TiVo and Rendezvous

An anonymous reader writes "Just found this press release on the Apple web site. Time to upgrade the TiVo?" Looks way excellent. Right now I have an old iBook sitting on top of the TV, and it streams MP3s via AirPort from the server. But it would be so much better to just listen to the MP3s through the TiVo instead ... and have access to my iPhoto albums too? Sweet. But I would still want it to be wireless: Josuah writes "Alex King has set up his TiVo 2 to download its meta information over his 802.11b network, instead of the landline. He's got step-by-step instructions up." I'd probably want to use 802.11g though ... lots of data, this is.

Comments

802.11g for meta information?

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Two questions:
1 - Where do you live that 11Mb/s is the bottleneck between your Tivo and the backbone? I count myself lucky to have 640k down/128 up DSL.
2 - Just how much meta information do you need to download to this thing that you need 22Mb/s? Or do you really need to refresh all program info for all 400 DBS channels every second?

Re:Sonic Boom

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Heh. I like it. "That thing that Rendezvous will let you do with zero configuration? Oh, you can do the very same thing today with this list of obscure tools and a couple of weekends of hacking work."

That, ladies and gentlemen, is why Rendezvous is a good thing. ;-)

What you can expect (real post)

[porkface]

This won't allow you to share shows...yet. Although I can see a big market for being able to share shows within a household.

This is for showing pictures and mp3s off your network, and if you think about the bandwidth of those things, 802.11b should be just fine. Program data doesn't usually exceed 5 MB (remember, TiVo was designed to do that over poor modem connections), and since it grabs 10 days ahead of Today and processes at 50 mhz (on series 1), an 802.11g connection isn't going to help.

The other big feature that nobody's talking much about is one I have been using for awhile now. Remote scheduling. I have full remote management via the TivoWeb project (tivo.lightn.org), and love it. When I had a job, it was nice to be able to schedule something a coworker might mention, or something I had forgotten to schedule but was going to miss, without having to be at home to do it.

I think this kind of interconnectivity can lead the way to seamless integration of set top boxes so that every TV in a home has one.

Re:this is just the beginning

[Twirlip of the Mists]

No offense, but I think you're full of shit. An iPod holds 20 GB today, and presumably 40 GB real soon now. DVD's put about two hours into about 7 GB, at about 8 Mb/s. So you could store five DVD's without additional compression on a 40 GB iPod, and stream them over plain old AirPort, and still have room left over for some MP3's.

So everything you describe could be done right now, with last year's technology. If Apple were planning to do it, they would have been doing it already.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think you're full of shit.

I Love Irony

[lamz]

I love the irony of two slashdot articles in a row, where one talks about Apple's Rendezvous, and the next talks about Microsoft's new 'Spot' wristwatch thingy. Apple's product is useful, open-sourced, and can provide benefits beyond Mac owners, since devices can communicate without a Mac or any Apple products at all. Contrast this with the Microsoft announcement: a clunky, expensive watch that will cost at least $100 year in service fees.

Apple Press Release
Microsoft Watch Article

But there is something more going on here. Apple is returning to its roots, and to computing's roots, by giving away software in order to sell hardware. Microsoft sees the "free software" writing on the wall, and is desperately trying to sell hardware and services. Who's going to win?

Re:How do you firewall tivo ads?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Oh hell, fuck tivo I want a free/open linux pvr with xml show listings available on the net.

Yeah, okay, whatever. Let us know when you get that working, okay? Meanwhile, the rest of us are going to stick with something that actually works, and that does not require an absurd amount of work to set up and maintain.