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TiVo To Support RealNetwork Formats

Posted by timothy on from the battle-of-the-proprietary-video-formats dept.

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."

13 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. uh oh... by 2Bits · · Score: 4, Interesting
    is someone going to scream bloody hell too, now that RealNetwork is doing this, just after MS?

    Standards, standards, we only want standards implemented in hardware!

    1. Re:uh oh... by jd142 · · Score: 5, Troll

      Yeah, I'll yell. RealNetworks is just plain evil. They make it almost impossible for the average user to find their free player. The last time I looked for someone, it was hidden on 1 line between two great big advertisements for 2 of their non-free players. They make it almost impossible for an average user to stop that *%^# Real Start Center from loading on boot. The warning messages make it sound like the computer won't work if you don't load start center. Plus that start center is the worst piece of software I've ever seen. If I have a user call in whose computer suddenly won't boot, odds are they just upgraded real player.

      Now I'm not against proprietary software and companies making money. But jeez, these people are as bad as the X10 ads.

      Their software is slow, resource intensive, buggy and ad ware.

      But let me tell you how I really feel. . . ;)

  2. Oh, Heavens No! by justinstreufert · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Please, PLEASE, TiVo, stay with MPEG! The video on my TiVo looks excellent. I challenge ANYONE to show me a Real video that looks even remotely acceptable. I have never seen one. Seriously.

    Justin

    --
    "Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
    1. Re:Oh, Heavens No! by Enigma2175 · · Score: 4, Informative
      Actually, no. Your bitrate info is way off. TiVo's bitrate is about 2-3 megabits per second at basic, while those RM files are about 175-250 kilobits/second, or about 20 kilobytes/second

      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

  3. Oh great... by Adversive · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now when you set up your new RealTiVo and you forget to uncheck ALL the boxes, its going to make it your default toaster and blender too.

    --
    Adversive
    My cat's breath smells like cat food.
  4. Real, TiVo & Big Brother Databases by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Is there a possible privacy angle in this deal -- perhaps a move to combine/share Customer Viewing/Buying patterns?

    Am I the only one who remembers when RealNetworks was Progressive Networks, and Rob Glazer was helping to support liberal politicsl causes?

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
  5. need new Tivo? by fetta · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sounds like those of us who already own a Tivo would have to buy a "second generation box" to take advantage of this deal with RealNetworks.

    For me to shell out more money for a new box, they better be offering some real compelling content. The Tivo already records more stuff than I could possibly find time to watch.

    --
    ** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
  6. Great by British · · Score: 5, Funny

    Great, now we can watch "BUFFERING" on TV now, and have it solicit your email address for special offers!

  7. Maybe TiVo can get their codecs to perform by joshv · · Score: 5, Troll

    I dunno, but even on broadband connections I have never viewed an acceptable video stream based on a RealNetworks codec. I keep giving them a chance, downloading the new required viewer every other month, click 'No, cancel, no, exit' every time their viewer loads and prompts me to register. But their codecs suck.

    On the exact same connection I can get near VHS quality streams (BBC online is a great example with their 300 Kbps feed) using windows media. I've tried many different Real feeds that claim the same bandwidth targets, and I've yet to see one that is watchable. I wish Real were better, but it not even in the same ballpark.

    I think Real has done more to give streaming video a band name, than any other company out there.

    Perhaps TiVO can figure out what's wrong.

    -josh

  8. An opportunity for Tivo by irregular_hero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    With Tivo's stock price in the toilet and analysts wondering about Tivo's "business plan and future," it only makes sense that they would try to bring something to the table as far as "on-demand video" goes.

    Tivo is hamstrung in that it has -- for most consumers who don't specifically modify the device -- only a 56K modem to get video into the device. Tivo's got to come up with something else, and darned if RealNetworks doesn't already have ready-made code that can run on Linux. What else would they choose? Microsoft's Media format?

    Seems to me that Tivo needs to take a page from SonicBlue's playbook and start making broadband-capable Tivos ASAP. You might as well forget about asking me to download .rm files and display them on my Sony WEGA TV, blocks and all. Give me something a little better by sticking with MPEG and upping the connection speed. I'd pay for it.

    1. Re:An opportunity for Tivo by uradu · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > Seems to me that Tivo needs to take a page from SonicBlue's playbook

      How about photocopy the whole damn book? Their whole business model sucks, "giving away" the player and "making money" (obviously not) off the guide fee. It only leads to people getting pissed off for being charged for 3+ guides (TiVo, DirecTV, Digital Cable etc.) They might as well give you the player for free and charge $50/mo for the TiVo logo.

      It seems they could have a much more lucrative business if they built an entire accessory line around the base device. They should take at serious look at the game console market if they want to know how to make more money after selling the basic box. It's all in the expansion, stupid.

      - Put in 1394 ports and sell external expansion hard drives that every moron can install w/o a kernel recompile. Sell a purple TiVo-branded 30GB 1394 HD for $200 or so, and you would actually make money off hardware. Don't limit the number of drives, and you'd be surprised how many drives you'd find in some homes.

      I would bet that just offering external storage expansion alone would seriously improve their bottom line. They could easily co-brand an ADS 1394 enclosure, throw in a cheap 30GB HD--all for $60 to them, while selling it for $200 or $250.

      - Add an Ethernet port and sell PC (and Mac) software that lets you manage the TiVo over the network: provide a more powerful (and quicker) version of the on-screen menus, save shows to PC for possible burning to CD/DVD, watch streaming video on multiple PCs from the TiVo etc. IOW, sell all the stuff hackers are working on anyway, while actually making money off it.

      - Sell a purple TiVo-branded broadband router as a "broadband adapter" or under some other such Joe-Blow-appealing label. Take the opportunity that you're actually providing a killer app for home networking to become a major force in home networking. Become a pioneer in phoneline, powerline and wireless networking appliances.

      - Otherwise expand the digital entertainment management idea that the TiVo introduced.

      Instead, they're resting on their original laurels with nary any innovation since (save the DirecTiVo, if that's innovation). TiVo could have worked hard and become THE digital media company, but they pretty much paused their vision along with live TV. They remind me a lot of Palm.

      -

  9. Real = terrible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    RealNetworks is terrible, so bad that I have stooped to only using MS media player. Problems include:

    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.

  10. Great! by asdfasdfasdfasdf · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can finally watch streaming video on TV!

    err. wait. That's what tv is.