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

Sonic Boom

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do all this today (and more) with a Replay TV, a wireless lan, and a handful of free (and excellent) tools from Sourceforge. Plus archiving video to your PC and burning to DVD, if you have the hardware.

Re:Sonic Boom

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you cannot do this because what Tivo and Rendezvous does is automatically give the Tivo access to your media on your computer with absolutely 0 set up at all. If your computer is simply powered on and attached to your network and running OS X 10.2 or later it will be completely automatic. That means, you'll be able to just buy a Mac and a Tivo and have nothing to configure.

nothing to configure... That means something to some people.

Re:Sonic Boom

[AKnightCowboy]

If your computer is simply powered on and attached to your network and running OS X 10.2 or later it will be completely automatic. That means, you'll be able to just buy a Mac and a Tivo and have nothing to configure. nothing to configure... That means something to some people.

Does security mean anything to anyone anymore? What are the security implications of Rendezvous?

Re:Sonic Boom

[Artifex]

Plus archiving video to your PC and burning to DVD, if you have the hardware.

Does your ReplayTV send its content to your PC through its NIC? According to what I've been reading, it will officially only send it to other Replay TV boxes. And unlike Tivo hacking, I haven't read of anyone successfully modifying their ReplayTVs to do this, either.

Or were you just referring to the ability to use a capture board on your PC, which is something you can do with Tivo and your VCR and lots of other stuff?

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. ;-)

Re:Sonic Boom

[uradu]

> It finds data that people went out of their way to make accessable from the host computer

Oh, but still "nothing to configure," right? Bah!

Re:Sonic Boom

[uradu]

> And unlike Tivo hacking, I haven't read of anyone successfully modifying their ReplayTVs to do this, either.

That's because there's no hacking required on your ReplayTV box itself. ReplayTVs identify themselves "securely" to each other when requesting shows, and if you can impersonate a legitimate ReplayTV unit successfully, a unit will simply stream content to you. That's what the show grabbing software for the ReplayTV does, and it actually requires much less work than the Tivo.

Re:Sonic Boom

[JohnA]

Of course, in fairness, I can do those things with my ReplayTV TODAY, while Rendezvous/TiVO integration is still press-release-ware. :-)

And yes, I am biased, as I am a ReplayTV zealot... ;-)

Re:Sonic Boom

[Anonymous Coward]

ReplayTV indeed works great with the Mac. I got a 5xxx series for XMas and was archiving video to the Mac within a couple of days.

Google around a bit and you can get it up and running with dumps of video to your Mac -- MPEG/MP3 video files that can be converted to VCD/SVCD/DVD. It's sweet!

The thing that ReplayTV needs to get that is NOT available but is touted by the TiVo Rendezvous solution is the ability to get to your MUSIC library (read: iTunes). This would be a great step for the ReplayTV to take as well and I have been trying to find a way to contact them to make the suggestion.

Having your PVR also act as a music jukebox for your main entertainment room would be excellent.

Re:Sonic Boom

[Artifex]

if you can impersonate a legitimate ReplayTV unit successfully, a unit will simply stream content to you.

And how do you do that? Seriously, this one reason why I put off buying either box.

Re:Sonic Boom

[Sethb]

I've got two TiVos, series 2 standalones, had two series 1 boxes before these. Honestly, I'm not trying to start a flame war, but I've been tempted to get a Replay for the show-sharing capability. I have a fast broadband connection 1.5Mbps upload speed, so I actually could send the files to friends fairly quickly.

The one thing holding me back, is that compared to the TiVo devices, it's harder to tell what Replay is going to record. TiVo has the priority season pass list and the ToDo list, and I purposefully have a lot of conflicts set up in my list, so that if Fear Factor is a re-run, it'll record Antiques Roadshow, or if there's a conflict with the Sunday night episode of Oz, TiVo will grab the Tuesday night episode.

From everything I've read, Replay seems to be hit-or-miss about which show it will record, and there's no easy way to see what it is going to choose exactly. That, to me, is the only reason I haven't jumped on Replay. I have a TV with component connnections, and I know Replay offers that as an option on one of their models.

I'd also miss the Suggestions that TiVo records too, but I could live without those. I couldn't deal with ambiguity in the program scheduling though...

Am I wrong, or is there a way to manage this?

Thanks!

Re:Sonic Boom

[uradu]

> in the same way that turning on and off your TV

Yeah, changing permissions on folders is an everyday operation for most users, especially those that would be put out by having to configure a device.

Re:Sonic Boom

[jtl]

With ReplayPC, DVArchive, or rolling your own tools with the LanVideoSharing documentation out there.

Re:Sonic Boom

[uradu]

> And how do you do that?

Google is your friend: google groups search on "replaytv copy shows" will give you the answer in the very first hit.

Re:Sonic Boom

[class_A]

The file permissions are already set up so that by default, only your Public folder in your Users directory is shared. To get access to all your files, mount drives etc. you have to authenticate.

Easy to set up too. Just log in, click System Preferences, click Sharing and tick Personal File Sharing.

Simple :-)

Re:Sonic Boom

[JohnA]

Very good point. Based on my experience, the priority of recording on the ReplayTV is as follows:

1. Guaranteed Specific Show & Time Slot Channel
2. Guaranteed Specific Show Channel
3. Guaranteed Keyword Based Channel
4. Not Guaranteed Specific Show & Time Slot Channel
5. Not Guaranteed Specific Show Channel
6. Not Guaranteed Keyword Based Channel

While this lets you better plan how to set up your channels, the replay still lacks the ability to view what shows are to be recorded.

While it can be confusing, I feel that the benefits of the RTV outweigh the negatives. Although now that the RTV has a monthly fee, and Tivo 2 series has the capability to utilize ethernet, the advantages of the RTV are far less than they once were (Listening SonicBlue???)

If you have any other questions, let me know.

Re:Sonic Boom

[JHromadka]

Where can I find out how to do this?

Re:Sonic Boom

[miltimj]

More work? There's basically no work involved. If you can extract a zip file, you can install ReplayPC with a GUI.. it took me all of 10-15 seconds (literally) to "setup".

Re:Sonic Boom

[Zathrus]

Mind giving websites for references? I look at some of the various TiVo hacking sites every now and again, but last time I didn't see a way to easily transport shows between TiVos, or store them off on a PC. Everyone seemed more interested in burning to S-VCD, which I couldn't care less about.

If I could move shows between my two TiVos then it'd be really cool. Have plenty of spare drive space and computers to act as an intermediary too.

Re:Sonic Boom

[WatertonMan]

Hey, that's pretty cool. It is even OSX compatible. (The archive software looked like Java, but I assume that is compatible once you upgrade your dev tools to Java 1.4 from Apple's web site)

Re:Sonic Boom

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You know, dude, you're not exactly off to a good start here. Your posting history has exactly three comments in it, all of them in this thread, all of them sarcastic and content-free. Why don't you try contributing something, instead of just adding to the noise-to-signal ratio?

Re:Sonic Boom

[h0tblack]

Does security mean anything to anyone anymore? What are the security implications of Rendezvous?

Rendezvous currently only broadcasts availibility of services within a single subnet. This will change in the future though, then there would be the possibility of you broadcasting the availibility of services to the entire world. Of course, this happens already with such things as NetBIOS, and is a problem - mainly for users who don't understand networking concepts. But, this isn't a new situation, people do need to be better informed regarding security, but this is a seperate issue which needs addressing.

Rendezvous (and more specifically the zeroconf working group) is not there to increase security, it's to make networking and service discovery easier for people. That isn't to say that security isn't important and that it isn't something which the working group take seriously. But Rendezvous really doesn't harm security, certainly no more than a variety of other standards such as NetBIOS and UPnP.

If an individual or company is worried about security, then they should have a policy regarding this and methods to implement it, regardless of what OS, protocols, etc they are using.

Re:Sonic Boom

[uradu]

(Ok, let's keep flogging this dead horse)

That brings back the original objection about security then--everyone will automatically have access to everything if you put it in Public, which tends to be a BAD THING. So if you want to change that, you're back to having to CONFIGURE things. Which is no big deal in and of itself, but it refutes the original claim that Rendezvous automatically configures everything INCLUDING security, without requiring any kind of manual configuration.

Re:Sonic Boom

[uradu]

> If you can't trust those on your own subnet, then who can you trust? :-P

With wireless, and given how most people just plug stuff in out of the box and use it, how about nobody?

Re:Sonic Boom

[Artifex]

Google is your friend: google groups search on "replaytv copy shows" will give you the answer in the very first hit.

Thanks! Like I said, I hadn't seen anything on it before - I just wasn't typing the right stuff in, I guess.

Re:Sonic Boom

[Artifex]

With ReplayPC [sourceforge.net], DVArchive [sourceforge.net], or rolling your own tools with the LanVideoSharing [molehill.org] documentation out there.

Excellent! Thanks!

Re:Sonic Boom

[stephanruby]

"Obscure tools and a couple of weekends of hacking? You really have *no* idea what you are talking about. [...] if you don't know what you are talking about, keep your mouth shut. It is certainly better than making thousands of people dumber for the experience of listening to your uneducated drivel."

You're right, the guy who posted this doesn't know how to do this and he is probably making all of us dumber by his very post. But you've got to admit, based on the original post of the anonymous coward, his assumptions were pretty reasonable (even if they were incorrect). There are plenty of Sourceforge projects that don't work and there are plenty of people who like to make us feel dumber for not knowing how to install them. It has gotten so bad, some people will go ahead and actually lie about the simplicity and the usability of a particular project. And please don't get me wrong, I am not saying that you would lie about this. I am just saying it would be reasonable for anyone to assume that the first anonymous poster lied or exagerrated about the simplicity and the "excellence" of the tools mentioned.

Re:Sonic Boom

[ealar dlanvuli]

no one made the claim it required no configuration...

99% of what you want to share you don't give a rats ass who sees it, the rest of it you can put in password protected folders (which you would access using the other tick for enabling "ftp access for user" found on the same prefpane)

Rendezvous is NOT a security protocol, it's a sharing protocol. This is basically like bitching about sharing files on kazaa not being secure.

MS

[grub]

From: billg@microsoft.com
To: Research and Development

I don't pay the two of you in R&D to play Quake all day! Find out what this Rendezvous is and copy it! I'll prepare a hot press release announcing it today. Be ready to ship by 2006.

Thanks,

Bill

Re:MS

[isorox]

I don't pay the two of you in R&D to play Quake all day! Find out what this Rendezvous is and copy it! I'll prepare a hot press release announcing it today. Be ready to ship by 2006.

So *thats* when the BOFH and PFY really are!

Re:MS

[Elwood P Dowd]

Find out what this Rendezvous is and copy it!

If I understand correctly, when Rendezvous was first announced, everyone said that Microsoft's Universal Plug 'n' Play (UPnP) has all the same features, is TCP/IP based, etc., and had been out for a while already. The differences that I know of are: 1) Microsoft didn't hire the ZEROCONF guy, so it's not an IETF standard 2) One additional features was a remote root hack, solved a couple of months ago. 3) I haven't heard of anyone using it. Including Microsoft Windows XP filesharing.

The key similarity is that (IIRC) Open Source. Free as in BSD-type-License.

Re:MS

[Elwood P Dowd]

Right. Apple had AppleTalk forever ago. Microsoft had SMB forever ago. Neither worked via TCP/IP. Then Microsoft had UPnP. Then Apple had Rendezvous.

We weren't discussing AppleTalk. We were discussing Rendezvous, and MS's desire to copy it.

The originator of the thread was joking anyway. I need to shut up.

pr0n use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Find a way to use this for pr0n, and it'll be an instant success.

mmmMMMmm

[plexxer]

>I'd probably want to use 802.11g though ... lots of data, this is.

Talk like Yoda Slashdot editors now do.

Broadcast to other TiVos?

[nullard]

Can I broadcast whatever I want to my neighbor's TiVO? Can my neighbor watch my slideshows w/out me knowing?

This may open the door for simple pirate TV stations using 802.11, TiVos, and Macs.

Re:Broadcast to other TiVos?

[isorox]

This may open the door for simple pirate TV stations using 802.11, TiVos, and Macs.

Or just use an old VCR, a booster, and a roof ariel aimed at everyone else.

Be a nice excuse though. "Yes dear, I just turned on the TV and there was all this porn there, it must be next door!"

Re:Broadcast to other TiVos?

[nullard]

Since Rendezvous is implemented as multicast MAC-level transport, and most ISP's don't pass anything but unicast OUT from your link, the answer is probably no if you're on DSL. Cable modem users with no or properly-configure firewalls/routers may work though.

Won't your neighbor's 802.11 equipped TiVo pick up Rendezvous signals from your 802.11 equipped Mac?

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:802.11g for meta information?

[rodbegbie]

You mean you don't rip your MP3s at 15Mbps?

rOD.

Re:802.11g for meta information?

[happystink]

Listen, you obviously don't grasp the complexities of this: g is a higher lette than b, and it's newer, so it's better and 802.11b sucks, it's useless, it's garbage. I know we all loved it last week, but now that Apple has announced some g units coming out, we all hate it.

Re:802.11g for meta information?

[mgs1000]

The "meta-information" is just the daily call Tivo does that verifies that the subscriber paid for his service and downloads program guide data (if the Tivo didn't get it through the Discovery Channel). Occasionaly, software updates also are downloaded.

This replaces a modem call, so just about any type of network connection will be faster.

Re:802.11g for meta information?

[zrodney]

yeah he is very confused, but likes to look educated

the tivo normally uses a 56k modem over a phone line to download the metadata including the show listings.

Rendezvous

[jaavaaguru]

Rendesvous sounds like Windows Network Neighborhood done properly :-)

Re:Rendezvous

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Actually, and in all seriousness, it's like AppleTalk for IP. AppleTalk was great, but had problems, not the least of which being that it was proprietary. Windows networking-- Network Neighborhood and all that-- was a horrible copy of AppleTalk. Now here comes Rendezvous, which combines the ease of use and convenience of AppleTalk with the goodness of IP without having to suck.

Gonna change the world, man.

Here's just one example of why Rendezvous is cool. Safari has Rendezvous support built-in. I have a friend who works for a company that builds web applications; their apps run on Apache, and they have dozens and dozens of development servers in their lab, all with names like SVR-LAB-01-A-342 and stuff like that. Keeping track of which server is running what, and on what ports, is a nightmare. So I set him up with mod_rendezvous yesterday. Now everybody who uses Safari (which is like half the damn company already) gets a nice list of all the currently running servers on his bookmarks screen. All you have to do is pick the one you want.

I'll say it again. Rendezvous is gonna change the world.

Re:Rendezvous

[jamus]

Where can I find mod_rendezvous?

And yes, I checked google. :P It returned no documents. I also couldn't find it on modules.apache.org, unless I'm missing something...

Re:Rendezvous

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You know, you're right. I'm surprised Google hasn't picked it up yet. Clicky-clicky:

http://homepage.mac.com/macdomeeu/dev/current/mod_ rendezvous/

(The eds, in their infinite wisdom, rejected my story about this yesterday. Oh, well.)

Re:Rendezvous

[dr00g911]

Here ya go.

Works as advertised. Way, way, way cool stuff.

Re:Rendezvous

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I used "proprietary" in the Slashdot sense: something that was invented by a company instead of by a university or a teenager or something. ;-)

You were right to call me on it.

Re:Rendezvous

[Twirlip of the Mists]

It won't change nothing if it's proprietary

Good thing it's open then, huh? ;-)

and doesn't play nice with other OS's (Windows included).

I think it's inevitable that Microsoft is going to add support for Rendezvous in Windows. It's an IETF standard (or rather a set of them) and third parties are adopting it like crazy. Microsoft sees where the wind is blowing.

I think people are getting fairly fed up with artificial barriers between mac/windows/linux on the same network.

What artificial barriers? A Mac can browse and mount Windows shares directly, without any additional software. It can also export shares to Windows machines without any additional software. No barrier there.

Re:Rendezvous

[CowbertPrime]

For the record: SMB could not possibly have been a "horrible copy of Appletalk", since SMB (windows networking) predates it. The SMB protocol was invented to allow interconnectivity between unix and dos machines. Meanwhile, appletalk over IP from my standpoint as a network analyst is a pain the arse, which is why we are phasing out Appletalk routing soon. Part of the reason is that appletalk is so damned chatty and actually increases load on the router because appletalk expects every client (including the router) to keep track of every device on the network it can see. So while a local client sees only the devices on its subnet (Of course, I won't forget to mention that every appletalk client broadcasts one name for each appletalk service that the client is running - multiple nameservices, file sharing etc.), appletalk routing is dumb in the fact that all addresses are cached.

Furthermore, your ease-of-use argument doesn't make sense, as smb browsing in network neighborhood is just as easy as appletalk browsing via chooser or some other util. On the unix side, netatalk handling is far more complex than smb, with reasons demonstrated above. (Try using nmblkup under netatalk on a reasonably sized appletalk zone).

this is just the beginning

[Fict]

Having done a bit of consulting work for Apple over the past few months, I can provide just a bit of insider info...

For starters: 802.11g enabled iPods. A video compression format tight enough to let you put a whole goddamn star trek movie marathon on said iPod. How? Easily, and the video quality is *almost* up to dvd standards.

It's going to be cool. Collaboration with TiVO, too...

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.

Re:this is just the beginning

[Dephex Twin]

If you are telling the truth, you might want to have a look at this article about the most recent contractor who leaked sensitive Apple info on an Internet forum.

Re:this is just the beginning

[Twirlip of the Mists]

As in: it's illegal to access and therefore to re-encode DVDs because of the DMCA.

It's only illegal to decode DVD's. It's not illegal to copy them from one medium to another. (At least, I don't think it is.) So you could legally copy a DVD's VOB file to your iPod and then play it (somehow) on your TV, if the device that was actually doing the playback had a licensed decoder in it.

The reason Apple hasn't done this already is because it's kind of a dumb idea, I think.

Re:this is just the beginning

[Twirlip of the Mists]

IMHO, a video, wireless-networking iPod is definitely on its way.

Nobody wants a video, wireless-networking iPod. There's just no existing demand for it. Apple would be insane to release an expensive product for which there is zero demand.

Look, the standard-definition digital video problem has been solved DVD players are practically ubiquitous; you can buy cheap Chinese models at the grocery store, for cryin' out loud. There is absolutely no need (i.e., demand) for a wireless video iPod. It's just a dumb idea.

Now, if Apple were to build their own HD PVR with an embedded version of OS X, I'd be all over that. That's something that's in seriously high demand. Put Rendezvous and an AirPort Extreme card in it and have it work automatically with iMovie, iPhoto, and iTunes. Hell, yeah.

But a video iPod? No way. No way.

Re:this is just the beginning

[Johnny Mnemonic]

No offense, but I think you're full of shit

Not to mention, but one of the fastest ways to get fired at Apple is to mention unannounced products. Nothing like talking about an announced product on /. and then signing your post, especially in light of the recent contractor who was arrested for an anonymous submission of info.

Bottomline--either this guy is lying, or dumb. I prefer to think that he's lying.

Re:this is just the beginning

[imadork]

You're right, the market for a video iPod isn't there, if all you think about is video. But my video iPod would display hi-res digital camera stills. Being able to carry around your entire photo album in your pocket is something people would be interested in.

Re:this is just the beginning

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Being able to carry around your entire photo album in your pocket is something people would be interested in.

Not really. People are keeping their photo albums on their web sites. There's no reason to carry them around.

802.11g

[Chazmyrr]

I'd probably want to use 802.11g though ... lots of data, this is.

If you could actually buy consumer grade 802.11g I would agree. At least at the prices currently listed on Amazon. $133.99 for the WAP54G is one helluva deal considering I didn't pay much less than that for each of my WAP11s about a month ago. Problem is that it isn't shipping yet.

Thing is, I don't even use all the bandwidth on the WAP11s. I'm using them as a bridge to get from the cable modem on one side of the residence to the LAN on the other side. Since I only get 1.5 down from the cable modem, it doesn't really matter that much. Even if I went all wireless, it still wouldn't matter. The limiting factor will always be the cable modem.

Still, anything that drives the prices down on 802.11b gear is a good thing. I'll go completely wireless as soon as I can PCI cards at something I consider to be a reasonable price.

Re:802.11g

[Anonymous Coward]

If you could actually buy consumer grade 802.11g I would agree.

FWIW, at the online Apple Store their 802.11g card is $99, which isn't bad at all, and will ship in "2-4 weeks". It's a mini-PCI form factor -- I think a couple non-Apple laptops have these, but I haven't seen a PCI-to-mini-PCI adapter. I wonder how hard it would be to write a driver for it...

Re:802.11g

[EricWright]

Aren't the new Airport extremes out yet? Steve announced them, what... 48 hrs ago? :)

Anyway, those are $200 (down from $300) and have a USB port for wireless printing. Not as cheap, but rather snazzy looking!

Re:802.11g

[miltimj]

If you're using the wireless exclusively as a bridge to your cable modem, then that makes sense. Going from wired to wireless does not, however.

For example, my linux server has all my important data on it, and I transfer a lot of data to my other computers regularly, and there's no way a wireless link will cut it, whether a,b or g.

Re:802.11g

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Aren't the new Airport extremes out yet? Steve announced them, what... 48 hrs ago? :)

The Apple Store says AirPort Extreme base stations will ship in 2-4 weeks.

You want to connect it to your Mac?!

[stratjakt]

No wonder your TiVo thinks you're gay. /me waves bye-bye to some karma.

Don't get excited

[pashdown]

The press release is very specific about streaming music and photos to and from the TiVo. It says nothing about remote viewing of shows. Every TiVo hacker wishes something like this was "built-in." However, it appears that television executives have more sway with TiVo than their customers.

Slashdot effect- Contents here

[Anonymous Coward]

Technology > Wireless TiVo Connection

How to set up a Series 2 TiVo with an Apple AirPort (802.11b) Wireless Network
Last Modified: January 9, 2003 @ 3:06 am

Background

When my DSL provider went out of business, I decided to go with cable modem instead of getting DSL with a different provider with the goal of getting rid of my landline phone altogether. With that change, the TiVo was the only thing I had that still needed a landline phone for. I use my cell phone (Treo 300, recommended) for just about everything anyway so if I could get the TiVo to get data over the internet via our home network, I could cancel my landline phone and save about $20 a month which more than justifies the cost of the TiVo, right? One problem - our network connections are all upstairs and the TiVo is downstairs. We do have a wireless network though... so I figured I'd give it a shot. I read up a bit on the tivocommunity.com message boards - basically, you connect a USB-to-Ethernet Adapter to the USB port on the TiVo, then connect a Wireless Ethernet Bridge to the USB-to_Ethernet Adapter. It took too many hours of tweaking and trial and error, but it finally works. I am quite pleased. I decided to write up the steps I took in hopes that it will help someone else who is trying to set up a similar configuration.

I have gotten a lot of mail asking why I didn't just get the Linksys WUSB11 USB-to-Wireless adapter or a similar product. Unfortunately, you cannot currently use a USB-to-Wireless adapter with a TiVo as there is no way to properly configure the adapter. You can read more on this at tivocommunity.com. Although to be honest - I did not try myself, I took other people's word for it. If you somehow make it work, please let me know - it would be a lot cheaper and more convenient.

My Network Configuration

I have a DSL/Cable modem attached to the uplink port of a hub. I have an AirPort Base Station (which is acting as my router/DHCP server) attached to the hub, along with my desktop computer. I have several laptops connected to the network wirelessly. Desktop Computer (TiVo with USB->Ethernet->Wireless)//DSL/cable modem -- hub -- AirPort Base Station -- Laptop A\Laptop B

Router: Apple AirPort Base Station serving DHCP
AirPort Network Name (SSID): Alex's AirPort (for this example)
WEP Security: none (for the sake of this example, however running a wireless network without encryption is not a good idea).

Required Hardware

• You need a PC (Virtual PC 5 worked for one reader) to run the WET11 setup program. Note to Mac Users: According to this article, you can configure the WET11 through a browser by connecting via ethernet, setting your computer's IP to 192.168.1.5 and sub 255.255.255.0, then going to http://192.168.1.225 in your browser. Thanks to Michael Dinsmore for the tip.
• A USB to Ethernet Adapter, I used a LinkSys USB100M.
• A Wireless Ethernet Bridge, I used a LinkSys WET11.

Configuring the WET11 to be a DHCP client

1. Unpack the WET11.
2. Set the switch on the back of the WET11 to quot;II (not X).
3. Plug the WET11 into your wired network. I plugged mine into my hub.
4. Launch the driver/setup program on a PC (or virtual PC) connected to the network (wired/wireless does not matter). Download Page | Zip file - or you can try accessing the WET11 from a browser using the default IP address (see the screenshot in the setup guide).
5. In the setup program - follow these teps:
   - select the WET11 and click Yes
   - enter the password (default is admin) and click OK
   - choose Infastructure mode (not Ad-Hoc) and click Next
   - enter the name of your AirPort network into the SSID field (Alex's AirPort), all other settings can be left as is, and click Next
   - choose Automatically obtain an IP address (DHCP)
   - enter your security settings, in our example we leave it disabled
   - review your new settings, click Yes to save the changes
6. Note: Your network may go a little screwy at this point until you disconnect the WET11 in the next step.
7. This is important: you must unplug the power from the WET11 for a few seconds then plug it back in again to save the new settings. The directions say to reset the WET11 - they DO NOT mean for you to hit the reset button on the back of the WET11, this undoes all the settings you just entered and restores the factory defaults.
8. Unplug the WET11 from the wired network.
9. Set the switch on the back of the WET11 to X (not II).
10. Now your WET11 is ready to go!

Let's test the WET11 to make sure it is working on the network.

1. Disconnect a computer from your network.
2. Connect the WET11 to this computer with an ethernet cable (RJ45).
3. Wait a few seconds and see if your computer is able to rejoin the network.
4. If you get back on the network, you're set to go, disconnect the WET11 from the computer. If not, try rebooting with the WET11 attached. If it still doesn't work after rebooting, hit the reset button on the back of the WET11 and go back through the WET11 setup steps.

Connecting the TiVo

Now we need to connect everything to the TiVo.

1. Unpack the USB100M.
2. Plug the USB100M into the top USB port on the TiVo.
3. Plug in the WET11 to a power outlet.
4. Attach the WET11 to the USB100M with an ethernet cable (RJ45).
5. Restart the TiVo: Main Menu > Messages and Setup > Restart or Reset System > Restart the Recorder.
6. Enter new dialing settings: Main Menu > Messages and Setup > Recorder & Phone Setup > Phone Connection > Change Dialing Options
7. Leave Dial-In Number as is.
8. Set Dial Prefix to ,#401 (comma - pound - four - zero - one).
9. Set Call Waiting Prefix to nothing, leave it blank or erase what you have there.
10. Set Tone/Pulse to Tone (I don't think this matters).
11. Set 'Phone Avail. Detection to Off (again, I don't think this matters).
12. Set Dial Tone Detection to On.
13. Select Use these dialing options (at the top of the screen).
14. Select Make Test Call.
15. Cross your fingers, close your eyes, make a wish...
16. Press the SELECT button...
17. It worked right? I sure hope so... if not, pull the USB100M adapter out of the top USB port and insert it into the bottom USB port, then Restart the TiVo again (step 5 above) and go through the steps again.

If you still can't get it working, unplug the WET11 from the TiVo and again verify that it is working when attached to a computer. To start over from scratch, you can hit the reset button on the back of the WET11 and go back through the WET11 setup steps.

I hope that this helps someone. If you know of another way to do this or have some related information, please let me know.

td colspan="2" valign="top

802.11g

[mgs1000]

I'd probably want to use 802.11g though ... lots of data, this is.

Definately. I have a wireless bridge setup similiar to Alex King's. (To get both my Tivo and PS2 networked) Extracting video from the Tivo is painfully slow over the 4Mbps(actual) 802.11b connection. Each hour of video is a little more than a gigabyte. It takes longer to download the video than the actual length of the show, so I guess streaming video would be out of the question, if the Tivo ever had the capability.

Regarding DirecTiVo

[HiroProtagonist]

FYI this hack DOES NOT WORK with the DirecTiVo (Series 2s), as they have (stupidly) disabled the USB ports on the back of the device.

There used to be a hack to get the USB ports working again and the DirecTiVo using a USB-to-Ethernet converter, but the newest version of the DTiVo operating system ( 3.1.0-01-2-151 ) wipes this hack out.

When I got my HDVR2 last week and found this out, it really pissed me off because like many geeks, I have a cell phone ONLY, no land lines, just a Net connection. Had to drag my DTiVo over to a friends so that it could initialize properly.

Anyways, be forwarned!!!

There is hope in the future that Directv will stop being assholes and allow the USB ports to be used in the future, but that's all it is.... Hope.

Re:Regarding DirecTiVo

[HiroProtagonist]

For me a not having a land line is a function of economics. 0.00 $39.00 (or $17.00 or whatever) and my cell phone already has nationwide long distance included (which my company pays for anyway). Basically, I don't WANT a land line because I would never USE a land line.

Re:Regarding DirecTiVo

[nvrrobx]

There is a solution to this if you're a geek!

My DTiVo is plugged into my FreeBSD box's serial port (using the serial cable that came with the TiVo and a null-modem adapter)...

Change your dial prefix to ,#211 and the TiVo will make it's daily call via PPP over the serial port.

I do all of that plus divx on my ps2..

[WestieDog]

I know it's been said before but I do all of that plus playing divx with the Qcast tuner (www.broadq.com) for my playstation2. All that you need is a ps2, nic, and a pc to push the content. The bonus is that you don't have to pay a monthly fee, the down side is that you loose the easy interface for recording that the tivo has.

Just for anyone...

[labratuk]

...who wanted to actually know what the press release was about before they loaded it, it is about rendezvous being adopted by Tivo (sounds like it hooks into iLife software), Brother (for printers) and Aspyr (games/software).

Juicy!

[webword]

Throw some technology together and get some interesting integration. Surprisingly, there is no mention of iPod in the announcement. Wouldn't it be nice to have a wireless connection to your iPod and stream that way too? Walk around the house or apartment with an almost infinite selection of streamed songs from your desktop or laptop. Eliminates the need for larger and larger storage on the iPod, at least while you are in range of the transmitter.

Speaking of this idea, how many people know about the Dr. Bott iPod Connection Kit w/ FM Wireles Transmitter? Not the same thing, of course, but it still should get you thinking about other ways to extend and expand your devices. And, while I am off on a tangent here, wouldn't it be interesting to get RSS feeds on our various wireless web devices? ;-) If this is already being done, post some references here. I'd be interested to learn more about it.

Re:Juicy!

[WatertonMan]

Unfortunately the Dr. Bott iPod thing is worse than useless. In a car it has to be basically beside your stereo and even then it doesn't really have enough power. If you hold it then your body's capacitance changes things enough that you actually get decent reception. Unfortunately that isn't exactly convenient.

Anyone who thinks they could use one of these in a house is fooling themselves. There are other radio transmitters, as a Google search will attest. The good ones cost nearly as much as your iPod!

I wish there was a power booster for the Dr. Bott thing. It is a good idea. But right now I feel like I wasted my money.

Wireless TiVo is easy...

[NetJunkie]

I just did this the other night. I use a WAP11 in bridge mode to get wireless connectivity to my home theater. I just popped in a TurboNet card in the TiVo and I was set. Enabling telnet, FTP, and Web took 15 minutes.

The problem is, 802.11b is sloooooow for pulling off video. An hour of video on a TiVo may be 2.8GB. When pulling vid over wireless it takes a LONG time... I usually either do it over night or just plug in to the switch behind the HT and get it off directly.

For those wanting to do this check out TiVoApp. It's pretty much a one step vid extraction tool that'll dump anything in Now Showing to an mpeg file.

Discussion on tivo forums

[gatekeep]

There's a discussion about this press release at the tivo forums - http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.ph p?s=84c11bddf1300f950b6c97ad19d4e465&threadid=9446 9

It seems the consensus is that since this is an apple press release, it doesn't preclude PC support, but means that mac's will be supported, probably in addition to PCs.

At last!

[Anand_S]

It took all night, but I finally got Debian installed on my TiVo. Where's my $200,000?

Why you, geeks watch TV?

[WetCat]

Better use Internet or walk...

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.

The Wireless Thing Is Easy ...

[thedbp]

You can get your TiVO wireless if u so desire. fairly cheap, too:

http://www.dlink.com/products/wireless/dwl810+/

I'm liking this. This is the kind of integration that TiVo and the like needed to really grab average consumers. and since Rendevouz is open source, anyone can join the party :) thanks apple!

Re:The Wireless Thing Is Easy ...

[mgs1000]

Or you could just get a Tivo AirNet

(Only works on a series one Tivo, so I guess you won't we able to use it with all this new Rendevouz stuff)

A few notes...

[dr00g911]

But I would still want it to be wireless.

I noticed this press release a few days ago, as well. Been doing some research since then.

You'll need a TiVo Series 2 to make this work. No word on whether 3rd party TiVo 2s will be supported (like the Sony unit).

Most everything below is an educated guess, so take with a grain of salt.

I'm assuming after looking at the unit's connectivity that you'll need to get a TiVo USB->Ethernet adapter. No word as to whether other parties' USB->Ethernet or USB->802.11x adapters will work as of yet.

I've already got a Linksys WET11 hooked up to my Playstation 2 network adapter, bridging to my wireless LAN (iMac with connection sharing on via Airport card), so adding a cheap hub at my receiver isn't a big deal on my end.

If you go this route, you'll need a Wintel box, or at the very least Virtual PC to properly configure the bridge (for the first time -- its http admin works on the Mac after initial setup) -- even though Linksys claims otherwise. Also, if you turn on encryption, keep in mind that you need to set up the Mac side to use the long-ass hex version of the password you pick (ie $AA2E43323B2300000) or the WET11 won't be able to get on. At the very least, lock your access point down to specific hardware addresses.

As far as bandwidth concerns -- let's see -- MP3s ripped at 192k -- vs the 11 megabit bandwidth on 802.11b. I'm not seeing a problem here. Hell, a direct uncompressed dump to AIFF or WAV from a CD will only come in at 150k/second (ie 1x CD-ROM). That's 1.5 megabits of bandwidth -- for uncompressed audio.

Back to the info -- this functionality seems to be part of a forthcoming firware upgrade for the series 2 models (which are currently shipping and on sale -- $199 for a 40 meg unit, $399 for an 80 with rebate).

It also seems that they're hinting that LAN functionality is going to be part of a new 'tiered' pricing structure -- the veiled hint being "part of our premium service".

At any rate, I'm in on this the moment it's available. I bought a Sony 200-CD jukebox about 5 years ago, and it's skipping horribly now and cleaning hasn't helped. I'm giddy at the thought of dropping it and just getting a 120-gig drive to take its place.

Here's to hoping that TiVo's media center (or whatever they call it) UI is decent, and it supports iTunes playlists and iTunes browsing by artist, album and genre.

I'd pay an extra $5 or so a month for that.

One last hint:

When ripping to iTunes, make sure your prefs are set to add track numbers to the filenames, otherwise your albums will play back in alpha order.

--dr00gy

Re:A few notes...

[dr00g911]

I'll bite.

See, I use iTunes as my central media library at both the office and home. I'm not always the one using it, and not all views by artist and album show up in the proper order.

For example, if you sort by:

Genre -- > Artist -- > Album

And song name was the sort in your previous view, it shows up in Alpha order, unless you add track numbers. G'head and try it. I'll wait here.

It also reburns in alpha order (which I found out as the fiancee burned Sgt. Pepper's that way accidentally for a road trip).

I don't know about you, but I think it's blasphemous to listen to Dark Side of the Moon in alpha order.

Adding track numbers is *helpful*.

Re:A few notes...

[mgs1000]

You bring up an interesting point. The current Tivo software has a very poor sorting capabilty for recorded TV shows. I guess the Tivo MP3 player might have similiar problems.

Re:A few notes...

[swb]

I've not heard of firewire upgrades for series 2s or of series 2s with firewire. All series 2s have USB, and AFAIK the "upgrades" will center around a USB->Ethernet adapter (which works now, actually, and can be used to replace dialup for daily calls).

Everybody thinks that Tivo will now support moving video on to/off of the Tivos. I *highly* doubt this will ever be permitted due to copyright fears by Tivo and due to the inherent limitations of USB as the source of connectivity. Even at basic quality we're talking in the neighborhood of 2.5Mbit/sec, which is probably pushing the limits of what can be reliably streamed over a USB link.

Even if you could drive the USB net link at max speeds (12Mbit/sec) you're talking hours to get a single basic-quality hour long mpeg onto or off of it. A firewire connection (or a GigE connector would help), but I suspect that Tivo is feeling a lot of heat from the entertainment industry to make extracting video only happen at 1x speed via analog video connections.

Re:A few notes...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

What the hell are you talking about? For one thing, iTunes doesn't sort by the file name ever, under any circumstances. It only sorts by ID3 tags. (Well, unless there are no ID3 tags. That's the only exception.)

So whether you have track numbers in your file names or not doesn't matter a damn. If you want to sort alphabetically, sort by track name. If you want to sort numerically, sort by track numbers. All you have to do is click the column header.

Re:A few notes...

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I believe he meant "firmware"--he was missing an "m", not an "e", in the original post. Guess he didn't turn on spellcheck in Safari--btw, why the hell doesn't that setting persist?

Re:A few notes...

[Johnny Mnemonic]

If you go this route, you'll need a Wintel box, or at the very least Virtual PC to properly configure the bridge (for the first time -- its http admin works on the Mac after initial setup) -- even though Linksys claims otherwise.

Not having this linkys device, I'm interested to know what you tried to get it working--linksys does indeed claim that this will work, here. (Also linksys Knowledge Base KB10934380). Did you follow those steps, or no?

Finally, for those without easy access to Virtual PC--this kind of one-shot deal might be the kind of thing that you could go to your Apple Store for--they now have VPC running on some demo units, and aren't generally bad about letting one install software--it's all deleted every night anyways.

Re:A few notes...

[dr00g911]

The points I've been trying to make are:

1. It is not only possible, but likely to sort to an album by Genre --> Artist --> Album and have the list sorted in ways other than by track number.

So whether you have track numbers in your file names or not doesn't matter a damn. If you want to sort alphabetically, sort by track name. If you want to sort numerically, sort by track numbers. All you have to do is click the column header.

For example, if you had all your "Punk" songs sorted alphabetially by clicking on the song name column, then decided you wanted to listen to an entire album, the album would not automatically resort to track number -- it keeps the track name alpha sort between views. Seriously. Try it.

File name, song name. Same thing if iTunes has ripped the track. But as a *FILE* read over the network via SMB or whatever, it makes a bit of a difference, no? The check box is to add the track number to the file name, not append it to the beginning of the ID3 Title tag.

I've got a botched copy of Sgt. Pepper's that the significant other burned out of iTunes to prove it. And she's a pretty bright girl. Mistakes happen. What I'm trying to accomplish is to keep people from having to think too damned hard to make iTunes/the jukebox do what they want it to do.

2. Net-based streamers (ie TiVo, siMP3, etc.) will have an *easier* time of keeping everything in order if you take the time to make an extra mouse click in the prefs. That's what this thread is about, no? Above in the thread, it's been mentioned already how poor TiVo's organization and UI are for video. Do you really think that it's going to bring your collection in (even *if* playlists, ID3 tags and albums are honored) sorted how you'd like all by itself? I'd place money on an alphabetical sort being the default.

3. When you take these things out of the realm of being "your" music collection on the computer, and stick it in the rack with your audio/video components it becomes just as much a community-use item as your CD keepcase/flipbook. It's an appliance at that point. It should be as intuitive as possible for people who *don't* know what they're doing to be able to play an entire album in the proper order.

I'm just offering some constructive (IMO) advice related to the topic of the thread. Take it or leave it, but I'm willing to wager that someone may find it helpful.

4. For what it's worth, when I'm burning my own CDs, I like having the track numbers in the source file names. I prefer using Toast or Jam to burn my CDs, and Toast won't let you sort by ID3 track number tag when it comes time to burn a CD using it. But having the track number in the filename is damned handy for me.

Re:A few notes...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

For example, if you had all your "Punk" songs sorted alphabetially by clicking on the song name column, then decided you wanted to listen to an entire album, the album would not automatically resort to track number

Uh... right. iTunes does not arbitrarily change your sort order for you. It does what you tell it.

File name, song name. Same thing if iTunes has ripped the track.

Not true. To pick one of my 5,000+ MP3's at random, its song name is "Blackbird." It's file name is "02 Blackbird.mp3."

I've got a botched copy of Sgt. Pepper's that the significant other burned out of iTunes to prove it.

Dude, if you're grumpy because iTunes did what you told it-- burned the CD with the tracks sorted by title instead of by track number-- then kindly take it somewhere else. There's no other sensible way for the program to do it!

Do you really think that it's going to bring your collection in (even *if* playlists, ID3 tags and albums are honored) sorted how you'd like all by itself? I'd place money on an alphabetical sort being the default.

Oh, I don't think that's a safe bet. Look at your iPod. When you look at a list of all songs by an artist, it sorts them by title alphabetically. (What you'd want.) If you look at all songs on a given album, it sorts them by track number (again, what you'd want). I think it's far more likely that a TiVo-based MP3 player would use this sensible method of sorting rather than just blindly sorting alphabetically all the time.

iTunes is different, though. iTunes is not an appliance; it's an interactive application. If you tell iTunes to sort by track number, then by god it's going to sort by track number until you tell it otherwise. Likewise with an alphabetical sort.

It should be as intuitive as possible for people who *don't* know what they're doing to be able to play an entire album in the proper order.

You mean like an iPod is? Yeah, I agree.

Re:A few notes...

[dr00g911]

Trying to get my WET11 configured via HTTP on the Mac didn't work, no matter how I tried. Incidentally, it wasn't mine originally, it was a friend's who spent a weekend trying to configure it via the Mac to work with his Playstation 2.

After he couldn't get it working I told him I'd buy it off him if I could get it working here. And then I wasted the better part of a day before I fired up the Win box in frustration.

That was following those instructions you referenced, among other failed attempts.

I even called Linksys support about it and they offered me an RMA after lots of head-scratching.

See, it's got to be assigned an IP before you can get into it via http. That's the rub. It's also got to generate a hex key via the WinSetup wizard if you want to utilize encryption, then in my case I had to retype that hex key into the iMac's connection sharing password field. And it also needs to join the particular WLAN you're on (user-selected) in order to configure it wirelessly -- although I was doing it wired as the PC is on my wired segment.

The Win setup program has a wizard that dredges the network to find the bridge and configures it before it's a member of the subnet.

There may have been another way of doing it, but I'll be damned if it was documented. And I tried a lot of different ways to get it configured, including port scanning my LAN to find if it had picked up a DHCP address (which it handn't).

There are no Mac-configuration instructions in the user's guide (it's a PDF), but there is this lovely snippet:

Chapter 6: Using the Wireless Ethernet Bridge Web-based Utility

Overview

The Bridge is designed to function properly after configuration using the Setup Wizard [ed: Wintel Only].

So, yeah, it technically works with the Mac. But only after you've run the Setup Wizard to get the thing 'live' on your network, and you can't get encryption on without the wizard generating the hex key for your password -- unless you can do that in your head ;-)

Maybe the prefs were hosed in my unit as it shipped, but that's my experience.

What to record on your TiVo?

[Istealmymusic]

How about some Curse of Dark Magicians Guaranteed to satisfy any Slashdotter, better than LoTR:FoTR 9 out of 10 Slashdotters agree.

More Info....

[NetJunkie]

For easy info on doing this chec:

http://www.stevejenkins.com/tivo/newbie.html

If all you want is to switch it from using a land line just put in the NIC (or connect a USB one for Series 2) and change the dial prefix to ,#401. That's it. I'm dropping my land line now thanks to this.

Re:More Info....

[NetJunkie]

Get telnet access on the TiVo. Copy over a few small tools. From then on you just run the TiVoApp tool and just choose what you want. It'll dump them to an mpeg.

Re:More Info....

[delus10n0]

FYI, there's a much better tool out there for video extraction on the Tivo called TyTool. TivoApp is buggy and slow, and doesn't decode/demux the streams for you automatically like TyTool does. It also doesn't require a zillion hacks to get it working.

Re:More Info....

[ncc74656]

TivoApp is buggy and slow, and doesn't decode/demux the streams for you automatically like TyTool does. It also doesn't require a zillion hacks to get it working.

The tyStream->MPEG conversion in TyTool is superior, but the TiVo-resident daemon TyTool uses for extraction has issues...it tends to wedge my TiVo after two or three extractions. I'd recommend telnetting into the TiVo and using mfs_stream and netcat to rip the stream. You can then use TyTool to convert the stream once it's on your Win2K box (WinXP sucks, NT 4 is behind the times (no DirectX >3), and Win9x doesn't support files >2GB).

(You might also want to follow this DealDatabase thread about a demuxer that'll build under at least Win32, Linux, and Mac OS X. As it stands now, it chokes on streams >2GB, but it works great on smaller streams. I think that bit has been fixed, but not released yet because the author also wants to fix some issues related to decoding DirecTiVo streams before releasing a new version.)

All I want...

[phillymjs]

...is the ability to pull shows into my Mac, edit out the commercials, and burn the episodes to DVD for addition to my personal entertainment library. My 120GB-upgraded TiVo is chock full of my favorite New Twilight Zone and Outer Limits episodes that I'm keeping on there until a solution presents itself. If nothing concrete comes along by spring, I'll just buy one of those RCA A/V-to-FireWire boxes and do it all myself. But I'd rather use someone else's more elegant solution.

~Philly

Re:All I want...

[MightyTribble]

Sounds like you want a ReplayTV, then. Using a niftly little utility called 'ReplayPC' (see sourceforge for details) and your out-of-the-box LAN-enabled ReplayTV 5xxx series, you can download shows recorded in DVD-compliant MPEG2 streams, edit them with the vid editor of your choice, and burn them to DVD. Lots of folks do this already.

You can also upgrade Replay hard drives without hacing to "bless" them. :)

Re:All I want...

[tfoss]

Seems like you just need Extractstream.

-Ted

Tivo network hardware mods

[RunzWithScissors]

The only person at home who uses my home phone line is Tivo, everything else goes through the network connection or cell. So when a friend told me about some easy hardware mods, one of them is plug 'n go, I had to buy one. Check out 9th tee . They have a whole bunch of hardware upgrades for the Tivo including a wireless 802.11b ethernet card based on the prism chipset.

The ISA ethernet card is plug 'n go if you're using Tivo software 3.0.x or later and have a first gen Tivo. The 802.11b wireless card is not quite as easy to install, but 9th tee has links to instructions.

-Runz

Re:Tivo network hardware mods

[Skidge]

The only person at home who uses my home phone line is Tivo

I just got a Tivo for christmas. Am I going to start refering to him as a member of my household? Actually, I could almost see that, since tivo has made watching TV tolerable again with the ability to zip through the commercials at near light speed.

It's an open standard

[overunderunderdone]

It won't change nothing if it's proprietary and doesn't play nice with other OS's (Windows included).

Fortunately it ISN'T PROPRIETARY! It is an open standard that is also called zeroconf. Apple has also released source code.

Why isn't there an open source package that just makes it easy to share folders/files/printers across all platforms? Like Samba, but without being a cloned MS tech?

Grab Apple's code and get working ;)

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:I Love Irony

[geekee]

You might want to look up irony in the dictionary. I don't think you understand what it means. Also, you don't seem to understand that pc's under Windows do more than Macs, based on the far greater software base (including this rendezvous feature). What's ironic is that you are criticizing the price of some MS toy when Apple charged you way too much for your Mac.

Not good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to say "And furthermore, who pulled my dick out of my pants??"

That's the toughest part to sell.

Here's a possible application for it

[h4x0r-3l337]

I've always thought that the way PVRs will simply delete old shows is not right. What they should do is re-encode old recordings to a lower quality, thereby taking up less space and making room for new recordings. The change could be gradual, e.g. go from "best" to "high" to "normal" to "low", and then finally delete the recording. The advantage would be that a recording could still be watched after many weeks, even if at a lower quality. Of course, none of these PVRs have the horsepower to do this, but if you have a desktop computer available somewhere, the recoding could be offloaded to it.

Re:Here's a possible application for it

[Twirlip of the Mists]

What they should do is re-encode old recordings to a lower quality, thereby taking up less space and making room for new recordings.

Two things. First of all, there's only one (or at most two) MPEG encoder ASIC's in a PVR, so you'd only be able to transcode shows while the encoder was not in use. My TiVo is busy just about all the time, either recording stuff I asked for or stuff it thinks I'll like. So that won't work.

Second, low-bit-rate MPEG transcoded to even-lower-bit-rate MPEG comes out looking like hammered shit. TiVo's picture quality is bad enough without multiple generations of increasingly constrained encoding making things even worse.

Re:Here's a possible application for it

[h4x0r-3l337]

Did I say MPEG sucks? Did I mention Ogg? Do you always jump to conclusions like that?
All I meant to say was that instead of MPEG, which you would have to decode and then encode again in order to lower the bitrate, some other format could be used where you can "peel away" part of the data. This would have the advantage of not degrading the quality more than necessary, and not being CPU intensive, so it could be done on the device itself.

Re:Here's a possible application for it

[h4x0r-3l337]

Ah yes, I forgot... Posting on slashdot is about "karma", not about saying something meaningful...

Re:Gads at the Grammar

[pudge]

I am vexed by your implication. In your suggestion that I learn more, you either mean that there are people who don't need to learn more -- and surely no such person exists -- or that my speech above is evidence that I am especially lacking in learning. There's no evidence for either suggestion. Thornton Wilder said, "Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech." If my speech was, as you suggest, a propos to the topic of television, then perhaps I've done my job properly.

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.

Apple is so close

[Anonymous Coward]

to making it's digital hub strategy come true, and yet I don't understand why they don't just do it.

All they have to do is allow the Mac to connect to the TV and let iMovie record stuff off the TV. Once they integrate iCal with iMovie, they've made the Mac the ultimate Personal Video Recorder.

How many people own digital video cameras? And of those, how many actually have the patience to make a movie out of their footage? But everyone has a TV and everyone wants to record their favorite shows and movies and edit out the commercials and archive it to DVD. This is the killer app Apple has been looking for since the Laser Printer.

Not only will it convince the average joe to buy a computer with a powerful processor and a large hard drive and a SuperDrive, it'll convince appliance manufacturer to adobt Rendezvous technology. It may also help Apple sell Airport base stations.

iLife won't mean squat if Apple lets Microsoft integrate the computer with the TV first. Until the people see that they can increase the value of their TV by buying a Mac, the hub for digital lifestyle is just a pipe dream.

Re:Apple is so close

[phillymjs]

All they have to do is allow the Mac to connect to the TV and let iMovie record stuff off the TV. Once they integrate iCal with iMovie, they've made the Mac the ultimate Personal Video Recorder.

Absolutely not. I don't want to have to leave my Mac on all the time to record stuff-- and I could connect my TV to my Mac with about 15' of cable (my old beige G3 actually was connected to it for years), whereas many people don't have their Macs in the same room as their TV. If I don't want to do it that way, then surely they won't.

If Apple does anything, they should partner with TiVo on a set-top box (maybe Apple-branded, maybe not) that's much like existing TiVo units, but able to be controlled by the Mac. Give the Mac the ability to pull/push video to the set-top's hard drive. With a sufficiently-large hard drive in the set-top, you could record a program, suck it over to your Mac, edit out the commercials, and push it back over to the set-top for a video library with no getting up to insert a tape or DVD. Or burn the programs to DVD or VCD. Whatever you want.

Give the set-top a 10/100/1000 wired Ethernet port, a slot for AirPort Extreme, and a FireWire 800 port. Build in Rendezvous (we already know they're doing that). That would pretty much cover everyone's options-- connect the box as a local FireWire hard drive to access the streams, or do it like a network server volume.

~Philly

Thanks, my eyes can't handle that website...

[aquarian]

Sorry Mr. King! While your website has lots of neat material, you won't have me as a reader because tiny white text on a light blue background is too damned hard to read!

Today's TiVo Announcements from CES:

[maggard]

• TiVo Unveils New DVR Design That Supports HDTV
• DIRECTV AND TiVo to Introduce New High-Definition
• Toshiba Creates a New DVD Domain With TiVo
• TiVo's New Home Media Option(TM) Transforms DVR Into Entertainment Center, Bringing Control and Simplicity to Home Networking

The last one is most relevant to the discussion here.

Basically for $99 one can order a TiVo SW upgrade (secured with public/private keys) to allow your TiVo to stream mp3s, jpegs (incl. ones from Corbis), be remotely administered from a personal account on TiVo's website, and get some extra promo material. One can then get the upgrade for addt'l TiVos in the household at half-price and be able to stream shows between TiVos on the same account.

All of this due in April, software for enabling the local mp3 & jpeg streaming to be available then, you can sign up to be notified when avaliable. Presumably these apps and the TiVos will use Rendezvous to find eachother.

So: Extra cost paid upfront, secured software, able to share but only with other extra-package TiVos on the same account and not with the general 'net population. Oh yeah, and LinkSys is the preferred networking hw vendor.

An Easy Way to Tell

[Doktor Memory]

Most likely, he's full of shit. But there will be an easy way to determine it:

If in two weeks he's facing down the mother of all legal summons for violating his consulting NDA with Apple, he was telling the truth. :)

Door is already swung...wide that is

[djupedal]

I've taken my (Korean) satellite TV feed, sent it to my G4, and piped it right back out...onto the internet, using QuickTime Streaming Server and Broadcaster (both free from Apple).

Only I'm using Firewire and a Sony DV cam to get it into the Mac. What would a TiVO get me, I wonder...maybe better control over the source?

Now to figure out a way to change TV stations remote, via a web browser, and I'm set :)

ZephIR

[djupedal]

Perfect...thanks sooooo much! :)

Re:Gads at the Grammar

[goon america]

"I used to hate writing assignments, but now I enjoy them. I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!"

-- Calvin (Bill Watterson)