The Next Generation of PVR has no Hard Drive

William Kucharski sent us a story about the next generation of PVR (Tivo) device. This time there will be no hard drives. Instead the content will be stored at your cable company and streamed in real time to the reader. The upside is that this effectively removes many of the limitations of existing PVRs and could make all media available on demand all the time... eliminating the concept of "Channels" entirely. The main downside is that control is moved out of your home, returning PVR users to the dark ages where they had to watch commercials.

Comments

the future is bleek

[Anonymous Coward]

A friend of mine and I were discussing this sort of thing this weekend. Why is it as technology progresses and things become easier, we must sacrifice or privacy more and more? VCR+ allowed people to quickly and easily tape shows, that progressed into TiVo which took that a step further, only downside is, MS or whomever now knows every show you watch/tape. We talk about having microwaves hooked to the web, our TVs, pretty much any appliance, but once you start doing this, what's stopping people from tracking and selling this information.
We have articles discussing CDR recording and companies attempting to keep track of who's songs you are burning.
We already have our little supermarket coupon devices which track every piece of food you buy. So basically in the near future, someone will know every phone call I make, every show I watch, every song I listen to, every game I play, every piece of food I buy, and the list goes on.
1984 is scarier then ever since it's happening ever so quickly and ever so subtle and its become beyond the governments control and the people are too lazy or comfortable to stand up for their rights.
The future looks bleek and I'm actually becoming frighten for what appears to becoming our way...

Make a buffer box.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheap and simple... Order your program, have it delivered through a buffer box that will store it on a 3 gig hard disk (1 hour's worth at hi quality) then after the amount of time of commercials, come in and watch it off the buffer box, and FF through the commercials. Such a box should be cheap with only a 3 gig HD. They even have sub $50 SOC that have TV out capability. Duh!

Re:Am I just stupid? Why not a VCR?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you have the time to watch 30 hours of backlogged tivo recordings? Geez. Get a life.

Re:the Linux VCR Howto

[Yarn]

I suspects this limits you to the ~300x200 res supported by the BTTV capture driver. I don't think this resolution is sufficent.

I have a Hauppauge card with built in mpeg2 compression, but the linux driver for it is still deep within development, and with no help from hauppauge.

I pretty much expected this, so I'm not bitter ;)

Re:Hauppage?

[Yarn]

It is cringeworthy. Luckily you can run it with the window borders turned off.

BSD drivers are unlikely, yes. Is there any bt8x8 support under the BSDs?

Re:No more Blockbuster?

[jbrw]

There's a company here the UK, recently launched, called Homechoice that does VoD, based on BT's ADSL network. According to their FAQ, "[y]ou can pause, rewind, or fast forward it and even watch it as many times as you want over your 24-hour rental period."

A friend of mine has it - apparently one month they got their on-demand charges to over £100 because of the sheer convenience of clicking a button to get a movie they (more or less) wanted to watched streamed to them instantly.

The biggest problem with HomeChoice, from what I hear, is their range of content. And this comes down to business issues, rather than technical. I believe a lot of the TV channels they have show older re-runs than you would expect to get on a normal cable/satellite/digital terrestrial service.

No idea what HomeChoice's back-end looks like. I pressume the infrastructure costs have come down significantly since the Time-Warner (?) trials in Florida in the early '90s - the trials that get quoted so often as to how VoD will never catch on (and I guess that's the what Wired was talking about in the above comment).

Homechoice also does a bearable always-on 'net connection, although with some pretty significant limitations (128k, NAT, etc) - but I imagine it's quite attractive to your ma-and-pa style home users. ADSL Guide probably talks about their net services. You'll probably have to dig around their message forums to find some users of the service.

As far as Blockbuster goes, I thought I read something recently about them doing a JV in the UK to provide VoD-style services. Can't find a link to that story, but here's something about them doing a JV with DirecTV in the States. Blockbuster thinks, probably correctly, that their brand is worth something in the PPV/VoD market.

Contradiction

[Have Blue]

This is at the same time desirable and undesirable for various reasons.

• Cutting commercials: Sure, I'd love to do this on the face of it, but give it five seconds of thought and you see that a) the content providers will give you this feature when hell freezes over b) the alternatives to commercial breaks are even worse. The article suggests that commercials could be replaced with either split-screen (wtf! that's already bad enough when they run promos over the credits of the previous show), logos (Not sure exactly what they mean... if it's anything bigger than the station emblem in the corner it will get annoying) or product placement (read as: give significant control of content to advertisers). None of those are preferable to commercial breaks.
• Profiling: [blah blah blah corporation blah blah blah big brother blah blah blah paranoid ravings blah blah blah]
• Not to mention the technological issues: At the worst case, every single person orders a different movie at once, so they lose all the advantages of distribution. Even with digital cable I can't see how they can stream more than a few movies at once, in which case the meaningful choice (any movie whenever) is gone and this is no different from current premium cable.

Re:not fair

[Dicky]

TiVo launched in the UK in October last year, and I've had one since December. They're not the same boxes as in the US, the UK ones being made by Thompson, but the service is substantially the same. The usual dollar-to-pound conversion applies, meaning that both the hardware (and there's only one box available, with 45Gb of storage) and the service cost 40% more than in the US.

The biggest issue you'd have to overcome to provide your own service would be the hardware. You could probably use a UK TiVo without to much problem (has the right voltage and TV standard), but you've have to get the guide data from somewhere. I spoke to people at LinuxWorld in New York back in January who were using TiVo boxes in Australia, and had hacked up the box enough that they could get the guide data from a local web site with local TV listings. I'm not sure if they've released that software, or if it crosses the line regarding the community support of TiVo, meaning that the hacking community will not try to undermine the TiVo service, which would cause financial damage to TiVo - the company. If the software to get guide data in Australia existed, it wouldn't be hard to write similiar software for the US and UK, meaning that people could get full functionality without paying

All we need now....

[SiliconJesus]

Is for M$ / AOL / @Home / Sony to get together and decide what *they* want you to watch. All they ads they see fit.
Secret windows code

Re:disk approaching $2 a GB

[Sabalon]

And six years ago I paid $200 for a 1GB drive.

I hate being in the computer industry.

Re:PVR

[cpt kangarooski]

In truth, it needs two things - first, the script to munge data from various guides (hopefully not _just_ tvguide) and secondly some kind of detection script that can see if it's failing for some reason and poke around for a replacement script automatically to help foil attempts to impair the use of the things, and alert people when such attempts are being made.

(Truly good would be the ability to read it out of the cable feed for digital cable systems, but the legality of that is unknown to me, though I wouldn't expect copyrights to protect it; it's factual data)

I'd be very interested in a homemade box - I have no desire to line the pockets of big companies when I can do things myself in in open cooperation with others, and I LOATHE advertising.

Competition will help consumers

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Fortunately, this is a sector of the industry in which competition still exists. The consumer will ultimately choose whichever product delivers the most value. This will probably come in the form of a box that does not depend on a subscription service and can store data locally. Ideally, the "guide" data will come from a place where it is already being paid for, such as the program guide included with DirecTV service. All they have to do is figure out some way to export the program guide from the DirecTV receiver.

On the other hand, this is a market that Microsoft is entering, so perhaps they'll simply tell consumers what to do (and buy, and view...) by eliminating competition.
--

One word: Ikadega

[Archeopteryx]

I don't know what technology these folks plan to use for this system, but I do know what the right choice for a large media streaming deployment is; Ikadega's DirectPath(tm) technology. Check out http://www.ikadega.com for more information.

(BTW, Yes, I do work there.)

no, previous generation...

[kevin lyda]

i remember reading about this. it was a huge array of sgi boxes with a fiber ring connecting them. people would request a movie and one box in the cluster would stream it to them. in addition you could fast forward it, rewind, etc. it was available in orlando, florida. here's a link to a news letter that has a blurb on it.

the year? why it was 1994 (and i think i heard about it in 1993, but i'm not certain).

granted what the /. story covers is more than movies, but the principle is the same.

Re:no, previous generation...

[angelo]

Damn. This is one of those times that I HOPE FOR a company having a patent on the concept so it never sees the light of day..

Sometimes process patents are a good thing, go figure.

Re:No more Blockbuster?

[schwantz]

Blockbuster is already partnering with some big pipe providers to have its own brand of VOD.

Re:Am I just stupid? Why not a VCR?

[Ed Avis]

OTOH, it is easy to expand your capacity - 3 hour, fairly crappy tapes cost around 0.89 sterling where I live. That's six hours if you don't mind really crappy picture quality (which I don't) and sound quality (which annoys me more). You can keep buying more tapes without limit. But fitting a new disk to your TiVo is expensive, and for the non-geek, difficult.

Re:Am I just stupid? Why not a VCR?

[Ed Avis]

I don't archive anything. But I often get 'behind' by up to a hundred hours (eg over Christmas when lots of stuff is on, or when a particular show is being repeated one episode every day). A huge stack of videotapes is no problem, I couldn't really do anything equivalent with TiVo.

I am at home, I just may not have time to watch TV (or at least not to watch it at the same rate it is broadcast). But I can just accumulate stuff and watch it later when I have less to do. Your situation may differ.

Re:Am I just stupid? Why not a VCR?

[Ed Avis]

I don't need TiVo's 'intelligence' - I wrote XMLTV to grab listings in advance and semi-automatically pick what to watch. I still have to program the VCR for tomorrow's programmes, but that takes only five minutes. I'd much rather have some Perl code and an open file format (whether or not I wrote it myself) than rely on a subscription to some black-box consumer electronics. </plug>

(BTW - have a look at my TV preferences if you're curious - though this does include some shows I record for my younger brother. Honest...)

Why not both?

[Ed Avis]

I'd just get this service and stick a hard-disk recorder, or plain VCR, on the other end.

Re:probably flamebait but....

[Chris Burke]

Or in other words, it is just a glorified vcr, but that's a very good thing.

Unlike this new POS, which says "you can have your neat new features, but you have to take this stick up the behind along with it."

Re:probably flamebait but....

[Chris Burke]

I've never seen a VCR that...

Right. Thus glorified. :)

Re:Filtering commercials

[Archfeld]

They claim it will be back with 2.5 but they LIE ALOT. I hate the way my unsub'd machine works now.
It is useless until 'they' decide to fix it which will be never.

Re:probably flamebait but....

[sdw]

A VCR is a useless piece of ancient junk compared to a Tivo, for time shifting.

Try subscribing to a show for the season, no matter when it's on, and having the device manage recording, aging, automatically deleting, and other features. 30+ hours of these shows with perfect fast forward/reverse, pause, bookmarking, etc. You can't do any of that automatically with a VCR.

Unfortunately, people can't seem to get over the price tag, even though it's fairly cheap now ($300 + listing subscription).

Go buy a Tivo and buy the lifetime subscription (just went up?). Best video entertainment purchase you'll ever make.

I bought one of the original units directly from Tivo when the first /. story on them appeared, long ago.

sdw

Re:I detest comercial television

[Art Tatum]

I assume that ABC is different in Australia? Here, it's one of the big commercial networks.

Re:Could be good (won't be, though)

[esj at harvee]

Anybody have figures on the total cost of advertising per viewer per half-hour of programming in the US or UK?

a few years ago, an article in wired claimed it was in the ballpark of 25 cents per viewer per half-hour program. With inflation, 50 cents per viewer per half-hour would not be all that far off.

hmmm, at that rate I'm wasting about $15 per week. Time to go back to books.

Cool

[c]

Use the new Tivo unit to pull whichever programs you want into your GPL PVR, then watch it across your LAN without commercials. Less local storage needed, but more programs available.

At least until they build content-control into the display.

c.

That's right, they're not cheap.

[EnglishTim]

Well, I don't like to break this to you, but... $200 is not cheap. That's more than an average VCR costs.

For a Tivo-like device to become useful and cool to the home user (i.e. be able to filter out ads, etc...) the manufacturer has to be able to make a profit on the hardware *alone*. Oh, and it really ought to cost $150 or less for most people to buy it. So, manufacturing cost would have to be about half that at most - $75. You've got to remember all the compression and decompression hardware on there as well, so I'd guess you'd need a hard drive that costs about $30.

Not a PVR... this is Video on Demand

[unsung]

Well, first of all, this isn't a PVR - and the article doesn't say that it is. This is basically a Media-on-demand player. It's equivalent to watching BMWfilms through your cable modem now - except with some finer interface enhancements for the TV. Unlike PVR, it doesn't arrange the TV shows that you want to see in order.

The benefits of MOD/VOD players:
- no HD - (no HD crash), and cheaper,
- supposed "unlimited" library of movies to choose from,
- no need to upgrade the unit as often as... say, TiVo. HD prices are always going down. Early TiVo adopters probably get the shaft here.
- probably have some webtv type of features - surf the web, email - benefit?

On a side note, the TV industry must be crazy now, with the different digital standards going - MPEG 2, 4, 7, HDTV, NTSC, Analog, Digital, Broadband DSL, Cable, Satellite... There's a lot happening right now that can leave consumers in confusion.

Re:Another reason to Kill your TV

[afniv]

So add to your cable bill the fee for this kind of service, probably billed like your long distance, right?

July Statement:

All episodes of Gilligan's Island: 7.00
Last episode of Seinfeld: 0.15
Max Headroom: 0.25
3 M*A*S*H episodes: 0.45

And 30 pages in your credit card bill: priceless

~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"

Another reason VOD will fail

[esper]

I am convinced that video-on-demand will fail in the market regardless of convenience, privacy, technology, or any of the other reasons that I've seen thrown around. I honestly believe that, as great as it sounds in theory, people don't want it in practice.

Why? It goes back to scarcity. If everything is available at all times, there's no incentive to either decide that something is specifically worth watching or taking the time to actually watch it.

For example, a few years back, I taped Monty Python. All of it. I have every episode on tape and I've never watched them - half the time I forget that they're even there. But when I see that Python is on TV, what do I do? Tune it in. Same thing with Babylon 5. And just about everything else I have on tape or DVD. It rarely gets watched unless either I have friends over or something external (such as it being on a current broadcast schedule) reminds me that it's there.

There's also the "I can just watch it later" aspect. I've got the anime series Bastard!! on tape and I've been meaning to watch it again for probably two months now, but whenever I have some time, I face the choice of doing something else now and watching Bastard!! later, or watching it now and skipping the other thing.

VOD will fail for the simple reason that we are more driven by scarcity than most of us realize.

disk approaching $2 a GB

[peter303]

Last time I looked at the local computer rag
some 70-80 GB disks had fallen below $200.
One gig holds a 30-60 minutes of compressed video.
The early PVR systems were pricey at $15 / GB,
but there are hack web sites that tell you how to
add your own disk cheap.

I would not be surprised in the near future you
could get a hundred hours of video storage for
a hundred bucks. Then why rent the remote disk?

Re:Roll your own...

[School Bully]

And in Europe, we get Digital Terrestrial TV, so we don't need to encode the signal.

Aren't Nokia doing a Digital Terrestrial box with Linux on it?

TiVO is expensive, even before you put the subscription stuff on (and I would refuse to pay for that)

Mark.

Re:Bad Investment

[Sloppy]

Well, the patents I've heard of so far, were for very specific optimizations that competing PVRs wouldn't necessarily need to infringe. For example, I think Tivo's patents have to do with features peculiar to their filesystem, and using closed-caption info to more accurately determine when a program is starting. That closed-caption idea actually does sound very clever, but a competing PVR could live without it.

---

Bad Investment

[Sloppy]

I suspect this will be a commercial failure.

I think the days of money-making PVRs are seriously numbered, because this is one of the few areas where either a Free Software or Open Source alternative will eventually kick all the commercial products asses from a usability standpoint. Instead of just being an abstract political thing, it will be a concrete user interface and feature issue.

With certain types of applications, such as word processors, closed software isn't really at any significant disadvantage to Free Software, because there isn't any commercial pressure to make the product suck. In fact, a commercial developer wants (and is encouraged to) make the product as good as possible.

But as soon as you get to media-reading-related products, the developers start to be pressured by outside influences to compromise the quality of the product. We have already seen this with web browsers, with the recent story about MSIE's "Smart Tags" being a good (but not the only) example of that sort of thing.

You can also see the problem with DVD players. The hardware appliance DVD players don't have Firewire ports, the software players can't capture still frames, etc. Some users expect these features because they are natural things that someone would want to do. Eventually, unlicensed players (which, due to bad legislation, will tend to be developed by decentralized teams, and that encourages open source) will be so more feature-rich than DVDCCA-licensed players, that users will have a significant incentive to use them.

And you can see the problem with the most popular existing PVR, Tivo. Tivo is a fine product IMHO, but it also has some flaws that aren't caused by bad programmers or lack of vision, but rather, they are caused by Tivo's desire to have a good relationship with its partners. For example, there's no "30 Second Skip" and there never will be, and the fast forward intentionally over-corrects to encourage the user to watch the end of a commercial. There are also rumors that future Tivo releases are going to have new disadvantages that the existing software doesn't have. (Something is going to eat up some additional disk space, but we don't know what that is yet. But you can bet your ass that it's going to be something that users aren't asking for, and that it's related to Tivo's partners.)

A PVR that is developed free of commercial interests, will have none of these disadvantages. Right now, the components for building one on Linux are (allegedly) very primitive (I haven't even gotten it all working yet, but that's my fault), but they'll get better. Eventually they'll cross a quality threshold that the commercial PVRs are not allowed to cross, and will be so much easier to use and more capable, that users will prefer the open/free ones.

So if you're going to bet the farm on a commercial PVR and you don't have any good means to suppress open development (DMCA combined with Hague is your best bet right now), then you're not going to be a farmboy for very long.

---

Re:Bad Investment

[gsfprez]

If someone writes software that is in violation of someone else's inane 1-Click-esque patent - and then that software gets put out there - a la DeCSS, SDMI crack whitepaper, etc - what the hell are they going to do? Sue every website with the software?

Sure, they'll go after 2600.com's copy of it.. but there'll be freenet copies... copies on sealand...geocities.com/groomlake/aliengoatse.cx.. . etc.etc.etc....

software patents are totaly useless against the internet... at least ones that really don't warrant such a thing.

the only problem is going to be the cddb.com-like server necessary to have the programming listed...

that is, i have no idea how Tivo, DirecTV or TV Guide, for that matter, know what's going to be on.. and how can the free TV listing database get the programming. Can anyone elaborate?

Re:Bad Investment

[Trepalium]

The problem is that companies like Tivo have PATENTS on this kind of technology, and Open Source companies (or individuals) can't usually afford to pay for an unrestricted license that would allow them to distribute such a work. While someone such as myself, who lives in Canada, a country that doesn't recognise software patents, a large number of people who live in countries like the United States will not have this option. Such a patent would make even an end user that uses such a program a criminal, regardless of if they knew they were breaking the law by using the program or not.

Re:TIVO Question for owners :

[xneilj]

TiVo comes with a small IR controller on a wire which you place in front of the set top box or it can 'blast' the signal from the front of the TiVo and it'll bounce back to the set top box (if your room is not too big, etc.) Pop along to here if you're interested in discussing TiVo in the UK.

Back to the Future(tm) (used without permission)

[Smitty]

"The upside is that this effectively removes many of the limitations of existing PVRs"

By reintroducing all of the limitations and annoyances of existing cable TV (commercials, network outages, etc.).

I won one in a contest.

[raygundan]

I won a 14-hour model in a wacky 200-word essay contest they were having. (mine was something like "I want a Tivo. Please send me one.") I never would have purchased one on my own, but after having used it, I can safely say that I would certainly buy one now.

The biggest difference between it and a VCR, is that I can't tell my VCR things like:

-"Record every episode of the Simpsons, regardless of when the network schedules or re-schedules the episodes"
-"Record every show with Actor X in it"
-"Fill your remaining space with shows you recommend based on my viewing habits"
-"Let me watch a recorded show while another is being recorded"
-"Record at a sensible resolution, not that lousy VHS stuff"

Even without everything but the first item, the Tivo is much easier to use. Just select from the menu or type in the name of a show, and record every episode ever with just another click. Sit down at the TV later and pick the show you want to watch from a menu of 20 or so shows that you are much more likely to enjoy than just channel surfing.

the Linux VCR Howto

[raygundan]

Is right here:
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/VCR-HOWTO.html

All you need is a cheapo $50 winTV card and the patience to get it all set up.

Other alternatives include using bttv-grab and mpeg2encode, rather than vcr and avifle+divx as outlined in the howto. I have yet to get it all working quite the way I want it to, but I expect it will be done in a week or two.

Re:the Linux VCR Howto

[mr3038]

this limits you to the ~300x200 res supported by the BTTV capture driver

Umm... There must be something broken with your BTTV. I've Hauppauge WinTV PCI and I can capture up to 924x576 (PAL). With mmap()ed capture CPU time [for capturing] needed per frame is 0-2ms. Another question is whether or not you can compress 25MB/s YUV (or 38MB/s RGB) data stream fast enough... This is the reason most programs capture at lower resolutions.
_________________________

Re:No more Blockbuster?

[JamieF]

I agree; I've been a NetFlix customer for about two months and so far it's great. About 1 in 10 DVDs is scratched and is unplayable (so far) but they handle that well. I haven't had the unavailability problems that the other poster has. It's very convenient, particularly because I'm in SF and NetFlix is in San Jose, so the snail mail delivery time is pretty quick.

Here's to hoping that paying for a service will keep it in business.

Re:The more things change...

[JamieF]

This is pretty fatalistic. Ad-funded analog free TV will never die (sorry, digital TV hornswagglers), but lots of people spend lots of money on cable and satellite TV. Nobody wants to watch commercials, and it's a lot easier to run a business when you're focused on giving customers what they want rather than walking the fine line of providing desirable content without pissing off sponsors. Cable has proven that there is a pay model for TV that makes it profitable to deliver more narrowly targetted content to people who have a bit of money to spend.

The only reason there isn't even more targetted content offered for more money without ads to an even narrower audience is that content publishers are paranoid about piracy. As they were with the VCR, and as the music folks were about the cassette tape. What they fail to realize is that movie trading is tedious, very time consuming, and the resulting quality is pretty bad (compared to a DVD or laserdisc). Convenient delivery of extremely high quality digital content is something that people would pay for, but greed on the part of content owners drives them to refuse to try it until they have a total control, through a 100% foolproof means of defeating piracy. Of course this is impossible.

What will change is the attitudes of content owners. They are still living in a fantasy world, and regardless of what they annouce as their intentions or wish for how things will work, they will be forced to accede to customers' wishes. Content won't be totally free (that's a fantasy world too), but it will be cheap, because nothing else will succeed when pitted against the consumer's other option: piracy.

Re:I detest comercial television

[Shadowlion]

My guess is that's it's the Australian version of the BBC.


--

Re:Not tivo

[Scutter]

Frisbee=Kleenex=Aspirin=TiVo

Personally, I love my TiVo and I'm happy to see that it has such widespread name-recognition that it's considered the "standard" in PVR's.

I don't throw a flying disc.
I don't blow my nose on a tissue.
I don't get rid of headaches with acetylsalicylic acid.
I don't time-shift my Cinemax soft-core porn with a PVR.

FP

Re:Not tivo

[Scutter]

Heh...who needs to re-type stuff when there's Google and cut-n-paste? :)

Devil's Advocate....

[Ensign Nemo]

Television costs money to produce. Where does that money come from? If people can completely cut out the commercials what incentive do companies have to fork over money for show?
We can't have our cake and eat it too. What are better alternatives to commercials? (This is a serious question.) Please thing about that. Complaining doesn't do any good unless you generate an alternative.

Re:No more Blockbuster?

[Moofie]

My problem with NetFlix was that of the thirty movies I wound up with on my queue, ALL of them were on delayed availability...most had been there for months. When they weren't able to explain to me when I'd get the movies I wanted, and were unable to explain to me why I should give them $20 for them to give me zero movies, I quit their service. I was sad to do so...had their stock been more reliable with esoteric movies (why have them in the list if I can't get them?) I'd have been delighted to continue paying them.

Re:Use a downstream PVR on the upstream PVR's outp

[Ralph Wiggam]

Two problems:

Your recorder at home might be difficult to program. As it is now, the Tivo gets a TV schedule and I select what I want to watch. It knows when everything is on and records for me. Depending on how the upstream feed is set up, you might have to manually instruct the Tivo to record a specific channel for a specific time period. If I wanted to do that, I would use my old VCR.

I don't know about you, but I would rather not pay for two nearly identical services every month. Obviously nobody knows what the pricing on this new upstream stuff will be, but it could get expensive.

-B

Re:Back to the Future(tm) (used without permission

[WNight]

And no actual recorded content...

At least with a standard PVR or digital VCR you've got your shows even if you cancel the service at some point.

(Well, unless you've got a TiVo, where they fraudulently disable the device when you cancel their listings service.)

Surveys

[ianezz]

The main downside is that control is moved out of your home, returning PVR users to the dark ages where they had to watch commercials.

The company streaming out the content will also be able to gather tangible information of the tastes of its users, following the principle that "if you are willing to time-shift it to watch it later, you are really interested in it". This should be by far more accurate than everything done until now (i.e. surveys done on a limited set of people).

It would be possible also to tell if the content met the expectations (i.e. lots of people recording something, but then few watching it for more than 10 minutes or so).

This kind of surveys could be either a real boost to producing better quality content, or the grave for every idea not strictly following well-known successful formats... I'm not sure if I really want to know the answer.

Use a downstream PVR on the upstream PVR's output

[AtariDatacenter]

The main downside is that control is moved out of your home, returning PVR users to the dark ages where they had to watch commercials. Unless, of course, you still have your PVR at home, and use IT to record the video that comes from the upstream PVR. Then, you've got all the features you want. Chances are, that an upstream PVR will be PPV like. If that is the case, I'd still use the downstream PVR in my home for the majority of recording, but only use the upstream PVR for recording conflicts, or niche programming. In any case, the PVR at the home isn't going away.

Get your hands off me you damn, dirty Ads!

[schmack]

What are you people crazy? Ads are here to stay. Fact: Television exists because of advertising. There is no way Tivo will be allowed to attain a significant market share without some safe-guards in place to make sure viewers are force-fed their daily dose of advertisements.

VCRs are tolerated by the Television industry because their impact on ad-aversion is thought to be minimal. Face it, most people don't know how to use the timer-record features of their VCRs - the vast majority of television people watch is live-broadcast. Thus, ad-watching remains a huge part of television viewing.

Tivo and similar PVRs can change this - through integrated electronic programme guides, they make it easy for people to record shows regardless of their air-time. Large built-in storage make them even more attractive. Your average Joe Remote can now actually negotiate the smorgasboard of TV in their own time, and therefore easily skip ads. Once these devices become as ubiquitous as the VCR free-to-air networks are in real trouble.

Unless... well, you work it out.

--

Re:Get your hands off me you damn, dirty Ads!

[Gordonjcp]

Fact: Television exists because of advertising.

Not in the UK it doesn't. We pay a certain amount of money towards the production of 7 or 8 free-to-air, advert-free *DIGITAL* TV channels.

through integrated electronic programme guides, they make it easy for people to record shows regardless of their air-time

I wonder what the funny clock thing on my VCR is for?

Re:Get your hands off me you damn, dirty Ads!

[b0bby]

VCRs aren't "tolerated" by the TV industry - the courts have upheld them as fair use. They're stuck with VCRs, but they'd like to make sure that newer tech doesn't kill their ad revenue.

No more Blockbuster?

[hawkestein]

Could this sort of thing wipe out the video rental business?

I never watch pay-per-view movies (and I don't know anybody who does), because I like being able to watch a movie at a time that's convinient for me, pause it to go to the bathroom, etc. These outweighs the disadvantages of actually having to go to the rental store.

But, with video on demand, these disadvantages are gone. Bye bye, Blockbuster?
--

Re:No more Blockbuster?

[Lozzer]

PPV must be making some money since it's still available.

Substitute VA Linux or Redhat for PPV and it doesn't seem to read so true. Not that that implies that PPV isn't making money

Re:No more Blockbuster?

[IronChef]

Sadly Blockbuster will stick around. At least until VOD can offer as many choices. On my satellite, there are only 25 PPV channels, but many movies are shown on 2-3 channels so there's a selection of start times.

naturally most of the movies are current ones, too. Though once or twice I noticed Shaft was available.

Re:No more Blockbuster?

[IronChef]

NetFlix RULES. When I had time to watch movies, I dumped Blockbuster for NetFlix and never looked back! Anyone with a rental habit owes it to themselves to try them out. It's just a better way of doing things.

Re:No more Blockbuster?

[cnkeller]

Much better than getting in your car, driving to the store, sifting through BlockBuster's nonsense, and then having to return the darn thing.

I guess I don't understand this thinking. Maybe it's my mentality or maybe it's where I live. There are at least 10 video rental stores (blockbuster,hollywood, mom&pop) within a mile or two of where I live (San Jose). Take a nice after dinner walk with the girlfriend or 60 second drive and pick a movie. Not much nonsense. Late fees and returning the tape? I don't know about everyone else, but I don't hibernate in a cave. I'm usually running in and out of the house everyday: work, gym, groceries, post office, mall, whatever. I mean, how big a deal is it to swing by and drop a video off?

I'm not criticizing anyone, I just don't understand what the big deal is about renting a movie then dropping it off. As far as VoD and other things, it's just another reason to never leave the house and become a real TROLL in my opinion. Groceries? WebVan. Entertainment? porn.com or VoD. Money? Contract programming work over the net (for us programmers). Bank? Wingspan. Am I the only one who actually enjoys leaving the house for things?

Re:No more Blockbuster?

[vslashg]

I'm also in Austin and have played with this. It's great when it works: you tune to channel 999 and you get a pretty wide selection of movies to watch. Unfortunately, I can almost never get it to work. All times I've tried going there except 2, I get an "error initializing file loader".

Re:No more Blockbuster?

[banuaba]

AOLTW cable does this here in Austin, TX. It's called icontrol. I rented? paid for? one of them the other day, and it was pretty cool.. fast forward, rewind, pause.. and they have a catalouge of about 200-300 movies (and yes, billy, they do have pr0n).
Brant

Re:No more Blockbuster?

[tb3]

Video on demand was market-tested years ago (there was a write-up in Wired about it at the time.) It bombed. The conclusion was that people liked going to the video store to browse the aisles, and maybe rent something they hadn't planned on renting.
As for pay-per-view, my cable company offers an 'all-day ticket', you pay $3.99 and it unlocks the channel for a day. That's relatively convenient. PPV must be making some money since it's still available.

"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"

Re:No more Blockbuster?

[4mn0t1337]

These outweighs the disadvantages of actually having to go to the rental store.

Uh,... *TWICE*.

One of the things that sucks about Blockbuster (aside from the fact that it is BlockBuster!) it that you have atoms you are responsible to transport. And you have to do this twice (at least) for every rental session. And if you don't do the second trip by a time Blockbuster declares, then all of a sudden the whole experience costs a *LOT* more. (Isn't it something like 60% of BLockBuster's revenue stream comes from late fees? More??)

When I want to rent stuff, I use NetFlix.com. I set up my orders over the internet. I keep a handful of movies around so I have something to watch when I have time. I PAY NO LATE FEES WHATSOEVER! And a new movie is only 2-3 days away (keeping in mind that I have others in hand in addition to the one I just watched and returned). The only down-side is I don't have the "immediate gratification" factor of picking something I want and watching it that night. BUt the selection I do keep on hand has enough variety, that if I am in the mood for drama, I have one. Or in the mood for comedy, I have one.

But, if I do feel like watching one out of the blue, I *do* use the pay-per-view. (Hi, hawkenstein! I'm 4mn0t1337. Nice to meet you. Now you know someone who uses pay-per-view.) I have digital cable, so I have about 60 channels of pay-per-view movies. Not all channels are unique--They usually have about 10-20 movies that start at all different times. So, pick one and chances are it is starting either now, or within 30 min. And most of them are "all day tickets" which means I pay 3-4$ and get the movie played for a 24 hour period.

and if you want to get up to go to the bathroom or watch at a time that is convinient, throw a tape in the VCR first or turn on TiVo and just record it from the begining. Then watch it when you want. Much better than getting in your car, driving to the store, sifting through BlockBuster's nonsense, and then having to return the darn thing.

______

Re:No more Blockbuster?

[4mn0t1337]

I have a few rental stores in my area, but they are all BlockBuster. BLockbuster killed all of the Mom&Pop's in my area.

What I am left with is the film choices of BLockBuster Management. Great! I can rent 400 copies of Jurasic Park VII or I can choose from the 4 independent/foreign films they stock. (Mind you, I am not comparing this to pay-per-view, whose selection is none better. NetFlix on the other hand tries to stock every DVD ever made. Better choice.)

And to some degree, *picking up the film* isn't as much of a problem. Other than (in SoCal) finding parking, dealing with lines 15 deep and only two people on register, picking through the picked through generic selection under those horrible fluorescent lights, and making one more (semi-)useless trip in my car.

You *always* have enough time to rent a film. I never seem to have enough time to return them. Too many fires to put out, and next thing you know, you ran out of hours in the day. Then I wind up paying late fees. Hence the NETFLIX.com.

"Troll"?? You say that like that is a bad thing...

Seriously, my days are such that I get very little time at home. I paid all that money for a house to not be able to enjoy the comfort of it. When I worked out of my office at home, I would have been looking for more excuses to leave, but as it is now I am not there enough and relish the hours when I am.

So it boils down to convenience. I (as a lot of /.ers) don't have a lot of spare time (aside from the hours spent on slashdot). I don't like to waste my time in BlockBuster, when I have a solution (NETFLIX + Pay-per-view combo) that A) Costs me less, and B)Gives me more time to enjoy the movies.

Oh, and... I do get my food over the internet (not webvan but healthy gourment foods). My entertainment gets in the house over the cable, phoneline, and USPS. I still run to the bank in person (they know me there and checks get cleared into my account quicker than the ATM). All of my hardware/software comes from broadband/AirbornExpress. I still run out for minor groceries. And until they make a USB port bigger, I carry in all the dry cleaning.

______

Re:probably flamebait but....

[bdrago]

For everything I've read about Tivo, there's nothing yet that has convinced me I want one. Can it get to the 100+ digital channels I have now? (not that my VCR can, but if the Tivo can't, then it's no better.) Just curious.

Yes. My old 14-hour Tivo controls my brand new digital cable box flawlessly. I've even set it up to record the digital channels instead of analog if both are available (like HBO).

For DirectTV users, there's DirectTivo which combines a Tivo and your DirectTV unit, so that you only have to have one box. Or you can just connect your Tivo to your current satellite box with a serial cable, and it will control it from there.

Re:Hauppage?

[funcan]

I *thonk* the voodoo3 tv has hardware mp3 encoding...

Re:TIVO Question for owners :

[tm2b]

I don't know either of those particular boxes, but if it's the same as a cable converter or a Dish Network controller...

There are two possible leads out of a TiVo - serial and tethered IR emitters. The TiVo has a huge database of possible controls codes, and you cycle through them on startup.

Hope that helps,

Re:Targeted advertising not so bad...

[t_allardyce]

I want everything - the full works, i want up to the minute news, reviews and entertainment. I want top notch TV, films, music, games and software. I want it full, uncut and uncensored - with no advertising and no sponsership. I don't want to see a single coke can in my life. I want all of this - it must be high quality. And, i want it for _free_
lol :-)
I think bill gates should pay for it - as punishment for his ways.

Re:Video on Demand, so early '90s

[t_allardyce]

No, PVR provides a way to let the big money corporations to control what you do while making it seem like their not. The only way forward on that front is to build your own pvr, or get a local computer store to custom build one for you.
That way you can get infinatly more features and no restrictions.

As for Video on Demand - its already around. eg. HomeChoice etc.. but people dont realise that current technology is simply _not_ ready for it. You cannot possably expect to get decent quality from a compressed signal through a cable modem or whatever, its just quantity over quality - the way most companies (like dvd lol) work these days.

Kill them, its the only way to stop their control

[t_allardyce]

Is it just me, or are we moving closer towards the sort of civilisations in films like Aliens, where everything is controlled by the company

So, are there any free-lance terrorists out there willing to do our bidding?.. All you have to do is take out Bill Gates, The heads of AOL/Time, The Heads of Tivo, and the TV Networks and dont forget the _entire_ board of MPAA, RIAA, DMCA, and SDMI people. Also Thompson, and those people who were responsible for CPRM and anyone else with too much money and power... um... Mr. Torvalds will pay you.. no, scrap that, you can nick all of Bill G's money

rofl
-tfga

A very *smart* glorified VCR

[Monte]

Disclaimer: I own a Replay box, which is a competing version of PVR. I don't know enough about the differences between the units to know if all the same features are on Tivo.

Essentially it's a box that watches TV so you don't have to. You tell it what programs you like, it consults the TV listings it downloads every night and records those shows to the hard drive. Yes, you can set a VCR up to do most of this, but the biggest advantage is convenience:

You don't have to put a tape in, or remember to take a prerecorded tape out, or worry about whether you've got enough room on the tape.

It automagically erases old episodes for you (you can specify how many to cache, so you could keep, say, the last three episodes).

It can find a show & record it reguardless of what channel or time it's on. You can say "Record every single 'This Old House'" and it'll do that.

What it does that a VCR can't: automatically spools the live feed. By that I mean you can be watching a ball game live, the phone rings, you hit Pause on the remote, and the game freezes, but is recorded on the hard drive. Phonecall over, you hit Play and it picks up right where it left off. Even if you don't pause the play you've got "instant replay" on live feeds, so you can take another look at that last pitch, a dozen times if you'd like.

But the BEST feature (and the one that's got to drive advertisers crazy): you skip commercials. On a show that's pre-recorded or one that's been spooled, you can zip n number of 30 second increments forward. "We'll be right back after"... 3, Quickskip, zingo we're right back to the good stuff.

The Replay has really changed the way I watch TV. I think in 5 years these things will be ubitquitous, as common as VCRs are today. Hopefully we'll soon see versions with built-in DVD-R burners for archiving shows.

Hope that answers you question...

This brings up an interesting question..

[AnalogBoy]

If you are able to exercise your 'right' to skip commercials, and the companies providing said commercials finds out about this if this becomes a big industry - Where will the funding for your favorite television programs come from?

I'll happily watch 5-10 minutes of commercials per hour if that means $FAVTVSHOW can continue to be on the air.

Re:PVR

[grytpype]

It would need some integration with the TV Guide website to get an on-screen programming guide, too. But I think there's a perl script knocking around out there that will get the data from that site in some form.

And is there any good way to get the video output from your box to the TV? I'd rather not have to watch TV on a monitor!

Re:probably flamebait but....

[Tackhead]

> And a Tivo is a useless piece of junk compared to a VCR, for archiving. Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other.

Eh? A Tivo will let you get a good-quality MPEG2 stream of whatever video you want, and with recent hacks, the files can be backed up as required.

30 hours of MPEG2 stream = $200 worth of hard drive. Equivalent to 20 DVDs' worth of movies. With DVDs costing ~$15-20, it's price-competitive to just buy a new hard drive every time the old one fills up.

2 years from now, $200 worth of hard drive will archive 60 hours of video. Or more. DVDs, of course, will still cost $15-20 apiece.

10 years from now, $50 will buy a magic cube that'll hold your last 8 years' worth of MPEG video. Another $50 will buy you an identical cube that you can stick in a safety deposit box in case your house burns down and destroys the first one.

15 years from now, you'll be watching copies of those MPEGs from your "Tivo emulated on your headband 23-GHz megaputer and projected directly onto your retina", while the NTSC-quality images on your VHS tapes have silently gone the way of magnetic flux loss, oxide-flaking-off, and all the other afflictions that magnetic tapes suffer from. (Or you'll be watching fourth-generation analog copies of your VHS tapes, which will be just as bad.)

I don't own a Tivo, hell, I barely watch TV anymore. But if I were interested in archiving video, I'd take a Tivo over a VCR any day.

Re:Use a downstream PVR on the upstream PVR's outp

[Tackhead]

> I imagine if anyone provided this service, they would have it chock to the gills with next generation Macrovision style copy protection.

True. Your old PVR probably won't record the video-on-demand your cable company offers.

So you hack the ever-lovin' hell out of it until it will. (Or more likely, you wait until someone else does, preferably in a non-DMCA country, and you download the hack yourself ;-)

This is in no way a 'PVR'

[ikekrull]

a) it's not 'personal', in that no content is held by the user. The cable company has total control over what you do and don't watch with this device.

b) it's not a 'recorder', since it doesn't record anything. The servers at the other end of the cable do the actual 'recording'.

i suppose the word 'video' has some relevance in this context.

This is nothing like a TiVO, this is just flexible programming taken to a new level. The bandwidth requirements for this will be astronomical, not to mention the I/O requirements for the video servers themselves.

But why only do this with a set-top box? Why not give cable modem users this capability - i.e. stream MPEG-2 to a window on your Windows/ MacOS/ X desktop? I've often wondered, since i subscribe to both cable TV and cable internet from the same provider, why they can't offer me something like this.

This is nothing new

[Gorimek]

Video on demand was tried and failed in the mid nineties. Rebranding it as some cool Tivo mutation doesn't change what it is, and the reasons it will fail.

What's interesting is that it shows how successful Tivo has become.

SAN sales

[MikeBabcock]

Who's ready to propose some Linux-based SAN sales to the cable companies?

Video vs. Audio

[ZahrGnosis]

What amazes me in all this is the completely separate approaches from TV (video/movie) broadcasters and audio (radio/internet/mp3/whatever) broadcasters. While Cable companies are trying to get real stream-on-demand technology in place, the dubious RIAA are trying to stop the exact same technology for music; even for companies that pay broadcasting fees and aren't being accused of copyright infringement... there was a slashdot article that I have in mind, I just can't find it right now...

Re:nCube and streaming media

[zlern]

Oracle never owned nCube; it was Larry's personal investment when he bought in. Larry is one of the last few true believers in MMP (massively multiprocessor) architectures, or at least he still was last year.

The big advantage of the nCube for serving video was the massive IO bandwidth between CPU nodes. This allowed you to stripe video across disks connected to each CPU node (for better availability). Of course, these days you can get the same level of disk access from SAN architectures; SANs don't necessarily give you the CPU to CPU bandwidth that the nCube has, but for video serving you don't need that anyway.

Anyway, Oracle had a solution for doing server-side PVR before liquidating its video server group, and I think nCube and/or thirdspace (no, you've never heard of them and you're never going to) is selling this solution now. In 1992, many companies (cable and telco) were promising that they would be installing fiber to the curb or fiber to the home, and Oracle and nCube built a system for delivering 3-ish megabit/second content over that network. RealNetworks and the gaggle of streaming companies that Microsoft bought bet that compression and IP delivery would be dominant over broadband for quite a while, and they turned out to be right.

Animats is right, the server side of this has been done and rewriting it from scratch wouldn't even take that long, but the bit pipe into the home isn't there and isn't going to come any time soon.

Commercials == No Sale

[horse]

Why buy it if I can't avoid the commericals? Even a VCR can do that...

Re:Filtering commercials

[RedX]

I'm assuming you're referring to the hack that allowed you to add this capability in pre-2.0 versions of the TiVo software since this capability never officially existed on a TiVo. The newest software version (2.0.1) effectively disabled this hack, and so far no other hacks have been found to reintroduce this capability. I know that there are ways to change the speed of the 3 steps of Fast-Forward, but don't know the particulars.

Re:probably flamebait but....

[runestar]

No it's not a glorified VCR.

I've never seen a VCR that you could skip to the begining of something that's being recorded and watch it from the start, while it continued to record, or even switch to another channel while your still watching the first show.

I've never seen a VCR that will allow you to pause live TV while taking a phone call.

I've never seen a VCR that will know if CSI or Seven days are moved days and record on the new days without prompting by the end user.

I never saw a VCR that knew the difference between a first run episode of a show and the countless repeats shown every week.

I never saw a VCR that could resolve conflicts between two recordings by seeing if another episode was available of one show at a later date. This happened this year when I started recording The Sopranos, and sure enough it was interfereing with The X-Files. Tivo knew enough to record the X-files on sunday night, and record the Sopranos on Tuesday night.

I never saw a VCR that said oh hey you might like this let me record it for you.

I never saw a VCR where you could set up wishlists of stuff that you like for posible recording.

Unlike most technologies the Tivo for subscribed customers keeps getting better and better. Can you say that about any other home electronic? Ususally 10 minutes out of the box I'm trying to find ways to work around a problem with the controls or software or setup of a particular unit. God for bid 90 days later it's obsolete.

Runestar

Re:PVR

[motardo]

here's the script. http://www.cherrynebula.net/projects/tvguide/tvgui de.php

i got it up and running at http://jobrate.org/tv.html if you wanna check it out

-motardo

probably flamebait but....

[JEDi_ERiAN]

... what is the fascination w/ the tivo? and why are there so many articles on /. about it? it's just a glorified vcr, right? someone please explain what the big deal is over tivo, thnx.

E.


-

Re:probably flamebait but....

[stang]

And a Tivo is a useless piece of junk compared to a VCR, for archiving.

Yeah, but Tivo has a "save to VCR" function -- it's very easy to archive stuff you've Tivo'ed.

It's hard to explain in just a few words how cool Tivo is. The season pass that catches stuff whenever it's on, aging of old shows, filling up unused space with shows you might like (but always at a lower priority than stuff you've picked) -- Tivo is the best thing to happen to tv since the remote control. Or cable, take your pick.

Tivo is an evolutionary product that has revolutionized the way I watch tv.

--

Re:probably flamebait but....

[bobwoodard]

Sure, it records like a VCR, but the thing that snagged me was the ability to schedule season passes and not using VCR tapes. I did the HD upgrade and I now have 30 hours of "best quality" recording, which would be a mess to work with, if I still had a VCR & 15-30 tapes laying around. So, for me it's been the combination of ease-of-use/convenience and the ability to go in and add capabilities to the base product.

Re:probably flamebait but....

[cworley]

Everybody I know with a TiVo no longer surfs realtime TV. At all.

When you sit down to watch TV, you look at the current list of what's recorded, and select from the list.

You get to see the shows you want, when you want; it's very convienient.

I know a few folks who are very disiplined with there VCR library. They're good at setting the schedules, shuffling the tapes in and out, and labeling them for their library. They don't need a TiVo. I'm not that disciplined. I've got hundreds of tapes, and haven't a clue what's on any of them, and I never watch them.

The TiVo makes it easy for the undisciplined viewer.

Re:probably flamebait but....

[ebh]

Tivo is a useless piece of junk compared to a VCR, for archiving.

That's why the Sony TiVos can drive Sony VCRs. Want to archive something TiVo recorded? Throw in a blank tape, select the program from The List, and do a "save to VCR".

(Too bad it only works for Sony VCRs, though.)

Re:probably flamebait but....

[aozilla]

And a Tivo is a useless piece of junk compared to a VCR, for archiving. Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other.

Until they add a tape drive. 20 gig tapes cost about $30. Sure, it's not random access, but if you're able to plan ahead a little you could preload the show. You could probably even preload it on the fly.

Not only is this good for archival, but also for transportation. I could record something at home, but view it at my friends house. Of course, to be truly universal you'd want to make sure it was an open standard, similar to the way VHS works. Yeah, it's probably a pipe dream in today's monopolistic patent crazy world.

That's my biggest problem with Tivo. Sure, you can hack it to add extra devices, but it would be a lot nicer if the company supported it.

Re:probably flamebait but....

[IronChef]

For everything I've read about Tivo, there's nothing yet that has convinced me I want one.

I'm not going to repeat the feature list everyone else is posting. But if you are curious about what has people going so crazy, go see a Tivo or ReplayTV somewhere. Find a friend, or a friend's friend. Any PVR owner will be happy to show it off. They really are THAT cool.

Re:probably flamebait but....

[damiangerous]

And a Tivo is a useless piece of junk compared to a VCR, for archiving. Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other.

Who says you have to give up your VCR for archiving? You can dump from your TiVo to your VCR easily, there's even a menu choice to do it "clean" (without the TiVo splash bar).

For everything I've read about Tivo, there's nothing yet that has convinced me I want one.

Like everyone who owns one says, it will change the way you watch TV. Mainly, you'll never watch Live TV again. It's not the digital VCR capability that makes TiVo great, it's the software. Unfortunately that's where TiVo fails (the marketing, not the unit). I've never been able to explain to someone why a TiVo is so great, but just about everyone who comes over and sees it wants one.

Can it get to the 100+ digital channels I have now?

Of course it can. It goes inline after your cable box and before anything else (receiver, TV, whatever). It controls your cable box with an IR blaster, or your DirectTV box with a serial cable.

Re:probably flamebait but....

[Zaknafein500]

. . .while the NTSC-quality images on your VHS tapes have silently gone the way of magnetic flux loss . . .

Small technical beef there. 99% of broadcasts in the US are NTSC. Even if you record something to Tivo, the image is still NTSC. (this is, of course, assuming you live in the US, overseas PAL and SECAM are common) The only time a broadcast is not NTSC, is if it is in one of the ATSC standards for high-definition TV. I don't know of any Tivo box that can take HD (or even prograssive 480p) signals off the air or from satellite and put them on hard drive. I'm sure as high-def broadcasts become more common we will see a PVR that has this capability. There would be larger issues though, as an ATSC 1080i or 720p stream would take up an enormous amount of disk space.

Re:probably flamebait but....

[tb3]

A VCR is a useless piece of ancient junk compared to a Tivo, for time shifting
And a Tivo is a useless piece of junk compared to a VCR, for archiving. Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other.

For everything I've read about Tivo, there's nothing yet that has convinced me I want one. Can it get to the 100+ digital channels I have now? (not that my VCR can, but if the Tivo can't, then it's no better.) Just curious.

Want I rally want is a random access digital recorder with removeable media, mayabe a Sony miniDisk?

"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"

They don't get it

[Gunzour]

The summary is a little misleading because this really has *nothing* to do with Tivo. It's another company trying to compare themselves to Tivo (although it's kind of strange that neither Tivo nor UltimateTV are mentioned in the article).

But if you read the article, it's clear this company just doesn't get it.

PVRs are revolutionary because they free the viewer from the normal constraints of television. They give the viewer control. It lets you see an entire show without having to ignore the phone or your need to go to the bathroom or your spouse. It lets you make your own schedule, without having to rush to get home by 9pm on Sunday to watch X-Files. This article, though, is basically about providing a PVR without giving up control, and that eliminates the major benefit of PVRs.

In the article they talk about restricting viewers from fast forwarding through commercials! I mean, how stupid are they? The advertising industry KNOWS we don't watch commercials NOW, even watching live TV (without a PVR). We get up. We go to the bathroom. We go to the kitchen. We talk to our family members or friends.

With a Tivo, we probably pay more attention to commercials than without -- when I am watching a show on Tivo and a commercial break comes up, I hit fast forward. BUT, I am watching the screen very closely to see when the commercials end.

If you remember the Max Headroom movie, in that movie the advertising industry created blipverts -- 30 second ads compressed into 2 seconds in order to not lose your attention. Well, guess what -- Tivo has created blipverts for the advertising industry! And here are people trying to get rid of it thinking they are going to benefit the ad industry by *forcing* people to watch ads at normal speed.

The ad industry needs to get a clue -- ads are supposed to *sell* something. Ads that people are *forced* to watch cause resentment, and are more likely to make the viewer think "Dammit, I'll never buy from these assholes" than sell anything.

Re:They don't get it

[cprael]

PVRs are revolutionary because they free the viewer from the normal constraints of television.

Having been there, and done that, Tivos are NOT revolutionary. They are a commercialized package scaled for a single-user, single-television installation, using an open-source implementation of SGI's decade-old ITV software, run by some of the same people who ran that ITV group. We looked at doing pretty much the same thing, using (ironically) the software that powers nCube's servers. Our version had:

• 200 hours of storage
• Ability to receive 3 input channels simultaneously
• Full jukebox to the entire house - each TV could request it's own stream via a thin STB.
• VCR load-to-disk and tape-from-disk capability.

Larry Ellison wasn't interested in building it.

But, to get back to the point, Tivo is about as revolutionary as a hammer. Same technology, new package.

Ads and the DMCA

[beej]

Could the DMCA be bent somehow so that using a digital VCR to further edit out commercials would be counted as using a circumvention device?

What if the signal was encrypted and the TV was provided by the cable company and did the decryption?

If cable companies were providing all other VCR functionality for you, they could argue that having your own VCR had no non-infringing uses...

You don't want MD

[Jus'n]

MiniDiscs are NOT good for archiving. I've been using MD for music ever since the price of Sony's original consumer audio desk fell to $300 (roughly 5 years). Many of my original recordings are now deteriorating, and need to be re-recorded. Yes, I DO take care of them (most of that time, they've been sitting in a box in my closet -- I got bored with MD when the price of CD-Rs came down, 'cause no one else could listen to my mixes!). Yes, MD is a cool medium, but it's not good for archiving. What would be great (As I dream) is a TiVo with MD for small recordings (as they only hold about 150MB if I'm not mistaken), and CD-R (or dare I dream, cost-effective DVD-R) for archiving. Come to think of it, I don't have any 5+ year-old CD-Rs -- can anyone vouch for their resitance to deterioration? Obviously, CDs are great for archiving, but I suspect CD-Rs might be less permanent.

Re:stories like this remind me:

[brunes69]

I don't know why you'd be stocking up on Win2k, unless you're planning on some sort of mass infestation ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H instalation program to get back at the companies.

Premium for ad-free television.

[Nonesuch]

Actually, the Sluggy Freelance online comic is going this route- donate ten bucks, and you get the daily comic page without any banner ads, for one year.

Hauppage?

[Nonesuch]

How horrible is the MS-windows interface to the Hauppage software?

I'm disappointed that there is only ONE consumer tuner+MPEG encoder card on the market, and none with any hope of BSD drivers.

Old technology

[eth1]

I say screw cable and go back to the way it used to be...
I can use it whenever I wish, can fast forward, reverse, pause indefinately. It even has an easy to use, indexed random-access feature! They last years without maintenance, there's no wiring headaches, and the entire unit is about the size of a VHS tape or two. And all that without ever having to get out of your chair or use a remote. And the bandwidth is limited only by how many you can fit in your car on the way home from the bookstore.

Content on demand is the future...

[Tiroth]

Even the networks will likely accept this fact. However, they'll fight it tooth and nail, even if they might make more money with the switch. Why? Because despite the 200+ channels out there, the networks still dominate TV. If you change the model, you give other companies an opportunity to get a piece of the action.

Historically we've seen many examples of the dominant players in the marketplace holding back technology in order to maintain their stranglehold on the market. (most recently in the U.S. the cellphone and bankcard industries) I doubt this will be any different.

Dumbasses..

[Lord Bitman]

Whenever customers start asking for options, companies always seem to either add or remove the feature entirely.
You see this more in software than in hardware (since hardware can sometimes be changed in the software end anyway) But this is really getting out of hand.
Customer: "I want to be able to turn off auto-save"
Company: "Fine, no more auto-save"
Customer: "wtf!? Where's my auto-save!?"
Company: "You said you didnt want it."
Customer: "You're a fucking dumbass."
Company: "But you're still going to buy it anyway, right?"
Majority of Customers: "Of course, I'm a fucking dumbass too."

Point? Simply tell Tivo that you wont even consider buying a Tivo unless they make storing off-site an OPTION rather than forcing you to not use your own hard drive.

Forcing you to store things elsewhere is exactly the same as things like BattleNet and that stupid Black&White server thing. Sure it's nice to have, but why in fucking hell would you force it on someone?

There's a simple solution, just like there is with battlenet: Trick the Tivo into thinking something else is Tivo's server, and have it save there; but why force customers to do this sort of thing which the majority of them probably wont even know how to do?

I suggested this previously...

[dsginter]

The psychic friends network has helped me to predict this before.

And now for my next trick...

Roll your own...

[Dr_Cheeks]

So, how difficult would it actually be to make your own Tivo? Way I see it, get a basic PC (something like a PII 500 should do fine), stick in a TV card, graphics card that can do MPEG compression (don't ATI make combined TV/graphics cards) and a big HD. Then hack at it a bit and bingo - you've got your own Tivo to use as you see fit. Maybe I'm grossly simplifying things (especially saying "hack at it a bit"), but if people are prepared to try and do that in-car MP3 player that was up here a couple of days ago, then surely this wouldn't be too tough.

Though frankly I don't expect to see them laying the sort of bandwidth to support something like this any time soon here in the UK (hell, BT's still dragging it's heels over DSL while not exactly making it easy for others to compete).

And what's to stop someone downloading a show on demand, then re-broadcasting (time-delayed and advert-less) it themselves for say 5% (per subscriber) of the price it cost them? I know I'd pay for a pirate TV network with no ads that came cheaper that the regular one.

OK, I'm kinda all over the place cos it's past quitting time at work and not thinking too straight, but I'm just trying to provoke some discussion : )

Re:Roll your own...

[nanojath]

PVRs potentially allow time-shifting, circumvention of advertisements, and storage of programs, which interferes with the entertainment industries' goal of making all entertainment only available on a pay-to-play basis, and the advertisers' goal of keeping asses in seats for these important messages from our sponsors.

So I think that an increasing interest in DIY PVRs is inevitable. Commercial services like Tivo are constantly going to be struggling to maintain the good will of content providers while still giving the customer what they want... Current trends make it clear that the former is more critical to them than the latter (an irate customer is far less likely to bring a multi-million dollar lawsuit).

Making a computer into the perfect PVR is a trend that will be impossible to stop but keep a close eye on the law because if experience tells true the entertainment concerns will lobby successfully to make this illegal - probably by exploiting the transition to digital television to introduce proprietary digital video standards and then using DMCA (or similar legislation) to make playing the television signal through anything but a legal, industry-approved playback device a case of "illegal circumvention." The approved devices will of course be designed to make splitting an analog signal out difficult (hard to make this illegal in the US due to fair use precedents), and splitting a digital signal out very difficult and illegal to boot.

Of course this won't stop a lot of people but they will be technical criminals of the cable thief variety which will keep most mainstream viewers out of the homegrown PVR market. For the average consumer, pay-to-play, with at best a Tivo-type device with its teeth pulled (limited memory, limited commercial circumvention, limited storage time) or a digital cable box with whatever pay-per features will be the norm. Of course, 30 million idiots watched Survivor so most of you will not notice your choices slipping away.

Certainly there is going to be a brisk trade in pirate video from teevee just like there is a trade in MP3s, but any activity of this type will be prey to the Napster effect: if you are big enough to be exhaustive in your offerings, organized enough to provide a real content service, and easy enough to use and find that a reasonable percentage of consumers will be able to get at and play what is offered, then you're going to get sued or busted for violating copyrights on a massive scale, particularly if you're charging people for it. If it's invisible to entertainment companies and the law, it's also gonna be invisible to most individuals.

I'd like to think that the principle of fair use will overcome and crap legislation like the DMCA will be struck down, but I have little hope. Maybe it's time to start thinking about alternative ways to PRODUCE teevee, not just how we'll be allowed to CONSUME it.

What would this mean to existing customers?

[SpookComix]

I don't have a Tivo, but I suspect I will very soon. I'm struggling with the decision to go month-to-month, or just do the lifetime subscription. However, with this kind of thing coming down the pipeline, would it be insane of me to spend $200 (the equivilant of 20 months) on a lifetime subscription?

This may be a tad off-topic, but how have some of you been able to sleep at night after giving $200 to Tivo, not knowing if they'll be around, at least in their current capacity, long enough for your investment to have paid off?

--SC

Re:Too optimistic

[pouwelse]

The bandwidth of the last mile of cable is shared amoungst many other users. 212 compressed digital channels are probably not sufficient to support the video needs of all users that share the same cable in the 'cable cell'.

If you have the hardware to do 'video/TV on demand' it is hard to avoid not getting hit by lawyers. This kind of infrastructure costs more than users are willing to pay for every month. Internet access would be a better way to use the bandwidth.

J.

Too optimistic

[pouwelse]

The bandwidth of current cable infrastructures is often limited to the broadcast of about 25 - 40 video channels at the last mile. In the near future I seriously doubt if this sort of infrastructure is capable of competing on cost and service with a $299 Tivo box. Besides Tivo, if you provide users with a 1 Mbps Internet connection it is possible to stream video in real-time, in my opinion users would go for this option.

Who want's inserted adds or other stuff inserted in their video stream? If a company offers hassle free Internet capable of video streaming, a subsription based video server could be more cost effective.

What do users want?

Just my 5 Eurocents Johan.

Re:Too optimistic

[demaria]

"Just my 5 Eurocents Johan."

Cable systems may be better here in the US then.

I get about 60 channels, and digital cable offers up to 212.

The rest of your post I cannot understand.

Re:Too optimistic

[Gigs]

First off where did you get that number? 25-40??? Maybe if you live in a cable system that hasn't been rebuilt since the mid 80's.
Second if you live in an area covered by one of the top 20 cable systems( which 95%+ of all cable subscribers do) you have, or will have with in the next year or two, capacity in the 500+ channel range. Current rebuilds are building 2GHz systems, with a 6Mhz channel thats 333 analog channels. Add in digital cables average of 12:1 compression and that number jumps to 3996 channels. Now thats all good on paper but let just cut that number in half to deal with real world issues like ingress and amp tilt that still almost 2000 channels. Now I haven't even mentioned that the average fiber node feed 125 homes and so each node now has a 2000 channel capacity to feed 125 homes. So now you have 16 channels just for your house. You plan on watching more than 16 different programs at the sametime??? Most people only have three tv's in their house.

Now the cost issue: current digital set top boxes are selling for around $300 a pop without any PVR ability. A new service like PVR/On Demand Programming(ODP) is a new revenue stream, which means we can justify a higher unit install cost. When cable modems were first launched in they cost $700+ a piece. The cable company I work for gladly ate this cost and has been smiling ever since.

Finally the issue of commercials: Hey I hate watching them as much as the next guy but there are only three options here. First you must understand that it cost big money to make a tv show! Don't even think of makin a pilot for less than a million(if you can even do that anymore) and if the show is a hit the actors will demand ever more money. So season after season your cost will increase. How is that paid for? One word: ADVERTISING!!! But lets say for the sake of argument that we don't want to do advertising. Well then you have the HBO model, where you have no commercials but the subscriber fronts the cost of all production. So lets say an average price of $10 a month per channel you want. The average viewer watches 9 channels. So theres $90 a month... Not so cheap, considering you can get that now for under $40 a month! The other option is the PBS method, where they stop and beg for money every 15 minutes for 15 minutes... NO THANKS!!

The idea here is that the model you have now is here because it gets you the most value for the buck. If you have a better way of doing it great start up a business doing it and good luck. But don't fall for the Marxist/Liberal crap being pushed on you, telling you that all corporations are evil and want nothing but your money. Sure they are out there, but do be so quick to judgement...

Re:Too optimistic

[cprael]

Interesting story from one of the earlier ITV deployments. A number of years ago, BT bought the software behind nCube's new PVR. They deployed a "classic" ITV system, and once they'd finished their trials, decided it was cheaper to loft a pair of satellites just to transmit video streams than it was to try to wire the last mile.

stories like this remind me:

[Argylengineotis]

...remind me to stock up on today's technology, like win2k, hackable tivos, high end athlons with PC133 RAM, etc. so that when the seige being currently waged against the consumer is finally won by the big corporations, I'll still have an easy time of pirating intellectual property. :)

nCube and streaming media

[Animats]

nCube has been around for a long time. They started as a "supercomputer" manufacturer. The original mid-1980s nCube had 64 cpus per board, 1024 per box, with 128KB (not MB) per CPU, 1 MIPS each. It's a message-passing hardware network hypercube architecture, with each of 2^N CPU connected only to neighboring CPUs in N dimensions. Thus, inter-CPU communication involves passing messages through intermediate CPUs. There's no shared memory. Later machines went faster, but kept the architecture.

It's not clear what problem this architecture solves. It's one of those wierd architectural ideas that got run over by faster conventional machines.

Oracle owned nCube for a while, but, I think, sold it off. Larry Ellison was making big streaming media noises about 10 years ago, and nCube was involved in that. In fact, nCube demonstrated something like this about 10 years ago.

The problem with streaming media isn't the servers. It's the "last mile", as usual. This is one of those technologies stuck waiting for high-data-rate consumer broadband. You need about 3 to 5 Mb/s to the home to deliver decent video. It's tough to do that unless you're wiring something new, like a hotel or a condo complex. Juniper Networks was working on faster DSL over existing copper, but they just had a big layoff.

So this isn't going to be deployed in volume for a while.

Could mean more commercials

[regen]

What scares me is that this could mean more commercials. Once the cable companies can insert commercials at will, and we aren't tied to a fixed start and end time then there is very little incentive to keep the commercial time so breif. Right now if cable companies are limited to how much time that they can use for commercials due to the length of the content and the need to fit the content in a fixed amount of time. If cable companies don't have to fit the content into a fixed amount of time, then the commercial can run longer. Already the local cable company cuts off the end of CNN Headline News to insert extra comercials.

Re:Could mean more commercials

[Dr. Spork]

Damn, you're right. I didn't think of that. They also won't need to hold to the 30sec standard which makes commertcial skipping at least somewhat convenient now. They'll also know when you're skipping commercials, and might just add a few extras for compensation.

This is why I am thankful for computer TV decoder cards. That way I'm in control can add all the HD space I need, burn to CD, recompress and post to newsgroups, etc.

Re:PVR

[fl1t]

Actually, that's a damn good idea: an open-source software project that allows you to build your own PVR.

Assuming you can get your hands on the additional hardware required, it shouldn't be that difficult. All you'd really need is a cheap TV decoder/video I/O card. Stick that in a Celeron-level box with a big HD, running Linux and the PVR software, and away you go!

PPV without limits

[EvilAlien]

That will be a boon to cable providers branching into digital cable services includng Pay Per View. Currently, PPV events or movies go through a rotation and you have to wait for a movie to pop up in the schedule (at least in the cable system I'm in) in order to watch it.

Being able to select whatever you want to watch when you want to watch it will do more than just quash the concept of channels... it could seriously decrease the profitability of video stores if not mode them out. Of course, the same argument has been made for years about print media and the Internet, and print media is still around (but I think it can be argued that it is in transition and "downsizing").

Well, I have no interest in a TIVO anymore.

[shren]

If I were ever to get back into watching TV, I would want one of the old school Tivos. The replay and recording facility is wonderful. I'm not interested in having them stream it down to me - I like the recording feature.

Anyone at Tivo listening? You just lost a potential customer.

Re:Am I just stupid? Why not a VCR?

[a42]

Q. Why not a VCR?

A. Extrememly crappy picture quality.

Also, TiVo does have a feature that allows you to dump a recorded program off to VCR if you need to keep it.

Re:The more things change...

[a42]

Your chain of events is somewhat faulty. The article is *not* about TiVo -- they are not the ones doing the "on demand PVR."

Also, #3 has been in the works for a long time. I saw a demo at NAB in 1999 of a similar service. I seem to remember that Larry Ellison was involved somehow, also.

Nokia is setting up a service in Europe

[LazyGun]

Nokia is setting up a service in Europe

check out the Nokia Media Terminal

Q: How much will the Nokia Media Terminal cost and when will it be available?

The Nokia Media Terminal will be priced competitively. The first Nokia Media Terminals will be available in Sweden in the middle part of 2001 and later on in the year in Europe and North America.

Re:This article deserves some sort of award:

[Wesley Felter]

I disagree about it taking 10 years. I live in Austin, TX and I have video-on-demand now, so each cable subscriber in my neighborhood could be watching something different. I don't know or care how much it cost Time Warner to make that work, but it works.

However, I think the article still sucks, because VOD and PVR are not the same thing, no matter how much nCube tries.

c'mon OpenPVR!

[vtaluskie]

I love my Tivo, but the thing I find frustrating is the issue of control: they won't put a 30-second skip in, they won't release the format for storing the MPEG video and audio streams (but someone has hacked it). Still up to this date Tivo does more to get out of the way of hackers who want to play with their units (no pun intended :)

I am looking forward to a day where a Open PVR is available and consumers can actually have all the features that they find useful rather than crippleware that gives limited functionality because of the 'danger' perceived by corporate America.

That would be a powerful force... the genie is out of the bottle on this one!

Do it yourself

[hardburn]

While this may not be a good idea for the non-technical, most of those on this site could make their own.

------

Huh

[elegant7x]

The rest of your post I cannot understand.

After this comment, I read the above post like five times. For the best of my efforts I cannot find anything the least bit incomprehensable. Why did you have so much trouble understanding him?

Not in a million years....

[martijnd]

One national cable modem company where I live just decided that trying to convert millions of miles of outdated cheap junk wired cable TV installations owned by hundreds of small time operators who make their money by broadcasting illegal localized advertising wasn't worth their money and they never even got close to their targeted number of customers. (And thus missed their target quarter after quarter)

So now instead they are leasing telephone lines from the telephone monopoly and started offering ADSL lines. Bit late to that party though.

Irony is of course that until recently they have spend $$ in advertising the negative aspects of ADSL as compared to cable modems.

So cable TV on demand (who wants it?) might take a while to be introduced around here. Happily there are plenty of movie rental places.

Deep in the Microsoft Bat Cave...

[Lizard_King]

An executive scratches his chin and ponders, "... Now that control of this content has moved out of the home, I wonder if we could embed SmartTags somehow...". A thin smile cracks on the executive's face as he massages the backside of his hairless kitty.

Pay-per-view TV, and what about premiums?

[Boone^]

Well, anytime my cable provider (Charter Communications) changes my schedule, my fee goes up. A few months ago they removed TNT and replaced it with another 'local access' station... and the fee went up!

So, what happens when the TV-on-demand thing hits? Fees will easily double if it's unlimited viewing. If the entire country went to this model, "Must See TV" could occur at 2am so as to not trip over anything else. Moving new programs to Friday night wouldn't mark their death. Moving NYPD Blue to Wednesdays directly opposite Law & Order for fall 2001 wouldn't cause people like me to hate ABC, because they could put Blue after Letterman instead and I'd watch it the next day... you get my point. Suddenly the words "Prime time" lose their luster.

They'd be smarter with having a few dedicated pay-per-view channels, and charging someone to watch a tape-delayed show. Watching it in real time incurs no extra charge, but there's a $1 dollar charge to watch the newest Friends on Friday night... or something like that.

But you know what? I still like my TiVo. Now if they could just enable that second tuner so I could record Blue as well as L&O on Wednesdays this fall...

they gotta sell it to the customers too...

[connorbd]

What this is is just an enhanced cable box. IMHO it's going to be the Divx to Tivo/ReplayTV/UltimateTV's DVD...

/Brian

Presto, the media box...

[connorbd]

I've had this idea floating around for a while, but the level of functionality it provided didn't really measure up to the cost.

First take your basic Linux PC with an S-video capable video card and a DVD-ROM drive. With the right software you have a region-free DVD player, even if it's not quite legal. Slap on audio codecs for Ogg Vorbis (and MP3 and WMA playback if you want) and a CD burner and you also have a very nice digital music station (completely free and clear on top of it). Now all that would probably be worth somewhere in the vicinity of $400 as is, and I couldn't picture a mom-and-pop operator (realistically the only outfits who would be able to get away with selling these things) making enough of a profit off of these boxes to justify it. But... you put in a good-sized hard drive or something of the sort, you've got a PVR. To me, that does justify the likely cost (probably $600-$800US)...

/Brian

DVDs

[RESPAWN]

This very much reminds me of what some production companies are doing with DVDs these days. As many of you who prefer to watch DVDs on set boxes (I don't know if PC based DVD drives have the same problem), many DVDs will not allow you to skip past the usual FBI warning and Liscensing agreements. Furthermore, I've come across one or two DVDs where some (rather unscrupulous, IMHO) companies have set it up so that you cannot skip past the preview trailers. Frankly, things like this piss me off, and I wish I had some kind of protection against stuff like this.

--------------------------------------

Re:DVDs

[damiangerous]

many DVDs will not allow you to skip past the usual FBI warning and Liscensing agreements.

From what I understand from the DVD newsgroups the DVD spec requires there to be a section in which the remote is disabled. It doesn't specify what this section has to be, merely that one exist. This is just a software command though, and some recorders don't accept the disable command.

Not the sort of thing one can feasibly verify though, as you have to shell out a few thousand dollars and sign an agreement to get a copy of the spec.

The more things change...

[Rackemup]

Step 1. Introduce recorders to home users so they can start taking control of what they watch, when they watch it, and what parts they want to skip (ie annoying commercials for feminine products during dinner time).

Step 2. Hope the broadcasters dont try to sue us out of existance because people suddenly dont HAVE TO watch said commercials.

Step 3. Start working with the cable companies to find a way to take control away from the users again. After all, we the cable broadcasters know what is best for our viewers. Now we can say "hey, if you want to watch teletubbies at 4:17am all you have to do is ask. Oh and we're going to keep track of everything you watch so we can pump in the commercials most likely to suck the money right out of your wallet."

I have to admit, I like the idea of "on-demand" television, the ability to select and view whatever show I want at any time is very appealing (especially since it means I wont miss a show because I forgot to set my VCR before I went out for the night), but the fact that they think they're "helping" by keeping track of what each user watches so they can insert the "right" commercials is REALLY annoying.

Now all I need is a TV that will show me pro-M$ advertising while in the background it can fight with the AOL commercial trying to install "the all-new AOL 27". Why spam your mailbox when we can take over your TV and send it directly into your eyeballs?

Re:The more things change...

[ruzel]

Discussions and decisions like this are always completed short-sighted. Advertising is not a fact at all, and as interstitial space disappears in ever-increasing and competing nonlinear mediums there will be no space for interstitial advertising. Product placement, sponsorships and contextual advertising will be all that's left. Even billboards and signs are becoming digital, and without integrated entertainment, they will get lost in the noise (much the same way current banner ads on the web do). (see www.bmwfilms.com) Advertising as we know it is dying -- thank god -- because it doesn't work in nonlinear mediums.

Re:It's simple...

[IronChef]

Man, you said it.

Recently I have decided I need to create a backup image of my RTV 3030 hard drive. If the drive ever craps out (and that seems the most likely point of failure) I can replace it myself and keep on' truckin. No Panasonic Macrovision hassles, no switching to Tivo and losing 30-second skip...

I think that if PVRs take off the next generations will be saddled with all kinds of restrictions. I can very easily imagine a netowrk paying Tivo/RTV to disallow FF control inputs during their shows, for example... so long as the economics make sense, anyway. For that to be possible a LOT of people would have to be didging ads with PVRs, but things may get to that point. When they do I want to be still using my friendly old technology.

Planned obsolescence?

[BrendanL79]

Does anyone know whether and/or for how long the TiVo service will be accessible with the current generation of devices?

Re:This article deserves some sort of award:

[sqlrob]

You care if you have a cable modem. Guess where the bandwidth for VOD is coming from?

Network will be bottleneck

[duvel]

This doesn't really sound like a good idea. The argument made in the article that saving the content in a central place will result in having more content available is of course correct. On first sight this looks like the customers will be getting a better service than they are getting now.

However it's one thing to have a giant (think Beowulf cluster) computer that stores everything that is being broadcast. It's a whole different story to get that content to a customer when that customers wants to get it. Distributing that kind of heavyweight (bandwith-wise) content on an as-you-request basis will quickly result in giant bandwidth shortages. It's just not feasible.

The cynic in me however does not think that improving the quality of service is the first target here however. I presume that this company has just smelled the money of delivering a pay-per-view to its customers.

Could be good (won't be, though)

[nagora]

If you had the option of paying per view to get an ad-free version or just getting the version with ads for "free" that might be quite good.

I can't see why this would either be difficult to arrange or be something the provider would not want to do.

Anybody have figures on the total cost of advertising per viewer per half-hour of programming in the US or UK? That's the figure the provider would have to charge us (per half-hour) to watch without the ads. Obviously the current rate varies but it would be interesing to get a feel for what it would cost.

TWW

Video and PCs

[Alien54]

I am sure there will be a market for a video recording software that will fake this service out, and allow you to record it all to your hard drive. Especially since the size of hardrives are pushing past the 100 gig range, etc. let's face it, for most of what I want to do, analog output is fine.

Art level stuff I would probably go out and buy the DVD or something.

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

Re:Use a downstream PVR on the upstream PVR's outp

[ahrenritter]

It seems to me that the problem with this idea is that the cable companies will have likely thought of it. I imagine if anyone provided this service, they would have it chock to the gills with next generation Macrovision style copy protection.

not fair

[fons]

Over here in Belgium we don't TiVo or anything similar. why is that? How do you go about setting up a service like that?

Are there any other countries (apart from the USA) where you can get this service?

Re:not fair

[4mn0t1337]

TiVo *IS* the service.

TiVo did design the system, but different companies make the hardware. When you buy the box, you buy it from Sony, Philips, etc. All your $$$ goes to the manufacturer.

Once you get it home and you want the system to start downloading data so that it can record, then that is when you set up a subscription to the TiVo service.

______

Not tivo

[sulli]

this is some other service, not TiVo. There will still be room for both in the marketplace .. and home-built PVR type devices as well!

Re:Not tivo

[tdye]

$20 says you had to look at the bottle before you typed acetylsalicylic acid.

Oh well...

[Jaysyn]

...I was seriously thinking about getting one of these soon...I guess I'll just have to build my own (or a close approximation)...

Jaysyn

Some scary ideas in this article

[phaze3000]

Some experts have suggested that advertisers will focus increasingly on "imbedding" advertising in the programs, via a split screen, an unobtrusive logo, or product placement as a "prop" in the show.

This sounds morally repugnant. Imagine a TV show where there was little plot and just a whole lot of product placement. I for one hope this never takes off.

--

Time Warner is working on something like this...

[tswinzig]

They have been talking about a new version of their InDemand broadcasting (pay-per-view) that will allow people using time warner digital cable to fast-forward/rewind/pause movies that they've ordered via their digital cable boxes from TW. I remember reading about this coming feature about 9 months ago... (this is in Orlando, FL)

Re:Video on Demand, so early '90s

[cprael]

I hope this dies an early death in the marketplace.

Actually, it did. The software that drives the nCube PVR is ... Oracle Video Server. Which Oracle tried (and failed) to push for a number of years, before quietly smoking the whole division last fall and pushing it over to nCube and another company whose name escapes me for the moment.

We talked about 2 years ago about using OVS to drive a video jukebox (30 hours? pfui - we were looking at a couple hundred, on hi-capacity IDE-RAID). Part of the idea was that you'd have a thin STB on each TV, and you could stream to each one individually. Never quite got off the ground, though.

Another reason to Kill your TV

[ackthpt]

As a non-cable subscriber I'm subject to offers frequently (through the mail and phone [um.. how do have my number and know I don't have cable?]) latest offer (at insanely low prices[!]) was 29.95 for basic. Maybe when I get my knee worked on...

So add to your cable bill the fee for this kind of service, probably billed like your long distance, right?

July Statement:

All episodes of Gilligan's Island: 7.00

Last episode of Seinfeld: 0.15

Max Headroom: 0.25

3 M*A*S*H episodes: 0.45

Then there's always the issue of Sports. Recall those "this broadcast is intend only for home viewers, any rebroadcast is prohibited etc. etc. etc." Will this yield yet another cash cow, reviewing sports events, when you pay to see the game again/later?

--
All your .sig are belong to us!

Re:Another reason to Kill your TV

[damiangerous]

As a non-cable subscriber I'm subject to offers frequently (through the mail and phone [um.. how do have my number and know I don't have cable?])

They don't. I get those same ads even though already I subscribe to Cox@Home and a fairly expansive digital cable package.

Re:yeah right.

[ackthpt]

Executives at networks that rely more heavily on advertising for revenue are far less enthusiastic about the concept of putting the viewer in control. Translation: They think it sucks the way it is now. Remember Max Headroom's Network 23? Ratings were followed real-time, and depending on the ratings of a show, it might be pulled without a moments notice. The only thing to fear is learning the new paradigm, people familiar with the old one will want to preserve even to the point it drives them under. I think there's enough creativity that the future would be lie somewhere in the middle.

--
All your .sig are belong to us!

Re:TIVO Question for owners :

[damiangerous]

How does a TIVO interface with either ONDigital or a sky digi-box ?

While I'm not familiar with those exact two models, it doesn't really matter. If it's a satellite box it will most likely work with the serial cable. Worst case sat, or for a cable box, you use the IR blaster. I don't think there's a box made it doesn't work with for at least channel changing (which is all it needs to do).

Re:Filtering commercials

[damiangerous]

They most certainly did, it was just undocumented. You enabled backdoors and used a remote code to reassign one button to be 30 second skip. It only worked with the 1.3 software, it was removed in 2.0 (at least, no one has figured out how to reenable it).

Re:Video on Demand, so early '90s

[MCZapf]

This is a very late reply to my own post. I just wanted to point out that I notice there are now 3 short 15 second commercials during the Car Talk RealAudio version. But, those commercials weren't there a few weeks ago.

Re:Video on Demand, so early '90s

[MCZapf]

I hope this dies an early death in the marketplace.

What's wrong with video on demand? That's exactly what I want. That's exactly what PVR provides, in a sort of backwards, silly way. Instead of just broadcasting shows, why can't networks also make them available for download/streaming?

This already exists in radio somewhat. Let me give you a specific example: I like to Listen to Car Talk on NPR. It comes on once a week, but I don't worry about being near my radio to hear it. If I miss it, I can just go to The Car Talk website and listen to the RealAudio version of the show whenever I want. It's great. There aren't even commercials in the web version (not that there are many commercials on NPR anyway).

Video on Demand, so early '90s

[Hairy_Potter]

I hope this dies an early death in the marketplace.

On the other hand, hacking into the cable company sounds a lot more enticing. We can find out which of our neighbors are ordering porn like "Lonely college coed seeks horny middle aged married man"

Re:Video on Demand, so early '90s

[hillct]

It's really unbelievable. There seem to be two distinct service categories out there. First there are P2P services which strive to drive resources to the network edge, at cost to the consumers. Second, there are ASP type services such as Microsoft HailStorm and this second generation PVR concept, as well as the early 90's implementations of Video On Demand.

That's right. Screw the onsumer by having him/her store data he doesn't want/need as in P2P services and then, don't let joe consumer store the information he/she DOES want. While we're at it, lets do away with video storage completely and make everything pay-per-view...

This stuff is outragous!!!

--CTH


---

Bad idea because...

[Spackler]

the other name for this device is a digital cable box. This would allow the cable company to show what they want at the time they want. In other words, the value is gone. So much for fair use!

Note to self - Don't buy this.

OT: TiVo IR Blaster

[Afreet1]

Is there a way you can reprogram the codes in the IR blaster that comes with the TiVo? Basically I want the ability to use the IR blaster to control non-TV devices, like an X-10 IR bridge.

I am not talking about a universal remote but the adapter that is an alternative to the serial cable to control the DSS Receivers.

Paradigm shift

[Kallahar]

We are at a paradigm shift. This is a major point in the development of media and entertainment. In the past, people were forced to watch what the corporate empire controlling the signals wanted you to watch. Until the VCR was developed, people did not even have the capability to fast forward past commercials. Until the remote control not many people could mute the advertisements.

Now we are entering a new age. In this age, people can choose. If products like Tivo (the good version) are allowed to flourish then the current businesses that rely on advertising will fail. There will be chaos. Out of that chaos will come a new system that respects the viewers. People will be happy.

Freedom is important, even if that freedom is merely choosing to not watch ads for tampons.

- Kallahar http://quickwired.com/

yeah right.

[canning]

The advertising implications are significant, but they're not all negative.
Translation: We'll make alot of scratch.

But advertisers might actually grow to like nCube's PVR, he said, because the central control over distribution of the product will allow a cable operator to inject "targeted" advertising.
Translation: Viewers will hate it but we'll have money coming out of our hoo-hoos.

Some experts have suggested that advertisers will focus increasingly on "imbedding" advertising in the programs, via a split screen, an unobtrusive logo, or product placement as a "prop" in the show.
Translation: This will be annoying as hell but we'll be rolling in dough.

Executives at networks that rely more heavily on advertising for revenue are far less enthusiastic about the concept of putting the viewer in control.
Translation: They think it sucks the way it is now.

Murphy's Law of Copiers

You get what you pay for

[TomRC]

Obviously: Free/cheap TV means commercials. Tivo subverts this. Combo PVR/recordable-DVD devices are coming. So the future holds some combination of: (a) higher cable rates, more pay per view (b) centralized control and monitoring of viewing (c) more and harder to avoid adverts (d) cheaper programming (re-runs, reality TV, game shows) I suspect it may settle out as: - Free broadcast TV with cheap content and whatever commercials they want to stuff in any way they can. - Better content you either pay for or get free by interacting with targetted commercials. Captured or downloaded - and once paid for you can capture or download again for a nominal fee.

Is it just me,

[Kalabajoui]

Is it just me, or does the concept of pay-per-play and commercials seem like double dipping. That's the kind of greed that has lead to commercials on cable and satelite tv (both expensive services) in the first place. Streaming movies on demand is a good thing, but spoiling a movie that you paid your hard earned money for with a bunch of commercials is just asinine. The same thing goes for DVDs and the fifteen minutes of previews that they wont allow you to skip. (At least that's what I have heard; not owning one and all.) I guess you are not forced to watch them because you can always play the movie fifteen minutes before you plan on watching it. What a convenience. And speaking of convenience, why do advertisers seem to think that they have the right to insinuate themselves into your personal space and every aspect of your life? It seems to me that with this pay for play + commercial business model that the social contract betweeen advertisers and consumers has been broken, and I hope that any pay per play scheme that includes commercials dies a quick death in the marketplace. Though it would be interesting to see if you are given the option to pay a little more for the priviledge of seeing a non-commercial interupted program.

All this is moot to me anyway, as I no longer watch tv unless I am at a friends house.
If I were to patent an invention for a time wasting machine that worked by the means of making addictive, colorfull, and loud noise with few redeeming qualities, I'd call it a TV. Huh, I could probably call it a computer too, for that matter. At least a computer makes you think once in a while. END RANT

But sacrifice your privacy

[NineNine]

But don't think that the entertainment industry doesn't get anything in return for allowing you to cut out ads. They, in turn, get to know EXACTLY who watches what, when. They get to store it all in a giant database, and with some decent data mining, they could probably even create a pretty decent psychological profile of each person. This stuff already makes Doubleclick's privacy intrusions look like a joke. Use stuff like TIVO and cable, and you might as well just walk around in the streets handing out your detailed viewing and spending habits to complete strangers, because in essence, that's what you're doing. Me? I'll keep my antenna and I'll sit through the ads (or switch to a PS game while they're on), and maintain my anonimity, thank you.

TV & ADS: Peanut Butter & Chocolate?

[grovertime]

Well it would seem that the two are intertwined, television and advertisements, so logically some force in the universe would be trying to keep them together depsite our attempts to never see another OBEY YOUR THIRST Sprite commercial. If TiVo is to survive what surely will be a heavy blitz from content producers and distributors (ie. network television), they had to do something to make their product more palatable and I think this is a step in the right direction for them. As much as I like HBO, I don't want to have to pay for each channel individually, at least not under the current system.

1. 
   is this.....is this for REAL?
   

Re:Am I just stupid? Why not a VCR?

[fmaxwell]

SVHS sucks, too. Just somewhat less. While there are 400+ lines of luminance resolution, the chrominance resolution is a fraction of that (like a kid that can't keep within the lines of a coloring book).

The tape transport is more failure-prone. Skipping forward/backward takes longer. There is no intelligence. With Tivo, I can tell it to record every new and/or rerun episode of a show and it finds and records them. If I am on vacation, I can come back to find 30 hours of stuff recorded. Ever try to record 30 hours on a single SVHS tape?

Re:I don't need stellar quality for timeshifting.

[fmaxwell]

How often do you need to record 30 hours on a TiVO.

When I go on business trips or vacations.

That's a SPECIALTY task.

I don't know what your employer has been telling you, but vacations are something most people expect to take at least once a year. Business trips are common for many people.

It's already slightly fuzzy coming from the cable company.

Degrading it further is not a good idea and I use DirecTV, which has a stellar picture compared to cable TV.

TIVO Question for owners :

[rixster]

How does a TIVO interface with either ONDigital or a sky digi-box ? Does it have some kind of magical lead that controls ? (Please don't offtopic me yet - I'm curious coz I might get one...)

I detest comercial television

[noz]

In Australia, I watch everything on the ABC and SBS (which recently won an international multicultural exposure award.

Sadly, the commercial stations do have The Sopranos, and Voyager & DS9, so I tape these (it's analogue I know, but hey).

But The Bill (greatest show in the world) in on the ABC ( :

pricing

[BCGlorfindel]

It won't be having to watch commercials that will be the problem with all programming being setup on-demand. I'd figure that a system like this would enable cable companies to start pay-per-view like setups for most programs, with the extra control they would have customers will probably see all new payment plans that would likely result in higher pricing in the end.

On-demand connections

[dachshund]

The bandwidth of current cable infrastructures is often limited to the broadcast of about 25 - 40 video channels at the last mile

Actually, if you get rid of the analog channels and go exclusively to digital transmission, you can pack a considerable number of on-demand channels onto the coax. Each 6Mhz band can currently support 8-10 channels on standard digital cable networks (the lower channels are slightly more limited.) If the "live" channels are multicast, you can further reduce the bandwidth they require. Of course, this assumes that you're completely revise the format in which digital cable is transmitted; fortunately, these changes would mainly take place at the head end and the client, so they wouldn't require massive system-wide upgrades.

Some of the calculations I've seen give each household an average of between one and two on-demand connections apiece, if you assume a reasonably sized local loop (300-400 homes.) If your local loop has too many subscribers on it, as some networks tend to (think the former TCI empire), you're out of luck.

And don't forget that the "take rate" for these services is not going to be high in the beginning, so 30-40 channels per neighborhood might be acceptable.

Re:This article deserves some sort of award:

[markmoss]

Do you truly have a cable network that can deliver VOD to everyone at once, or do you have VOD that works as long as just a few people use it? If you really have a network capable of 1 channel per user, you are mighty lucky to be served by one of the few forward-looking companies. Probably you won't know until the system does overload -- unless you can get a few hundred neighbors to cooperate in a test and bring it down NOW. I've heard too many stories of cable executives enthusiastically pushing cable modems while being utterly clueless about the network segmentation ("Huh?") that is needed to make those work for more than a few people. Chances are the same thing will happen with VOD.

VOD and PVR are not the same thing, no matter how much nCube tries. Yep. Well, you could deliver PVR from a server over a VOD-capable network, but you can also crack nuts by setting off a hand grenade near them. That doesn't make the hand grenade a nutcracker... 8-)

This article deserves some sort of award:

[markmoss]

"Worst non-technical article about a technical subject", or maybe "Most errors in one page".

The worst error of all: for this to work at all like Tivo, the cable company would have to dedicate one channel to each subscriber. That means cable loops with less than 100 subscribers on each, which will usually require running fiber further into neighborhoods and installing more fiber-to-cable units. Also the fiber-to-cable units have to be upgraded to select the channels instead of just dumping everything they get to the cable, the fiber bandwidth has to be increased to carry thousands of subscriber channels, and the central office needs lots of high-powered servers.

I do expect all those hardware upgrades to happen in about 10 years, but it's not going to happen just for timeshifting -- it will happen because the hardware is necessary for (1) good high-speed internet service to homes, and (2) to enable the cable companies to sell video rentals. It's going to take a long time to work out the details (mainly how the servers and the content providers split up the money), but on-line video rentals are going to be _big_ someday.

As far as scheduled programming goes, everything the article claimed as a reason for consumers to buy the service looks to me like a reason to avoid it: give me targeted advertisements embedded in the program or with fast-forward locked-out, and I'll spend a lot more time reading books!

Finally, "I can scale it, depending on how popular the service is. It's all under my roof. And I don't have to send a truck out to every customer who wants it. It presents great efficiencies for cable operators." WTF? No one had to send out a truck to put in my VCR or my DVD player. No one has to send out a truck to install Tivo boxes with the hard drive. But if they do implement the proposed scheme, they'll have to send out lots of trucks to do the network upgrades.

Re:Now is the time.

[WinPimp2K]

No, the time will be in 2026 when the patent that TIVO has on the core functionality (not how, but what) of recording the incoming video stream while playing "another stream" (which is how they can "pause" live TV).

And before you get all huffy about geek power, remember that even giving the tech away would set you up to be nailed/jailed under the No Electronic Theft Act (I may have the name wrong, but its the wonderful law that was passed to protect copyright holders from having their work stolen by people who would distribute it for free).

Buy one and see

[jrwillis]

I thought the same thing until I bought mine. Now, I can't imagine tv without it. It allows you to watch whatever you want whenever you want. Besides, show me a vcr that can record 30 hours, in digital quality, without having to change tapes. That's not to mention the fact that with a HDD upgrade you can get up 100+ hours. Especialy with the DirecTivo units, you'd be amazed the programs that you'd like that you don't even know come on. When watching a show on a regular tv, I still try to fast forward through the commercials. (: Anyway, while I'm sure they're not for everyone, a Tivo is just one of those things that you have to have to understand it's value. (and besides, it runs linux. (: hehehe)

Hard disks ain't cheap?!

[jrwillis]

I would love to hear your rational behind this statement. In a day when a 75GB 7200rpm drive can be had for a little more then $200, I can't imagine someone saying that hard drives arn't cheap. Also, I hope you realize that the PVR makers don't pay retail for the HDD's. Also, Tivo has nothing to do with the hardware end of things. The only thing Tivo provides is the service. All hardware is provided and sold buy Sony and Panasonic. I don't think they'd be selling these units if they wern't making money on them. Of course that's just my opinion. (:

PVR

[AX.25]

I guess this removes the P from PVR. Guess I'll be waiting for the howto to make my own tivo.

It's simple...

[jasonk3]

If there's no way to fast-forward through the ads, no one will buy it. They'll have to pry my Replay from my cold, dead fingers.

I can see it now...

[BIGJIMSLATE]

I can see it now...

One of three scenarios:

[1] The network sucks
"Honey, let's watch that episode of the Sopranos we taped last night"

"Ok! Wait a second...you sure you taped the Sopranos?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Nothing, its just been saying 'buffering' for the past twenty minutes!"

[2]All your rights are belong to us

"Honey, let's watch that movie we taped last night off HBO."

"Ok! Wait a second...you sure you taped that movie?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Nothing, its just saying that we're violating section 1201(a) of the DMCA, and the authorities are on their way..."

[3]Streaming media...er...SUCKS

"Honey? Why does Regis look like a bunch of pixels?"

Clockwork Orange?

[flacco]

Remember the forced video-watching scene? It's getting a lot like that with commercials. I'm sure the Ad-Man would jump at the chance to do something like that.

Re:Am I just stupid? Why not a VCR?

[koreth]

So? You use a VCR and a TiVo. Dump the shows you want to archive to tapes (I use S-VHS) and delete the ones you only want to watch once. The fact that the hard disk has limited capacity is irrelevant unless you decide to leave town for a few weeks, in which case cheap videotapes wouldn't have solved your problem anyway.

Bandwidth

[$hotgun]

How would even cable handle the necessary bandwidth to give everyone two way communication and what would amount to their own channel? Will this boil down to what DTV does with their movies ("your movie will be starting in 15minutes")? And if so, won't this be a blow to what makes TIVO so attractive (watch what you like, WHEN you like)? How would the pause and rewind work (a few megs of local storage)?

I just don't see how this could get far. Media companies keep thinking that they can make a business of NOT giving people what they want. They're doomed.

(of course, I didn't read the article. How am I supposed to get modded up if I take time to read the article?)

Filtering commercials

[Krelboyne]

Unfortunately I bought a Sony TiVo unit after the 30-second skips were eliminated from the remote. Can anyone direct me to a good HOW-TO on reintroducing this function to my disadvantaged unit?

-----------------

Re:Filtering commercials

[Krelboyne]

Thanks for the information. I'll hunt around and see what I can dig up on the Fast-Forward.

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