Posted by
Hemos
on from the electric-bugallo-for-you dept.
Anonymouse writes "I just saw on Linux.com that NewsForge has reviewed the new Linux-based TiVo Series 2 PVR. TiVo now (unofficially) supports broadband via a USB ethernet adapter as well, so it doesn't tie up a phone line." Yes, NF and LC are both owned by OSDN, as is Slashdot.
What formats and standards is TiVo compatible with?
TiVo is only compatible with a Standard Definition NTSC signal.
D'oh:(
Don't get me wrong here, I would love to get one of these. Too bad they don't have a PAL version available.
Re:US-Centric Device
by
burts_here
·
· Score: 3, Informative
er... what about this must be pal cos the uk is PAL.
-- Burt
"Out of my mind back in 5 minutes"
Re:US-Centric Device
by
dair
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The TiVO that's available in the UK is a regular PAL device - there's a UK TiVO FAQ with more info. If you have a sky/cable box, you just plug it into the back of the TiVO and the TiVO into the back of your TV.
It's preconfigured to dial a UK freephone number to pick up listings, and works just like the US version. I don't know if they've launched it anywhere else in Europe, so if you're not in the UK you might have to live without the listings feature (which makes it less useful).
I've had one for about a year now (in the UK), and would never go back...
-dair
Re:US-Centric Device
by
radish
·
· Score: 3, Informative
There is no version of Tivo specifically for european countries other than the UK. However the device will work anywhere in mainland europe where the applicable standards (PAL/220v/50hz) are the same. I think france is SECAM, but most other places should be OK. Of course, you won't have local listings, but if you happen to use Sky Digital for your TV (I hear that many non-UKers do so) then you can get it to work. There are several members of the UK tivo forum who are in Italy, Holland etc. Check it out here.
Good luck!
--
----
Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Tie up Phone Line
by
billnapier
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The new Tivo's also support getting channel information in-band from the Television Signal (played on the Discovery Channel late night) so you can keep your phone line open for important things, like ordering pizzas.
For those of you techincally minded folks, they have encrypted and encoded the guide data into the video stream, which you Tivo will record and decode. It will then call up (still need the phone line, just not as long) and (After confirming your account status) download the encryption key.
Re:Tie up Phone Line
by
joldc
·
· Score: 2, Informative
As will Series 1 Tivo's once they are upgraded to v3.0, slowly rolling out now. And it still needs the phone (or a net connection) to download local-specific channel information.
Re:When will TiVo get ReplayTV network features?
by
NoahsMyBro
·
· Score: 1, Informative
I'm mildly interested in Replay or TiVO, but have held off because I don't want to risk investing in the product as long as good use of it depends on an external company that may or may not be around long-term. It's the same reason I never got a network/internet digital picture frame.
So, being ignorant of any Tivo details, I've assumed you can always run the output of the Tivo into a standard VCR and archive any recorded shows that way. Is that an incorrect assumption?
I realize you lose picture quality that way, but it's still possible, right?
Doesn't everyone remember that the MPAA et all are activly lobying congress to make sure that even if there is a HDTivo that it will be worthless because they are adding a "no record" bit to the HDTV spec so that personal timeshifting will be impossible for anything of value. Yeah you can have a HDTivo but the only programming it can legally record is infomercials =(
-- There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Full Disclosure
by
FooBarney
·
· Score: 3, Informative
It's called full disclosure, and it's a bedrock principle of responsible journalism. A reporter or news outlet is responsible to acknowledge any financial interest in the subjects on which they report.
Read a few issues of any AOL Time/Warner magazine (Time, Entertainment Weekly) and you'll find one. They have their fingers in EVERYTHING.:)
Re:Is Linux relevant here?
by
rrs
·
· Score: 2, Informative
>Does it make the device cheaper or more stable?
Possibly. It definately makes it more hackable. Using a linux-based bootable CD tool I was able to add a 120G second hard drive to my AT&T branded series 2 TiVo.
Um. Its trivial to make it work with PAL...
by
tgd
·
· Score: 4, Informative
A ten second Google search would have told you that.
Its one of the first hacks that were available for the Tivo. In fact, an awful lot of the Tivo hacking is done by folks in Australia (including the guy who wrote Samba), and they all run them PAL.
A TiVo-like device for HDTV is years off, if ever. First, there's a distinct lack of interface standardization between set-top box makers. Sure, there's been standards agreed to, even for the cable industry. They've been summarily ignored, and the FCC is too balless to actually step in and impose a standard that they've been asking for since 1998.
On top of that, Hollywood stepped in a few years ago and started the standard whining on how evil it is for peons, er, I mean, consumers to be able to record shows and then do something as absurd as watch them when they want instead of when the broadcast studio wants. Ridiculous concept. So part of the agreement includes requirements so that shows can be flagged for record, record-once (e.g. - no copies), or no-record. This has been agreed to by everyone involved - the studios, the broadcasters, and the equipment manufacturers.
Think we're done yet? Nope. Because while Hollywood whined until they got the above, they then decided about a year later that this was utterly insufficient. Why? Because they still didn't have the control they wanted. No, they set about to make a standard that not only allowed them to control what you recorded, but also how long you recorded it for and how many times you could watch it! That's right, they wanted equipment manufacturers to build into their systems the ability for an outside source to delete recordings after an arbitrary amount of time, or make it so you could only watch something once (gee, hope everyone in the household was around to watch it).
Both the cable industry and the studios were all for this. The equipment manufacturers collectively told them to stick it up their ass.
But, all told, the hope for a digital VCR or PVR that will do direct digital recording is slim right now. There's no way to stop someone from building a TiVo-like device that re-encodes the stream, but you have the inherent problems of quality degradation and increased silicon requirements.
I archive shows (legally) with my TiVo.
by
SlashChick
·
· Score: 4, Informative
First of all:
"With a VCR I can record a show, movie, concert etc. for an unlimited amount of time - why can't TiVo do this?"
I'm not sure what you mean. I have a Sony DirecTiVo. A few months ago, a friend archived a 6-hour concert onto the TiVo just by hitting "Record" while it was on. It records until your available space is used up, just like a VCR.
I've also set up my TiVo to (legally) archive shows to my computer. How? I have an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 with video capture tools. I hooked up the S-video input on my video card to the S-video out on my TiVo, and I use ATI's TV software to archive shows. I've archived to DivX, VCD, and WMV with varying results. Sure, it's not as cool as "extracting" all of the shows off the TiVo would be, but it's incredibly easy and there is no question of the legality (as long as you're not distributing the movies, it's the same thing as backing up to a VCR would be.)
By the time this season of Six Feet Under is over, I will have every episode safely archived on my computer. The best part is that I can then take any of this with me on a plane with my laptop without the hassle of carrying around a DVD player.
Before I bought the AIW Radeon, I wasn't sure if archiving to the computer would work, but I can assure you it does. The results (a nice movie/TV episode library) are well worth it, too.
So, if this is the reason you're not buying a TiVo, go to tivo.com and buy one! I love it. I even set up a TiVo for my computer-illiterate parents. The interface is so simple that they picked it up in a couple of days and now they can't live without it. It will change the way you look at TV.
I find it kind of ironic that Tivo fans keep touting the Linux connection. And sad. Linux's main claim to fame is stability. Yeah, it's free, but the cost of Windows wouldn't be nearly so irritating if it bought you a little reliability.
It's ironic, because Tivo seems to be doing its very best to destroy Linux's reputation as a stable platform. More and more people are getting bit by the broken upgrade bug. This problem will continue to grow, as long as Tivo refuses to admit that bug exists and blames the problem on "hardware glitches" and "weak video signals".
Now, if you get bitten by this bug (and if Tivo remains in denial, you will get bitten eventually), you will spend a fair amount of time talking to Tivo tech support. And eventually they will say, "Look, all computers crash occasionally. Doesn't your home computer crash?" When I was fed that line, I laughed out loud. See, I work on a cross-platform Windows/Linux product, so I have two machines on my desk, one for each platform. The Linux box goes months without a crash or a problem that can only be fixed by a reboot. The Windows box has never lasted more than a couple weeks, and often needs to be rebooted several times a day, depending on what stresses I'm placing on it. I mentioned it to the call-center drone. He didn't have a response. Obviously not on the flowchart.
Right now I'm manually rebooting my Tivo at least once a day. I have "record suggestions" disabled and I record everything at basic quality. That keeps the machine working most of the time. I should probably call them again and bully them into doing a fresh install.
But even if they fix this problem, I've had it with their "our shit doesn't smell" attitude. I don't care how slick their products get. I don't care if they figure out a way to filter out the clichés from JAG, or record the lost episodes of Brimstone. I will never, ever, consider buying another Tivo product.
Tivo will make you LIKE Television again.
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Informative
Honestly, you can start to watch the shows you like WHEN you want to. Everything you detest about TV you can skip past.. Literally. I used to never watch TV till I bought my Tivo because it was just commercialized crud. Ads being stuffed down my throats for stuff id never buy. Now I watch everything that *I* want to see, and skip everything else I dont. It's really a life altering device in the sense that you have control over the companies you hate so much. Not only that, but if you let them send in your viewing habits you're telling the companies directly their commercials SUCK because you fast forwarded through them. Maybe they'll make them better!
Re:Is it smart enough to know about schedule chang
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Informative
TiVo does a daily call to get the schedule. Regular season football games are scheduled for 3 hours, which means if there is a game on at 4:00 PM and 60 Minutes is on at 7:00 PM, your TiVo will ask you to change the channel a few minutes before 7:00 PM. If you aren't home or don't respond, it will change the channel at 7:00 PM to record 60 Minutes. At this point, there is no way that TiVo could know when a football game goes into overtime.
The solution to this problem is 'padding'. This means that when you schedule your recording, you can tell TiVo to start or stop the recording a certain amount of time early or late.
For example, when you record a single game, or have a Season Pass (all NFL football games) or Wishlist, (all NFL Football games with a keyword like '49ers') you can tell TiVo to stop recording from a few minutes to at least an hour late. (Don't remember the exact number).
So let's say you told TiVo you wanted to record the 49ers game on Sunday at 4:00 PM, which is scheduled for three hours. However, you don't want to miss the end, so you tell TiVo to stop recording 30 minutes late. You already have 60 Minutes scheduled for Sunday at 7:00 PM. TiVo will immediately tell you that there is a recording conflict, and at that point you can decide which show you want to see more. TiVo will not record a partial program (e.g. half of '60 Minutes').
By the same token, if Showtime schedules a show to start two minutes early, you can tell TiVo to start your recording two minutes early so that you make sure you get the beginning of the show. Again, if there is a conflict with an already scheduled program, TiVo will tell you.
Hope that answers your question.
Re:How well does it integrate with Dishnetwork?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Informative
All allow hard disk recording, however I have no idea how well any of them work. Looking around the various hometheater groups the HiPix seems to be the most popular. These only work for OTA HD, so you won't be able to record DirecTV/Dish HD stuff.
-- Q.
Re:I still don't understand ...
by
Steve72
·
· Score: 2, Informative
It has a wire with a IR port on the end. There's an adhesive to stick the IR port 'sender' to the cable boxes IR 'receiver'. You program the Tivo to issue commands to your particular type of cable box. When the Tivo wants to change the channel, it issues the command through it's IR port, and the channel changes.
Slashdot Mirror
D'oh :(
Don't get me wrong here, I would love to get one of these. Too bad they don't have a PAL version available.
The new Tivo's also support getting channel information in-band from the Television Signal (played on the Discovery Channel late night) so you can keep your phone line open for important things, like ordering pizzas.
For those of you techincally minded folks, they have encrypted and encoded the guide data into the video stream, which you Tivo will record and decode. It will then call up (still need the phone line, just not as long) and (After confirming your account status) download the encryption key.
I'm mildly interested in Replay or TiVO, but have held off because I don't want to risk investing in the product as long as good use of it depends on an external company that may or may not be around long-term. It's the same reason I never got a network/internet digital picture frame.
So, being ignorant of any Tivo details, I've assumed you can always run the output of the Tivo into a standard VCR and archive any recorded shows that way. Is that an incorrect assumption?
I realize you lose picture quality that way, but it's still possible, right?
And, why is Replay any different in this regard?
Steve
Doesn't everyone remember that the MPAA et all are activly lobying congress to make sure that even if there is a HDTivo that it will be worthless because they are adding a "no record" bit to the HDTV spec so that personal timeshifting will be impossible for anything of value. Yeah you can have a HDTivo but the only programming it can legally record is infomercials =(
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It's called full disclosure, and it's a bedrock principle of responsible journalism. A reporter or news outlet is responsible to acknowledge any financial interest in the subjects on which they report.
:)
Read a few issues of any AOL Time/Warner magazine (Time, Entertainment Weekly) and you'll find one. They have their fingers in EVERYTHING.
>Does it make the device cheaper or more stable?
Possibly. It definately makes it more hackable. Using a linux-based bootable CD tool I was able to add a 120G second hard drive to my AT&T branded series 2 TiVo.
All kinds of info on hacking at theTiVo Forums.
ryan
-- Gah.
A ten second Google search would have told you that.
Its one of the first hacks that were available for the Tivo. In fact, an awful lot of the Tivo hacking is done by folks in Australia (including the guy who wrote Samba), and they all run them PAL.
Tip: try searching "tivo PAL hack" on Google.
Sadly, you'll have to keep dreaming here.
.
A TiVo-like device for HDTV is years off, if ever. First, there's a distinct lack of interface standardization between set-top box makers. Sure, there's been standards agreed to, even for the cable industry. They've been summarily ignored, and the FCC is too balless to actually step in and impose a standard that they've been asking for since 1998
On top of that, Hollywood stepped in a few years ago and started the standard whining on how evil it is for peons, er, I mean, consumers to be able to record shows and then do something as absurd as watch them when they want instead of when the broadcast studio wants. Ridiculous concept. So part of the agreement includes requirements so that shows can be flagged for record, record-once (e.g. - no copies), or no-record. This has been agreed to by everyone involved - the studios, the broadcasters, and the equipment manufacturers.
Think we're done yet? Nope. Because while Hollywood whined until they got the above, they then decided about a year later that this was utterly insufficient. Why? Because they still didn't have the control they wanted. No, they set about to make a standard that not only allowed them to control what you recorded, but also how long you recorded it for and how many times you could watch it! That's right, they wanted equipment manufacturers to build into their systems the ability for an outside source to delete recordings after an arbitrary amount of time, or make it so you could only watch something once (gee, hope everyone in the household was around to watch it).
Both the cable industry and the studios were all for this. The equipment manufacturers collectively told them to stick it up their ass.
But, all told, the hope for a digital VCR or PVR that will do direct digital recording is slim right now. There's no way to stop someone from building a TiVo-like device that re-encodes the stream, but you have the inherent problems of quality degradation and increased silicon requirements.
First of all:
"With a VCR I can record a show, movie, concert etc. for an unlimited amount of time - why can't TiVo do this?"
I'm not sure what you mean. I have a Sony DirecTiVo. A few months ago, a friend archived a 6-hour concert onto the TiVo just by hitting "Record" while it was on. It records until your available space is used up, just like a VCR.
I've also set up my TiVo to (legally) archive shows to my computer. How? I have an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 with video capture tools. I hooked up the S-video input on my video card to the S-video out on my TiVo, and I use ATI's TV software to archive shows. I've archived to DivX, VCD, and WMV with varying results. Sure, it's not as cool as "extracting" all of the shows off the TiVo would be, but it's incredibly easy and there is no question of the legality (as long as you're not distributing the movies, it's the same thing as backing up to a VCR would be.)
By the time this season of Six Feet Under is over, I will have every episode safely archived on my computer. The best part is that I can then take any of this with me on a plane with my laptop without the hassle of carrying around a DVD player.
Before I bought the AIW Radeon, I wasn't sure if archiving to the computer would work, but I can assure you it does. The results (a nice movie/TV episode library) are well worth it, too.
So, if this is the reason you're not buying a TiVo, go to tivo.com and buy one! I love it. I even set up a TiVo for my computer-illiterate parents. The interface is so simple that they picked it up in a couple of days and now they can't live without it. It will change the way you look at TV.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
It's ironic, because Tivo seems to be doing its very best to destroy Linux's reputation as a stable platform. More and more people are getting bit by the broken upgrade bug. This problem will continue to grow, as long as Tivo refuses to admit that bug exists and blames the problem on "hardware glitches" and "weak video signals".
Now, if you get bitten by this bug (and if Tivo remains in denial, you will get bitten eventually), you will spend a fair amount of time talking to Tivo tech support. And eventually they will say, "Look, all computers crash occasionally. Doesn't your home computer crash?" When I was fed that line, I laughed out loud. See, I work on a cross-platform Windows/Linux product, so I have two machines on my desk, one for each platform. The Linux box goes months without a crash or a problem that can only be fixed by a reboot. The Windows box has never lasted more than a couple weeks, and often needs to be rebooted several times a day, depending on what stresses I'm placing on it. I mentioned it to the call-center drone. He didn't have a response. Obviously not on the flowchart.
Right now I'm manually rebooting my Tivo at least once a day. I have "record suggestions" disabled and I record everything at basic quality. That keeps the machine working most of the time. I should probably call them again and bully them into doing a fresh install.
But even if they fix this problem, I've had it with their "our shit doesn't smell" attitude. I don't care how slick their products get. I don't care if they figure out a way to filter out the clichés from JAG, or record the lost episodes of Brimstone. I will never, ever, consider buying another Tivo product.
Honestly, you can start to watch the shows you like WHEN you want to. Everything you detest about TV you can skip past .. Literally. I used to never watch TV till I bought my Tivo because it was just commercialized crud. Ads being stuffed down my throats for stuff id never buy. Now I watch everything that *I* want to see, and skip everything else I dont. It's really a life altering device in the sense that you have control over the companies you hate so much. Not only that, but if you let them send in your viewing habits you're telling the companies directly their commercials SUCK because you fast forwarded through them. Maybe they'll make them better!
TiVo does a daily call to get the schedule. Regular season football games are scheduled for 3 hours, which means if there is a game on at 4:00 PM and 60 Minutes is on at 7:00 PM, your TiVo will ask you to change the channel a few minutes before 7:00 PM. If you aren't home or don't respond, it will change the channel at 7:00 PM to record 60 Minutes. At this point, there is no way that TiVo could know when a football game goes into overtime.
The solution to this problem is 'padding'. This means that when you schedule your recording, you can tell TiVo to start or stop the recording a certain amount of time early or late.
For example, when you record a single game, or have a Season Pass (all NFL football games) or Wishlist, (all NFL Football games with a keyword like '49ers') you can tell TiVo to stop recording from a few minutes to at least an hour late. (Don't remember the exact number).
So let's say you told TiVo you wanted to record the 49ers game on Sunday at 4:00 PM, which is scheduled for three hours. However, you don't want to miss the end, so you tell TiVo to stop recording 30 minutes late. You already have 60 Minutes scheduled for Sunday at 7:00 PM. TiVo will immediately tell you that there is a recording conflict, and at that point you can decide which show you want to see more. TiVo will not record a partial program (e.g. half of '60 Minutes').
By the same token, if Showtime schedules a show to start two minutes early, you can tell TiVo to start your recording two minutes early so that you make sure you get the beginning of the show. Again, if there is a conflict with an already scheduled program, TiVo will tell you.
Hope that answers your question.
TiVo works fine with Dish network.
Not really. There are three products to do this with a computer:
- Hauppauge WinTV-D.
- HiPix
- AccessDTV
All allow hard disk recording, however I have no idea how well any of them work. Looking around the various hometheater groups the HiPix seems to be the most popular. These only work for OTA HD, so you won't be able to record DirecTV/Dish HD stuff.Q.
It has a wire with a IR port on the end. There's an adhesive to stick the IR port 'sender' to the cable boxes IR 'receiver'. You program the Tivo to issue commands to your particular type of cable box. When the Tivo wants to change the channel, it issues the command through it's IR port, and the channel changes.
-Steve