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TiVo Service Cost Rising
evil_one writes: "Shortly after the article on ReplayTV mods, comes this story about TiVo cost increases." A 30% increase in the cost of TiVo service will probably affect a lot of readers -- and might just make the hassle of a homebrewed PVR a little more attractive. Of course, TiVo service is what makes a TiVo more attractive than a plain recorder anyhow.
...for a limited time, the cost of a lifetime subscription has dropped from $250 to $200. Maybe they're trying to get people to switch to lifetime service. It potentially means less money for TiVo in the long run, but a shot in the arm right now.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
There are basically two options available for me as a TiVo subscriber: $9.95/month (now $12.95/month), or $199 (or $249 off-season) for a lifetime subscription, which is the lifetime of the TiVo, not the subscriber. So of course, it only makes sense to get the month-to-month subscription, as who can predict if they will still have the same TiVo box 15-19 months from now?
Also, TiVo is BLEEDING money. They have never had a profitible quarter-- losing between $50 MILLION and $34 MILLION net for every quarter that they have posted so far. According to their published #'s, without some serious additional financing, TiVo will be out of cash in a year. I can't really blame them for increasing their service fees...
Couldn't one create a distributed PC client that would compile the TV listings from around the world (Maybe leeching content off of TVGuide.com).
Even more interesting than that idea is that you don't need to chew on HTML to get the listings. See XMLTV.
Now that I have some free time on my hands, I think I'm going to start that home PVR project based on XMLTV. You don't need to sacrifice useability either, as there is code out there for on-screen menuing. Nice.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Hmm, kinda. The parts are there, but no-one has put them together in a neat package yet. That's probably since Linux video software has really taken off in just the last 6 months.
There's mplayer which is a great player for any video-format out there. It can even play DVD's, although it doesn't have menu support like Ogle. It can also rip DVD:s to MPEG-4 (a.k.a DivX) using a couple of different encoders. Xvid is my favorite open-source MPEG-4 encoder, it's also got good reviews on Doom9 (good place for DivX info!).
For the TV-in recording part you can use a $50 WinTV card and the Video4Linux drivers. On top of that you need an audio-video capture application that can use encoders such as Xvid and Lame to encode to MPEG-4 (video) and MP3 (audio). I use NVrec. If you try the NVrec suite, use the DIVX4rec app (with the Xvid library instead of divx4linux which isn't maintained anymore). On my P-III 500MHz I can compress 29.97 Hz (NTSC) 320x240 in real-time to 800 kbit/s (video) + 80 kbit/s (audio). It takes about 5 hours to make a one-pass encoding of a DVD, so with a faster CPU it's probably possible to do real-time de-interlacing and encoding of 640x480 video.
A drawback is that NVrec is a command-line app for recording, I'm working on a patch for real-time preview on Matrox G400 TV-out. Or if you have a fast enough computer you might be able to run mplayer on the file as it is being recorded. This would allow for Tivo-like pause and resume. It might be a problem with AVI files from NVrec though since I don't think they're streamable.
Now, to put all of this together you need some kind of control application. That's not really that hard to write compared to all the other pieces (mplayer, xvid, nvrec). I've been working on one for the last couple of months, and have an alpha version that is usuable. It only supports the Matrox G400 for TV-out, and is a little crude, but it works good enough that I have it hooked up to my TV for everyday use. It's controllable by a remote control (see Lirc), using a very simple text-menu system to view tv, play avi/mpeg/mp3/dvd, record tv-in and rip DVD's. I'm getting ready to put it up on Sourceforge as Freevo within the next couple of weeks.
The application is written in Python which is great for stuff like this. Once the basic stuff is done, it might be cool to make a plugin architecture where you could interface to other stuff. For instance, with OSD (on screen display), it is easy to add things like new mail notification while you're watching TV. Or new Slashdot headlines, ICQ chat notif, phone caller ID interface, www control, etc. And, of course, an interface to some kind of tv-guide.
I haven't really found any other complete applications like this. Not that I've looked that hard, I'm always looking for an excuse to write software. mplayer might end up with all these feaures eventually, it is improving at an incredible rate at the moment.
Freevo - Linux Multimedia Jukebox
You know, no one is *forcing* you to get the service.
I bought a 20 hour Tivo in December, upgraded it to 80 hours on my own, and have been using it without service since then. I still think it's great!
Sure, service would be nice, I would get to see the program names and scroll through tv guides, but I'm still happy without it. TIvo records the same programs for me every day (I set it manually to repeat), and it does perfectly well for me.
Maybe when I start making some more money, I'll justify paying another monthy fee to some company, but not now. I'm already fed up with those cable, telephone, etc. companies.