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TiVo Basic
Keith Russell writes "TiVo has announced a new TiVo Basic service. ( Press release here, CNet story here) The Basic service only offers a 3-day program grid, and doesn't include title searches, season passes, or wish lists. There's no subscription fees for Basic, however, and it can be upgraded to a full-on Series 2 unit by the usual payment options ($12.95/mo. or $299 lifetime). The first product to include it is a Toshiba DVD player with an 80 GB hard drive and progressive-scan output of both DVD and Tivo content."
http://www.toshiba.com/tacp/dvd/current/RDX2.htm l
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Basically, the TiVo service comes in two forms:
1) Monthly payment of $12.95, or
2) Lifetime fee of $249.00.
Note: the lifetime fee applies to the unit, not the owner.
Subscribing to TiVo service lets you get the guide data, which is programming info up to two weeks out. This is what lets you do wishlists, season passes, etc.
New with series 2 is the "home media option", which is a upgrade available for $99.00
I recently switched to Dish Network from digital cable. Aside from the much better picture quality and customer service, one big advantage is that there's a PVR built into some of the boxes. Previously, I had a Tivo with a lifetime subscription. That's now on the second TV with the first one having the built-in one. I could easily see this becoming standard in both cable and satellite boxes. If the cable companies and satellite companies are supporting it, I don't see it being made illegal any time soon. However, I do foresee the end for Tivo, with PVR functionality becoming standard in set-top boxes.
Someone really needs to start building Mini-ITX machines with Debian and MythTV preloaded en masse. I've been using my desktop as a MythTV machine since the early days, and it's just about surpassed Tivo anyway. Not to mention, no subscription fee.
A stripped down Tivo without season passes removes almost all of the usefulness of the device. MythTV has the same functionality, but it doesn't cost you anything but the hardware. I can't speak for the quality of the software versus Tivo, as I've never used a tivo, but I do find myself spouting the same "Changed the way I think about TV" rhetoric as every tivo user.
Either way, one thing I know MythTV has which Tivo does not have is automatic commercial detection. That's right. Download 0.8, play with it.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
This isn't a "TiVo box" as we usually know it, without all the subscription features. What it is, is a DVD-VCR. Without any subscription fees (a cause for hesitation among average consumers), it allows you to record shows and movies to the hard disk, then burn them at your leisure to a recordable DVD. Voila, all the functionality of a VCR with the advantages of digital media and commercial-free archiving.
It seems to me that TiVo's strategy is to make this a must-have device for those features alone -- which are all Toshiba's hard work, not theirs -- while including the TiVo subscription features as a kind of upgrade, which no doubt is advertised prominently at the bottom of the 3-day guide every time you use it.
It's a good strategy, and I think it will pay off -- not in the sense of 90% of all purchasers becoming subscribers, but in the sense of maybe 20% of all people who wouldn't buy a TiVo because of the subscription now buy it for the DVD-recording features. Like another poster suggested, I'm sure TiVo will offer AOL-like 30-day trial subscriptions for free somewhere along the line, once enough of these TiVo-capable recorders are out there being used. Because like broadband internet, once you learn to love it, there's no going back.
Well, their stock is up, so the markets thinking positive things about them. And while they haven't paid for the standard 30 second spots, NBC has done several placements in their TV series (Friends, Scrubs, Will & Grace). Not sure if they're paying for it or NBC's throwing it in as part of their investment.
Besides, the word of mouth advertising they get is pretty strong, and is a damned site better than lame TV spots.
Funny thing is, Tivo is hugely popular with the whole entertainment industry, outside of everyones favorite mad dog, Jack Valenti.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Whose lifetime mine or their's. I don't imagine their's to be more than a couple of years ... pretty steep anual fee.
The leftime of the electronics. If it dies in 1 year, you're screwed (unless you have an extended warranty, they honor them) I don't think the lifetime plan is a great deal myself, proved right for me when DirecTV took over mine and dropped the price to $5/month (ie 5years!)
That said, I love the idea of progressive scan output, this is definately something I'm looking for on my next DirecTiVo, along with HD (DirecTV and OTA)
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Is that without any subscription, and without ever hooking up to a phoneline?
Yep. If you buy the box and never hook it up to a phone line and never sign up for any service, you can still use it to record channel X from time 1 to time 2, and fill your hard drive that way. It also still lets you do cool stuff to live TV (you can fast forward, or with the backdoor code you can turn on 30 second commercial skip).
I don't think there's too much to worry about re: rooting your system. You could always create a CD image of the hard drive, and if the system is ever compromised, you can format the drive and recreate the virgin Tivo conditions.
That's only for the initially released models, because the original license agreement didn't say that you had to subscribe. They grandfathered VCR-like capabilities for those so as not to screw their customers. Anything from later batches of Series 1 or all of the Series 2 (i.e. the ones sold with the updated license agreement) requires a subscription, otherwise it stops working in any useful manner after an introductory period of time.
A no-fee basic system does sound nice (and will probably entice people to get the full service), but $12.95 seems like quite a rip-off when the DirecTV DVR service (another name for Tivo service) is $4.99/mo. Of course, that only works with DirecTV Tivos, but they are better anyway (no re-compressing of video, dual tuners, "purchase and record" pay-per-views, etc.)
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
" The nice thing however, is that when you're receiving a signal through the dish network PVR (or Bell ExpressVu in Canada), the PVR is recording the raw MPEG stream directly - there's no recompression as in TIVO, so you're seeing exactly the same quality picture as if you were watching it live."
:(
It's the same case for DirecTiVo
Either way, no satellite for me. $1200+ in tree removal in the way. And two of the trees in question are not on my property.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
To my knowledge information on what season is what is not available from Tribune, which is who TiVo gets their guide data from.
Heck, TiVo has to make guesses on whether or not it's even a rerun, since not all shows have even that information (it bases it off of first air date, and occasionally gets it wrong because of this).
It's not a bad suggestion though - when www.tivocommunity.com is back up next week I'd recommend suggesting it in the Suggestions forum. TiVo does read them, and has implemented ideas on occasion.
TiVo has what they call a "dead man switch" ready for if the company ever goes out of business. Its not anything new - its existed since day one.
The main idea is if something happens they throw this switch, the boxes update, and they avoid becoming totally useless boat anchors.