the unit with interested people at work. IMHO, the TiVo has several features which make it a much better unit than the Replay, such as:
1. Converting the buffering to recording (Replay doesn't support this.)
2. Browse all channels by time (Replay has a truly crappy channel interface compared with TiVo.)
3. Setting a "Season Pass" for a show on any timeslot (Replay doesn't support this.)
there are a bunch more. ReplayTV is failing b/c it's business model was flawed (hmmm - anyone remember the Macintosh from the 80s...yeah, don't license the hardware) and b/c it lacks some great features that TiVo has...30 second skip button be damned.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
I've owned my Tivo for almost 2 months now. The reason I chose it instead of a replay tv thingy is simply the hack-a-bility. Though I didn't hack my Tivo for more capacity it was/is very comforting to know that I could if I wanted to. I also came to realize that if my Tivo is made obselete, or if the service is dissolved, it will always function as a glorified VCR. I hope at the very least that ReplayTV ppl can say the same.
"Me Ted"
BOSTON SUCKS!
At this point, isn't TiVO quickly winning the mindshare war?
Why license ReplayTV instead of TiVO?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
What the digital tv recorders really need is a storage medium to archive programs. Personally, there are some times I'd like to record something "forever." Like a friend of mine appears in a commercial or an interview on a show. Or whatever; you get the point.
What would be great is a CD-RW drive built in that allows you to "archive to disk." If I can record onto SuperVHS, what's the problem with recording to disk from a digital source? The difference is not that large.
Sure, you can say I can just upgrade my hard drives and keep it forever. That doesn't really work long-term because over the course of 5 years I may want to store dozens of recordings, which means my usable space becomes smaller and smaller.
For legal reasons, there is some buzz that because it's a digital recording, the quality is higher than VHS and thus would be more problematic for the broadcasters who would like to limit the recording and re-recording of their material. I say that's crap. Like I mentioned above, SuperVHS exists (and I personally have a SuperVHS VCR) and it records in a quality superior to VHS. They're legal. Why not make a digital VCR with removable media legal? Same difference. It's going to happen, it's just a matter of who's going to do it first. Imagine burning a VCD of the latest Simpson's Halloween special with your TiVo2 and taking it over a friend's house to pop into their DVD player. Mmmmm.
The differences are
- my Tivo fits into my entertainment center
- I don't have to stop using it when my daughter wants to print out her term paper
- with rebates it cost about $300 w/lifetime service, vs. $1000-$2000 for your computer
- I don't have to write any scripts/programs
- remote controlled
- blah blah blah
You just can't hit the features vs. price point on your own.I'm just waiting for the local cable companies or whomever "releases" the content to companies such as TiVo to permit you to construct your own "digital video storage thingie" sorry I just woke up and got to work so my brain is kind of munged. Seriously though, if the software was GPLed and with a little electronics hacking building your own TiVo rather than hacking an existing one shouldn't be too very hard. Besides people would still have to pay for the service for incoming transmissions. :D
.--bagel--.---------------.
| aim: | bagel is back |
| icq: | 158450 |
( o ) one could say I'm rather baked
As far as which is better, keep in mind that TiVo is currently succumbing to the arrogance of power. Sony chose TiVo for its box; that alone should imply something. TiVo is now advertising in sports events. All the signs of a bloated company about to explode from its own, self-inflicted infestation. The "TiVo runs Linux" issue seems to be the only beneficial aspect of TiVo; the rest reeks of the capitalist status quo.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Have you looked at DirecTivo?
The 2.0 software (standard on DirecTivo, coming next year as a free upgrade to all other TiVo's) has the best handling of recurring shows and scheduling conflicts.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I'd be happier with TiVo if it ran a more robust operating system, perhaps something like QNX instead of their own specialized realtime extensions and filesystem grafted onto a stripped down Linux kernel.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I've got a Dishplayer with replay, but I think this still applies. . .
.Surround sound! Even on PPV movies with 5.1 channel audio. And not through my PC, but through my shiny new home theater system.
hmm....my favorite difference. .
My TV tuner is a cheapo ($35 WinTV Go) and It's just not the same. I like to watch TV whilst I surf sometimes, but it doesn't come close to the quality. The only real use I've found for my card is taking my VHS anime and converting to VCD.
-Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Dish has the same thing. It rocks. Long live DSS!!!
-Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Your "TV App" is most likely just feeding a video signal directly to the video card from a tuner, not actively reading and writing live MPEG to and from a hard drive and MPEG codec.
Watching live TV in a window using a hardware tuner is like listening to a CD in your CD-ROM drive directly attached to a sound card. You can crash MS-Windows, and it just keeps playing.
What TiVo does is more akin to playing one 192Kbps MP3 stream from disk speakers while you encode another stream to the same hard drive, in realtime. Considerably more system intensive.
TiVo is a PPC at 50Mhz, with EIDE and dedicated MPEG audio+video encoder and decoder, it only manages to function with such minimal hardware because that is the _only_ task that gets "foreground" priority on the CPU.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I admitted it.
/. attention.
I was recently in the market to buy a personal recorder. I reviewed both replaytv and tivo. I liked TIVO a lot and it wasn't just because it got such
I had only one concern when I was buying. which company, replaytv or tivo, had staying power. I looked at both and thought...heck, if TIVO goes down, there'll be a large underground hack community...
So I bought a TIVO just two weeks ago...
I win!
:D
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
TiVo has truely changed the way i watch TV. i used to miss the dual daily simpsons' episodes b/c i was never home from work...now i TiVo a whole week and watch them at my leisure.
TiVo also has done a great job of recording some wonderful shows that i would have never seen and would have never know about, such as Scandalize My Name
i fully recommend picking one of these units up...it is well worth it if you are like me and watch little TV b/c it conflicts with your daily schedule.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
There have been several posts asking "why can't I do this on my PC?", so I thought it best to put this out here. There is a software-based Tivo-like program called ShowShifter at www.showshifter.com that is in beta. No linux version yet, but the bits and pieces for a linux recorder are already there-- there are linux drivers for the very common BT848 video-capture chipset and software for encoding, as well as nifty scheduling tools like cron. If somebody wrapped it up in a nice GUI, we'd already be done!
I think the biggest obstacle for digital video recorders to become mainstream is the price point.
What value do you put on your time? Once you've got TiVo setup for the shows you like, you're done. If the network moves it, TiVo moves too. Also, forget time spent rewinding.
Then, of course, there's the ability to pause live TV.
I think it's a mistake to simply compare TiVo to a VCR. It does more/different things. You still need a VCR if you want to watch VHS tapes or save a show for good.
--
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Go to a store and compare the ReplayTV and the TiVo side by side. Use the interface..mess with the remotes. I think you'll see why TiVo is winning. Sure, there is a service fee but if you get the lifetime the TiVo box costs the same or less than the ReplayTV.
The only feature the TiVo is missing over ReplayTV is 30 second skip... but after using the fast forward on TiVo a few times you know when to stop and hit play...it even adjusts back a little for your reaction time. The reason TiVo didn't want the 30 second skip is that they are working deals with advertisers and they didn't want to make them mad. On some commercials you will get a small TiVo icon (called a TiVomatic) where you can hit one button to tell the TiVo to record the show currently being advertised.
Whenver one of these stories comes up, a number of people always say you can build a PC to do it just as well. Try it. The great thing about the TiVo is the integration in to the audio/video setup. I can't imagine watching TV without one now. Sure, a PC can record shows in to mpeg...but they don't record things I might like (which get overwritten by things I want recorded when out of space). The PC doesn't have the great interface... It doesn't have a lot of things, and the TiVo costs less than a new high speed video card.
Fucked Company - The Dot-Com Deadpool.
ReplayTV - Notice it isn't ReplayTV.com.
Repeat the question to yourself.
.sig: Now legally binding!
It uses WebTV's "Personal TV" service at $10/month. So, I basically got a satellite system and digital recorder for free. How's that for a price point?
It is missing some features that Tivo has that I'd like. (I had been planning to get a dish and then a Tivo. I may still get a Tivo.) For instance, it doesn't have the learning AI or a great "season ticket" type feature (basically will record same time/channel weekly), but the recording is integrated into the dish's channel browsing and searches. I'd also like to be able to do more multiplexing (ie, watching something different than I'm recording). It directly streams the MPEG-2 video from the dish to the disk, so recorded programs look virtually identical to the live version. Also, pausing live TV is only limited by disk space, unlike what I've heard about Tivo (30 min). There is a site (can't find URL right now) indicating basic hacks of this thing, basically replacing the 17GB with a larger disk. I may try an 80GB which would boost the recording time from 12hrs to 56hrs or so.
If I was so inclined, the Dishplayer also does WebTV access and there is an IR keyboard for that or searching the TV listings.
Overall, I think the integration of these things with dishes works well since the dishes are so closely tied to the service model and contracts. To me and others getting the dish, the cost of Personal TV is about the same as one of the movie packages on my bill.
LetterJ
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Actually, in October, the $300.00 14-hour Philips TiVo had a $100 Philips Rebate, and a $100 TiVo rebate, making it only $100. Not to mention that they had a TiVo-a-day (or was it 10 or 30 a day?) giveaway all October (is it still going on??). So there isn't much to complain about as far as price is concerned... You just have to find the deals.
It's not a direct complaint about price. The point is until the average consumer walks in to Circuit City and sees one sitting on the shelf for $100 it really doesn't make a difference. Why do you think companies would rather give you a rebate than just lop a hundred bucks off the price in the first place?
Hey, nobody ever said English was logical; just memorize it and get on with your life. - Paul Brians
I love terms that only a directv pirate would use. So what software are you running? :-)
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
I've got the 7222 model. It's got a lot of nifties and niceties.
-Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Er...
Had to point out. You can get Tivo in silver as well. My new Sony SVR-2000 is a nice silver/platinum and matches the new Sony Wega TVs.
D.
ELITISM: It's always lonely at the top. Uninvited company is rarely welcome.
This link comparing the two companies illustrates many of the differences such as price, Duplicate episode recording, and schedule conflicts.
You can also see some ReplayTV Notes that show what exactly the company was into.
Overall I am dissapointed that such a good service was run out of business prematurely by a great marketing job by a competitor.
TANSTAAFL.
The Replay TV costs about $200 more than the equivalent TiVo. Guess how much a lifetime subscription to TiVo's listing service costs - that's right, $200. So Replay TV's service wasn't free, just hidden in the hardware costs.
BTW: I'm not getting the lifetime subscription to TiVo, because I honestly don't think the technology is going to stand still, and in 20 months time of paying per month, there is likely to be something better than TiVo on the market.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Yeah Yeah, Of course it costs less than a PC, but your PC does more. My Bike costs less than more car, but that doesn't make it better.
;-p
> my Tivo fits into my entertainment center
It wouldn't need to if you have a long enough coax cable and a TV out on your video card.
> I don't have to stop using it when my daughter wants to print out her term paper.
That's odd. I've never had to quit watching TV on my PC to print out anything. As a matter of fact, I often let my TV app stay under my text editor while I type and just listen. If it sounds like something cool is happening, I just change windows. What could be more cool than watching TV, surfing the net, and typing a report on the same screen?
>with rebates it cost about $300 w/lifetime service, vs. $1000-$2000 for your computer
Ever go to Pricewatch.com? Pick up a Linux box for $300 and add a $50.00 TV tuner card.
I don't have to write any scripts/programs
IMHO, this is both a plus and a negative, but it also limits the functionality of the TiVO.
>remote controled
Okay, you got me there. (although I do have a wireless Keyboard).
> blah blah blah
Exactly my point!
No, it's XboxTV, comes with built in 45" HDTV and 70GB HDD, all for only $199.99.
Really, I swear.
BTW, how come this isn't on fuckedcompany.com yet? I mean, they laid off quite a few people, their whole business direction has been shifted, and they chopped off part of their revenue stream (content management, programming). So where do they go now... licensing? Something tells me these guys will be gone by next Christmas, unless Phillips decides to buy they (for whatever reason).
Hammer of Truth
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
Don't need it. I got mine a week and a half ago and have already mastered 3x ff (which is actually around 60x speed). The jumpback feature lets you hit play when you see the show and it jumps back a bit, and you see the start. Its not hard.
What's the magic price point?
Ten years ago I paid nearly $500 for a Mitsubishi HS-U52 VCR (which still works flawlessly, btw) and although cheaper models were available, the VCR was ubiquitous by then.
I would imagine that even inflation-adjusted, the Tivo units are cheaper than many VCRs where 10 or so years ago.
I think the big obstacle is the idea of paying for a service for the VCR (I know, not necessary)
and the lack of removability. People want to be able to record and "save" the video. Where's the version that works with Jaz 2GB carts?
People want to be able to record and "save" the video. Where's the version that works with Jaz 2GB carts?
Hmmm... would you be able to stream the video on/off a Jaz cartridge at a usuable frame rate??
Hey, nobody ever said English was logical; just memorize it and get on with your life. - Paul Brians
That's the problem: You're watching blitverts without even thinking about it. An advertiser's dream!
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Also thought I'd add that it has RCA inputs on the front which lets me dump video from my Hi8 camcorder and then do poorman's editing to VHS by skipping around the footage.
LetterJ
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
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You are a fucking moron.
I got my TiVo yesterday, and immediately added a second 30Gb drive (thanks to the Hack Tivo FAQ). Worked great. I got to watch Star Trek Voyager this morning for the first time since they moved it to midnight. Now if only I can keep my step daughter from filling the damn thing with General Hospital and Real World.
I love this technology, and I'm especially glad that the market leader is using Linux and turning a blind eye to people making their own hardware upgrades. However, I'm sticking to the monthly subscription until I know it isn't going to be eclipsed by tomorrow's technology.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Isn't ReplayTV the only one that doesn't charge a subscription fee for the listings? If they're in financial trouble how long is that going to last.
This time next year there will be many 2nd generation commercial systems using fully integated components. The box will be little bigger than the 70Gbyte disk(s) it will contain and the h/w costs will fall dramatically.
Perhaps replay decided not to bother competing with the huge cost reductions that will occur over the next 12 to 24 months.
4. ReplayTV can record based on expressed preferences, it's just not an automatic function. I appreciate that as I usually record 45 hours every week on a 30 hour machine and don't have the space to waste on what the machine thinks I want to watch.
TiVo's suggestions don't waste any space. Shows that you have specifically told TiVo to record will always take priority over suggestions. When the TiVo needs space to record something, suggested shows are the first to go.
It basically comes down to this: Say you have a 30 hour TiVo and it's half full of 15 hours of your favorite shows (that you have season passes for or have told TiVo to record). Since you give thumbs-up ratings to your favorites, TiVo tries to fill the remaing 15 hours of disk space with shows that match your ratings criteria.
If the TiVo does fill up the hard drive with 15 hours of suggested shows and you pick a new show to record, enough suggested shows will be deleted to make room for your new recording (at the time of the recording).
Your shows are never in jeopardy of being deleted or not recorded due to a suggested show.
You end up with a hard drive full of shows you specifically requested along with suggested shows that more than likely you'll like (the suggestion algorithm is good to the point of being spooky).
The initial response to TiVo's suggestions is usually one of paranoia. It must be a big brother thing. The box keeps track of which shows you give 1-3 thumbs-up or thumbs-down to and builds a list of shows that match based on genre, actor, etc. When there's free space available and the TiVo isn't recording anything else, it will record one of those shows. It replaces suggestions as it needs space (or with other suggestions).
BTW, if you just don't like the suggestions feature it can easily be turned off.
What if the Hokey-Pokey really is what it's all about?
I have the TiVo and I think if given a choice between the two options, I'd take the TiVo method.
It takes a little getting used to, but the FF system on TiVo corrects for reasonable reaction time. You can, typically, lean on the FF button 3 times and when you see the show, press it again. Nearly every time I do this, It jumps right back to the end of the last commercial and off I go.
Also, occasionally, it's nice to say, "WTF?" and back-up to see the commercial/news trailer that just winged by. My impression is that you miss these things with a true skip feature.
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Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
The 14 hour model by itself is pretty useless if you want to store anything at all, since it's only like 8 hours at watchable quality. And when I think of price, the long-term subscription cost has to be taken into account.
And while it's certainly viable for tech-savvy folks to upgrade a cheap Tivo into something useful, how many normal folks are even going to know that it's possible? And of those, how many are going to feel comfortable on the Linux command-line?
I'm not bashing it at all - personally I think my Tivo really is 'revolutionary' in that you watch what you want when you want in the lowest-maintenance way possible. I just know a lot of folks that are put off by the price tag.
Oh no. You are sending money to WebTV aka M$ boxtop. Look out for the /. flames!
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Replay had a number of issues. 1: A Replay box cost more than a Tivo. Tivo compensated for this by charging a monthly fee, but when you walk into a store and see two similar boxes, one is $100 less, which one do you buy? The $10 monthly fee really only comes into play later. 2: Replay is a small company. As such, they had to go outside to do their manufacturing. This makes it more expensive. Rumor has it that they were losing money on every box sold. They needed to get manufacturing costs down, and that wouldn't happen until volume went way up. By licensing to companies like Panasonic, they can avoid that issue. Panasonic is very good at manufacturing, and they have a huge base of resellers that Replay didn't necessarily have direct access to. 3: Replay was betting money on their advertising, but the current schemes for distributing ads over phone lines truly suck. The revenue model there was completely unclear. The Replay is a great box. Hopefully Panasonic can improve the quality of the Showstopper to where Replay already was and make the Panasonic/Replay combination a good one. Note that Tivo is already heading in this direction, with the Philips/Tivo and Sony/Tivo boxes. It's not entirely clear to me how long Tivo will continue selling their hardware. I don't think that they're making money on it.
Its like $0.25 for an hour of video tape
and $4.00 for a hour of compressed disk TV (gigabyte). The ratio has always been around 10-20x. Five years from now, move the decimal place left again for both.
So the price has to be based on other factors such as functionality and convenience. I think there are enough of these to keep Replay/TiVo promising.
ReplayTV wasn't some great little weak guy. Tivo units tend to be about cost less than ReplayTV units. Why? Because instead of saying the subscription is free, but building it into the price, they actually bill it seperately. No effective difference there. TiVo does have lifetime subscription for $200 which is, gosh, the same as the price difference between comparable tivo and replaytv units.
ReplayTV actually has an annoying feature where you get ads when you pause. Hit pause, get a helpful advertisement, burning into your screen. Yeah, that's so much better.
Grow up, and stop complaining about the capitalist status quo. You want change? then do something other than whine about topics where you obviously don't even have a solid base of information.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
It takes about 4 seconds and 4 button presses to skip through a normal commercial break (approx. 2-3 minutes of "normal time")... and it took me about 2-3 nights to get the timing down to do it. It's a piece of cake.
Hardware is a brutal business, as American TV, VCR, IBM clone, and now Computer VCR makers have found out. Sell the software and content to manage the hardware. In some cases you may want to be in the hardware end for a year or two (MicroSoft plan?) to jumpstart the software.
Maybe they shouldn't have stood by while Panasonic released a defective version of their product -- the Showstopper -- with Macrovision detection -- highly succeptable to false positives -- on the inputs.
Now that they've acquired a reputation for delivering a shoddy product, there isn't much left for them to do but license out the technology. Perhaps others can avoid the Showstopper mistake.
I think the biggest obstacle for digital video recorders to become mainstream is the price point. Until they can get knocked down to VCR territory in that respect, they will just be geek toys for the most part. Whether or not that can happen, though, is the question, since they are already losing money on the hardware (which is why Replay is getting out of that side of the business).
My point is, the TiVo folks went the right route, and Replay botched it. The results are rather plain to see.
I talked with Microsoft about ultimate tv recently and they said that there would be Ethernet connections in it to access the data guide via the Net. Of course they didn't mention anything about using it to transfer programs to computers, which is one of the big questions about both replay and tivo today. (One point for Microsoft for putting two satellite tuners in their box for PIP and recording different channels.) But none of them is talking about a date for incorporating 1394, which is a bummer, since that would do away with the decode/re-encode process that's so idiotic right now. Might have something to do with the MPAA... Anyway, I'm getting a DirecTivo any day to try out, so let's hope the thing works.
A Dubs
I guess I'd want to re-arrange about a weeks worth of TV viewing for watching at geek-convenient times, i.e. about 20 hours. There are
occasions when I'd get interested in a TV series mid-season and wished to have access to earlier episodes.
Not only that, there are useful cases where you might want to see what is going on during the commecials - for example, sometimes for "preview" commercials used to indicate up-coming episodes or new shows, an icon will appear during the commercial, allowing you to press SELECT and have Tivo automatically add that program to your TODO list. Even skipping at full speed you can usually see the icon and press SELECT, or at least go back and see what the deal was. You wouldn't even be aware of this feature if you simply skipped blindly ahead 30 seconds.
And as the previous poster points out, it's actually better to skip the Tivo way, because you have control over when you jump back to real time.
I think the real test (IMHO) of how well ReplayTV is doing (and is going to do) is how many stores are physically carrying the devices. At first, only TiVo was available locally while the ReplayTV could only be had by ordering over the Internet. Once Panasonic got the deal to produce ReplayTV devices, BOOM! They were in The Good Guys, Fry's, etc. Frankly, I waited for that to happen before I bought one (I liked the ReplayTV better from all that I had read about the two devices), simply because I'm not a fan of buying devices sight unseen.
This sort of overreaction from the public (yes, you people are included in the public) is typical. I suppose it's caused by the news media who treat every press release as if it is a big deal and/or crisis. Get with the program. ReplayTV isn't dead yet.
There is a firmware problem with the DishPlayer when it records more then 50 hours (or 50 events, no one is sure) it erases all the recordings and configurations and you have to set up the unit again. People have been upgrading to a max size of 46GB, anything over that and it may crash. Some people says it has to do with the hard-disk geometry, but who knows.
The reason I bought one of the first ReplayTVs, and not a TiVo, is because of the privacy policy, which seems to be commonly ignored. ReplayTV says that information about what you watch will remain private, whereas TiVo refused to say anything similar.
I hope that this move by ReplayTV won't mean the end of snoop-free digital recorders.
-- Sam Weber
The red encoded as green is actually a known issue, so I'm surprised you haven't run into it. I'm assuming that it must be something signal specific (maybe my signal is a tad hot or something?). Whatever it is, it's a publicly admitted problem, and one that a Tivo plugged into the same spot doesn't experience
I've crashed them just by using them. I have some weird knack for finding ways to break software that nobody else notices. Just yesterday I got a Tivo into a mode where while displaying guide data, the first two lines of guide data would be blank... <shrug> it happens. no big deal, just a minor annoyance.
As for Replay's ability to record by preference, it doesn't touch Tivo. Tivo, after using a unit for a few weeks, will record almost nothing that you don't like, and it only does this with extra space anyway, so if you fill to capacity, it just won't do that. I, however, record very little with my main Tivo... one or two shows a day, basically. This means that the auto-disk-fill feature is pretty kickass for me.
I didn't know about this new mode, I'll have to check it out when I go home, see what I haven't been paying attention to.
One bad thing about both, that I forgot.... No HDTV recording.... maybe in a few years, I guess.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
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
Well if you got lots of money and lots of cool stuff. Take the phillips pronto supercrazy remote and you can build a macro button on your TiVo page that fastforwards at the highest speed for a set amount of time and then hits play again. Not super elegant, but it works.
The phillips pronto btw is the coolest "wow" factor gadget i've ever owned for non techies. Everyone and i do mean everyone who plays with it wants one until they hear the price.
--- I do not moderate.
I think ReplayTV is seeing the difference between a service-based business model vs. a hardware-based business model. TiVo has never sold their own hardware - they license the design to Philips-Magnavox and Sony. TiVo then collects a monthly/yearly/lifetime fee for service, without which the box is pretty much a live TV-only device. ReplayTV has always included their service as part of the purchase price, which they've had to reduce to compete with TiVo on the shelf. TiVo's been eating their lunch.
Panasonic's OEM version of the ReplayTV has been selling much better than ReplayTV's own model (ah, the benefits of brand recognition). So it makes a lot of sense to get rid of the overhead, find one or two more manufacturers to sign to licensing deals, and maybe change the service to a TiVo-style pay-for-play service (grandfathering existing customers, of course ;) ).
Right...
Hey HackTivo types - what would it take to create a "30 Sec Skip" feature on Tivo, since that was the only really good feature on Replay (and it was also what the broadcasters squawked most loudly about)? I have no idea but I bet one of y'all might...
sulli
RTFJ.