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RCA PVR Will Use Free Guide+ Program Guide
Mark Leighton Fisher writes "RCA has announced (among other CES goodies) a PVR/DVD player for this year that uses the free GUIDE Plus+ program guide rather than requiring an oncoming program guide contract. Once we bring the price down (yes, I work there) I may break down and get one, as I don't like the program guide fee required on current PVRs. (This may be the first no-program guide-fee commercial PVR.)"
dishnetwork has em.
Cool. Way better than TiVo charges
This could cause TiVo and ReplayTV to lower, or drop, the fees for their guide services. Eventually the manufacturing costs of TiVos and Replays will drop enough that they can sell in the $300.00 price range and make a profit. Maybe.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
doesn't anyone that can afford this already have satellite or digital cable? what's the point?
RCA is notorious for making crappy products. (My apologies to the poster.) I worked at radio shack and one of the first thing I noticed was how shoddy all of the RCA products were. A lot of returns on these items, especially the DVD players. Also, an RCA Lyra player I once had was a total piece of crap. I've learned my lesson about buying stuff from them.
God is real unless declared integer.
"But if it is free, who do I sue if they get the wrong time for Will and Grace?"
Hell, if that isn't the most obvious of the many "put paper thing on computer" patents.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
"The vast hard drive in the RCA LYRA Audio/Video Jukebox can accommodate up to 100,000 JPEG images."
:*)
who has 100,000 jpegs images, thats some collection buddy
Tivo charges for their guide because they are providing a service. They sell their PVR for almost no profit whatsoever; unlike RCA, they have no other source of income to keep their PVR afloat until the PVR market takes off.
I don't mind supporting Tivo with a monthly charge, as long as I get service for my money. The program guide itself is worth the cost, and the convenience of Tivo is well worth the initial $200 outlay.
All-in-all, I figure if I can spend $12/month to support my Earth And Beyond habit, I can shell out $10/month for Tivo.
Just my $.02. Different people place different values on different things, so YMMV (your money may vary).
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I can't believe no one else has thought of this. I would certainly be much more interested in a $200 PVR with a free guide than a $100 that I have to pay monthly for. In the long run it just becomes cheaper. Granted, however, I probably never will because our digital cable gives me all the guide action that I need.
--naked
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Tivo doesn't make their pvr. They designed it, but actually subsidize other mfr's to make them for sale.
Tivo makes their money only on subscriptions.
This *could* put Tivo out of business. I can only hope that this at least makes them rethink their position on selling, effectively, advertising space on their customer's pvrs. (I'm referring to Tivo's policy of taking money to record programs and push them on the customer, with the customer being unable to delete them for 7 days.)
I'm still enjoying free Replay service from my Panasonic ShowStopper. All the new ones require a subscription, but I'm currently grandfatered in. I wonder how long that will last?
... except for Apple :/
Still, if it isn't an easy DVD->DivX-on-device rip, I can't see it selling...
This sort of product should have been on the market a year ago. I'm sure it's just the beginning of a flood from all the major manufacturers, and the price will drop fast.
Jason
ProfQuotes
I have a Panasonic Showstopper, which is an OEM Replay, and there has never been, and never will be, a program guide fee.
FCC Chairman Michael "Deregulator" Powell got a TiVo, for Xmas, and christened it God's Machine. He also said he'd like to share recordings with his other TV's and his sister. Perhaps this is good news for those of us who are worried about broadcast flags, etc. that are coming with digital TV adoption?
... paying a fee for using something like a Tivo, (afterall, I do want them to stay in business), but it does irk me that the service you basically get is "it knows the stuff you can get on line for free, like what channel something is on..."
Here's an idea, why not do something like Pay Per View, only the Tivo unit automatically captures it for you ready to play? (as opposed to having to catch it while it's on...)
The other option is keep me interesting in upgrading the machines once in a while. I don't want to replace the whole box, but I'll always be interested in buying new hard drives etc. Wouldn't it be cool if they used something like Firewire so you could keep adding more units to increase the storage?
This is interesting to me, at least. I'm the kind of guy who likes to watch shows from beginning to end. I'd watch Farscape, for example, if I could catch the first episode and reliably watch the rest of them in the order they were intended for. Problem is, that's a lot of storage if I'm mid-season.
*Shrug* It's cool that they're offering that service, hopefully it'll get Tivo and Sonicblue to reeconsider what you're actually paying for.
1st let me start off by saying I don't own a PVR. I probably won't buy one until a certain conditions happen first which is not related to this post.
Next, the guide fee.
Isn't the idea of the subscription guide fee the ability to track your favorite shows even if their times do change. Otherwise, for your 200-300 dollars you could just buy 3-4 cheap VCRs and set the time to record your shows. That would get you 18-20 hours of record time. The instant advance capability really isn't worth the the price tag when it takes 1 minute for my cheapo VCR to go through 10 minutes of broadcast.
What I don't understand is why the PVR can get the information off the existing cable or public station broadcast? Wouldn't it be more convienent to have the PVR grab from the cable company a constantly updated schedule and let the PVR sort out the recording times and what not? In a similar way, the cable company could sell a larger variety of Pay per view movies/sports by broadcasting them at obscure times and letting the PVR grab and serve them up the next day whenever.
I guess for me, the big question is, why isn't the cable companies developing PVRs to interact with current cable set tops?
> (I'm referring to Tivo's policy of taking money to
> record programs and push them on the customer, with
> the customer being unable to delete them for 7
> days.)
Heh, you mean that star menu option at the very very bottom of the menu? The one with the big star next to it so you can see if its there and not even glance in its area to read it if so?
Yes, those shows that only take up space on the root disk where it doesnt use a single bit from the volume the video is recorded to are so bad for me.
I know, lets boycott!
...but DirecTiVos already have no extra fees involved, and you can buy a $250 lifetime that eliminates all fees for standalone tivos as well. Older ReplayTVs also had no monthly program guide fee of any kind.
The EyeTV, a USB MPEG-1 PVR for mac/windows also uses a free online guide, so this is not even close to the first PVR/DVR to do that. ReplayTV probably takes that honor, but many have followed since.
"I don't like the program guide fee required on current PVRs."
You know, this subject comes up every time an article featuring the TiVo is posted, and every time someone gets "+5, Insightful" for whining about the TiVo monthly fee.
My TiVo monthly fee is $4.95. Yes, less than five dollars a month. That's cheaper than the burrito I ate for lunch today! For everything that TiVo gives me, $5 is chump change. Plus, you can do yearly and/or lifetime subscriptions. It's also lumped in with my DirecTV bill, so I don't get a separate "TiVo bill" that I have to worry about paying. What is the big deal?
I get 500+ channels plus HBO, local channels, and TiVo for less than $60 a month. Digital cable would give me the same thing without TiVo for $85/month. You want value? Buy a DirecTV+TiVo. But please, stop whining about the subscription. Every damn TiVo owner in the world will tell you that the $4.95 is money well-spent on a TiVo.
The only people I hear complaining are people who think the TiVo is a glorified VCR. The TiVo is not a VCR with a monthly fee! It is a totally different way to watch TV. It frees you from cheesy "primetime" TV. I told my TiVo to tape every Steve Martin movie that was on, regardless of any channel it was on. Every once in a while I turn the TiVo on to find a Steve Martin movie recorded and waiting for me to watch! I can order and record Pay-Per-View with one click. I have completely foregone Blockbuster (and I say "Good Riddance!") Five dollars a month is worth it to watch every Steve Martin classic, get rid of video store late fees, and give up on crappy primetime TV. (Hmm, the Simpsons was on at 6PM... I think I'll just watch that at 9PM instead of whatever is on now!)
I do not work at TiVo. I do not work at DirecTV. I am, however, a satisfied customer of both. (Oh, and has your cable company lowered your monthly cable bill this year? DirecTV lowered my monthly bill TWICE in 2002. What more can I ask for?)
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
I've got an RCA TV (hey, it was the cheapest stereo 20" at the time) with the Guide+ feature. Unfortunately, it only stores up to 2-3 days worth of programming; you're probably still going to have to have a TV guide so you can use the VCR+ codes to schedule your long term programming. Though the fact that this burns DVDs is a definite plus; I'd love to see this feature in more PVRs. I wonder if it's got a firewire port on it...
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Lets see. On one hand I have a brand name product with a reputation of not putting out the greatest quality product (RCA) on the other I have the leader of the PVR pack (TiVo).
RCA expects an MSRP of $600 for this product.
TiVo charges $150 for a 60 hour unit right now (see http://www.tivo.com)
RCA doesn't charge a fee for guide info.
TiVo charges $13/mo, or you can get a lifetime subscription for $250.
With that price difference it would take 3 years before you broke even on the RCA purchase. And if you bought the TiVo lifetime subscription you'd have $200 with which to buy TiVo's new Media Center software as well as a nice region free DVD player.
Or you could just buy the Toshiba DVD/TiVo device that was also announced at CES.
Sorry, but RCA sucks and you can have my TiVo when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
If you use the TiVo to record your favorite show on channel X and it moves to a new time or there is a new showing this week or it's an extra long episode this week you change NOTHING on the TiVo. It's all automatic. With the Guide Plus you will have to manage and monitor these changes yourself. I pay a bit each month to have someone else worry about this. I can't believe that people complain about paying less than the price of going out to eat for a guide and features that save you so much hassle and time.
Fallout? I hardly think so. RCA is charging $600 for this device while TiVo charges $150 for a 60 hour Series 2 TiVo. I hardly think TiVo will stop charging their monthly fee just because someone comes out with a non-subscription model that costs 4 times as much.
and I'd just like to provide some info for others thinking about getting one themselves. I haven't personally used a Tivo or Replay so I can't really say whats best first hand, but I read lots of reviews before deciding on the RCA Scenium.
I mostly chose it for two reasons. It is a DVD player in addition to a PVR, which is great if you don't already have one as with me. I have no complaints about its DVD playing functionality whatsoever.
The other reason is, as the article points out, that it doesnt require a channel guide subscription. I didn't want to add another monthly bill to my family's life, nor pay a lifetime (of the unit) fee when the companies' lives may be even shorter than the average electronic appliance. My family pays the local cable service about ten bucks a month to have nice reception of local stations plus TNT, CSPAN and the other junk they throw in. Thus our situation as far as channels go, may be unusual, but it is an issue. The guide is flaky! When told we don't have cable it gets quite a few broadcast stations that we dont receive and associates some of the ones we do with the incorrect channels. When told we have cable it only gets the listings for TNT and the Food network consistently correct, though there was one day, since christmas that the listings seemed pretty complete across the board. I havent put a whole lot of time into figuring it out since you only get the new listing after leaving the unit off overnight, but I'm pretty sure we're hosed as far as the guide goes. That sucks, but it would be OK if the thing were reliable for doing scheduled recordings ala a vcr. No such luck! Instead of recording the scheduled show it sometimes (maybe 30%) goes to the menu and says "an error has occured". Maybe these are simple software problems that will go away with the next revision, but guess what!? the firmware is not updatable.
The RCA PVR is $599 according to the article, and you can already get a TiVo or a Replay box with a lifetime-of-the-unit pre-paid program guide subscription for that kind of money. The RCA box only provides 40 hours of recording time, which isn't all that great either. You can get a 60 hour TiVo with lifetime guide subscription for $550.
The new feature is that the RCA box is also a DVD recorder, which may justify the extra cost for some buyers. But making a 40 hr PVR for $600 up front with no per-month free is nothing new.
(I was the third employee of Replay, which was originally Pacific Digital Media and has since been acquired by Sonic Blue.)
Their problem is that they spend a lot of money to consolidate the tv schedules - and they offer it free on their site using the advertising model. When people scrape it for their own use, they're subverting the ads, and zap2it loses money instead of making it (bandwidth, servers, staff, syndication). It's a much larger problem because of the way XMLTV scrapes - hundreds, if not thousands of pages must be retrieved and parsed to get the complete schedule.
Now before you all scream anti-corporate statements, realize that if enough people "steal" their content, they'll simply shut it down, as no company (and no one) wants to lose money.
For an interesting previous thread on this very topic, check here.
Correction, you can now buy a 60 hour TiVo for $150. With a lifetime subscription your bill comes to $400, not $550!
Plus, come April, TiVo's will have folders and the ability to share shows to other TiVo's on your local network.
I have an RCA television with "Guide Plus". I don't have cable,so the TV apparently downloads listings from local broadcasters at night, for a few days at a time. There are small ads on the left sides of the listings, and many times there will be gaps in the listings. The whole system is a little clunky; it takes a while to actually bring up the menu, a while to scroll ahead, and sometimes it'll "crash", causing the TV to suddenly turn off, and all the listings to be lost. The whole thing reminds a little of using Gnome a couple years ago.
This television was only bought a couple months ago, but hopefully RCA will improve the software before they bring this PVR to market. It's not such a big deal that the software's buggy in my case, because the TV itself is fine; I just don't use the Guide Plus function much. With a PVR, it'd be a much bigger problem, I think.
If it's the same GUIDE+ that comes on RCA TV's,
the ads are MUCH more intrusive -- over 1/4
of the screen while using the gude.
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
My father has an RCA TV with Guide+, and the data is not very complete (there are quite a few channels on his cable that they don't list). It seems to be more focused on ads. Without more complete data, using Guide+ for a PVR will be frustrating (I've got one channel that Tribune and TiVo don't have full data for and that is highly annoying; not having any data for a number of channels would be a show-stopper for me).
Guide+ is something that RCA has pushed but pretty much everyone else seems to have ignored.
It sounds like RCA is going to make something competitive to an original TiVo series 1 with the original software; nice, but three years out-of-date.
At $600 it makes no sense, one could buy a TiVo and a "lifetime" subscription for less, and hope that the "lifetime" is more than a year or so. However, the monthly fee is certainly a reason that many including myself would not but a TiVo. Like others I hope that RCA will realize they have to drop the price of the PVR to be competitive, or that someone else like Apex will get into the market and undercut RCA. It's nice to see the subscription model broken, even if the product isn't reasonably priced yet.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Wait, you worked at Radio Shack and are calling RCA "shoddy"? Like "Realistic", "Tandy", and "Optimus" are somehow synonymous with quality.
-_-_-
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
..."it does irk me that the service ... is ... the stuff you can get on line for free..."
Great! Let me know where I can go to a website and see every Steve Martin movie that is coming up in the next two weeks, with specific channel numbers, dates, and times.
And which website was it where I could go and click on MOVIES, and then type in "Steve Martin", and have it record all of those movies automatically?
That is why I pay TiVo $4.95 a month.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
And the total is probably about the same or less than the price of the RCA box.
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
Did you only look at the RCA products? My impression is all of the products there are shoddy. My expectation is that they demand shoddy from the manufacturer, it's the only explanation I can come up with.
And I'm not trolling here, I'm very serious about this.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
All I really want is a disk-based recorder, without paying some lame monthly fee. (And yes, the fee is LAME). To date, all the reasons I've been givin for Tivo charging a fee boil down to "because they can". That's fine, that's their perogative, but I'm not buying.
Maybe once this RCA device is out, it will put some pressure on Tivo to get their act together. Sorry, but at $200, they should be able to make a profit. (I can buy a whole computer for that, and all that's in Tivo is a hard drive that wholesales these days for about $30 and some MPEG chips.)
Since the Guide+ service is available in Canada, and the Tivo and Replay services aren't. (Unless you get satellite tv.)
The monthly fee for me is $12.95. How are you getting it for $4.95?
You'd rather buy a $600 device (RCA) than pay TiVo $13/mo or $5/mo if you use DirecTV? Man, you need to go back to elementary school and learn some basic arithmatic.
I just can't feel anypity for a website that still in this day and age thinks it can make money from banner or other types of ads.
Either charge for the service or stop whining.
...PVR records you!
Every DirecTV receiver, with or without Tivo, already has this programming data in it. But only on the DirecTivo do you pay $4.95 extra for it.
I own a DirecTivo myself, and I agree that it's the best deal in TV. But I find Tivo's explanations of their pricing sadly dishonest. It does not cost near $5/month on the DirecTivo or $13/month on the standalone to provide the programming info. The true story is that they sell a $350 machine for $100 and take the $250 in fees over the years instead.
So my complaint is not about the money but about the phony explanations. And whether you agree with that or not, it does in fact scare away a lot of customers who perceive it as sneaky.
Korea is too expensive. Taiwan, maybe...China for sure. They don't even make microwaves in Korea any longer...that has all just been moved to China. Korea's labor and infrastructure costs are simply too high. My company is keeping R & D and marketing here, but everything else has gone or will go overseas.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Most of the big Cheabols/corporations already have stealth factories setup and ready to go in the North.
:) Remember what happened when East and West Germany came together. For the two Korea's, the gap between the two earning structures is even wider. Someone will have to foot the bill to equalize the two living standarda, and again, the large corps have already said they will fund it. Politics is in the way, so everyone waits.
There are many impediments to actually using any of the labor at this time. A prime example is the lack of infrastructure to move goods. Beyond manufacturing, there is also a ready source of low-cost programmers...we just can't get them on the payroll just yet.
The South Korean people are willing to open up, but with so much political sludge clogging the system, there's not much hope for any progress soon. It's a long and painful story
Remember, ReplayTV used to use as a selling point that their devices required no seperate payment for their guide data. However, the price of a ReplayTV was roughly equal to the price of a Tivo plus lifetime service... it wasn't that the guide data was free, it was included with the cost of the purchase. However, they learned that model didn't work very well, so they've now converted to the TiVo pricing model of selling a loss-leader unit and making back the money on service.
More or less, that's what this RCA device is setting up with too. Gemstar's Guide+ service isn't free as in speech. In fact it's not free at all. And when you look at the price tag, it's more or less going to line up right next to the Tivo with lifetime service. The only thing this device is trying to add to the mix is a DVD player... but do you think RCA is really going to let you copy that DVD to the HD? Nope, so there goes the only vaulable feature of a DVD and PVR in the same box.
So RCA's thinking they can use a business model that ReplayTV has already tried and retreated from? This is a product failure in the making.
whoops, forgot to put the link there..
'Kay
and I see someone beat me to the punch...
First, in order to get advertisers to put their ads on a Tivo, you have to convince them that people will look at them. Tivo is in the process of doing just that. Eventually, with any luck, they should be able to eliminate the subscription fees.
They're busily creating a market. That's what the "star" is all about.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
GUIDE Plus+ is a product of Gemstar, the same nice people who print TV guide. Their guide data is not free, there's no server filled with standard XML that anybody can connect to.
Basically, RCA pricing in a subscription that's roughly equal to TiVo's lifetime cost into the price of the unit itself.
Sorry guys, no great "free software" advance here to report.
...they manufactured the TRS-80. The Model I, Model III and model IV were damn good computers. So was the Color Computer series. All very advanced for their time. Of course, RS used to be known for selling discrete components, radio equipment, test gear, and electronics kits for kids. Now they sell crappy TVs, cheap Sharper Image junk, and cellular telephone contracts. Clearly, it's time for Radio Shack to die. --M
There is also the little fact that the current leader of North Korea is INSANE.
This is a guy who has special bread flow in each day for him to eat.
This is a guy who, when presented with the question, feed my people or build a nuke decides to build the nuke.
He is totally off his fscking rocker.
He's, exactly right! He deserves to be modded up!
'God's machine' could mean it's too sacred for us mere mortals to possess.
Someone needs to figure out the format for the magic Guide+ signal (it's transmitted over normal cable tv signals somewhere) and use that - it can't be changed without breaking anything that uses it.
The ATI TV cards use it, so it's possible to get it from a PC somehow.
He's wrong. The Gemstar employee himself said it was free. You can even get your own free guide online, which is powered by Gemstar.
Free TV guides just don't excite me somehow. Really free broadcasting, where anyone could put up their content and the user could chose anything anytime, that would be nice. That's what the internet was supposed to be.
OK, I'm having a bad year.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Oh, and how is the service in thunderstorms or other rainy conditions?
Better than our local cable company was during calm sunny days.
My wife works from home and ends up watching a lot of TV. First year we lived here, cable was *constantly* going out - often for minutes or hours at a stretch, with no adverse weather in sight. In a one month period we had about 20 hours of down time *that we knew about* (might have been off at 3am - who knows?). On average, we had about 2-3 hours of noticeable downtime per month with cable. I think we've had about 5 hours total in the past 3 years of DirecTV. Oh, and the cable company 'upgraded' since then and telemarkets us to come back, even though they still apparently don't have some basic channels we really want.
So, no, directv isn't perfect in bad weather, but it's still miles better than our cable ever was.
creation science book
Tivo doesn't make their pvr. They designed it, but actually subsidize other mfr's to make them for sale.
I don't know about anyone else, but I sure didn't read that as manufacturers the first time...
I don't want to pay ten bucks a month for the TV listings. That's not whining. It's me wanting to save ten bucks a month.
Notice to TiVo fanatics: Comparing prices between competing models isn't "whining". It's "capitalism".
I want to find something that offers the features of a TiVo, but I don't have to pay for every month. That doesn't make me "cheap", it just makes me a smart consumer.
This is a guy who, when presented with the question, feed my people or build a nuke decides to build the nuke.
How many homeless people in the USA? And what's the current defense budget? People in glass houses, etc...
With the new RCA Alert Guard models, television viewers are assured of receiving the latest information on natural disasters threatening their area - such as hurricanes, tornados or floods - as well as nuclear power plant alerts, chemical spills and even threats to the national welfare in the form of terrorist attacks. Even while the consumer is sleeping (and electricity is available), the RCA Alert Guard TV can be set to sound a built-in chime or alarm when danger is imminent.
Kind of reminds me of this news item.
BTW, does anyone read posts by people who just don't like registration?
Not one RCA product is any good. They make cheap junky stuff. They are the GM of consumer electronics. Give me a Sony anyday. Too bad I guess.
Mouser Electronics. --M
No way you are getting 500+ channels + HBO for $60 a month. What plan are you on? The hacked 'HU' plan?
m pa rison.jsp
#1 DirecTV doesnt even offer 500+ channels, maybe your channel #'s go into the 500's, doesn't mean you have 500+ channels.
$39(130 Channels + Locals) + $12(7 HBO's) = $51 (137 Channels)
How do you think you are getting 500+ channels for only $9 more?
http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/learn/Packages_Co
The discussion on this thread seems to have already nailed what's going on - RCA has cut a deal with Gemstar for data access equivalent to the Tivo or Replay "lifetime" subscriptions.
:-) It also does some interesting non-GuidePlus+ like capturing the close caption info into a window or file on the fly, etc. Geek stuff, you know.
I have a couple of ATI All-In-Wonder cards of various vintage and they've always included a PC-client version of Guide Plus with no monthly fee as well. Works very nicely - you do a once-a-week download of program info, tailored to your local service. There's an app that lets you scroll through this info, similar to what you see at tvguide.com, but better actually since it's local data - you can very quickly scroll through times and days in the 1 week range.
The All-In-Wonder includes PVR functionality, although I must admit that even with generic installation, it seems to work quite poorly for me. The GuidePlus+ app works very nicely - if you want to tell the PVR to record something, you just select it in the TV grid and you're happening.
There are also include a number of other interesting functions that fall out of doing this on a computer. The TV view overlays the program title as you scroll through the channels - nice to be able to tell which Tremors movie you're seeing when you flip to the Tremors Channel - oops, Sci-Fi Channel.
ATI even includes this free GuidePlus+ functionality in their standalone TV Wonder tuner cards. These cards only run $50, so it's clearly a steal.
I do a lot of videotaping and have a couple of Sony VCRs that include GuidePlus+ and it's a really good thing - a huge leap in friendliness over VCRPlus+. Had I realized that this feature would disappear from all VCRs (along with all quality VCRs going away!), I would have bought more of them. On these VCRs (Sony SLV-M20HF), the GuidePlus info is also provided for free and is delivered to the VCR when it's turned off in the blanking interval of some channel.
those shows that only take up space on the root disk where it doesnt use a single bit from the volume the video is recorded to
I have a refrigerator I'd like to sell you. It has a vertical divider in it, the left half is for your food and the right half is for my food.
It's ok though. My food doesn't take up any of the space for your food so you you aren't losing anything.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The important difference is that your Tivo stops working when Tivo, Inc. goes out of business. The RCA PVR is yours forever.
ATI All In Wonder cards have come with Guide+ support for free. You set-up recording times and view the tv schedule using a software program that also shows ads on the time. There is no cost for that, and it has been that way for many years. All you do is buy the All In Wonder card.
Of course, I never owned one, but I'm sure that's the case.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
How many homeless people in the USA? And what's the current defense budget? People in glass houses, etc...
How many homeless in the US? The most reliable numbers I've seen range from about half a million to one million homeless at any given time. This is based on extrapolations from HUD reports, shelter populations, and studies from the Urban Intsitute. We're talking about one third of one percent of the US population.
What's the current defense budget? The estimate I'm looking at (from FY 2001) gives a figure of about $300 billion dollars. Given recent events I'd call this a bit on the low side. However, you can compare this figure to spending on Social Security ($443 Billion), Medicare and Medicaid ($362 Billion), or Means Tested Entitlements ($119 Billion). Gee, it looks like we're spending more to take care of the poor and elderly than we are on defense.
You could literally enlist one million homeless people, pay them $50K a year, and still have the defense budget come out cheaper than Medicare+Medicaid. You could even do that for only half of the means tested entitlements budget. Lets phrase it a different way:
The US spends enough on programs for the poor that you could give every homeless person a six figure salary. What was this about glass houses?
The new DishPVR also supports slow motion and instant replay, by using the pause button and the arrows on your remote. There are a bunch of bugfixes and generally faster guide parsing/display as well. Your receiver should download it tonight if it is powered off and set to automatically install new software.
My source: Usenet
-Pat
I think subscription-based PVR models are really a bit expensive for the consumer in the long run. Tivo may be selling their hardware under cost, but enough to justify the subscription cost? I personally don't believe so.
Another concern about TiVo is that they get detailed information about my viewing habits and can correlate that with my credit card (whether they do it or not is another matter).
I want to reduce the number of companies that have their fingers in my finances.
Guide+ started life as "VideoGuide", an interesting little piece of geekiness that was a small box with an antenna that picked up the guide data (as well as news and sports scores) from the pager network. It had a very simple remote - a little 4-way joystick and one button. It hooked up inline with your cable/antenna input.
It worked OK, albeit slowly, but was ahead of its time.
Then Gemstar bought the company. They already had a competing product, called Starsight. Starsight happened to come built-in to various TVs and VCRs (as well as a standalone unit), and picked up their data from the local PBS VBI feeds, but the "presentation" was poorer. Since VideoGuide was only a standalone unit, they chose to kill that, but they at least offered 100% refunds on the hardware.
I had VideoGuide, and still have Starsight (but not for much longer as I wait for my DirecTV install).
Then Gemstar had the original VideoGuide company rework the product to be integrated into TVs and VCRs, and called it "Guide+", then "TV Guide+" (they had bought TV Guide then), and back to Guide+. Several vendors were on board, but RCA/Proscan was the only vendor I ever saw to actually bring it to market.
Incidentally, there hasn't been a new Starsight product on the market in years. I'm actually surprised I still get service.
rm
Sci-Fi Storm
Offtopic, I know, but that is one really funny typo! A special bread flow! They pipe it directly from the bakery into his veins... and on fridays they pipe him chocolate cake...
Why are you paying them for a "service" - they ought to be paying you.... It would be sad enough if you were volunteering for free to be a data point for them - a "Neilson" but in fact you are paying them for that privilage. I'd rather some corporation (or government entity of course) wasn't noting all the shows I watched, rewound, etc.
I really don't understand why it's so difficult to get program guide data reliably and for free. It would seem to be in the station's interest to give this data to people as I assume they want people to watch their programs.
Does anyone know how the various commercial program guides get this data? Is there some standard format that stations use for this?
If enough people use XMLTV, maybe stations could be convinced to make their program schedules available in XMLTV format...
That analogy only works if I agreed to buy a frig that I only get to use the left half of. In that case, yes it is like Tivo. If I agreed to the whole frig then your analogy is wrong. When I bought the DirecTivo, I bought a device that would hold 30 hours of programming. I still have that 30 hours, even with their star ads, since the ads don't take up any of the space I use to record my shows. If I had bought a device with a 30gig HD and they took 2gigs from me THEN we might have a problem, but I still have everything that was advertised for the unit.
I'm all for the star ads, if I don't want to watch them I just DON'T SELECT THEM. And with the revenue from the ads, Tivo gets to stay in business longer. Win-win.
This is the future: Branded PVRs and "must pay for" schedule service are both out of bussiness, they just don't know it yet. Cable companies and satellite companies will supply the PVR in their own box. Case in point. My Huges 508 unit just installed by Dish Network, has no guide fee. The same guide that you use to choose channels sets the PVR timer up to 7 days ahead, a one button operation. The minimum programing package was 21.95 for 50 channels for one year, like a cell phone contract. The whole shebang was 200.00 installed including the satellite on the roof. I can dub the digital recordings to the VCR before I erase them, and there is a jog button to jump the commercials. I never had to leave the house to buy any thing. Why would any one pay for a service that is free? Napster changed the way people think I guess. -Strat
If you look at the service on TVs in any retail store, you'll see that there's huge ads all over it (not in the demo mode mind you, but the actual running functional mode). So, companies that want GuidePlus pay a fee to be able to use it, then the customer gets innundated with ads. Sounds like GuidePlus gets paid twice if you ask me.
There have been nice PVR's in Japan for a while now (at least a year) that also interface with your computer via USB1.1/2.0 (I'm sure there's a firewire version too and maybe a networked one) so you can copy and backup recorded shows as well as program it from your computer (not just on the TV). You can "explore" the contents of the PVR as you would your hard drive and copy, cut, paste, delete, rename at pretty much, will.
Maybe it's 'cuz of the DMCA, which doesn't exist elsewhere. (And they wonder why OUR economy is in the sh!ts)
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"You can't get blood from a turnip" - My dad back when I was a kid asking him for money.
DirecTV lowered my monthly bill TWICE in 2002. What more can I ask for?
tv that stays on when it rains?
seriously - i had directv for two years, the dish was mounted on a 6x6 pine post sunk 4ft onto concrete (barn beam), with all the mounting bolts tightened till the metal was distorted, and the reciever would still lose the satellite lock if the winds were gusting more than 30kts. i live on the ocean, so that's a bigger problem than it sounds. dense cloud cover, that made for some interesting jaggies...and fugeddaboutit in the rain. this with a signal booster on ~75ft of cable no less! i'm happy with digital cable - i get almost as many channels as dTV, really everything except the sports package, the same image and sound quality, and my tv stays on 24x7! even in the rain!
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
So, let me get this straight. There's a space on the TiVO they sell ads for, but they are watched only voluntarily? Seems like some genius must've come up with that idea.
What, do you suppose, is the value of an ad that no one watches? Zero. Eventually, their advertisers will figure out that those star ads work as well as banners, and TiVO's revenue will take another nose dive.
Then it's win-lose. Or an interface change which forces you to watch them to get at your desired recorded programming.
My cable company dropped Guide+ recently probably for this very reason or some other crappy reason. This won't work.
That analogy only works if I agreed to buy a frig that I only get to use the left half of.
That's exactly what I said I wanted to sell.
the ads don't take up any of the space I use to record my shows.
LOL. And the half refrigerator doesn't take up any of the space you use to store food. The only reason you don't use that space is because they are taking it for themselves.
The point is that it is still using up recording space on the machine, space that COULD and SHOULD be used to record our shows. Putting up an artificial divider in the middle of the drive doesn't change the fact that the ENTIRE drive is YOURS or MINE. Products are supposed to be designed/function for the customer's benefit.
The test for whether a "feature" should be included is pretty simple - given two identical machines, one with the "feature" and one without, which would they buy? This is expecially true in software. Once I buy the machine I can install any software I want.
It's my machine, I want it to use all available space for my benefit. I would either look for a competing product that does what *I* want it to do, or I'd look into obtaining software that does what I want it to do, or I'd look into helping to create software that does what I want it to do.
I'm not saying they CAN'T sell machines with anti-owner "features", but that they shouldn't. It's a bad idea. It can only work untill a competitor comes out with a pro-consumer design, and owners have to put in work to make it function right. It's just stupid to sell something and expect it to work against its owner's interests.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The homeless are by and large the people that these programs pass by.
If you were to divert the other programs to paying 6-figure salaries to the homeless, you have many millions more homeless instead.
If you have any interest in making a valid point, why not tally up the gap between income and budget for all those other people served by domestic aid programs, divide by the number of beneficiaries, and then see what a handsome salary it works out to.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
No, it means you are an arrogant ignoramous, who thinks there is some difference between paying $650 up front, rather than paying $400 for the box and $250 for the lifetime service for that box. In other words, you really do believe that there is a real, significant difference between "six" and "half a dozen". In other words, you are an idiot.
Also, those fees are not just for the guide data. They are for intelligent software that can use the guide data in an intelligent way, and for software updates for this, plus updates for new features. Your bottom feeder, fly by night, "no monthly fees" PVRs don't act like a TiVo, can't do what a TiVo can do, because they have put no time, money, and effort into improving the service. They are strictly aimed at fooling tightwads like you into thinking they are getting a "deal".
Well: newsflash. You get what you pay for.
Want the very best PVR that blows the competition out of the water with intelligent software that makes sure only watch what you want, when you want? Than get a TiVo.
Want to fool yourself that you are getting "money for value"? Then get one of the no-name PVRs with their "free", so-called "service". And keep telling yourself you "aren't paying monthly fees", even as you get your crappy service, the same crappy service that you paid for up front, in the form of a more expensive box.
Yes, you are a fool.
> > those shows that only take up space on the root
:P
> > disk where it doesnt use a single bit from the
> > volume the video is recorded to
> I have a refrigerator I'd like to sell you. It
> has a vertical divider in it, the left half is
> for your food and the right half is for my food.
> It's ok though. My food doesn't take up any of
> the space for your food so you you aren't losing
> anything.
Sounds like a similar deal my roommate wanted to make, except he wasnt going to charge me to use it at all.
Works out great.
You dont live there so im not interested in buying yours... good luck on selling it!
(Isn't self choice yummy)
(As is tivo)
However, they learned that model didn't work very well, so they've now converted to the TiVo pricing model of selling a loss-leader unit and making back the money on service. So what exactly makes you think that they are not also earning a sweet profit on the unit itself?
Sounds like a similar deal my roommate wanted to make
Isn't self choice yummy
Exactly, he chose to share. Does Tivo give you the choice option to turn this off and use the space for what you want to record? It is YOUR machine and YOUR harddrive space. Share it if you like, but it should by YOUR CHOICE what it is used for.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
So, let me get this straight. There's a space on the TiVO they sell ads for, but they are watched only voluntarily? Seems like some genius must've come up with that idea.
What, do you suppose, is the value of an ad that no one watches? Zero. Eventually, their advertisers will figure out that those star ads work as well as banners, and TiVO's revenue will take another nose dive.
Actually, they work a hell of a lot better than banner ads.
You see, people actually click on them. Especially the Two Towers trailers which came out early, and the BMW Films shorts.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
One question though - the $250 'lifetime service fee' - is that TIVO's lifetime, or yours? If TIVO has control of how long that lifetime is, then it may not really be worth as much to me as the ability to record shows on a digital device without having to pay for the priviledge (like we do today with VCR's).
Go with Dish Network. They have a PVR that uses their program guide, and they don't charge any monthly fees to use it.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Uh, it's also my low-end PPC-based linux system. But, you see, I bought my TiVo to be nothing more than a wonderful PVR.
I didn't give a single care as to whether or not every last bit that was on the hard drive was available to record what I wanted; hell, now that I've upgraded the hard drive (sone thing which the "anti-consumer" TiVo seems to willingly condone) I've got more space for recording programs than I know what to do with.
The fact of the matter is a TiVo isn't a computer, it's an appliance. You're not buying 40 GB of storage for TV programming, you're buying the ability to record a given number of hours of programming.
Please, get a life. The benefits of TiVo far outweigh the things you (and others in this thread) are bitching about.
Only on slashdot can a posting be rated "Score -1, Insightful".
The fact of the matter is a TiVo isn't a computer, it's an appliance.
Is there even a difference anymore? And even if there is a difference, so what? I expect my appliances to work 100% for me as well. I don't want 10% of my toaster reserved for toasting General Electric's bread.
sone thing which the "anti-consumer" TiVo seems to willingly condone
The company TiVo has been pretty good with being pro-consumer, but as this feature shows it's not 100%. I'm not compaining about it because I hate TiVo, I like TiVo and may get one. I want TiVo get it right. Call it constructive critisism.
Please, get a life. The benefits of TiVo far outweigh the things you (and others in this thread) are bitching about.
I never said otherwise. I said this "feature" was bad. TiVo without this feature would be better than TiVo with the feature. I said that they can only push this feature into the product so long as there isn't an equivalent device without the feature because I would buy from the competitor and get to USE that extra space myself. I said that I would try to find a patch to fix this "feature", and that if I couldn't find one I might help make one (I'm a programmer).
My point is that it is stupid to put "features" into a product that are against the intrests of the owner of that product. For example making TiVo's networkable is good - it benefits the owner. Encrypting that link does NOT benefit the owner and should not be done.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
True, in some cases. Not, however, in my case. I would LOVE to buy a Tivo. I'd do it today. Tivo won't sell to me because I live in Canada. However, I do have an RCA TV, with Guide+ (which is great!). So this RCA PVR with Guide+ would be just the ticket for me. Sure, it doesn't have the Tivo suggestions, which I think would be cool, but its better than having nothing.
The $250 option is for the lifetime of the TiVo unit. It is linked to the unit's serial number, and so it follows the unit if, for example, you sell it on EBay.
Well: newsflash. You get what you pay for.
Right. And I'm not interested in paying for a "guide" service, and I don't really want such a service.
Rabid TiVo fanboys like yourself go on and on about how their TiVo will automatically record every Rock Hudson flick without them having to do anything. Hey, whatever floats your boat. I wouldn't use such a feature, and therefore I don't want to pay $10 a month for it. Nor do I want to pay a one-time fee of $250.
I'd pay maybe $300 for a TiVo that didn't require any subscription at all. I'm perfectly happy just telling the thing to record on Tuesday at 9:00 pm.
As for the "software updates for new features", that sounds like a great way to wake up one day with Digital Rights Management you can't get rid of. Any PVR that refuses to function without being plugged into a phone jack is not for me.
Bottom line: I don't want to buy a "service", crappy or not. I just want to buy an appliance.
I have a refrigerator I'd like to sell you. It has a vertical divider in it, the left half is for your food and the right half is for my food.
It's ok though. My food doesn't take up any of the space for your food so you you aren't losing anything.
Data space is not physical space. If you sell me a fridge that wastes ten cubic feet of my living space, that is real loss. If TiVo sells you a device with "80 hours" of space on it, not telling you about the extra hour squeezed in behind the scenes, you have lost nothing material. In fact, that small bit of space subsidizes a portion of the unit cost. In fact, you've GAINED SOMETHING.
Why aren't you going apeshit because Intel sold you a processor artifically limited to a percentage of its true capability? What about the speed governor that's part of the automobile you drive? You know, my CRT monitor looks like there's some wasted space between the tube itself and the case. Sony's going to get a piece of my mind, LET ME TELL YOU!
If you buy a TiVo, you're getting what they're selling you. Remember that. They sold you an 80-hour PVR that just HAPPENS to use a hard drive that can hold slightly more. Stop thinking of it as an affront to your righs as a consumer. Almost everything you have is artifically limited in some way or another, whether it's in the name of efficiency, safety, reliability, or (God forbid!) helping the company provide a product to you at a lower price.
± 29 dB
The PVR manufacturer has to compete WRT the quaility of hardware and software. Tivo is a great box, and the software is nicely integrated. RCA may realease a great box w/ good software as well - I don't know. Whichever you buy, the utility is going to depend a great deal on the quality of the metadata, i.e. whether you find what you want & the information is accurate & updated.
In my 3 years at a search engine, I've learned that, almost universally, metadata from the content provider sucks. Ultimately it may improve as people discover that it improves your share (more eyeballs) to have good metadata as well as hot babes and exploding cars. But for now, it's up to third party providers to do the curation, cleaning up the mess (and it is truly a mess) by writing very sophisticated software (screen scaping is just the beginning) or having teams of humans continuously fixing it up.
So it has utility, there will be a market, and some of us will pay for higher quality stuff. The pay stuff will be better. Remember, it's not an open source software product it's a service. If I have a dozen people on staff I can do a lot better job. Someone has to make sure the screen scapers haven't broken on a new HTML format, or that somebody mispelled vampire or tell the bayesian page parsers that the token "ORC" increases the likelihood that the page describes action/fantasy.
Full disclosure: I love my TiVo, and I work for Thomson (which owns RCA).