TiVo Home Media Rollout

ncstockguy writes "TiVo rolls out its new Home Media option next week. Subscribers with a Series2 DVR box can get some impressive new functions to their TiVos. They'll be able to screen digital photos on their TVs, listen to music stored on their computer hard drives on their home entertainment units, schedule to tape a show "remotely" through the Internet, and watch a recorded show in different rooms on different TVs. Some of the functions will require two or more computers connected either by WiFi or ethernet."

Comments

DIRECTV users left out in cold

[tbdean]

If you are a DIRECTivo user - a DIRECTV user with a TiVo2 box you do not get these features. TiVo has offered them to DIRECTV, but DIRECTV doesn't seem to want them. I'll keep my TiVo1 series box until DTV gets on the ball. When I can get these new features I'll buy two TiVo2 boxes!

Re:DIRECTV users left out in cold

[anthonyclark]

Complain!

Corporate types wait for a certain number of complaints before doing anything. If enough people complain (and promise to buy the Home Media Option if DirecTV make it available) then DirecTV will do something about it

Go here and tell them how disappointed you are and how you you want to buy this. Mention that you'll complain to J D Power Consumer Satisfaction Survey which should make them take notice; DirecTV really values their high customer satisfaction rating and use it as a selling point.

Re:DIRECTV users left out in cold

[neonzebra]

Yeah this really pissed me off. I bought a DirecTiVo Series 2 box in anticipation of the new HMO features. Now my roommate is going to have a better TiVo than me! (Damn him!)

I can't really blame TiVo, though, it was DirecTV's decision not to offer the feature. TiVo gave complete control of the DirecTiVo featureset to DirecTV some time back.

If you're in the same boat as me, there's an online petition here. From the tone of the DirecTV VP that made the announcement, it looks like if there's enough demand, they might change thier minds and release it anyway. So please do us all a favor and slashdot the petition!

Re:DIRECTV users left out in cold

[ncc74656]

I'll keep my TiVo1 series box until DTV gets on the ball. When I can get these new features I'll buy two TiVo2 boxes!

Even then, I'm not so sure that HMO makes the upgrade to Series 2 worthwhile. I have a standalone Series 1 TiVo, and I don't plan on upgrading. My TiVo is connected to my network, and I've been ripping/archiving shows from it for nearly two years now. The software to enable this keeps getting better all the time...TyStudio is especially slick. Once it's set up, a few clicks are all it takes to extract an MPEG stream that you can burn directly to DVD or transcode to a lower bitrate for SVCD. (Info on transcoding/editing TiVo video is available here, but it's not yet been updated for TyStudio.) Remote scheduling is handled through TivoWeb, so that's covered...that's really the only HMO feature I'd find useful, as I have only one TiVo (making "multi-room viewing," as they've defined it, useless) and my DVD player plays MP3 CDs.

Maybe HMO is a bit easier to set up for the drooling masses, but you can still do more with a Series 1 TiVo...and it doesn't cost you anything (other than the cost of a NIC for your TiVo, and even that is cheaper than HMO).

Re:DIRECTV users left out in cold

[Caduceus1]

Just to inform people.

The home Media Option is only available to owners of the TiVo Series 2 DVR. There is no such thing as a "Series 2" DirecTiVo. There is the Hughes HDVR2 (and some other brands soon), which is call the "DirecTV DVR powered by TiVo", and is based on the same platform as the Series 2 (faster processor, graphics, etc.), but it has never officially been dubbed a Series 2.

That said, the HDVR2 and others of its ilk could support it (it has the power), but DirecTV is now responsible for the support, not TiVo, and has too look at all software and hardware updates closely. Also, all fees for the service are paid directly to DirecTV, so somehow DirecTV would have to pay TiVo for the added service.

If you want them to support HMO, tell DirecTV. They are the ones who decided, and they do so based on customer demand. Complaining to Customer Satisfaction surveys about not supporting features that have never been announced won't be as productive.

Re:DIRECTV users left out in cold

[karmawarrior]

One of the major problems with most large organizations - be they telecommunication/entertainment powerhouses like DirecTV or consumable food & recreational drug giants like Altria (formerly Philip Morris) - is that there's a natural disconnect between them and the customers they serve. As layers of management increase, giant corporations find it more difficult to sense the needs and wishes of their customers. Usually this ends up being solved through countless customer surveys and marketing, but such research rarely has much affect in at least one major way - it doesn't tell corporations what questions are being asked, what is being expected of them: this type of research merely tells a company whether it is successful at what it believes itself to be successful at.

Getting feedback to companies like DirecTV is a tricky situation as it's rarely easy to determine who the information should go to. As if this isn't enough, for the most part any large company has little chance of telling apart sincere customer requests from background noise. If many customers suddenly demand a product be released, or another dropped, what's to say that this isn't because of a mention on talk radio, or because of the behaviour of a competitor?

This quagmire of companies being unable to ask all the questions they need, and of customers being unable to provide the kind of feedback giant corporations need to continue to provide quality goods and services at affordable prices will not disappear by itself. Unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.

You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them that choice, quality services, and economical pricing is important to you, and that you worry that many businesses are crippled by being unable to understand what it is that their customers want. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done to promote loops of feedback, through clearly marked feedback email addresses and constant customer surveys but that if corporations continue to be unable to supply you with what you want and need because of a lack of awareness, you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how poor communications, bad feedback loops, and talk radio harms all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on their ability to make giant, unaccountable, corporations provide the goods and services that make this country great.

You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.

Is it just me...

[Jonboy X]

...or is anyone else creeped out by that TiVo icon?

Computers

[MCMLXXVI]

"Some of the functions will require two or more computers connected either by WiFi or ethernet"
What self respecting Tivo owner has less than two computers?
I am willing to bet some /.ers have more computers than dates in the past 6 months.

Re:Computers

[Carbonite]

What self respecting Tivo owner has less than two computers?

I'm on welfare, you insensitive clod!

Re:Computers

[DonkeyJimmy]

I am willing to bet some /.ers have more computers than dates in the past 6 months.

so, one computer then.

Life before the PVR

[dtolton]

It's a little suprising how much your view of Television in general changes when you get a PVR. When I originally bought mine I thought it would be a nifty little gadget, now it's painful to go to someone's home that doesn't have one. I'd forgotten how obnoxious commercial's can be.

I hope they have some solid security built in with the Web Server, I would be devastated if someone hacked my Tivo and deleted all my scheduled recordings.

What do you mean Dragon Ball Z didn't record?!?!

Re:Life before the PVR

[fudgefactor7]

Could be worse...they could hack your Tivo and recored nothing but Dr. Phil episodes of Oprah...

Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been beta testing the service for a while now...

The Apple Music and photo sharing is awesome, total use of Rendesvous and your iBook, Powermac, etc. shows up immediately in your TiVo categorized down to a "T"

Another feature that a lot of people probably wouldn't expect is to try this: Make a playlist with some internet radio stations and share it out to your TiVo. Access the playlist on your TiVo and you can listen to Internet radio stations on your TV! It's very, very cool and works great!

Not such a great deal.

[brocktune]

It costs $99 just to unlock the software. You still have to buy a USB ethernet adaptor. And for the old-timers like me, you have to get a series 2 TiVo. (And pay for a new lifetime subscription)

All I wanted was to dump the crappy built-in modem that has died twice in 3 years and use my internet link to get the guide information.

Stuff like this makes me want a roll-your-own PVR. (Gratuitous MythTV link)

Re:Not such a great deal.

[uberdood]

All I wanted was to dump the crappy built-in modem that has died twice in 3 years and use my internet link to get the guide information.

You mean this, this or even this? Ethernet-based guide data has been available for the Series 1 TiVo for well over a year now (probably more like two years by now). Sure, these options cost you $70, but they do give you that functionality you crave so strongly.

Now if you're strapped for cash, there's a free way to get guide data without buying an ethernet card (you still must have a subscription of course). It's called ppp over serial - all Series 1 have a serial port and came with a serial port adapter (9pin to your PC). The procedure is well documented here.

Unforutunately....

[hawkstone]

1. Viewing files from your home computer (photos, music) requires Windows or a Mac. Their "TiVo Desktop" software is not (yet) available for linux as far as I can tell.

2. The ability to share your recorded shows requires you to buy another Series 2 TiVo and buy (yes, it costs money) the Home Media upgrade for it as well. You cannot "share" the file with anyone else's Series 2 either, only ones registered under the same household account at TiVo HQ. You can't "share" with your computer either, BTW, only another TiVo.

Maybe some of these will be improved over time, either by TiVo or someone else.

recording remotely from internet

[sixdotoh]

so does this mean hackers will be able to fill your TiVo with hours of Telletubbies?

Not ready for prime time

[MediaBoy77]

I was a beta tester for 'HMO', as it's known at TiVo. I've been living with it for the last month--and I'm not going to shell out the $99 to purchase it. Why?

1. Lack of format support. TiVo plays MP3s. That's it. No OGG, no WMA. My collection is mostly in WMA. If I were to start again, it would be into OGG, not MP3.

2. No playlist control. You can create M3U playlists on your computer and play those, but if you don't create playlists ahead of time, you're stuck playing individual songs or folders (which in my case are sorted by artist). You can't switch songs without stopping the current song from playing. That makes it pretty much useless for parties where you'd like live control over what will play next.

3. No photos simultaneously with music. The feature is named "Music & Photos". But it's actually "Music OR Photos". So if you want to play music during your party, your guests get to see a box with song info onscreen, and that's it. If you want to put a slide show up on your TV, your music has to come from somewhere else. Similarly, there are no other visualization toys to play with.

As for the other features, I "only" have one TiVo, so multi-room viewing isn't useful to me.

And in the month I've been using it so far, I've never had the need to schedule programs for my TiVo remotely.

Even if I had, the conflict-resolution options are minimal: record this program if nothing conflicts, or or record it regardless. You don't get to see what may be conflicting, because TiVo connects to the mother ship every 15 minutes or so to check for new orders.

In short, it's a 1.0 feature set, competing against computers in a 3.0 world. If I want music & photos on my TV, I'll just plug my laptop into my AV system and be happy. So sad.

Let me get this straight...

[b.foster]

At the bottom of this page:

You can turn Multi-Room Viewing off on any DVR. You decide which DVRs can share programming. Television programming is not under TiVo's control. Programming providers may restrict or limit the transfer of particular programs. TiVo does not guarantee access to or transfer of any particular program.

They're asking us to pay $100 per unit to let the content providers decide what shows we can transfer? I like how they blame "programming providers" for crippling their software.

My TiVo is a great toy, but it's looking like it's time for this company to die. First they fire RB, and now they snuggle up to the content industry? Screw them, it's time to cancel my subscription and start hacking my box. They had a chance to earn their subscription fee from me, but they blew it when they decided that they were going to give Hollywood control over my own equipment.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[NerdSlayer]

My TiVo is a great toy, but it's looking like it's time for this company to die. First they fire RB, and now they snuggle up to the content industry?

Yes, lord knows that telling content providers to fuck off and die worked well for Napster. I'm sure it will work just as well for Tivo.

Beware the Google monopoly, too

[anonymous loser]

Why don't you stop using Google, too? They have a "monopoly" in the search engine market. I don't know anyone who uses another search engine anymore, except as a last resort.

The reason Tivo and Google have a "monopoly" as you put it is because they sell a good product, and others have yet to introduce another product that can compete with it effectively.

Nobody is locked out of the PVR market at this point in time, especially since this is a brand new market, and anything can happen. Several big players (e.g. Microsoft, with UltimateTV) have already gone up against Tivo, and failed. It could be in near the future that the perfect PVR will appear that completely destroys Tivo's current dominance, but telling people not to use a product because there are no decent competitors is just wrong. It's still a free market, not a monopoly.

Develop Your Own TiVoServer

[CraigEagle]

Tivo has released Developer Resources including an API for creating your own TiVoServer as well as an Apache module to get you started. For a company that is frequently trashed in this forum, they seem to be throwing the /. crowd a rather large peace pipe. - Craig

Re:Dear TiVo.. (Vorbis)

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Dear TiVo-

I would gladly buy your service if you included Ogg Vorbis [vorbis.com] support. Any hardware that is capable of decoding video can easily decode Vorbis as well. I am not about to re-encode my CD collection to an inferior proprietary format for this feature."

Dear TiVo,

I'll buy your product if you support Ogg Vorbis. I know you won't meet this demand because a.) it's frivolous and b.) because not enough people are using it, but I intend to rack up a good deal of karma whether you support it or not.

chilling

[pz]

As anyone who is familiar with the MythTV project will attest, the feature list trumpeted by TiVo is precisely what is available for MythTV, an open source, volunteer effort (although MythTV supports more, and more diverse features). Isn't competition grand!

Oh great, just great....

[DjMd]

So this option lets you listen to MP3s? Not that bad, but unless you do creative wiring I imagine that means that your TV has to be on. And there are other ways of doing that.

You can share between two TiVo Series2 DVRs? Well that would be nice, except...

Multi-Room Viewing is available exclusively on TiVo Series2 DVRs. To transfer recordings between two DVRs, each must have active TiVo service under the same account name, and must be on the same home network. Home Media Option must be purchased seperately for each DVR.

So to do this you need:

-2 Series2 TiVos

-2 active accounts (for 2 that 25/month or 598 lifetime)

-and 2 Home media options (99 each!)

I can't believe that they require both Tivos to have both the active accounts and the media options. Does SonicBlue's ReplayTV require that double charging??

Re:Dear TiVo.. (Vorbis)

[schnell]

No offense intended to anyone ... I just see these Ogg letters all the time and I think they're hilarious. ;-)

Dear TiVo -

I would gladly offer to buy your service if you included Ogg Vorbis support. (As you know, Ogg Vorbis is currently used by upwards of several people, many of whom are doing so on an operating system you don't support with your software right now. So I think you can see your economic imperative here.)

Notice that I did not say that I would actually buy your service if you spent the time to include Ogg Vorbis support. Much like the letters I keep sending to Apple about the iPod, if you did support Ogg then send you a letter saying I would gladly buy your service if you made your software open-source. Assuming you somehow did that, my next letter would assure you that I would buy it if it used open hardware. This series of letters would continue until finally I offered to gladly buy your service if you gave it to me for free and sent a supermodel to my house to deliver it.

My fellow technologists who don't like to pay for anything are eagerly awaiting your efforts to satisfy our statistically insignificant needs. So please don't ignore this potentially incredibly unlucrative market and give us Ogg support today!

Re:[Q] When Will TiVo Be Hi-Res?

[testify]

The long-awaited TiVo HDTV is on it's way.

You can view the press release here:
TiVo HDTV DVR press release

I'd also recommend checking out the various forums at the TiVo Community Forums, where discussion about the HDTV models has been underway. There are some very knowledgeable folks there.

I've had SOME of this already... and more!

[RevRagnarok]

I got an ethernet card from 9thtee a while back, it is great! I then got a program called "tivoweb" which lets me remotely record, and even search future listings with a REAL keyboard (I like to compare it to my NetFlix list every now and then and queue up movies on the TiVo that I don't care about all those DVD goodies).

Then there is my e-mail on my TiVo with the shameless plug of tivo_mail that I found a while back and people seem to like it. ;)

- RR