Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
"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)
Note that, for the Super Bowl, one uses TiVo to skip the football and watch the commercials.
Computer geeks can "Do the TiVo thing anyway" without a TiVo? Technically, yes, but living in Silicon Valley as I do, I know six people (including myself) with TiVo or ReplayTV units, and not a single person who uses their computer as a poor-man's PVR.
In fact, one of my friends has two ReplayTVs, and is considering getting a third. He's also a Phoenix alumnus, the chief programmer of the Phoenix 4 BIOS. He knows more about computer hardware than almost anybody alive, and he never for a second considered using a computer to do this.
Similarly, many of us are fully capable of writing our own operating systems, or building our own cars. Very few of us have actually done so. Maybe the pre-packaged aspect has a lot of appeal to most people.
Anybody that is smart enough to set up their computer as a TiVo is also smart enough to know that the commercial boxes do a better job with less effort.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
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!
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?')
Tivo is really easy to set up. All you need to know is your zipcode and who your program provider is (satellite provider, cable company, antenna, etc.) Tivo then dials into headquarters, sets it clock, and downloads the channel lineup and schedule.
After that, you simply tell Tivo the name of the show you want to watch. Then you tell Tivo to record it. That's it. That's really all it takes. You don't need to know what day or time the show is on. Hell, I don't even know what time any of my shows are on anymore because I don't care. All I know is that each week, a new episode shows up, and I'll watch it when I want to.
The biggest difficulty is getting people to understand that Tivo is like a VCR - you have to either leave your TV on channel 3/4, or use an auxillary video input. However, if they've used a VCR or DVD player to watch movies, using Tivo isn't much of a jump.
As for why aren't they more popular, I'd have to say price is a major factor. Tivo costs $2-300 and requires a subscription fee, or a one time fee of $250. ReplayTV starts at $700. These things aren't going to be considered "cheap" to the average consumer.
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
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.
>>This means that the Tivo only has utility to
:)
:)
>>people who tape a fair amount of stuff of TV.
Thats where you're wrong.
It may sound patronizing, but until you've really used a Tivo you don't understand it. Having a PVR totally changes how you watch TV. I never taped anything on tv. Either i'd catch it when it was on, or i'd miss it. With Tivo i just give it the list of the shows i care about and it grabs them when they're on and there's always there when i sit down. If the show changes time, day - no problem. Tivo grabs it.
>>I watch a fair amount of television
right. But with a PVR you can watch it whenever you want.
I'm not a moron - I can program a VCR. But you know what? Generally it's more headache than it's worth.... the show changed time, i forgot to turn the VCR off, i forgot to put a tape in, i forgot to rewind the tape, blah blah blah.
Tivo is like your own personal video-on-demand. Sure - you can't order up a show that it doesn't hold, but once you train it with what you want it's inventory is always full.
If they are ever going to take off, PVR's need to stop:
a)trying to sell it at a VCR. It isn't. Not even close.
b)quit trying to sell the 'pause live tv' angle. Sure it can do it, but it's so much more.
Yeah yeah, i know i sound like a salesman. But i can't remember a piece of tech that i've enjoyed more in the last 10 years than my tivo (ok - maybe my portable mp3 player
I got my tivo back in august when i moved apartments. My VCR is STILL in the box and i have no reason to take it out. Anybody want to buy a top of the line Sony VCR - low milage?