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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.
Well, I haven't heard of an entirely homemade version of a TiVo. It's a pretty complicated device -- MPEG compression isn't all that easy to do on a chip. Toms recently had an article describing a hard drive hack for it, which explains what a TiVo is pretty well in the introduction. This place also has a pretty good FAQ which answers a bunch of random questions that are likely to come up.
I was just looking at the TiVO web page recently and noticed that they were pushing the version 2 of the recorder. (With USB ports for future expansion)
My question is why not Firewire?
Having an external firewire connection to me makes MUCH more sense in that they can use to for additional storage for drives. They can also make the device communicate with a PC easier where it acts as a "camera"; of course these very same suggestions might get them into "hotter" water with the Media companies..
If they had a Tivo that had the firewire features, the rate increase may be worth it... but as of now... nope...
--
Time is on my side
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...
Of course, TiVo service is what makes a TiVo more attractive than a plain recorder anyhow.
What service is that exactly? TV Guide? The one I get free off the satellite dish? Even on the standalone boxes (of which I still own one) you can get TV guide date for $20-30 a year. The only "service" received from TiVo is based in their blocking my choice of where to get TV guide data from. In other words: In support of a poor business plan. I only paid for one year of service with my nearly new DirecTiVo, on the assumption that the company will go out of business and I will lose my already limited reluctance to use the existing hacks to avoid paying for the DTiVo.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
b) You simply cannot match the features (and AI) currently offered by the TiVo service by attempting to hack into various online listing databases..
c) Once your piehole is shut, remember to breathe through your nose.
It just might make the hassle of a homebrewed weblog a little more attractive. Of course, Slashdot service is what makes Slashdot more attractive than a plain weblog anyhow.
[sarcasm]
Because it's more than fair to pirate a satellite signal. After all, they intrude on my property by broadcasting!
[/sarcasm]
This is the most common argument given by satellite pirates. $50/mo. for over three-hundred channels is not going to break the average consumer, especially those with enough money to be investing in satellite hacking equipment.
Guess where DirecTV receives the funding to launch their satellites? That's right, the consumer who pays for their service. I'm not an advocate of the DMCA or SSSCA. In fact, I am strongly opposed to both, as well as the latest copy protection methods. However, by pirating DirecTV, you're merely depriving a person like yourself of an income.
That's right, freeloader. CEOs aren't the ones laid off due to lack of funding. You aren't benevolent to society; if anything, you're keeping the cost of DirecTV higher. With more subscribers, they can provide you with more content and keep costs lower.
Inevitably, somebody will respond to this comment with "how is this any different with the RIAA?" It is. DirecTV is merely a content provider; they don't generate it (except for channels 100, 200, 201, and the other DirecTV customer information channels) and you certainly get something for your money when you subscribe (instead of the RIAA, where you pay $18 for a CD that costs $1 to manufacture comprised of filler plus one single that you actually like). Also, my DTV receiver doesn't restrict me in any way from recording my favorite TV shows.
In conclusion, as a DirecTV subscriber since 1997, I've experienced nothing but friendly, competent people working at their company. People who are negligably different from yourself; people who certainly aren't deservant of losing their primary source of income because of thousands of penny pinching freeloaders.
Do you like German cars?
For my household, I see no sensible alternative here. We had a bargain, but... they are altering the bargain. I will pray that they do not alter it any further.
however, these are locked to the UNIT itself.
There is a website that will transfer the service from a pre-existing TiVo to a new one. Here is the direct link, they have other services as well, such as removing the nag screens (for people who don't want the service, such as myself), memory upgrades, harddrive upgrades, etc. Well worth bookmarking.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
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))"
I think it would have been better to say TiVo's service cost is rising from $9.95/mo to $12.95/mo. It sounds far better than "increase by 30%." Its only another $3/mo, and that's only another $36/yr. I'm pretty sure most subscribers, myself included, can handle another $36.
I won't homebrew my own because I am not just paying $12.95/mo for TV Guide data. TiVo has a lot of power in its software to handle that data. It seems to me that if you want a peice of software to record TV shows automatically (based on what you like), track when shows move, allow you to watch a show while its still recording, continually record liveTV, and update itself (to fix bugs and add new features) without any intervention on your part what-so-ever, then have fun writing it. If you want to do that, fine. Stop wasting time by posting and go do it. I, on the other hand, bought TiVo and pay for its service because its extremely convenient. It only took me about 15 minutes to set it up. How long is your homebrew going to take? I get free software upgrades to an already excellent UI/system while I'm sleeping. Can you code in your sleep?
I don't personally don't watch TV on my computer, nor will I put a computer in my living room so that I can. You get a lot for $12.95/mo. Not just guide data. You get a system supported by a company well deserving of another $3/mo. (BTW, a company I now understand why sent out TiVo Window clings last month...)
Before posting "What does TiVo service offer?" just howzabout going to their website and looking it up for yourself? They do a lot better job then having a bunch of /.'ers put it in their own words. www.tivo.com
Next before saying "I can do that!" no, you really can't. Not in a nice box with a good remote and trick-play and quality recording with some exemplarily expert system software all hassle-free. Yes you can cobble together some Frankenstein of a solution that will get you 70%, mebbe 80% of the way there but it's those final few steps that make the whole thing a pleasure to use and not some annoyingly geeky custom half-solution.
Will we see these stand-alone devices superceded by PC-based ones? Mebbe, mebbe not. First off folks like to watch TV on their TVs, not on their computers (yes some of you don't, I'm talking the majority.) They want to sit on their couch with a remote in hand without cables strung across the house from the PC and be able to click the shows they want with minimum hassle. That doesn't describe most of the PC-based systems that we're hearing about.
Next there's the question is it preferable to make your great-as-a-PC PC do double-duty as a PVR? Sure the network connection is already there but in most cases the rest of the wiring (TV-in, TV-out, Audio out, IR-in, etc.) is a major PITA. Then there's just the hassle of having a heavy-load application running on your un-optimized hardware. Do-able? Mostly. Worth it? Likely not IMHO.
Lastly comes the question of the listings. This is where TiVo and the like really differ from a VCR - they're SMART. That smartness is based on having those current detailed listings customized to your local system & tier and no, that information isn't easy to come by. Yes it might be possible to try and snarf the listings out of TV Guide or someone but that's brittle and if enough folks did it they'd soon find ways to break it. Given that along with these listings come software updates and tech support and such it's likely that they're not all that bad a deal.
So - is TiVo gonna make it? Probably. They just got another round of financing, have lots of investment from the right folks, seem to be doing well in spite of the uphill battle of teaching folks just what their product is. The price hike isn't a great thing but with the lifetime-offer price still being offered for a short time that takes the sting out and once folks go TiVo they really don't want to go back, will pony up. Next fall we'll likely see more companies coming out with more licensed models and possibly another design but for now its TiVo & Replay.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Here is the orignal (informal) announcement with some Q and A:
. ph p?s=&threadid=47571
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread
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
This is the most common argument given by satellite pirates. $50/mo. for over three-hundred channels is not going to break the average consumer, especially those with enough money to be investing in satellite hacking equipment.
I do not want to get into the piracy argument, but I do want to point out that sat hacking gear is not expensive: you can start hacking echostar for less than $50, assuming you have a computer to maintain the gadget with... so you can't fairly say that $50/month is comparable to the cost of the hacker gear. It's not, it's a hell of a lot more. There is a substantial savings for pirates. (though in the case of Echostar maintaining a minimal sub makes things easier.)
It's 3 dollars. Really folks, 3 Dollars. :-) That's one less bag of potatoe chips you can buy a month. Let's face it, there is such a thing as inflation, et cetera, eventually they had to increase the price. Three years without a price hike is pretty freaking good!
Derek Greene
The service is just the program guide data, downloaded periodically to the TiVo unit.
It's what the TiVo does with the guide data that makes it worthwhile. It lets you set up season passes (shows you want recorded every time they come on), wish lists (shows to keep a watch for), and of course you can view the program data about 99 different ways (by schedule, genre, actor, etc). The software is pretty smart. If a show changes time slot, it'll adjust the recording. If that episode has been recorded in the last 28 days, it'll skip it, and so on.
Although the TiVo runs on Linux, the applications that do all the work are not open source. In addition, the program data is in a proprietary format. You may be able to access and assemble your own guide data but I don't know of any way to get a TiVo to use it.
I'm not crazy about the price increase but will continue to subscribe as it's still easily worth the price. I don't watch much TV but am totally spoiled by TiVo now in that I can watch it whenever I want.
The service fee is related to paying for providing the TiVo dial-up services.
Technically this has five major parts:
- A TiVo provided Internet access dial-up point (which presently is done through UUnet)
- A TiVo provided NTP (Network Time Protocol) server to reset the time on the TiVo
- A web server which provides TiVo software updates
- A web server which provides almost *ALL* the data Zap2It has for the channels you recieve in a format approbate to TiVo (it also provides the TiVolution magazine data)
- A toll-free accessable technical support staff if any of the above does not work correctly
Of the five major items that make up the service, TiVo actually allows four to be used even if TiVo is not presently subscribing. The only piece they with-hold is the Zap2It data despite the fact that they need to still pay to provide the other four major pieces.
Figuring out how to rewrite the CGI scripts used to feed the data to the TiVo and the format of the data is not overly hard. Tridge from the Samba group has done it but has been "kind" enough not to provide details to the public at large. But probably any of the bnetd developers which cloned the Blizzard Battlenet server would also be able to figure out the data structures and protocol of TiVo guide data.
However, the hard part is getting ALL the data. Zap2It does not make everything easily available through their web interface. The TiVo makes use of not only the program names, length and descriptions but also other critical data effects it's functionality. The wish-list feature requires properily formated data of the actors and actresses for each show. The parental controls requires properily formated ratings of each of the shows.
Also, selling the service is a big portion of TiVo's business. Building and selling the hardware is largely Phillips and Sony's cut of the business. The service is the only thing TiVo sells itself to the consumer. Hence, alot of TiVo hackers, like Tridge, tend to avoid discussing attacking this portion of TiVo's business with fear that it will destroy the future of TiVo.
Questions I have however is:
- How much money is being made off TiVo service related advertizing such as the special Lexus menu item which appeared for a while? Why isn't the service advertizing help reduce the cost to subscribing?
- How much of the subscription ends up being payed over to UUnet? Can TiVo provide a discount to those that already have an alternative PPP/Internet dial-up account someplace else (or use TiVo Net through broadband)?
For quite some time I've wanted to make a homebrew PVR. In fact, I shelled out quite a bit attempting to make one. Here are the basic problems:
1) TIVO and ReplayTV technologies all have built in MPEG encoder/decoder cards. In the US, such cards simply do not exist. There are MPEG decoder cards, but they are barely supported in Linux.
2) TV-OUT technology simply doesn't exist in the US for Linux. The most promising technology is with the ATI-AIW card. I have heard some folks have mixed success using a framebuffer but in framebuffer mode, all video acceleration is lost.
3) It takes an _aweful_ lot of processor power to perform real-time MPEG-encoding. Larger processors also bring high heat and require more cooling and bigger cases.
4) Cost is just enormous. An ATI AIW is around $250 and then throw in another $250 for a HD, then throw in the cost of the other pieces and you end up with a solution costing well over 1K. CD-R only inflates that number.
As long as all manufactors are keeping the specs to their hardware closed, homebrewed PVRs are just not possible. Hardware is desperately needed to complete the solution.
ATI was working on a set-top motherboard but I do not know if it was targetted at consumers or OEMs. Maybe some enterprising hardware geek out there will whip up a custom StrongARM-based single board with built in S-Video out and MPEG encoding/decoding...
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
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.
ReplayTV doesn't have a subscription cost.
Not that I don't wonder about a company with no continuing revenue stream, but fwiw, there's no cost. (I have a Tivo.)
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
BASIC cable costs me $45/mo from Comcast.
I'm seriously considering cancelling it. I don't watch enough TV to justify $500/yr.
Too bad there's no real "basic" option (other than broadcast) at a more reasonable price.
I wasn't pissed. My cable company raises their prices every 6 months. This is the first price increase I've gotten from Tivo. I just forked over the $200 for the lifetime sub and was done with it.
Supposedly MS will be releasing XP SP1 by the end of the year, containing Freestyle software. Freestyle lets you control Windows from a remote control, presenting a special UI and features just for that. The features included DVD playback, etc, and also television recording, pausing, just like the TiVO. Basically, MS disbanded it's ultimate TV, and sent the developers to either the Freestyle camp or the XBox camp.
Tivo has to pay for the guide data, so they pass that cost on to the subscribers. Just because you (or any individual average Joe) can go collect TV guide information from any number of on-line sites to be feed into your tivo doesn't mean you can offer that data ("service") to everyone for free. Tivo certainly cannot do that. (The contents of those web sites are protected by copyright for which you have no right to redistribute.)
Basically, what you do with their data in the privacy of your own home for your personal amuzement is totally your business. However, what you do with their data in the privacy of someone else's home, is very much their business.
And the odds that the buyer of Tivo will honor those lifetime subscriptions? If they are losing as much money as everyone says, I'd bet that lifetime subscriptions go away real fast.
Have some faith, they are a good Company, with a good business model. Besides, I would still have two perfectly good PVR's, only difference is I'd have record manually and I'd be out $450 ($200 for one, $250 for the other), I lost a lot more than that when the Stock Market crashed and everyone lost money.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development