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TiVo To Support RealNetwork Formats
rtphokie writes: "The flurry of announcements coming form the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas has started with
RealNetworks ' anouncement that it had struck deals to include its technology in an array of microchips and devices, including TiVo PVRs. This is the latest move in an effort to expand from the desktop to consumer devices."
it is "spyware"
it is non-secure: that is, use of it injects data into your system that you don't have the control over to save, copy, or do what you want.
Unless you are careful, it splatters itself all over your desktop
If you are a real idiot, you get spammed if you enter your e-mail address during set-up.
Unless you are careful, it keeps nagging you to upgrade to a version that is less secure and works worse than the previous version.
"One of the emerging themes this week (at CES) is the whole digital convergence in the home, and what we have in place with TiVo is what I think is the most concrete practical example of that," Glaser said.
In short, they are looking at an internet appliance of sorts. Hook TiVo up to the TV and the internet and you have a way of interfacing with internet content.
______
Once: you're a philosopher. Twice: a pervert.
The point of an open source PVR is not to make a cheaper or a 100% cost-free PVR. It is to promote open standards, and to create features that you don't see in common PVRs. Like, say, MPEG-4 video. There are lots of opportunities in an open source PVR. But cost avoidance isn't one of them.
Actually, yes ;-). A 30 hour (at basic) TiVo has a 30 GB hard drive, which equals about 1 GB (1024 MB)/hr at basic quality. This equals 17.06 MB/minute and .284 MB(or 291.27 Kilobytes)/second. This of course discounts the parts of the TiVo that do not store MPEG data, like the root filesystem, swap, etc., so the actual bitrate is even a little less than that. I based my .rm rates on the Simpson episodes that I mentioned in the previous post. An average episode is ~250 MB for 22 minutes of video. (250 MB / 22 minutes / 60 seconds) * 1024 KB per MB = 193.93 Kilobytes per second. Just because I didn't quote my math in my original post doesn't mean I didn't do the math. These are comparable bitrates and the .rm looks much worse than the mpeg.
Say what you want about RM's shitty software, almost never do we see RM files encoded at a bitrate even approaching most MPEG files.
That was my point, that I do have .rm's at a bitrate approaching many MPEG files and it still looks like dog shit.
Enigma
Please, PLEASE, TiVo, stay with MPEG!
Who said they were dropping MPEG? They've agreed to use RealNetworks technology for music management, not to replace the video codec for recording television programs!
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay