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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."
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.
I disagree. TiVo was simple for my 84-year old dad, and he had trouble figuring out how to install "Macromedia Flash Player" (I sent a link to an HTML page with an embedded flash slideshow; Flash auto-installs thanks to COM, btw). TiVo isn't hard to use, it's easy. 16 million homes have DirecTV or Dish Network recievers, and those are much harder to use than TiVo. TiVo is easy. One remote that controls your entire system (cable or satellite, stand-alone or combo). The remote controls your TV, but it doesn't allow you to change the TV's channel or input. Set your TV to video input, follow the simple instructions in the manual for installation, then follow the instructions on screen to set it up. TiVo is easy enough for anyone.
Absolutely right. And that statement can be extended to my parents (who, by the way, are not Joe Sixpack).
In addition to this, I would say that general knowledge of the existance of TiVo is rather minimal in the non-geek catagory of TV viewers. We know about it because of articles like this one being posted on the `Net, but as the article pointed out, the networks stopped running commercials for TiVo because they realized its potential threat to kill their advertising revenue. People just don't know it exists in the first place. Before you go home, or tomorrow morning at work, ask your non-geek co-workers if they've ever heard of TiVo. I bet less than half even know what you're talking about.
Also, I know about it, but hear so little news that I quickly forget about it. I've intended to research the Sony TiVo pictured in the article for some time now and keep forgetting. I'll be swinging by Best Buy tonight to get another 'hands on' demo before I head to the house. This is really something we should all be jumping at.
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Your exactly the type of person who would actually LOVE a TiVo if you gave it a whirl. Because when have you ever taped something that you didn't tape over a few weeks later? And to tape those special 9/11 events you never want to loose, you can still copy them from your tivo to a regular vcr.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, but once you have one, it doesn't matter whether you skip their commercials. They're advertising to the people that don't already have one.
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.
I watch a fair amount of television, but I've only used my VCR twice in the last year.
That's exactly why a Tivo makes sense for you. Right now you're watching television shows when they're on. You're scheduling your life around what you want to watch. With a PVR, you start arranging your television viewing around your life.
I suspect the above sounds a bit grandiose. I was suspicious of such descriptions as well. My description matched yours. I watched a fair amount of television, but I didn't tape much. 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"). So I got a Tivo viewing it as a VCR replacement.
Sure enough, my Tivo did replace my VCR. All of the taping hassle went away, and I'm thankful for that. But my Tivo did so much more. I don't really know when my favorite shows are on, or what channel they're on. I watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it. It changed my viewing habits. Witohut the need to manage a VCR or watch television live, I've been finding all sorts of neat shows that run at inconvient times.
If you watch a fair amount of television, give a Tivo a try. Many places have a "no questions asked, 100% refund" available. I think you'll find it significantly improves your television experience.
(I am not affiliated in any way with Tivo beyond being a satisfied customer.)
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
Now see, this is far more interesting to me... The basic idea behind the Tivo is nice, but it doesn't quite do enough, and it's not quite easy enough to use.
Do you have any information about your custom system?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
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!
... 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.
"why do geeks like these while Joe Sixpack isn't buying them"
I consider myself Joe 12-pack... The reason why I haven't bought Tivo yet is, something else gets in the way, like money. I travel down the aisle in Best Buy, and the only way I could probably buy TiVo is is they were placed in the front. Since I am Joe 12-pack I am easily distracted travelling all the way to the back....
"Ohhhh GTA3, and FFX...."
or maybe
"Yowsa new Brittany Spears...." (See guilty pleasure)
or even
"(Homer Sound) GeForce 3 Video card mmmmmm...."
and always my $299 I brought to buy TiVo is somewhat reduced to more than half of that and I wait till next paycheck, and try to make my way to the back of Best Buy again. Maybe I should buy on-line.
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
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.
This just goes to show that Tivo really is doing a poor job of marketing, because:
- You don't get it. You're still thinking in terms of taping vs watching.
- You (or anyone else who watches a serial don't-miss-an-episode show
like Buffy) are Tivo-bait. If you ever make a mistake of giving Tivo a try,
it will ensnare you worse than crack.
Somebody at Tivo needs to read your remarks and figure out a way to clear up your misconceptions, because I think your misconceptions happen to be very widely shared. It really isn't your fault that you're wrong; it's their job if they want your money.As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
A "30 hour" Tivo costs $300, throw in the lifetime fee, and you're up to $550. This model comes with a 30GB hard drive.
Based on my salary, my time is worth around $80/hour.
I figure that at best I'd be looking at 3 hours of labor to build the physical box, get the software installed and configured.
Now then, tell me how I'm going to build a box for around $350.
This is my first point.
Is a Tivo more expensive than a PC? Considering the physical components used, yes it is. It's based on a slow Motorolla chip, and has a small amount of RAM. But when you consider the *time* needed to build a Tivo-like PC, the price doesn't seem so bad anymore.
Now consider ease of use.
You want me to manually put stuff into Cron? Are you kidding? That's neither "easy" or "elegant."
So far, Tivo is the only software solution I've seen that allows you record shows without needing to know when they're on. If you tell it to record "ER", it will go and find all instances of "ER" in its database and schedule them. Since it runs Linux internall, I'm sure this is actually an entry into Cron somehow - but I don't have to know that. All I care is that the thing records what I tell it to. Other solutions require you to scan a TV-guide like grid. While this isn't too hard to use, it does mean you could potentially miss shows and movies you want to see unless you diligently scan the grid every day, every hour, every channel. Tell Tivo you want to watch "Terminator", and when it airs, it'll be recorded. You don't even need to know what channel it's going to be on, much less what time.
Combine this search & find ability of Tivo with its ability to resolve conflicts in your schedule. Say two shows you want to watch overlap. Tivo lets your prioritize your shows, and since many shows rerun at a later time (say, 1am) you can even tell Tivo to pick an alternate recording time.
In this way, Tivo continues to save me time.
Yeah, yeah, I could probably write a program to grep through downloaded TV data and moreorless recreate Tivo on my PC...and while I'm at it, why don't I build my own Playstation and code my own version of GTA2 for it too?
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.
A couple of months ago, I was about where you are, bnenning. I wasn't sure about the whole PVR thing, thought it might not be something I'd find useful. I had watched the PVR phenomenon from a distance. Watched the hype. Read a few reviews. It was interesting, but nothing about it *really* impressed me.
About the time my fiancee had to go in for some surgery that was going to have her laid up for several weeks, I decided to take one last close look at it to see if there was something that would help her be comfortable during the time she was going to be immobilized. I read some articles in DejaNews (I can't bring myself to say Gooooogle), and stumbled across one that described the experience for a new TiVo user in a way that I could identify with.
The writer was one of those who wrote in a way that indicated (convincingly) that he thought much the way I did, and I felt that I could benefit from his judgment. He had decided to take the risk, spent the money, had a very good experience, and felt good enough about it to write it up and share it with the world.
I decided to buy a TiVo for my fiancee. I expected to spend several hundred dollars. I made several trips and called around to the local stores -- TiVo's were largely sold out, mostly because they'd been "clearanced" last summer. A few more calls revealed that there might be a few available in neighboring towns. On a Saturday morning, I called a WalMart that had two low-end Philips units available for $100 apiece. I drove up and bought them both, figuring that I could use the second one myself at that price. Got one set up at in her room (impressive collection of cables came with it -- everything I could possibly have needed), and it started storing her favorite shows.
Turned out to be the best thing I could have done. While she was bedridden, that thing pulled in West Wing, all manner of Law & Order and enough movies to keep her from going stir-crazy during her down-time. I got the other one set up at my place and it's been grabbing science fiction movies and network programming according to my preferences.
Worked so well that I bought disk drive upgrades to substantially increase the capacity (I won't say how much it cost -- she might read this).
The people who write "it's more than a VCR -- it changes the way you watch TV" are right, but I think I'd say it a little differently.
It improves the whole television *experience* by completely freeing you from the scheduling set up by the networks and/or your cable company. It is easy to underestimate the impact of this -- it's the kind of thing that you only really appreciate after it's done.
Examples (and please substitute your own program names for my preferences -- don't pick on me for my choices):
1. Not missing episodes -- I was out of the house most evenings for a couple of weeks. TiVo stored up Babylon 5, Farscape, Enterprise and various Star Trek shows for me. When I was back and had the time, the TiVo menu gave me the option to watch everything I'd missed at *my* convenience.
2. Relief from schedule anxiety -- I didn't realize how much of a change this was until it hit me that I didn't have to *care* what shows were on at what times & channels. I just tell TiVo what I like and then forget about the schedule. When I have time, I browse the menu. "Oh, look! Five more ST:TNG, two Babylon 5's and three new movies! I think I'll make popcorn while I decide what to watch!"
3. Pause/rewind function -- while this is discounted by many, it really is *very* nice to be able to freeze the show when the phone rings or there's another distraction or something happens that you want to share with someone who's not in the room. Nested example (includes #1 above): when the Klingon on Enterprise was observing an image of Chronos using holodeck technology and he pointed and exclaimed "I can see my house from here!" I laughed out loud! I played it a number of times, and when the madness had been reduced to chuckles, I paused the program, called my fiancee and played the soundbyte for her. She checked her TiVo, found that it had stored the same program (this is a weeks-old episode) and watched just that portion herself. Yes, perhaps we're both nuts, but we got to share a very nice, humorous moment because both TiVos knew we liked that show. I believe the word for this is "Priceless."
Advice:
1. Don't pay full price for a unit from Best Buy without first checking around to see who might have them for a lower price. I saved a lot by calling local stores and checking prices.
2. Relax about the charge for the service. It's $9.95 a month for access to the program scheduling information and automatic software upgrades. Come to grips with that right up front. This whole thing is about having options that you don't have already, and this is the price (along with the up-front cost of the hardware). For *me* (and I guess for lots of others), it has definitely been worth it.
3. Read the manuals and look for tips on the 'net. You don't *have* to, but it can help to gain an understanding of how your preference info is used by your TiVo. It's not rocket science, but it's best to understand it.
For me, at least, this sure beats the TV experience the way it *used* to be.
TyZone
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.