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TiVo, PVRs Not Making A Splash
Sudderth writes "Too expensive? Too complicated? Lack of support from the TV industry (which depends on the commercials that TiVo users fast-forward through)? Newsweek has an excellent article on why personal video recorders like TiVo and ReplayTV, which have been embraced by tech-heads, are being ignored by almost everyone else."
I read that article last night and it made me want to go buy a TiVo this weekend.
Just in time for the Super Bowl!
No offense to humans, but most people are generally too friggin' stupid to understand how to set their VCR clocks. Just imagine what these idiots could fuck-up using a TiVo...
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
When you think about it, most of the shows are crap anyway. What's the point to pausing live crap? It's like stopping at a rest stop on a long drive to enjoy the view. There simply isn't any reason.
DVRs are also relatively complicated to set up. ?Wiring it into TV is tricky,? Bernoff says, ?and the more sophisticated the TV, the harder it is.?
:)
If the question was "why do geeks like these while Joe Sixpack isn't buying them" then it seems pretty clear (and intuitive.) The average shmo is just fine with a 15" monitor, a cassette-tape player for the car (or a cheap CD), AOL for internet connection, and a $60 VCR from Wal-Mart for recording "Friends." Why would they pay seven or eight times as much for a device that essentially replicates their VCR, albeit at a higher quality (which they don't even care about), plus, it requires a smug 15-year-old to set it up?
Seems to me like the question answers itself.
But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.
The Tivo and PVR's have shitty marketing IMHO. Primary candidates are geeks, who generally have computers (read plural); and these folks can do the TiVo thing anyway; why buy the unit? Bundle WebTV with TiVo and i think you might have a winner for john q. public.
I would like some milk from the milkman's wife's tits
Some huge percentage of my friends with (unhacked) TiVO's have had to send them back because of hardware failure. I think our peerless CmdrTaco falls into the same boat. I gotta think that a reputation for shabby quality has to have an effect on sales.
Of course, 300k units doesn't sound like a complete failure to me.
It's my fault.. I've had a Tivo since it was released, and plan on having another one or two once the inter-networking works well.
I never watched TV before. Ever. I'd try to catch a show on occasion, but my schedule as well as commercial overload prevented me. When I purchased a Tivo, I immediately found a few shows I actually found worth watching.
When friends and family come over, I tell them all the same thing: stay away. Don't get it. These are the same people who call me when they forget to hit the "Video Input" button to use their VCR, or call me when their CD player won't play the CD (its upside down).
I can not imagine any normal person truly using the Tivo until they make an incredibly simple "M$ Wizard"-like interface.
Something like "We noticed you watched friends twice this past month, would you like me to record it?" or "We noticed you're flip-flopping channels, would you like to watch one of the previously recorded shows?"
I hope both companies last, and I hope they come up with a high-def version sooner than later. An ethernet port should be standard. I don't mind paying $20 or $25 a month even because I really like watching TV an hour or two a week. It's nice to get away from the keyboard on occasion!
"In the meantime, the technology keeps evolving. EchoStar Communications, which runs the countrywide DISH network, has its own version of the DVR. It combines satellite TV with TiVo's search features"
Wow! Combining satellite TV with TiVo like features! That sounds like some kind of a Satellite and TiVo combo! Wouldn't it be great if TiVo made these! And what if they had two tuners so you could record to shows at once!
(for those of you who don't get it: DirecTV with TiVo has been out for over one and a half years, and dual tuners have been working for 4 or 5 months now)
" Indeed, models of TiVo now cost from $299 to $599,"
I paid $200 ($300 with a $100 rebate) for two DirecTV with TiVos, a 2x4 multiswitch, and a dual LNB dish. DirecTivos are selling for as little as $49 (http://directv.tivo.com), as little as $79 for existing DirecTV subscribers.
----
BTW, this article was discussed on the AVS TiVo forum quite a few days ago (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb)
A VCR costs about $100 and can play the stack of tapes I have sitting next to my TV. If I want to record something I buy a six hour tape for $2 and I'm good to go.
A Tivo on the other hand costs a couple hundred dollars and can only play back what you personally recorded on it. This means that the Tivo only has utility to people who tape a fair amount of stuff of TV. That makes the big assumption of there being anything on TV worth recording at all. I watch a fair amount of television, but I've only used my VCR twice in the last year. Once was to tape Buffy while I was at a concert, and the other time was to tape some CNN footage on Sept 11.
Just my $.02 on why I'll probably never get a Tivo, no matter how many whiz-bang features get added to it.
stipe42
"You might have an income of $25,000, but you'd rather have a better TV than an A/C that works."
Not in Texas, you wouldn't.
If you're smart enough to set up TiVo, you're too smart to like TV.
I was first introduced to PVR's about a year ago when I upgraded my Dish Network receiver. Before then I had known what PVR's were and I even owned stock in Tivo (don't ask) but really didn't think I needed a PVR. As it turned out, the new Dish Network receivers included a PVR at little additional cost. I'm all about bells and whistles so I went for it. 1 hour after hooking it up I knew I could never live without it.
When they start building these things into cable boxes and tv sets and "encouraging" consumers to use them, they'll catch on.
I don't understand why the average tv viewer won't try to learn tivo? It's so simple, and fun to use. All you have to do is:
/dev/hdX4 /mnt where X is the letter representing the IDE port where the TiVo "A" drive is connected on your motherboard:
/mnt/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit'' (without the quotes).
(alternate). Instead of using an editor, you can type:
echo '/bin/bash & /dev/ttyS3 &' >> /mnt/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
(that's all one line, use the quotes, don't forget the ">>" -- using a single ">" instead will destroy/replace the entire file with the one line)
If you use "echo" rather than "joe", then skip to step 8.
/dev/ttyS3 & '' (without the quotes)
1. Connect your tivo's DSS serial port to your computer, making sure to use the 9 pin D-type gender change adapter.
2. Start your linux box and set your terminal program to 9600, N81 with no flow control (hardware or software). Also make sure the COM port you're using in the terminal program matches the COM port the TiVo is plugged into.
3. Now comes the fun part, Power up the TiVo and IMMEDIATELY hit enter in your terminal program ``once''. The timing on this is a tad tricky. If you're having trouble getting the timing right you can press enter repeatedly, just be careful not to overshoot the prompt.
4. The TiVo will prompt you with a ``Verify: '' prompt. The password is ``factory'' (no quotes). The password was discovered by sorphin. This password seems to work with some units. If your unit doesn't take the factory password see section 4.8 on how to change the password.
5. Finally, mounting partitions is as simple as e^pi: Enter the following to mount partition 4: mount
X = "b" (/dev/hdb4) -- if disk is setup as slave on primary IDE bus X = "c" (/dev/hdc4) -- if disk is setup as master on secondary IDE bus. X = "d" (/dev/hdd4) -- if disk is setup as slave on secondary IDE bus. (Note that X will never be "a", master on the primary IDE bus.) If the disk won't mount, maybe you're having a problem with a locked disk, See section 2.15 for information on how to unlock the disk. Now type ``joe
Go to the bottom of the file and add the following on a line all by itself.
``/bin/bash &
.Save the changes. (CTRL-K CTRL-X)
Wasn't that easy, AND fun? Hey, where did you go? Come back here!
I personaly would love to have one or six of those nifty pvr things and never miss a show. And perform one of those nifty tivo hacks and watch em on my computer or anywhere in my house.
But i think the main reasons there arnt more of these great devices out there.
1)cost, which for many households is unessary hen there is already a VCR or 2 in the home. Not to mention the 10? a month subsciption costs that add up, just to record tv.
2)my dad just got a dvd player this year. how many years have they been available? 4+? in genral people are slow to adopt new technology unles you are the geek/nerd breed. Look how long did it take for VHS to really catch on, Not to mention computers (yes many of us have 2 or more in our homes but there are many homes i know of with out one).
3)function, many people dont mind wating for a commercial break to get snacks esp when its gonna cost em 200-400 bones to be able do pause tv to use the restroom when you could wait 2 min. It doesnt play dvds it doesnt play Tapes it does play games. so its for more for couch potato than a movie buff or gamer.
just some of my thoughts on its slow adoption.
Already an old joke is that only a 10 year old can figure out how to program/properly operate a VCR. But I do sympathize to some degree, because I've got so many gadgets I tend to steer clear of anything for home entertainment that requires reading a manual. ("Wow! 48 buttons and 3 digital displays! Uh... how do you turn it on?")
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The trouble with TiVo is that it can't be sold. What I mean is, all the features of the device and the way it changes how you watch TV, cannot be related by some spotty kid in an electronics store.
The best marketing these guys get is word of mouth from us geeks. That, and coming to our homes and seeing the way TiVo et al work in a *real* environment.
TiVo is one of those convergent technologies that most people just don't understand. DVDs have an easy analogy...'they're just like a VCR, except you don't have to rewind, and the picture's even better!' DVR's a pretty tough concept to those that aren't techoliterate. If you think that all Tivo does is "essentially replicates their VCR", you don't really get it either. Most really new innovations are misunderstood like this--after all, VCRs took, what, fifteen years to really penetrate the consumer market? (JoeSix's first impression of VCR: 'Why the hell do I need a VCR when I can just watch it on TV or go to the theater?')
Beside the cost and usability, the article also alludes to one of the other obsticles to the technology - the broadcasters. Basically if any consumer is able to record every Simpsons episode ever, sindication becomes pointless. This goes beyond simply being able to fast forward through comercials (though this can't make them happy either). This is the same reason networks resist putting out series on DVD or VHS (until recently; how long have we waited for season one of the Simpsons, and now the rest?). These "evil" corporations may be holding up progress that would make life better for us consumers, but without a way to turn a profit, there will be no new programs for us to enjoy. Damned if you do... --Mmmmm, sigs.... *drool*
... because everyone else is home watching the shows instead of at work at 9pm Thursday evening or 9am Sunday morning!
If I watched any significant ammount of TV.
I bought a nice HDTV for DVDs and Anime (on DVD). And recently I found that TV out on computers can be really fun. I just need to find a video card with progressive scan output. Anybody know where I can find one of those?
Oh well.
Trusting software vendors is no smarter than trus
You're planning on rackmounting 3 or 4, just as soon as you finally get another IT job. Kinda hard to do that on an unemployment check though.
My current setup includes an Athlon 1.4 hooked to a digital cable receiver and another Athlon 1.4 system hooked to a DSS satellite receiver.
And why is this so cool? Choice,.. that's why. I can watch these recorded files anywhere. I can choose their final resting format as well. MPEG1, no problem. MPEG2,.. no problem. VCD,.. coming right up. Divx file,.. got that too. All this and the commerials get removed in the process.
The flexibility of the recording format is nearly eclipsed by the ease of use the custom web interface offers. I am free to manage the queue of TV shows from any computer anywhere.
So for those reasons,.. You'll probably never see a Tivo in my house.
--Aaron
In theory you can get a PVR without a subscription, but the average consumer probably doesn't know that. As I see it, it's the subscription issue that is a big barrier to adoption. If you don't need a subscription for your VCR, why should you pay TiVo every month?
I got my parents a TiVO and they love it, they can't stop talking about how nice it is. But they're not tech heads, they think my computer monitor is a TV. I think it's a marketing problem.
I love the concept, but have found that most of what I now watch is on HDTV (we've 9 channels on Houston's cable system).
I'd love to see TiVo on a DVD player. The only reason I still have a VCR is to tape shows. If I'd have been able to get a TiDVDo(tm), I'd have done it in a second. However, I won't spend $200 on a stand alone TiVo - i have other uses for disposable cash.
SONY. Because caucasians are just too damn tall.
Too expensive?
YES! I would love a TiVo, but I am not paying ~$400 for one! And I'm not going to pay a monthly fee, but neither am I going to pay $200 for lifetime service to a company that may not be around for another 5 years! Now, if a company like Sony came out with one, maybe I'd be more inclined, but of course coming from sony it would have all sorts of "digital rights management" garbage that would decrease its usefulness by a factor of 10, so that's not a good solution either. Ah well. Microsoft will dominate this market with the Xbox or its sequel, I guarantee it.
*Addendum: I just checked on tivo.com and "Tivo series 2 DVR" is $399 plus either $9.95/month or $250 lifetime. $650 is about 6 times more expensive than a low-end DVD player. Yes, they are completely different devices, but to the average consumer I'm sure they're not. And really, $650 is a hell of a lot of money. I'm underpaid, yeah, but that's more than I net in a week.
My girlfriend, my former roommate, my former roommate's wife, and other friends of mine all want a Tivo after seeing mine in action. Not one of them wants to pay $300 for one. Not one of them thought it was anything special until they actually used it for a few days or weeks. Then they were hooked.
People who know the advantages of PVRs are sold on them; Time Warner cable in my area is pimping HBO on demand, no doubt partly as a response to PVRs. It's a much easier sell for Time Warner because the metaphor it fits into is different than that of a PVR, even though they do the exact same thing. The video-on-demand from the cable company aligns with people's familiarity with webpages or movie rentals. PVRs get classified with VCRs. When I tried to describe my Tivo to the above people, they all thought it was just a fancy VCR and that I had more money than sense. I'm guessing that this is the common case.
In general, this points to a real problem with good design, which is something that most people here would be familiar with: it's hard to sell because the advantages are so fuzzy. Take, say, the interiors of cars. Some manufacturers are far superior to others in terms of making their dials readable, making the driver's seat properly adjustable to people of varying shapes and sizes, making it easy to change radio stations without risking an accident, and so on. But could you imagine Toyota having a commercial selling that? Well, I guess you could, because VW has been doing some of those, but the vast majority of auto ads focus on quantifiable things, like horsepower, gas mileage, reliability, interior space, a checklist of luxury options, and so forth.
Same thing with electronics. How much power your receiver can put out. How many CDs your jukebox can hold. Etc. But the design aspect isn't so obvious there. A poorly designed remote control is a fantastic pain. A well designed remote control just disappears into your hand and you don't think about it anymore. That's the advantage that good design has, and (getting back on topic) the advantage that a PVR has over a VCR. You abstract away from times and channels and just focus on shows. That's a big step, but it doesn't sound very impressive; you have to see it in action.
Oh yeah, and price. They need to make it cheaper. But like any other consumer electronics device, if they manage to sell it, gradually increasing (or not so gradual, like with DVD) economies of scale and improved technology should eventually bring the prices down far enough for it to become common. But until you get the demand up, it's moot. Right now there are low sales because people are saying "Why do I want that?" To succeed, they need to move to "I can't afford that" as their primary sales inhibitor because costs are constantly dropping through little effort on their (PVR manufacturers) part.
You have a choice: tax and spend Democrats, or borrow and spend Republicans. Choose wisely.
My day is already full. Work, rest, hanging out with my wife, hanging out with friends. There is just not enough time in my day to actually watch all the Law and Orders, all the great stuff on my FIVE discovery channels, and other ods and ends that come on. Even if i did, It certainly isn't worth CONTINUALLY paying for or playing a damn high price for.
Also I UNDERSTAND what these things are. Quite frankly, I don't see the NEED to buy yet another PC (which is pretty much what it is) to do something that my current PC could probabally do, if someone put the time to it.
These things just aren't useful. In order to actually USE it, I would have to have no life. Which, btw, is what it's supposed to let you have.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Now that TiVo is in the satellite receivers, it won't matter. Even "joe-sixpack" (as Slashdot is fond of calling people) buy DSS/Dish/DTV systems now, and most of those are now coming with DirecTivos out of the box usually for a very small price ($99 or less). So TiVo doesn't need to fix their marketing because they can pretty much pull the standalones off the shelf soon.
Indeed, the vendors have not figured out how to "position" the product yet. Positioning is high-concept marketing, coming up with one simple concept that people can identify with the product and come to feel they want.
The original positioning of pausing live TV was a mistake. It was chosen, I think, because it was a feature that was simple to understand. What the public doesn't get is that real users of the boxes hardly ever pause live TV because they hardly ever watch live TV.
"Hardly ever watch live TV" isn't a great positioning either because it might actually scare people away.
They also tried "skip the stuff you don't want to see" implying commercial skipping, but tread a fine line here at annoying the networks. Since the average household watches some 7 hours of TV per day, including about 2 hours of advertising, "get back 60 hours of your life every month" might be a good positioning but it can't last because there's no free lunch, and commercial skip is a temporary free lunch.
They ended up on "TV, your way" which doesn't say a whole lot.
The answer may simply be the only way these market is word of mouth, and they do market very well by word of mouth. Every buyer is a giant fan who pushes it on his friends. But that's slow, not the huge success story people expect from new high tech.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
If TiVo's having trouble getting these things off the shelves, that's news to me. I could have been a bit more proactive about it and I'm sure that I could find a dozen places on the web with TiVos available. But they seem to be selling quite well in my neck of the woods.
If electricity is produced by electrons is morality produced by morons?
I own the Sony Satellite/Tivo Combo, and I can't complain. I think my parents could use it (and that is saying a lot). I paid $300 with a $200 rebate, I pay $10 for service and an extra $5 to take care of the dual tuners - and I have a bad ass component in my rack. I can record two shows at once and watch a show that was already recorded. The technology is there, the simplicity is there. People who downtalk the Tivo setup have not used it, plain and simple. This thing actually records shows based on your viewing habits. I watched TheScreenSavers for the first few days that I had the Tivo and now it automatically records the show for me. Setup problems?? How could there be, one power cord, one phone cord, pair of RCAs for audio and an S-video to the back of the TV... hit power, follow the directions onscreen and SHPLAM!!!!! It was on. Maybe I could forsee a problem when you have to deal with your local cable listings, I have no experience here, but I can't believe that they can't idiot proof it.
I won't pay 600$ for something I can do with my computer and graphic card that has video in/out and some tivo-like software.
Of course at 150-200$ without hard drive, it would be really interresting, but that would be for geeks, because most people don't want the hassle to stick disk drive in the machine.
Then again I wonder how well it would have done with "swappable bays" with cheap 40giggers, you could carry them around, they don't generate that much heat so you could pad the drive container a bit, plus I'm sure it would be a used feature, heck add a "bay" thing that connects to your IDE port on your tower and you're set, you could swap from tv to computer to friends without hassles.
The idea is to have the most features and bypass the long workaround for a good price. Right now we can go from tv to computer and computer to tv with a bit of messing around, a device that would simplify all that would be a nice addition but it won't happen without hacking, since everybody seems to be going to content protection and instead of giving features and helping for the workarounds, they are doing the exact opposite, putting content scrambling and balbabla, of course this WON'T sell. At all.
One thing is look at all the TiVo hacking since a year, LAN? why LAN? because you want the video accessible on your computer, bigger drive? why hacking for bigger drive and not ordering a unit that has the drive already? Because there are still some people are not dumb enough to pay 2x the price of a storage device when they can stick it themselves.
Anyone that will come out with such a device will be a winner. There is a demand for a lan/swappablebay/noprotection/etc tivo out of the box for a good price, but... no one wants to do such a monster out of the box, even if its pretty simple, simply because they cannot afford gazzilion of $ for fighting MPAA lawyers.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
I can understand (maybe...) why they want a subscription fee, but all of these services require a phone line. I have a cable modem, and a cell phone, but no home phone line. So, the monthly cost for me is phone-line + Tivo fee. That makes it unattractive. Is there any reason that the Tivo can't read the TV Guide info that is already in the broadcast stream on cable???
Kind thoughts do not change the world
But that isn't really what PVR owners find dramatic about their PVR's. It isn't that it is cool to record to a hard drive.
It is that it changes how people watch tv, and until you have lived with a PVR you cannot understand the fundamental difference.
How many slashdotters have broadband? Is it just for speed, or is it because it is always on, and it changes the way that you use the internet?
But, it is very difficult to explain to people the benefit of always on internet access, and how it changes the relationship you have with internet resources. And broadband has done just about as well as PVR.
Having a PVR, means, you watch TV when you want, and you watch WHAT you want, when you want to.
It means not having to live with commercials, and that you only have to spend 22 minutes watching a 30 minute show.
But more importantly, you can ask the question, what did they say? Did you see that? Having been a PVR customer now for about a year, and being comfortable with the PVR lifestyle, I find it very irritating to watch TV any other way. Oddly, I have found that when I am in other passive viewing environments (like movies or sporting events), that I will have a similar reaction (what did they say? What was that), and have a strong desire for wanting to resee the last 10 seconds over again.
Just as AOL has access to the Internet, and it is hard to explain the difference between always on and dial-up, and VCR's provide time shifting and movies, it is hard to explain convincingly the benefits of a PVR beyond a VCR.
But I will not give mine up, either my DSL, or my PVR, because they are fundamental now to my interaction with the Internet, and my interaction with TV content.
I kept telling my parents about how great my ReplayTV was, and kept getting the, "How is that different from a VCR?" response. These are the same parents that you probably have: the ones that think "The Paperclip" from Word is cute, and keep sending you attachments with powerpoint presentations of Johnny's birthday photos. (They're willing to use technology, but not very sophisticated.) Finally, last Christmas, I convinced my siblings to go in with me to just buy the ReplayTV for mom & dad.
Within a few weeks, my parents finally understood why I was so obsessed. The problem they're having now is explaining it to their friends.
I suspect that's the problem facing everybody: to most people, it doesn't sound different enough from a VCR to be worth spending that much money. I suspect once enough people get them, and people start to see how their friends Tivo works, they'll start to catch on, but I don't think we've seen that critical mass yet.
seems that every TiVo owner I talk to can't say enough good stuff about it. Some not for the features that it ships with, but more for the features that can be hacked in.
Since I don't watch much T.V. in general, I find no use for one, but if I felt the need to record my television for later review, I'd go buy one.
These things(ReplayTV) are not that hard to setup, and they are EASIER to program than a VCR. Way easier! On the ReplayTV press one button to get the channel guide, cursor around to the show you want, press one button to record it! Press the record button again to record all episodes! Can you make it any easier?
... is coming. The TV industry is going to go through the same disruptive change as publishing, music, ...
Most "early adopters" are people who already know where the technology is at and are waiting for someone to build the product. Once those people buy in(some 1 million PVR's sold) then the market moves on to the people who listen to the early adopters, see that something works(it does nicely) and then buy in. Most consumers(the bulk of any market) wait till they have several friends who have them, and people start saying "you don't have a PVR!".
These things are as big as the remote control, in 10 years most everyone will have one and start wondering what the heck they did before PVR's. Of course by then you will be able to record all your shows on terabytes of storage devices(if not more)! Multi-giga bit wan connections will be the norm and transferring video and other multi-media will be as common place as banner ads are today!
Go back 10 years ago, imagine someone telling you that you would soon be getting animated ads when you dial up your BBS...
Anyhow, just wait, this is only the beginning. Internet channels, collaborative filtering, planetary media(TV) access
So inspiration I'm getting my torches ready for the bonfire party with the RIAA. May need some holy water and stakes while I'm at it, I hear they're undead!
I used to wonder what was so holy about a silent night, now I have a child.
TiVo continues to make some inroads into popular culture. On the Friends rerun last night, Rachel is afraid to tell her father that she is pregnant. She starts out bravely but then chickens out: "I got... Tivo." Her father: "Tivo?! What's Tivo?" Phoebe helps out: "It's slang for 'pregnant'."
I won't buy a TIVO because I don't need yet another friggin' company recording every last thing I do. It's sickening. If some company would just come out with a decent product that sold on the product's nature (IE: letting you record or fast forward TV), then I would buy it. But they always throw in these crap terms that force you to let them track your usage, so they can make even more money off you, thus making your life even more miserable (because your damn mail box gets crammed full of junk mail trying to sell you crap that's "related" to what you watched on TV). No thanks. This is why I won't shop at Safeway and why I won't ever buy another Microsoft product.
What happened to the days when a company produced a product and just SOLD IT, instead of trying to profit off every single thing they possibly could? I don't see wal-mart trying to track what I buy, and they're doing great. I don't have to fill out a form to buy a Sony monitor. I don't have to plug my Nintendo into a phone line to get it to let me play games, why should I have to in order to watch TV?
It's all big frustrating mess, and I refuse to support companies that value me not for the money I spend on their products, but rather for the money they make off selling my information to 100 other companies, who in turn sell it to another 100 companies each.
I think it all breaks down to how important is TV?
How big is your TV? Most people have a tv less than 27" These can be obtained for under $200 at a reasonable quality. Using that as a gauge for how important television is, what would make tivo think that everybody would rush out to buy a pvr for $500 WITH a monthly fee, if we don't spend half that on a tv. We can always go and get a vcr with reasonable quality and an accepted interface for $75. Suprise!!! most consumers arent that dependant on TV, and arent crushed emotionally when they miss an episode of friends. Get PVRs to $150 with NO MONTHLY FEE, and NO USAGE RESTRICTIONS and you may have something. I'm not paying $10/month for a glorified tv-guide. WOW. DVD players are cheap, and have clear benefits. PVRs are expensive, and arent that much better than VCRs.
It's kinda ironic. One of the big selling points of the Tivo is that it can skip commercials.
How do they advertise this to the public? That's right, commercials.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
Price? VCRs were hugely popular when they cost far more than the current under-$300 price of Tivo and Dish PVR.
Ease of use? I can't say for sure about Tivo, but the Dish 501 -- You can't get easier. Assuming your dish is already installed, you plug the 501 in and it sets its own time. Press "Guide" and you get a program guide. Move the cursor around and pick a program. Press "Record" and it will be recorded. Press the PVR button to see a list of your previously recorded programs, by name.
I'd be surprised if Tivo was much different. Of course, the Tivo has a lot more features for finding things you "might" be interested in.
Maybe the $10/month charge is enough of an annoyance to turn people off -- there isn't any charge (other than your regular satellite subscription) for Dish's PVR501.
I still have the VCR for rented tapes, but the PVR completely changes the way I watch TV. Rather than look for something I'm interested in, and maybe ending up watching something I don't care much for just because it's the least offensive thing on at the moment, I have the last 30 hour or so of stuff that looked interesting enough that I clicked "Sure, record this" in the program guide.
I almost never watch "off the air" any more - And I don't see many commercials any more, not even in fast forward, by use of the "forward 30sec" and "back 10sec" buttons.
Even when watching off the air, you can use the "back 10 sec" button for instant replays, or pause the show. This is a feature you get used to real quick.
Maybe "the masses" just don't understand how useful these features are. I bet Tivo could get a lot of customers by renting the boxes, and making the first two months free. Once you get used to having these features, you won't want to give 'em up!
Ideally, you get one of these that skips commercials, then the company fails, then the TV industry thinking its not a problem, so the don't bother to chage there commercial to circumvent the skipping, and I still get to skip commercials.
cause, really we kind of need commercials.
Unless product placement revenue could replace it.
I can see friends now:
Rachel "I need to freshen up"
Chandler: "You going to use a feminin hygene product?" haha
Rachel "why yes I am, I'm going to use Massegel, fresh women its number one on the market" holds box up.
...Yikes!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
SonicBlue must know they are going for a niche market because these units *require* a home network (the phone jack on the back is vestigial). Joe Sixpack may be online, but he isn't setting up a software or hardware router anytime soon (DHCP...what is that, a new designer drug?).
That said, the unit kicks ass. So, now, someone else get one so I can trade shows!
no one seems to have mentioned the tevo sergestions feature. where it says you like the simpsons and king of the hill and ... so i'll record dilbert just incase you like it or you like buffy and xena so i'll record dark angel that is why i wont get rid of my tivo i can come home and i know there will be stuff on the tivo even if i havent told it to record anything that day.
That the plebian masses don't want it. If everybody used it, eventually broadcast Tv would die (no commercials to pay for it), and what was left would either be a subscription based model (cable) with higher prices (since you still have ads with cable, hence loss of revenue for the provider) or 'product placement' adverts integrated within the programs themselves, which I find FAR more annoying than traditional commercials. Also possible are those damn 'bugs' that come on screen during programs (you know, history channel is horrible about them).
Probably what we'll end up with is combination of all of the above. Advertising works better when the consumer is unaware that they are being infected with the meme (IE when the defenses are down due to invovlement in a racey scene in sex in the city)..
I can just see the Trojan Man showing up in the middle of my favorite PPV.
I love my own Tivo, but my experience is very consistent with the Newsweek story. I'm a lifelong techie -- I'm the person other people call to deal with the VCRs and computers -- but I still make mistakes programming the thing. It's a classic example of a hacker system (it even looks like an older PC, both inside and out), full of design decisions that are sort of logical, but aren't obvious until they screw you over.
What really gives the Tivo a rep for bad quality is the business of constantly updating the software. This makes sense in a hacker toy, but not in a consumer appliance -- not until the process is a lot more reliable than it is. I suspect that most of the "hardware failures" are actually symptoms of this problem.
In my own case, my system started exhibitng weird little symptoms vaguely suggestive of the hard disk developing a bad spot. (This actually happens from time to time -- which makes it very bad that only the manufacturer, or a warantee-voiding hacker, can do a disk diagnostic.) But trial and error conviced me that it was a software bug, cause by some failure in the last software upgrade.
I could send it in -- but that's a big expensive hassle. Fortunately I found a semi-practical workaround. I do a soft reset every 2 or 3 days. How many people could have figured that out? Non-slashdotters, I mean.
As a certified techno-geek whom you would think would be considered part of the current target market, I can tell you exactly why I haven't bought one of these things:
Because 99% of what's on TV these days is vapid, mindless crap designed to appeal to sub-literate mouth-breathers with the attention span of a ferret on a sugar buzz, the memory capacity of a lobotomized Alzheimer's patient, and the sense of humor more normally exhibited by scatologically-minded six-year-olds. What few half-competent, marginally entertaining jewels do exist buried within the steaming pile of horseshit that TV has become are so few and far between, that I can record an entire week's worth of what pathetically few "good" shows do exist on a single T160 cassette (in SP mode) and go through it on a Sunday morning before lunchtime.
In other words - Television, as a whole, sucks. Unless TiVo contains some magic software that converts the incoming signals into something worth watching, a $600 (plus subscription fees) black box sitting on top of the TV set isn't going to make it suck any less... so why would I want it?
Tivos aren't a VCR replacement, they change the way you watch TV.
I also watch Buffy, but I don't sit down every Tuesday night to watch it. Instead I've told my Tivo I want to watch Buffy and it records it for me to watch whenever I want.
Remember the Buffy musical that went 10 minutes long? My Tivo automatically knew about the extra length and it recorded the whole show.
You know that Buffy is syndicated on other networks? I can ask my Tivo to show me ALL the upcoming episodes of Buffy on any network and pick and choose any old episides I want to see.
But where the Tivo really shines it I can also tell it to show me any shows that say, a star from Buffy is in. I can bring up a list of anything on in the next 2 week staring Seth Green and review/set to record any of them.
Or I can bring up any future show or movie having to do with vampires, review them and tell Tivo to record any that sound good.
There are thousands of shows playing on your television each week. Tivos aren't simply a way to record those shows, they're an interface for filtering through all of the content and watching the ones that appeal to you on your own terms.
There's a decent place Ive been using to find and share shows with other users. Its not a bad site, over 90 users and 900 shows.... great if you missed that last episode of Alias or Buffy.
Planet Replay
People think Microsoft is the answer. Microsoft is just the question, "No" is the answer.
it's odd... this is one of the funniest posts I've EVER seen on slashdot. Even if it is ludicrously offtopci... reading at 0 is fun and exciting!
I am a big, fluffy, cute, cuddly bunny. fear me.
I am guessing most people use their VCRs as read only devices, I know I do. I haven't recorded anything on TV for the last ten years. People I know who record their favorite shows do so rarely. I would guess there isn't much of a market to start with for recording.
I think their best revenue model would be to integrate the technology with the next generation of Digital Cable Boxes from companies such as time warner. TWC already has a very good interface for looking at and searching for the programs you want, take that to the next level, make the box a tad bigger, throw in a hard drive and you have a tivo box that the cable installer will put in for you. Then just charge the consumer an extra 10-15 bucks a month if they want that service.
I know I would pay for it.
-=SiGH=-
I would have a hard time plunking down $400 for a piece of equipment that is instantly worthless if decided I don't want to pay for a monthly subscription.
Cable is nice for TV but your TV can still do a lot without it. Internet service is great but your computer is still very useful without it.
I haven't looked into a TiVo because (as I was told by a few sales people) it requires the monthly service. Is this true? If not...hell, I'd buy one in a heartbeat..
- Who has a phone jack in their living room, besides the one already taken up by a phone?
- Preceived disadvantage of interupting the phone because of the DVR.
- Psychological seperation between entertainment center and phone service.
Additionally, I think that subscription requirement adds to the preceived sticker shock ("Not only to I have to shell out $500 for this, I gotta also fork over how much per month?" The reason it's been as successful as it has been is the incredible convience it offers. Of course, I don't have one simply because my entertainment center is all full of other components.-sk
I mean... "Pause live tv." Who cares! I have a TiVo, and like everyone else here has said, it has changed my TV watching habits. But to the uninformed, pausing live tv doesn't mean so much! No one knows how it works. I only knew because my roommate has it, and he knew from his fraternity. I suggest TiVo market the following perks:
1) TiVo allows you to not rush home for shows. If you arrive at 10:06 for you favorite show, TiVo allows you to rewind the program back to the beginning.
2) TiVo is always recording! Even if you are not specifically recording a certain program, you can click the "flashback" button and rewind 8 seconds to see something you might have missed!
3) Unlike a VCR, TiVo quality never degrades over time.
These are just suggestions. Advertise REAL LIFE issues! Not just "pause live tv."
I got a TiVo for my DirecTV system about a month ago. I picked up my Hughes unit for $100. New subscribers can get one for $29.95 (yes, $29.95) online here http://www.expertsatellite.com/tivotvyourway.html. So no, they're not expensive.
Once you get dual tuners setup, you can watch a recorded program, and be recording two others. I know that's a lot of TV, but it really kicks ass. Setting it up to record all your favorite shows is a breeze, and if you give shows you like a "thumbs up" it'll actually record other stuff it thinks you might like. Pretty damn cool.
Also, I don't think that the networks should complain too much about commercials. If anything, they should focus on providing better commercial content. Often times, I'll rewind to watch a commercial again or catch a phone number or website I missed. How else can you replay commercials like "I Love Alpacas" over and over again?
--------
As someone living in a technology-deprived land, I weep everytime I hear about the Tivo. Are there any plans at all for it to work in regions besides the US and UK? I can't imagine it would take much to get it working in Australia, just the phone setup or whatever it needs to get program info.
:\
Oh well...maybe we'll get it 5 years or so
And so the sundering between the Morlocks and the Eloi began. At first they had fairly decent parity in technology. Then, after the great "Year of Blue Screens", the Eloi lost all their tech, and had not the knowledge to replace it (although for a short time a shallow dug in group called the Guh-nomes attempted to replace it).
Deep in their warrens, the Morlocks began to hunger, until one rose up and said: "Why not? They're only users, anyway! We'll spare the ones that can read Perl!".
And the raids began...
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Simply put, Tivo is a dream machine for anyone who uses a VCR or people who would LIKE to watch Fear Factor, or Combat Missions, or South Park but are generally out with friends, or still at work, or just too tired to stay up that late.. Dont worry! Tivo will nab them for you, and you can watch them the next time you're sitting around bored off your ass with nothing to do!
Did I mention you can pause TV and walk away to stir the soup you're making and come back? Friend calls you in the middle of that football game? PAUSE. It buffers EVERYTHING you watch, not certain programs, you can pause it ANYTIME.
Oh yeah.. You dont have to change tapes.. ever!
1. Broadcasters and the majority of VCR/DVD player manufacturers hate TiVo and don't want Joe Average using it.
Broadcasters because people skip past the ads that bring in the bucks. Remember, from their point of view, programming is just filling to make sure you watch the ads they're broadcasting.
The VCR/DVD manufacturers hate it because TiVo doesn't just threaten sales of their players head to head, but also confuses the market - give Joe too many choices and he's more likely to take a wait-and-see approach, and will buy nothing rather than risk buying the wrong thing.
Without either the backing of major software providers (the broadcasters) or hardware manufacturers (the VCR/DVD crowd), TiVo is starved of publicity dollars, and that means...
2. Not many consumers know about TiVo.
I'd bet that our Joe Average is barely aware of TiVo's existence, let alone is aware of its features and benefits. And if Joe Average hasn't heard about it, he's not going to be buying it.
(Remember, Joe gets up in the morning, has breakfast, perhaps reads a paper, goes to work, comes home, has dinner and watches some TV before eventually going to bed. He doesn't read Slashdot, any IT or gadget-related magazines and he doesn't drool over the next big thing in quite the way we do.)
Besides, Joe Average doesn't shell out for hardware every day and he's just getting comfortable with his wide-screen TV and his other brand new appliance. Which merits a mention of its own...
3. DVDs are the hot item of the moment.
No technology has ever achieved such rapid market penetration as DVD. Or put another way, Joe Average and his brother either has a DVD player or is planning to get one.
And, having shelled out some serious money to buy his brand new box, Joe Average is darn well going to make good use of it.
And if he's buying the DVD back catalogue of his favourite TV show or he's creating a library of the latest blockbuster movies, he's got two fewer reasons to buy a TiVo box. Firstly, he's watching less TV (he's watching his DVDs instead) and, secondly, he doesn't need a box that will record every M.A.S.H. re-run, because he just bought a couple of series worth to play in his nice shiny new machine.
Of course, the broadcasters and studios (who in many cases are largely owned by the hardware manufacturers) love this guy. He might not be watching their ads or putting his bum on a movie seat but he's going one better - he's buying their product again but this time it's a product for which they recouped their initial investment some time ago.
Mind you, Joe doesn't mind. Now he's got his DVDs he can play them over and over again, and it won't cost him a penny. Which is more than can be said for TiVo, because...
4. TiVo is a subscription service. That means a monthly bill.
As far as Joe's concerned, he already pays enough for cable, satellite or whatever. Why does he need to spend even more on his monthly TV bill for a souped-up VCR?
In these economically uncertain times, Joe would rather have the money in the bank, thank you very much.
(Yes, I know some of you out there will have abandoned your subscriptions and will be using your TiVos without a monthly bill but if Joe gets a new box down at the store then he's committing himself for some time.)
There are, of course, many other reasons why Joe might have a TiVo but, frankly, these are reasons enough.
No one wants him to buy a TiVo, no one wants to tell him about TiVo, everyone wants to tell him about DVD and he doesn't feel comfortable about spending the money right now anyhow.
Pretty straightforward if you ask me.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Can you get more then one channel at once with the dich's pvr? i.e. watch one thing, record another?
there are a lot of things my wife and I enjoy, but we don't want are little ones watching them and this feature would be very nice.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I know that's what scares me off from the TiVo, and yes I know that you can buy it without it. But it's expensive without it, and they don't go out of their way to advertise that you can get it without the subscription.
PVR makers: READ MY LIPS I DON'T WANT A FREAKING SUBSCRIPTION. Shoot your marketing "genuises" who think that lock-in is the way to big $$$$ and just give me a basic unit.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I've had a Tivo for almost two years now, and it really has changed the way I watch tv. But I, like a lot of geeks, am really proactive when it comes to tech stuff - I am used to digging around for detailed info on whatever interests me, whether it's Tivo, the latest DVD burner, whatever.
Most folks aren't that way, though, so they never get a real understanding of why Tivo is more than an expensive VCR. Almost every person I have shown Tivo to or described all of the great stuff you can do with it (season passes, wishlists, etc.) is bowled over by it. But the things that sell are those with a clear, simple purpose that can be sold in 30 seconds (like the iMac 'home movie' stuff). Tivo has tried to sell itself that way (with the 'tv your way' ads), but it just isn't clear enough. In the end, Tivo may end up being a victim of its own high concept.
Maybe what Tivo needs to do is go door to door and actually show people what these things are capable of. The problem you thruney into is that people aren't getting it from watching the commercials apparently. If you can actually bring one into the home and show what it does, they might take more interest. It seems that once people see what's so cool about it, they are totally enamored with it. If people buy your product and immediately become frustrated when they can't use it, you've definitely got a winner if you can get people hooked.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
mod up this reply's parrent. Funny.
OK. I first have to admit that I do watch some television. The Simpsons, and Buffy. Buffy is my guilty pleasure. Well, I smoke too, but I don't feel guilty about that.
....
... FOUR WORDS: TURN OFF THE #*(#@@$*&#@()!!&@#) BOX!
But if I had to give it all up tomorrow, you're damn right I would. What happened to television is a sad and pathetic story of an amazing new technology that could have been used to educate and better the world at large. It is, many years later, nothing more than an outlet for stupifying worthless garbage that does more to keep the populace stuck in their seats getting fatter and more reclusive with each passing moment of escapist fluff.
That is not to say that there are not programs and services available over television that are worthwhile, or that there is a lack of satire or true art on television. But really, does it matter?
The buying power of the exact same John Q. Public that can't figure out tech stuff are the ones that drive this economy. Their piddly expenditures on a daily basis reflecting the flashing lights they say last night in between their tired, rehashed, stale-joke sitcoms and Robitussin-like news programs ("it'll be over quick, and it won't be especially pleasant, but we'll dress it up and make you feel better!").
Frankly, I'd like to see a grand majority of the American public DISALLOWED TO WATCH TELEVISION. Go to your room America, no TV and no dessert. NOW SIT AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE DONE.
And rather than lament the fact that the same horrid fate is befalling the internet at a much quicker rate, we sit here discussing what's wrong with America that they don't want TV to be easier. HOW MUCH EASIER CAN IT GET? They just want to veg out and waste their precious moments drooling at the flickering box. DO YOU REALLY WANT TO MAKE IT EASIER FOR THE MORONS THAT POPULATE THIS INTELLECTUAL WASTELAND TO WATCH EVEN MORE TELEVISION?
Why don't you just get them a nice couch w/ an intravenous nutrient delivery method built into the arm and a toilet underneath that only requires them to think about it to flush, oh, and while you're at it, embed the remote control at their fingers (Bonus: They can't fight back when we instate military rule!) while you're at it
Sheesh
Okay, 10 words.
First, we have digital cable. That means that we can't watch many of the channels without the help of the tuner box. We'd have to dedicate one to the Tivo, in order to be able to watch one show while
recording another, which would be our major use.
Secondly, the lack of portability. If we tape a show, we can watch it in the living room if we want, or take it to the TV in the bedroom if it's something the kids shouldn't be watching. Even if we bought two Tivos, we couldn't do that -- you have to watch it in the same room it was recorded, or move the whole box around. I guess Replay 4000s could solve that problem, and more, but that's a lot of money. A second VCR is just $100 these days.
As for building my own from a PC, if I could find a TV-in board that had a digital cable tuner, I would love to build my own. But as far as I can tell, such a thing does not exist. If anyone knows differently, please e-mail me.
i dont know if any of you have tryed bskyb's alternitve (uk only :-() but it rulez 100's of the channels, PVR, the most advanced interactive content in the world and loads of cools shows what more could you want?
Does anyone have experience with a Radeon All-In-Wonder 8500DV, or a similar video card with (alleged) "TiVO-like functionality?" I'd love a solution that let me do whatever I wanted with recorded video, and which I was convinced wouldn't have network-unfriendly featuers like commercial skipping suddenly disappear, but only if the quality and interface were at least comparable to a real TiVO.
I Can't Believe It's A Law Firm, LLP does not necessarily endorse the contents of this message.
The few times I am in front of the TV, I can always find something to engage me.
If you life is so empty that you have to kill time by watching recorded TV shows and you are so dumb that you can't figure out a VCR, I feel sorry for you.
aquarius decant BRITTLE OMNISCIENT jagged3a21fd02 910021af
DVDs took awhile. LANs took awhile. Remember the year of the LAN? PDAs took awhile, until Palm then they took off. Mozilla is taking awhile, but is mighty fine. If I ever do the nasty with Britney, I'll take awhile. Some things just take awhile. I have a Replay and I can't stand watching TV at a friends house. The value proposition is just too strong. Sure installation is a pain, but instant replay, commercial skipping, middle of the night or day recording, search, I just couldn't go back. Chris
TiVO was mentioned in the episode that aired last night (1/31/02).
Rachael's Dad: "So, what's new with you?"
Rachael (pregnant): "Well, I got a, um, TiVO..."
Youre assuming most of those viewers are intelligent enough to know theyre being insulted.
Liberty in your lifetime
that was hilarious!!
MOD PARENT UP!
best humor today. seriously. thanks. i can go home now.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
All you Americans talking about TiVo and all us poor Canucks can do is dream...
I want one.
Persons who record television are just as likely to pause the record session during a commercial.
While tapes aren't expensive, if I am taping something special, I sure as heck don't record the commercials, too. (You do realize that 4 CD-Rs are less expensive than good quality VHS tape, don't you?)
Networks are simply mad because they are behind the power curve with commercial time revenue. It's been heading this way since the first VCR hit the street, and it isn't getting any better.
Funny commercials are widely treated as "short" entertainment (RIP, Ad Critic). Stupid commecials are ignored. After all, we all have to go to the bathroom or grab a coke sometime.
That, combined with a smarter comsumer who researches impending purchases using the web instead of relying on TV commercials to gather "facts," unlike 40 years ago when TV was king.
It's the same thing newspapers went through as sales dropped in response to television news, and that television news is experiencing now in response to the Web's instant new potential. (This is, BTW, the reason for the new generation of "entertaining" and tabloid-style newscasters).
Broadcast is dying a slow, painful death. The broadcasters have a ton of money tied up in old, outdated technology and don't want to lose it all. Hell, they're even killing Saturday morning cartoons because of low revenue (Thanks, Congress. Stupid gits. I never minded watch lucky charms commercials.) RF is dead! Long live digital video.
So, life marches on. Keep watching for an asteroid coming soon to a planet near you!
Tivo doesn't allow you to place your stored recordings onto a removable tape and take it with you. People like to collect stuff, and 30GB just isn't enough space to keep things permanently stored. The least they could do is put an ethernet card in the damned thing so that I could download my recordings to my PC.
This just goes to show you that people really +are+ smart... they know when their rights are being stripped from them, and they vote with their wallets to let the corps know just how much they don't like it. Microsoft will find this out Real Soon Now (TM)
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
I read quite a few comments listing all the ways a Tivo will revolutionize watching tv. And to all of these comments, I say "Big Deal". I don't watch TV, and I have no interest in starting. Is there really nothing you could better do with your time? Read a classic book, go for a walk, *gasp* go on a date. Tivo solves a problem a lot of people just don't have. I'd rather opt-out of TV altogether.
I really love my TiVo and I'd never give it up, but I wish TiVo had a way to undo TNN's amazing squish technology.
... and why it took me two months to buy my second.
After first reading about Tivo I resolved to try to do the same thing with my current computer and capture card. So I spent the next two years researching and playing around with my computer.
First I started with capturing straight to MPEG-1 with WinVCR. Worked well enough but it became problematic (audio sync) when capturing very long video segments. I also noticed that I couldn't get the video quality to as good as where I wanted. Also, scheduling multiple shows tended to hang the machine up in the middle of recording. Could've kept working on my setup but I finally gave up on it.
I then tried using PowerVCR and it was fine for a while but the quality still left a little more to be desired.
In search of better capture quality I finally took the hard way out and started using AVI_IO and capture the scheduled video to MJPEG AVI files. This allows me to convert the files to either DivX or MPEG or even Real Media and the quality of the final product is as good as I want it to be.
After two years of refining my video capture approach I ended up needing to schedule more than the 10 events that I can set my satellite receiver to schedule. I considered getting an IR transceiver for my computer so that I can program it to change the channels of my satellite receiver but it dawned upon me that this is starting to get too complicated (I hit my complexity threshold here). I finally bit the bullet and got my first DirecTivo just so that I can schedule all the events I wanted.
The Tivo ended up working even better that I've ever imagined. I still capture to AVI on my computer for the shows that I want to have a long-term archive (Babylon 5 rules!) but use my Tivo to schedule this and record other shows. My Dad and brother saw it in action and were green with envy. To prevent family discord I got another one for the family room's TV. Of course, it also helped that you can start getting 35 hour DirecTivo systems for as low as $90.
My other brother ended up getting one for Christmas and I managed to talk a friend into making sure that he had PVR capability with his satellite subscription.
In short, I had to try to do it by myself for two years because of the challenge of getting it to work. After I got the first one everything just works so well that I had to buy another.
Never attribute to stupidity what can be construed as a monopoly preservation tactic.
With my VCR on a UPS, I'm guaranteed at least one correct clock in the house after a power failure.
I have demonstrated my TIVO for quite a few people, but nobody else has bought one. They just turn on the TV and choose one of the cable channels to watch. It doesn't really seem to matter what is on.
I don't think it will take off until it comes with the box that the cable companies provide.
http://www.9thtee.com/tivonet.htm
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
Isn't Tivo slang for pregnant?
Monica and Chandler have a Tivo sitting right next to their TV on the Friends set. Maybe they need to put one on Survivor, next season.
The real problem with the tivo, in my opinion, is the subscription fee. I wouldn't mind paying $400 for the hardware if that was the end of my expenses.
But I'm also stuck paying $120/year to use it, so after a few years, I have over $700 on what is basically a glorified VCR... I don't feel that watching TV is important enough for me to spend that much extra money on it.
Well, maybe not Tivo-the-company, but the PVR idea will make it.
When the tech reaches the level that it costs $10 to include on a TV, it will be everywhere. The broadcast companies will figure out a way to make money off it, eventually.
The question, vis a vis Tivo, is whether the company is flexible/prepared enough to move when the market shifts. Are they all about hardware? They will fail. Are they all about perfecting the tech through software? They have a chance.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
The 5100. I have it and love it....even though it cost me over 800 dollars Canadian and is missing features I would like to have.
There are two reasons I won't buy a Tivo. The first reason is the subscription. My cable box comes with a pretty comprehensive guide. I know its not the same as Tivo with it being able to find any show, but it is good enough for me. If use the cable box guide and a VCR commander and I'm good to go. No subscriptions. If I could replace my VCR with its tapes with a subscription free Tivo and use my cable box guide, I'd probably break down and buy one. The $300 for a tapeless VCR for time shifting is worth it to me. The $10 per month to tell me what is on when isn't. The bigger reason is I know I would watch way more TV than I currently do because I will always have something available. I waste too much time as it is. I came close to buying one in the fall and this reason stopped me.
Specifically, can you get a *TiVo* in Canada?
I bought the 30hour Tivo/direct tv combo unit for my parents about a year ago. My mom can't use a computer at all, except for solitaire, and she has no problems using Tivo. Along with soap operas, she has it setup to record every Shirley Temple movie that happens to be playing on any one of the several hundred directv channels. They really like the device, however there's no way they would've bought one for themselves. It's just one of those things that you have to use for a while to fully appreciate if you're not a techie who can see the benefits from the outset. That being said, introduce your non techie friends and family to these devices and they'll realize they can't live without them.
If the masses are rejecting TiVo, then how is it that every consumer electronics store in the Chicago area sold out of TiVos as fast as they could get them this past Christmas?
I know, because I was looking for one for a relative.
At Best Buy, Circuit City, Tweeter - the same story: "We got some in last Tuesday, they were gone the same day. We have some more coming on Friday morning - come in early if you want one."
Oh, yes - I'm a TiVo user and love it!
I would have never thought that joe who lives down the hall from me was so famous! but everyone who knows him (or his name at least) don't seem to know him very well. from what i've seen when i've visited his apartment, not only does he understand how Tivo works but he's currently hacking it. he's added the 'terabyte storage' slashdot was talking about yesterday i think. that, linked up to a security system that was brought up today on slashdot. so now, not only does he have TV when you want it.. he's got CCTV when you want it. so you see my pal Joe Average from down the hall might look like a dumbass to you all but he's really smart. i am amazed that people that seem to know him underestimate his mental capacity to comprehend the difference between a Tivo and a VCR even!! i'm telling you, the dude is smart. but why is everyone trying to sell him stuff? the dude's got everything!!
I don't even own a TV. It's amazing how much advertising never reaches me. Of course I kinda feel in the dark, but living without TV is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I strongly advise a lot of you to do the same. Try it, I bet you can't even do without it.. hahaha.
I agree with your post
TiVo is an example of why the average consumer is stupid, and thus why marketing is so important.
TiVo a relatively simple product that makes tv much more enjoyable that costs $100 more then a standard VCR. Its fairly stable, simple to set up, and comes with great service and pages of documentation with color-coded pictures. But no consumer wants to get one because, as one Circuit City employee stated, 'They are too complicated'.
TiVo improves your quaility of life, which is a very difficult thing to articulate, let alone encapsulate into a 30-second commercial. VCRs took off because of home porn, and DVDs because of quailty and coinciding with affordable home surround-sound.
The problem with TiVo is that it solves problems people aren't aware they have. First you have to educate all the consumers about TV's failings, and why a VCR doesn't solve them. Only then will they understand the value of TiVo. Currently, a live demonstration is really required. Then they get it. Shameless personal promotion: I wrote TidBITS' review of TiVo. -Andrew
For me, taping was a hassle. Sure, it's cheap, but you can't quickly hunt down a particular show you want to watch, you have to remember to swap out tapes as they fill, you have to manage your tape collection ("I can't reuse this tape because there is one show in the middle I still haven't watched").
Arrrgh! That's exactly the problem I run into with the VCR. Short of setting up a full-blown tape library/database (geek alert!), I don't always remember how many shows got onto a particular tape (% full), and if I get interrupted when watching a taped show, or get close to the time of another show I want to tape, I eject the first tape. Can I re-record over the first 3 hours of that tape? Hmmm. No time to rewind. Find another tape. I need 4 hours...can't use that tape. Later...what the heck was on that tape? No distributed table of contents either!Simply put, VCR tape management for weekly recording/time-shifting is a hassle.
Why am I waiting?
Get off my launchpad!
To make things worse for us apartment delling cable subscribers (victims, since they know we can't switch to a dish) is that the digitial cable boxen often require the use of the IR blaster. I had to build a "fort" for this thing and it has been known to drop digits when changing channels from time to time. If your digital cable box and TiVo combo doesn't require an IR blaster, you're damn lucky.
Setting up TiVo w/ a digital cable box is by far the hardest route to have to go. I hope that TiVo gets together with the cable providers and starts edging into the digital cable boxes the same way they edged into the dish systems. I don't know anyone else, but because of my beloved TiVo setup, I've haven't touched a Pay-Per-View order since I got it. Not for having so many more choices, but because I don't want to mess with the IR Blaster "fort".
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
TV is a huge timesuck of passive eyeball cramming, detrimental to yourself, relationships with your friends & family, and your free time. I've got tons of things to do in my free time - being advertised to while sitting through the crap on the screen that passes for entertainment doesn't even register. And the ability to watch same crap at some other time and without commercials isn't much better, IMO.
Nothing sucks more than watching the average American family huddle around a glowing box in silence for 2-3 hours a weeknight instead of talking to one another, playing a game, reading, enjoying a hobby, etc. So many people miss out on so much in life doing this, and in exchange for what? Seinfeld?
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
My wife, who is NOT a techie (far from it), loves our TiVo. In fact it was her who pushed me to get it. As geek, I do love it now, but was skeptical at first due to the added monthly cost.
But she found it easy to setup and get working. It has changed how we watch TV, I do find I watch more TV on a weekly basis, however, I don't on a daily basis. I record a bunch of stuff, then read the paper and watch it on Saturday AM.
I think more importantly as to why the market for PVR's isn't great is that they are expensive and they cost money every month (or one lump sum in the beginning). So Joe User, who already is looking at $30/mo min. cable bill then has to add $10 a month on to that (or $270 up front).
So in this economy, many potential customers of PVR's aren't out technology shopping for those extra luxury items (which a PVR really is). I admit at this point, it did cross my mind as to whether my budget could afford it right now in case things got tight. I'm guessing that's part of the problem for TiVO and others. I sure hope they keep it going, I do like their service.
-s
Not only can my seven-year-old son use the Tivo without help, but even my *wife* has mastered it. Trust me, if it passes thos two tests..
If it weren't for Tivo, I'd disconnect cable completely. It's the only thing that makes TV tolerable.
Yes, you can.
Apparently the Australian economy is going to pick up and lead the world in growth, funded by (sit down and secure all loose objects) US venture capitalists! You've got to love those enonomists.
There is one simple reason that everyone seems to be missing. And it's the reason I don't have and probably never will have, a Tivo: I really don't want to watch more TV. Everyone keeps gushing about how great it is, how they finally can watch more of the shows they like, etc. Well, guess what: like so many people, I only watch TV as pretty much a last resort. Sure, there are a few shows I like, but nothing I mind if I miss. I'd rather be hanging out with a friend, riding my bike (when it's not winter in MN!) messing around online, working on an art project, or some electronic project, or just reading a book. TV is what I do when I just want to veg out, or I'm too lazy to move. If there is nothing worth watching on, half the time it just inspires me to get up off the couch and find something more interesting to do. I can appreciate that Tivo is a well designed product, but face it, everyone does not want to watch more TV!!!
A while back I read a study that said something like only 20% of VCR owners ever record anything, and around 10% record regularly. With this in mind, it doesn't strike me as all that surprising that a device like Tivo hasn't caught on.
I'm not saying that Tivo and UltimateTV aren't awesome, because they are. It's just that there are more people like my parents (they only record the olympics) than myself. Maybe the interest just isn't there.
I was talking to two women before Christmas who were wondering what to buy their husbands. Since both men are TV_holics, I suggested a Tivo. Neither woman had heard of it so I said "It lets you pause TV...."
Two blank stares. They didn't have a clue what I meant.
So I said, "If the phone rings, you can push a button...answer the phone, talk as long as you like and come back to the TV right where you left off."
"OOOOHHH!" in two voice harmony.
Then one of them took half a second and said, "And if I tell him to do something, he can't say...'But, I'll miss what I'm watching!'"
Both men got Tivos last Christmas.
You can't skip commercials. You are thinking of Replay. Tivo can fast forward through them just like a VCR does though.
Why would anyone here buy a PVR? surely you would build your own custom box that also played dvds/cds/mp3s/games and pulled the tv guide from the net so you didn't have to pay per month. Then add network support for your home lan so you can watch tv from other computers _and_ then add internet and email and a remote and you'd have a machine to die for. come to think of it... why the hell doesn't someone actually get of their asses and manufacture this, then maybe it would sell... duh
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Ah, but Sony does manufacture TiVos. They may not sell the service, but they've got the units.
How would I record "Malcolm in the Middle" after teh super bowl? I have never understood how one of these could do that. By using the schedule you would only get teh hour they think the super bowl is over. It could run longer and you could miss much of the show. If the show was only a half hour you could miss the whole show.
Can somebody explain why tivo's are $129 with directTv built in but $500+ on their own?
Thanks in advance,
Vanguard
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
I've been surprised that Apple hasn't made a simple TV tuner thingie that would plug into modern Macs through the FireWire port. Coupled with some even better TiVo software it would make a logical addition to the "digital hub" concept that Apple has been pushing.
You could watch personal TV on your PowerBook or iMac I suppose. Or you could mirror to a regular TV. A Cinema Display would make a darn nice HDTV.
This sig space for rent.
They should encourage people to throw TiVo parties by giving us discounts or free chips and beer.
You don't just jump into Joe SixPack's house over night. The VCR took a long time to reach the mass market. The DVD player took a while, too. It'll get there.
Aside from that, I think TiVo is marketing itself all wrong. I don't think most people really get it. Everyone I explain Tivo to is amazed, and wants one. The commercials just don't convey the sheer coolness of it.
--Bradley
I won a TiVo last year...
Amazing technology!
I was so impressed with it that I cracked it open. Jacked out the 13 gig drive and it's caching this page with amazing speed and acuracy!
Am I the only one who read this article and went "hmmm -- they bash Tivo and Replay -- but nothing about Ultimate TV. Waitaminute ... this is an MSNBC article!!! Now I get it!!"
I want a Tivo-like unit that can either save a program to VCD or let me transport the file to a PC where I can do it.
Part of what I use my VCR for is archival storage of programs that I will want to watch again and know will not be on TV for very much longer (like Reboot).
Until I can do that I see no reason to get one.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
i dont know how the mass public can get confused by such a simple unit.
if youd like to read more, learn more, or pass this to a tech-crippled relative, check out tivoguide.com.
it basically explained what hed be getting from his tivo and how it was going to work for him.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
You're an idiot.
A moron of the highest order. You're so stupid it's a wonder you can
remember to breathe. Intelligent ideas bounce off your head as if it
were coated with Teflon. Creative thoughts take alternate transportation
in order to avoid even being in the same state as you. If you had an
original thought it would die of loneliness before the hour was out.
On an intelligence scale of 1 to 10 (10 corresponding to the highest
attainable IQ) your rating is so far into negative numbers that one
would need to travel into another quantum reality in order to even catch
a distant glimpse of it. Your personality is that of a rabid Chihuahua
intent on destroying its own tail. You are walking, talking proof that
you don't have to be sentient to survive.
You are wholly without any redeeming social grace or value. If God ever decides to give the planet an enema you'd better run like the wind
because anywhere you stand is a suitable place for The Insertion. There is no animal so disgusting, so vile, that it deserves comparison to you, for even the lowest, dirtiest, most parasitic member of the animal kingdom fills an ecological niche. You fill no niche. To call you a parasite would be injurious to the thousands of honest parasitic species.
You are worse than vermin, for vermin do not pretend to be what they are not. You are truly human garbage. You are a fraudulent, lying, predatory charlatan. You are of less worth than a burnt-out light bulb. You will forever live in shame. You have nothing intelligent to say, and Godwin's Law does not apply when writing about you.
Mothers gather their children close when you appear. You are an aberration, a corruption, and a boil that needs to be lanced. You are a poison in need of being vomited. You are a tooth so rotten it infects
the whole body. You are sperm that should have been captured in a condom
and flushed down a toilet. I don't like you. I don't like anybody who
has as little respect for others as you do. Go away, you swine.
You're a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little
Worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a
cad, and a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a
stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon. You are a curdled
staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal
accompanying your alleged birth into this world. Meaningful to no one,
abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then
killed themselves in recognition of what they had done.
I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same
Species as you. I barf at the
very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers
avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a
fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell? Monkeys
look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are
unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that
reality forgot. You are a waste of flesh. You are
ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You
are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You
are sour and senile. You are a disease. You puerile one-handed
slack-jawed drooling meatslapper.
On a good day you're a halfwit. You are deficient in all that lends
character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and
filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all
unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.
You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are
degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you
exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go away. I
cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are.
Try to edit
your responses of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with
your insight. The evidence that you are a moron will still be available
to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly.
The only thing worse than
your logic is your manners. Your attempt at constructing
a creative post was pitiful. I mean, really, stringing together a bunch of
insults among a load of babbling was hardly effective... Maybe later in
life, after you have learned to read, write, spell, and count, you will
have
more success. True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us "normal"
people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we
sometimes forget that there are "challenged" persons in this world who find
these things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then I
would have never read your post. It just wouldn't have been "right". Sort
of
like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the
emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on
you.
Have a great day, Loser.
Star Trek TNG...err....my sister's birthday so she can watch Friends, her soaps and all the Changing Rooms she can stand.
Oh, and why haven't these things taken off yet? Seen a TiVo ad lately?
I bought a ReplayTV for my parents for Xmas. I hooked it up, dialed into their servers, and had seriously THE MOST HORRENDOUS TIME attempting to set it up. The setup found every available spot to die, the servers were continually down or unresponsive, and I had a hell of a time even getting a phone line that was active. So I bought my parents another gift, boxed up the Replay, and took it back home to return.
When I got home I decided to give it another chance, and hooked it up in my system. After an 3 hours I was able to finally complete the setup process (I had the same problems as at my parents house, but now I was playing Dark Age of Camelot so I had time to sit around pressing the 'attempt re-connection button'). After it was set up, it worked fine for about a week.
After a week, ReplayTV decided to change my local access numbers. Fine, whatever. Except they changed them to numbers that didn't work. None of them did for a week - I tried every night, and every local number. So I was stuck with a box that just sat there with no use other than to pause TV until they decided to get their act together. I called their tech support and all I got for a response was 'yea that is a problem'. Nice fucking response. My parents would of been livid if I had somehow managed to get it working at their house and left them with an inoperable piece of hardware and no support.
Eventually the local numbers started working, and presently it seems as if everything is running smoothly, but based on my past experience I can't recommend ReplayTV to anyone. Their service just plain sucked, and if I didn't have the patience of Job (or the lazyness, take your pick), I would of returned it.
.agrippa.
It's the multiple angle pr0n flicks that sold DVD to Joe Sixpack. :P~
I bought our TiVo based on an infomercial. An infomercial. Never before, nor since, have I been tempted to buy anything I saw on an infomercial. This was so cool it overcame my huge resistance to this form of marketing.
If this is the best they can do for a marketing campaign, they need a new ad agency. Try this for a 60 second spot: just show a split screen, with the guy on the right channel surfing in the usual bored and miserable fashion, and the guy on the left picking a cool show out of his TiVo playlist of cool shows and watching it for a while... Enough said.
Everyone we've ever shown our TiVo to has wanted one. Several of them have got one. It can't be hard to sell a product like that.
... but it's all better now that we've got DirecTV with TiVo.
It's true the artifacts are visible on a large TV, which is why I only got 50 hours out of my 90G TiVo (using the second-best quality for almost everything).
Our cable (AT&T) signal quality sucked too, so we recently switched to DirecTV with TiVo. The noise is gone, the compression artifacts are essentially gone, and now each TiVo has 2 tuners.
As an added bonus, the PPV stuff is nicely integrated now. Recording PPV on TiVo kind of worked before with the AT&T digital box, but not well enough that I'd let it start unattended (It seemed like the AT&T box wouldn't always show your your movie if you tuned in a little early).
The only problem now is I can't get CBS off the dish, and DirecTiVos can't record off the air (they don't have MPEG encoders). CBS was listed on the DirecTV brochure as included in the local channel deal, but it turns out CBS (and/or KOIN here in Portland) decided not to allow DirecTV to carry them at some point (rumor has it it's related to some past deal with PrimeStar and at least one merger, but I haven't checked to see if that's even possible). We live in range of a decent signal from KOIN, but tried asking for dispensation to get the "distant" CBS stations anyway. Not surprisingly, KOIN declined.
I don't have enough inputs (or cabinet space) to hook up one of the old analog TiVos to our good TV, so CBS shows will have to be watched up in the den on the old crappy TV through a TiVo with rabbit ears (and no TiVo service, so we're bound to miss a few shows due to basketball or something). I expect we'll eventually lose interest in CBS shows completely (really just 60 Minutes and CSI) due to the incremental hassle required to watch them.
You might say we could just watch these shows live (assuming we had an antenna on the good TV, which we don't). That would require paying attention to when shows are actually broadcast. After using TiVos for 18 months, we're just not willing to do that anymore.
It will take a few more years before this sort of thing catches on, and then only with the support of a huge distribution model and multiple competitors. Tivo just isn't big enough as a company to really get its message across to everyone who "needs" one. The idea will ultimately prevail after years of social saturation, but it probably won't be Tivo who profits from it.
my .01 US
Man, I wish I could be as cool as you. Can you teach me how?
TiVos have always seemed really useful to me, for a lot of the reasons mentioned on this thread. However, I've always been held back from buying one by my lack of knowledge regarding how TiVo operates in a family.
Does it assume that only one person is using it, and get really confused because I like Space Ghost and South Park, my brother likes the Golden Girls, my sister goes for the Disney Channel "original" movies, and my mom likes the nighttime dramas?
In other words, I can't sell my dad on a TiVo unless I can tell him how it would work in a family setting. Help me, Slashdot -- you're my only hope!
Problem is, it's not really just "a slightly better VCR". I have one, and it just completely changes the way I watch TV.
Most tech people get it pretty easily. I've explained this to several non-tech people and they often completely miss the point and are just not impressed.
I have sold a few people on it and they're just as hooked as I am.
As for easy of use, I'd say it's much easier to use than a VCR. It even sets the time by itself!
The price could be better, but I don't think that's really holding up sales that much.
I think getting the digital cable set top boxes to include this capability (like the satelite boxes do) would be a big plus.
Also, sales can't be too bad. I tried buying one the first week of December and most places were sold out.
1. Price too high
2. Functions somewhat duplicated by VCR (or so perceived by public, rightly or wrongly)
3. Monthly subscription for maximum / proper utility of box and if company goes under, then what?
4. Privacy-invading ("Trust us, we'd never tell someone else what you're watching! Unless we got sold. Or paid a lot of money. Or changed our terms of service. Or our minds. Or our socks. Or...")
5. Uncertain future due to uncertain lifespan of NTSC television under the FCC HDTV mandate. Even if the hardware vendors provide some sort of upgrade option (unlikely) the content providers are trying to make time-shifting HDTV impossible. One way or another these boxes are going to die and probably not get replaced.
Which is really a shame because the technology is a cool idea even if the current marketing and implementation leave a lot to be desired.
If you do have kids you know that there are times when you just have to stop a show and deal with them. Or maybe your favorite show is starting while you are still putting them to bed.
If you have the flexibility to drop everything and watch TV when the networks decide to broadcast, you don't need Tivo.
Everyone keeps talking about how Tivos are so much better than a VCR. But I don't want the extra feature of it going and finding shows for me to watch. I want to get a Tivo and treat it like a VCR.
Right now, I usually record shows I want to watch (using my VCR), and go back and watch them later. But video tapes eventually wear out, and I do have to rewind, etc.
So I want a Tivo where I can tell it e.g. to tape CBS every Thursday from 8-9pm (to catch Survivor), and a bunch of other shows. I don't need all the bells and whistles; I'll figure out when the shows I want to watch are on every week. But here's the catch -- I also don't want to subscribe to the monthly service, because I don't want the bells and whistles. Why should I pay them $X/month for stuff I don't care about?
Can Tivo do that? In all the discussions over the years, I've never seen anyone say that it can.
Am I right that the only success story for subscription tied to appliance business model is for cellphones? I think that is only because they reached a critical mass in added function versus price compared to it's related product (the standard telephone). The perceived gain in function and/or the current price point of PVR compared to VCR is not yet enough to sway the public. Perhaps with the arrival of Moxi this wil change.
...is lack of content. How can I get excited about technology that allows me to tape crap?
Steve Browning http://www.sbrowning.com
It seems obvious to me that there are two reasons that Tivo hasn't been "embraced"
1. It's hard to understand the advantages over a VCR. This doesn't mean there aren't any or that their impossible for normal people to use, it's just a hard sell. Nearly everyone already has multiple VCRs.
2. THE BIG ONE -- The absence of a removable media (like tape on a VCR) is a BIG minus. VCR's are essentially used for 3 things, time-shifting shows, "copying" shows/movies (i.e. recording them to keep for a while or to transport), and for playing rented tapes. Tivo does the first but due to the lack of a removable media it can't do the other two. A Tivo owner can't record something and then take the recording to his friend's house and watch it. It's locked in the Tivo.
If Tivo would simply be brave enough to also include a CDR/W drive that would make this thing a 100% feature-for-feature VCR replacement, wide adoption would be much less painful. A combo Tivo/DVD player is what is needed to actually *replace* a VCR in full functionality, but they don't sell these.
ups delivered my tivo to me 4 days ago, and already i can say it is one of the best things i have ever bought. if you don't have tivo, get it. it has completely changed the way i watch tv
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
The problem is is cost, I'm about to cancel cable because the cost for just basic is approching $50/mth.
I love the concept of Tivo, but I won't buy one because of the cost. The more expense TV gets the more I find I can deal without it.
Tivo was hyped only with "look how much better your experience will be", whereas DVD used that AND the much more powerful "If you do not buy this product, in a few years you will not be able to watch videos". That's why Joe Sixpack bought a DVD player.
TiVo and Replay TV know that if they grow much bigger, they will be shut down faster than the next Napster clone. They represent a much bigger threat to the way the same corporations do business
Don't remember which one it was but one of the Dallas newspapers ran an article recently where they praised and said that sales of DVR was increasing and people were willing to pay to price.
The phone connection has got to go. The program guide info has to be broadcast somehow. There's no technical obstacle to doing that, but broadcasters will grumble. Maybe the trick is for the PVR companies to put schedule info in the vertical interval of every commercial they run for their products.
I've always wanted a tivo....but they aren't avaliable here. I explained the concept to my dad as well... and he wants one also now. If they had better marketing I think they would sell waaaay more.
Nope... One channel. This is sometimes a pain.
However, the disk is fast enough to keep up with reading and writing a program simultaneously, so you can still "watch one thing and record another" if the "one thing" is something you recorded previously.
I'm told some of the Tivo systems have two tuners, and Dish is supposedly coming out with a system "real soon now" which will have dual tuners. Then you can (I assume) record two things while watching a third that you recorded previously.
Most people that write and complain about TiVo never experienced it. It's kinda like ice cream, until you try it, you don't know what you are missing.
We have DTivo, 4 combination DTV/TiVo receivers that work really nice. They run on linux and are very easily upgraded. We only pay $9.99 TiVO service for the first receiver, the other 3 have no additional TiVo charges, only the DTV mirroring charge. Each Dtivo allows you to record two shows at one time while watching another ( with us it's 8 shows while watching another), you can join in a show any time after it starts and begin from the beginning and all in DOLBY DIGITAL sound ( if the show is in DD) - do that with a vcr!.
I won't even begin to talk about the "wishlists" and "season passes". I laugh at the people that never experienced the quality and ease of using a TiVo unit explaining TiVO; well it's about like a white person trying to tell someone what it is like being a non-white - they just don't know....
VCRs are almost worthless to us, the quality is far too poor to enjoy, not to mention the hassle of using it and no Dolby Digital sound. At any given time we have over 100 hours of high quality, digitally recorded shows that we like at the push of the button on our remote, no need to get up and grab a dvd and place it in the player, just turn on the system, select the movie or show we want to watch and enjoy it.
It saves us a lot of money over buying DVDs, heck before too long you can have thousands of dollars in even a small, 200 dvd collection! The Dtivos are free to new customers; if you can find any these days.
Quality over quanity, it's like having extra channels available at the same time , all running your favorite shows in dolby digital sound.
Yeah, they can write their reviews, probably never owned one, but they still know what it's like.. it's a joke to TiVo users that KNOW what it is really like.....
>>>please remove "nospam" from email address
I know that's not what you wanted to hear :), but I've done extensive research and never heard anyone mention this. However, if you really want to be sure, ask your question at the premier TiVo forum:
TiVo Community Forum> DIRECTV Receiver with TiVo
Sig goes here
Period.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Their "Pause Live TV" mantra is both hackneyed and absolutely ineffectual. I can think of a million campaigns that would be currently better then what they're using. Sales would skyrocket if they used something like your idea. Ten years from now, the TiVo campaign will be used in Marketing 101 classes as what not to do. I've never heard of any situation where a company's product is almost universally praised and its ad campaign universally criticized.
Sig goes here
But I happen to live in Canada and our only options seem to be buying a PVR with a satalite TV service. Tivo cites legal reasons (in their FAQ) for not moving into our market, perhaps they just don't see a large enough benifit to get Tivo past the CRTC?
I don't suppose there's a grey market for Tivo service like there is for U.S. satalite service?
No they're not perfect. I'm enjoying mine, mind you, but I've noticed two things:
(1) Even at best quality, the picture suffers some loss. Especially watching sports, you can notice the difference. Of course, the endless instant replays and the ability to have the passes go in slow motion if you want to increase the tension some do make up for it, but it's something to be aware of.
(2) About 1 out of every 15 recordings fail. The channel changer thingie is slightly off. So if I really want something, I have to make sure that it records it, which defeats the whole purpose.
The only fags I see here are you two morons.
But I'm of the impression that you have to subscribe for services = monthly fee, and your privacy is under pressure as the thing has to be connected the phone line.
And of course, Newsweek wouldn't happen to be a mainstream, massmarket, consumerist mouthpiece or anything, would it?
No...
We could certainly expect **objective** journalism from Newsweek.
heh..
Right..
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
I know it's selfish of me, but personally I want Tivo to be exactly as successful as it needs to be to survive, and no more. If everyone had a Tivo, it is likely that television with commercials would die out, and I'd have to pay more/watch more commercials integrated into the show itself. As it currently stands, commercials still pay for the TV I watch, and I can still ignore those commercials with my Tivo.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
I don't think anyone has yet mentioned exactly how difficult/bad the modem/phone situation is (at least with my unit and from comments on the AVS forum I don't think it's at all uncommon).
My daily phone calls seldom complete on the first try. It's always "service unavailable", "call interrupted", etc. After three or four days of this nonsense I wind up having to "war dial" it by constantly navigating the menu to tell Tivo to make its daily call. Once, around the time of the 2.0 to 2.5.1 software update, I actually RAN OUT of program guide. Ie, flakey connections for over 10 days.
Obviously the people who programmed the phone software and/or run the servers are complete imbeciles. Even 12-year-old Unix UUCP software could do a better job of transferring data, even in the presence of noisy phone lines or a crappy modem (which the Tivo also has).
And I KNOW it's not my phone line since I get good modem speed on top of good DSL speed. I don't hear any static during voice conversations. Also I can use another modem to call the UUNET POP that Tivo calls and I get a clean connection every time.
If it weren't for this stupid "phone home" problem, I'd be buying Tivos to GIVE to friends and relatives. I like them so much. But right now, how can I in good conscience push a device that requires so much user intervention to maintain its program guide.
Don't tell me to open the box and install an Ethernet card. This is an APPLIANCE. I even got the extended warranty so I wouldn't have to treat it as anything other than a "black box" appliance.
It's really SO SAD to see a product with such great potential be so limited by such a stupid problem.
This argument makes little sense. People don't record shows with their VCRs because it's a fucking pain in the ass. TiVo makes it easly.
No way in hell I'm going to buy a program that can record programs but won't let me save them.
(Ok, so i read that some people can hack the tivo, but that's not what they had in mind when they made it)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Here's what TiVO can do that no VCR can do:
Say I like Hitchcock films. I tell Tivo to record them when they are on. I NEVER have to look at a TV guide. All Hitchcock films are waiting for me after the broadcast. And I can watch them in any order I want, without having to sort through that convenient stack of tapes you mention.
TiVo is not for people who watch a lot of TV - it's for people who DON'T HAVE TIME TO WATCH A LOT OF TV. Watch only what you really want.
Of course, if you NEVER watch TV, you should stay out of this effing discussion altogehter.
To target Joe average consumer Tivo needs to demonstrate to joe average consumer that A. Tivo is worth the cost and b. provides them with something they never had access to before. DirecTV was perhaps the fastest growing innovation in consumer electronics ever, at least in it's first year. Why? The 'Sunday Ticket' ads. DirecTV offered Every football game a sports fanatic could want. This is something even joe average can understand.
How can Tivo Learn from this? What features that a football fan would want does Tivo have? It has Instant-replay and slow motion replay. It can do this With 'Live' TV as easily as with pre-recorded. So what they should do is have a commercial, say during the superbowl (or at least during some football games.) Showing a person using Tivo to slow motion instant replay a play that two football fans are aguing over.
eg:
Fan1: That was such a bad call by the refs! There was no way that was a facemask!
Fan2 with remote: Oh yeah? *pause, rewind Slow motion, Pause* Then what do you call That then?
(a frozen shot of a football player hith his hand clearly in the facemask of the other player)
True, the slow-motion isn't as good as the slow-motion they have from a real slow-motion camera and you don't have multiple angles, but this Is marketing. You have to hype up the features to sell a product.
Once 'normal' people have the Tivo the features like timeshifting and removing commertials become so obvious that word of mouth will get the units flying off shelves. PVRs haven't been targeting the right markets for explosive growth.
I agree, a CD-RW/DVD combo drive for recording Video CD's and playing DVD movies would make this much cooler. The other thing that would make these cooler is a larger capacity. 30 hours is nothing. I spend more time at work each week. Multiply that by a hundred channels... There's a lot of good TV out there! The original Tivo held 30 hours of content, nearly 3 years ago. Since then, hard drives have increased in size 10 fold. So where is my 300 or 3000 hour model? At first I didn't buy one because I thought the company wouldn't be around in a year. Now, I don't want to waste my money on 3 year old technology. I don't want to go out and spend $500 on a 3 year old VCR any more than I would buy a 3 year old computer. I'm waiting for the upgraded model. Someday it will come.