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More on the Replay TV 4000
boskone noted that Replay TV's site has updated with a variety of new information that will definitely allow the Tivo/Replay flamewars to escalate. Besides the networking capability we mentioned earlier (send shows to friends, or to other Replay's on your home LAN), and the gigantic 320 hour maximum storage capacity, there are more detailed specicifcations. Also notable is the progressive video output port, and the fact that it actually requires ethernet, but doesn't require a subscription! I'd love to try one of these buggers out when they ship.
Part of the reason early replayTV units were almost twice as much as the same recording capacity was because the subscription price was included.. You do pay for it.
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Sure, the Replay doesn't have a subscription requirement. But how much you wanna bet there's going to be more intrusive information sent up that ethernet connection about your viewing habits?
When I go on a trip for several days
When some channel broadcasts a bunch of episodes of something I like in a single day (a something-"marathon" they call it)
But even if I could record all these things and keep them in memory, I'd never be able to watch them all anyway. I hardly watch everything my mere 30-hour Tivo records already.
The thing that I'd really really like to see appear in PVRs is a second tuner. Very often, choosing between two programs is the real bother, not the amount of memory. The only reason why single-tuner PVRs work nowadays is because interesting programs are so diluted in an ocean of crap on TV. Come to think of it, that's also probably why 15 hours are enough, because there aren't enough interesting programs per day to fill it up.
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...pay a monthly fee for access to the networks and local stations. They come over my cable channel and I can't get them any other way. Plus I note that there are still commercials on channels like Comedy Central. So here I am, paying to watch commercials. How dumb is that?
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I have to say it is nice of them to give the service for free and all, but what happens if the service ends? I can't find anywhere that talks about who does the service, and how do the people that provice this service get reimbursed for the costs of doing this?
Without commercials, we would have to pay for content - using the money that we have saved by not having to pay 20 to 40 percent more for products to cover the cost of their ad campaigns. I can live with that.
Wrong. The companies will still pay for advertising, just in other media, since TV will lose it effectiveness.
So you'll pay just as much for the products, AND pay for your TV besides.
It's not a zero-sum game, you'll be creating new income for radio and print.
It is about the software. I've got an ethernet card in my TiVo right now. But I don't have any compelling software for it. I can't share video with other TiVo users without going through extreme measures. In all, the Ethernet on the TiVo is great for toys like a web server, or doing stuff from the shell prompt.
That's why ReplayTV is better than a TiVo with an ethernet hack. ReplayTV embraces the network connection. TiVo, unfortunately, is too in-bed with corporate sponsors. Here's hoping they change.
... so, a hack to make your PC look like a ReplayTV at the end of the cable would be miiiiiiighty useful. :)
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What I would like to know is, since Replay TV doesn't sell their program guide, then would they be opposed to someone else reverse engineering the service and providing a competing program guide? Or even better, handing out the specs so that someone else could easily provide a competing service. Personally, I'd like to see the program guides provided by the tv provider (i.e. your cable company or satelite provider). Why? Because then I know that both services will always be available simultaneously. I won't have to worry about getting a tv signal and not getting the program guide. Both will either work or fail. And if both fail, then I just switch to someone else who will provide both. With Tivo/Replay/Microsoft I might still get tv signal, but the program guide might go away. So clearly a competitive program guide is what I'd want.
But I don't think we'll ever see it. Clearly Tivo isn't going to do this, they want to sell the service. But I suspect that Replay won't do this either. Why? Because what they also want is the data that they download that tells them what you watched and when you watched it. They want the information about what programs interest you. They want the data about which commercials you skipped and which ones you watched. They want to know if you prefer the sports replays that the tv networks generate or the one that the PVR generates. They want to know who/what/where/when/why you watch TV.
Think about this. How can Tivo/Replay/Microsoft provide a service that needs to run forever, without corresponding income that gets generated forever? By selling the information gathered from the service to program providers, or advertisers or ??? Think this isn't a viable business model? Think of it as the same service that Nielson sells, but with tv viewers paying money to participate.
So with program guide going across an ethernet now, I imagine it's only a matter of time before the protocol is reversen engineered... unless of course, it's encrypted. And then it's only a matter of time before someone tries to hack the box to get the encryption secrets. And then it'll be only a matter of time before Replay/Tivo/et al, sue under the DMCA.
This will be an interesting next few years in the PVR world.
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