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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."
...first one's free.
from your wireless network? If so, I'll take it.
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
http://www.toshiba.com/tacp/dvd/current/RDX2.htm l
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Tivo will have to be careful that this doesn't hurt them. By removing a lot of the power of Tivo people might try it out, hate it, and leave.
They will have to make it clear what the added features will give you. (Perhaps a 30 day free trial of the upgraded service?) I know that once I saw the good stuff I would not willingly switch back.
I just want Tivo to be available in Canada damnit! Anyone know why the service hasn't been rolled out up here?
Considering that it is in the works to get Tivo declared illegal (you know, fast-forwarding those ads is STEALING!)~
...speaking of buying time, really what do you think the shelf-life of Tivo is at this point? By the time the cable companies/dish folks get into the game, along with the pending legalities, will Tivo even survive? I hope so.
Funny, I don't remember anyone buying my time from me...
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."
And here I was thinking that somebody had written a BASIC interpreter/writer for the TiVo. That would have been really cool. Oh well... I'll be happy when Canadian service starts with tivo.
If I didn't already have my lifetime subscription -- and frankly, I'm watching too much TV with my existing 30-hour series 1 box -- I'd probably be happy with the 3-day limits.
It's certainly a lot less data. The only real loss is the ability to look ahead two weeks to see what episodes are running and picking up specific ones. I'd assume that all the subscriptions still work.
Vacation time could be a pain, because I wouldn't be able to prioritize over the full time I'm gone.
The primary things I use the two-week lookahead are for things such as 24, Monk and Dead Zone that run new(ish) eps on multiple networks: I don't subscribe 24 on both Fox and FX, so if I miss an ep on Fox, I scan for it on FX.
Hopefully, this will bring in more sales for TiVo.
Design for Use, not Construction!
joke yet? This place is going to the dogs ...
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
As a DirecTiVo owner I love this.
It's an excellent way for TiVo to addict the masses to the glory that is the full TiVo. They probably should give people the ability to have maybe 2 or 3 season passes, but still, the concept is great.
The subscription requirement has always turned me off from getting Tivo. Why would I pay for a program guide and title searching when i have this inlcuded in my satellite/digicable service already. Basic sounds like a good idea for people who just want the hardware.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
I know what Tivo is and how it works but can someone please post a price structure? I've never subscribed and would like to understand what I get for what I pay.
I've got three TiVo's myself, and I have just convinced my mother to go get one. To be quite honest, this scares me, because it could be a sign to things to come. But, with today's economy, people would rather be cheap than functional, so I'm guessing that they're going to come out with this, then try to keep afloat. Sure, Oprah et al. have given TiVo good coverage, however, I really don't want to admit that this may mean that my favorite home appliance could be going to the dust.
I just hope there's enough of the hacking community out there to support my addiction should TiVo ever fall in the dumps.
I disable sigs...do you?
i got one of the early tivo's cheap off ebay, but the piece of crap modem died on me. the tivo service just didn't offer enough for me to deal with replacing the modem, so it's been just a pvr for me since then.
which is fine, but the goddamn internal clock keeps drifting.
i wonder how many subscriptions they've lost due to dead modems?
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I find it a little weird that the first such bundle is a DVD/Tivo box. Presumably it won't include the ability to make disk copies of DVDs! Without this feature, what the point of buying these two devices together?
The subscription is both the greatest feature and the worst shortcoming of the Tivo. The ability to easily specify what you want to watch, and even have the Tivo find similar shows for you, is beautiful beyond words. On the other hand, there's something to be said for the simplicity of the VCR.
The problem is that so many shows start early and/or end late. Often by just a few seconds, but enough to be irritating. Tivo lets you tweak this, but only at the risk of causing overlap. And when it detects overlap, the Tivo just refuses to record one show or the other -- even if both shows are on the same channel! It ought to be possible for the Tivo to act more like a VCR in this respect, but so far it hasn't happened.
My cable company is advertising PVRs that they say start at $4.95/month, including the hardware. They're looking for pre-registration, and I'm not sure what you get, or if the price will hold once the service goes beyond the vapor stage.
This is what they're doing to get all the people that have been complaining about being forced to pay a monthly fee for what amounts to TV listings. This is all I would need, I'm sure the other features are cool but I don't care. I watch very little TV, less than 10 hours per month, mostly F1 lately. I just want to pick out a few shows and tell it to record. The free service is all I need.
The only thing holding me back is the fact that they still don't offer service to Canadians.
The sooner the medium dies the better. It's crap. It's total and utter bullshit, designed to provide the minimum that'll leave us staring at the box so they can spring adverts on us.
I am not a robot. I have no desire to be programmed. The TV execs are welcome to provide me with an ad-free subscription or otherwise viewer-supported service (and no, $80/mo for HBO - which is what it is here after you pay for cable etc, isn't worth the money) providing a full range of quality programs, but until then they can go screw themselves. And TiVo, bless it, is little more than sand on the vomit that is modern TV. It may help remove the ads, but it doesn't make the programs any better.
Good god, sorry, did I post that? Sorry, I'm tired and cranky right now. That's what Javascript, shell scripts, and SQL do to you.
Thank goodness for DVD, and the evil minions of the RIAA, the latter of whom provide me with songs and symphonies and operas and ballets and all sorts of other forms of intelligent entertainment I'd not have a hope in hell of getting otherwise. Between Amazon and the new Apple iTunes store, and, for its faults, Fox on Sundays at about 8pm, I can do without having that box on 24/7, sucking the will to think from me.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
In any case, this is a good idea, and great for the consumer. I already anticipate answering my fiance's mother's 5,000 questions about TiVo once she buys a DVD player with limited TiVo features in it. I also begrudingly look forward to configuring it for her - every other day - for a year.
My cable company here in Central Florida will be offering free Tivo-like service for digital cable subscribers starting in June. I've wanted Tivo since I first heard about it in 1999 but wasn't willing to shell out money for the box AND pay a monthly fee on top of that.
One or the other, but not both. I'll buy the box if the service is free, or I'll pay a small monthly fee if the box is provided for me for free and is replaced for free in the event of failure or obsoletion. Given the rapid growth of technology, renting it from month to month is probably the better choice.
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.
I can do without having that box on 24/7, sucking the will to think from me.
Get a Tivo, record what you want, watch it when you want, and oh by the way, STFU.
...to make Tivo illegal...
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.
Tivo in Canada ? You're kidding ?
Who knows, we could filter out, and stop watching our 25% (or whatever it is) of canadian content !!!
don't give anyone any ideas...
(i work as a software tester on compiled BASIC medical apps. they keep trying to make it do more and more fancy stuff, all I need now is for someone to suggest slapping a TiVo into the pulmonary function testing software so that the subjects don't get bored during long serial testing days and I might just go postal...)
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
Interesting that the recorded video output is progressive, aside from the DVD output. Thats a great feature if the deinterlacing is done well. Deinterlacers in consumer RPTVs are notoriously AWFUL.
It isn't about watching more TV. Its about
watching the TV you WANT to watch.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
What there is is easily programmed into a VCR.
Sure, but then you have to find out when a show you like are on, find a blank tape or one with something you don't mind taping over, program the VCR, and (in my case, at least) make sure the cable box is set to the right channel before leaving for work/going to sleep for the night/whatever.
On a TiVo: Browse through the menu to find one occurrence of the show you like, and about four clicks later the TiVo will be set to record every occurrence of that show that it finds in the downloaded listings, and it'll change the channel on the cable box by itself-- and no futzing with tapes or coming home to discover that I forgot to switch the cable box to the correct channel and the VCR recorded an hour of some crap I don't want.
And there's plenty good on TV if you know where to look. Older classic stuff on SciFi, interesting documentaries on Discovery, TLC, and History, and daily doses of The Simpsons on FOX,and Family Guy and Futurama on Cartoon Network.
Move. To. The. US.
(Joke!)
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
And in the end you're not against Tivo; you're against television. As the preceding reply to your comment noted, Tivo has the opportunity to free up more "fresh air" time if your program viewing doesn't broaden after getting it.
And unless you're typing your comments on a laptop with wireless access, maybe you should get outside more often.
10 find pr0n;
20 display pr0n;
30 goto 10;
- passion
I've been looking for a good intro TiVo solution and I also need a DVD player for my Home Entertainment center. The only catch is that I'd like to be able to access the Hard Drive (in this case 80 GB) from my computer. That way I can manipulate video on my computer (burn, etc...) and I can use the 80 GB for a backup device.
Is this possible on this device? If not is there another device that is capable of doing this?
Where the Music Matters
Why do I have to read this here and not via Tivocommunity.com? Oh, it's down, and has been for too long.
Weren't there websites which had compared TiVo and ReplayTV when they first came out? This was one of the first website which did the comparison.
Here is a feature comparison matrix webpage.
Is this leading up to HDTV Tivo?
/sig
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.
Quite right there. Here's to hoping that Dish/DirecTV provides something like a $30/month subscription for 20 or so commercial-free channels. No commercials means no worrying about what and advertiser will like or not, and finally only worrying about what the viewers want.
No more bouncing logos in the corner of the screen, or TV-popups. Which is what has driven me to almost completely stop watching television at this point.
I hate to say it, but maybe the fed should step in. If TV is so annoying that few people watch it, then there will be a real problem with the public not being informed of the tripe that they call news.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Its funny how almost often you see people reference Simpsons as "the only thing worth watching" on TV.
Except you'll never hear my praise, because you posted as an AC, you silly person!
As far as I'm aware, all DVD players can do both PAL and NTSC.
Does this mean that this new device will be PAL capable too ?
If so, this would be the perfect thing for us poor Aussies who don't have a Tivo. Sounds like it would probably work without a subscription too. I'm assuming I can set it to record channel 7 at 8.30 every monday, like I can a normal VCR ?
Yippee ! I'm getting a Tivo......
TiVo's been advertising heavily in selected demographics. Mostly sports...
I've never thought their advertising did the service justice, but I heard from a TiVo marketing person two years ago that they cut back sharply on TV ads when Microsoft started hawking the Ultimate TV.
It turned out that the UTV commercials would get people to come to Circuit City, where they found they'd have to ditch their cable or satellite and get Dish Network to get to sue the UTV. When they got turned off on that idea, the salesperson would show them TiVo, which works equally well with satellite, cable, digital cable, or rabbit ears.
Every dollar Microsoft put into TV spots helped TiVo more than Microsoft. That's one of the reasons you don't see Ultimate TV advertised anymore. (Well, that and it sucked and is basically mothballed now).
TiVo does it right. Established companies are still partnering to make new hardware. You can't say that about webTV, U-TV, or ReplayTV.
Kevin Fox
I have to admit I wasn't much interested in a box that i had to pay to keep using. Also when you bring it up to other people they don't much like that idea either.
I also thing this kinda thing would be good for people who already have one Tivo, but want another (for say family one, and a personal one) and only need the subscription features for one of them (also makes the idea of using the tivo-to-tivo features much more attractive).
This is all I really need, I know when the shows I want are on, I hate having to do the damn tape shuffle, specially 10 mins before a show and i'm like "What has space on it? Looking at tapes with labeles I have ripped off and replaced, crossed out and relabeled and I have given up on the "labeling" system. I'm on the "overwrite whatever is on this, if i haven't watched it then at least I'll never know what this was"
Or I just tape over something old, i refuse to spend another dollar on tapes just because I was hoping that there would be some way to use a tivo without HAVING to pay the monthly fee or more frankly, that they would get legislated out of business, just go bust, or get bought and terminated, this was one of my main concerns.
Here's the thing, I have only been taping stuff that is on simultaneously to something else I want to watch on my big 4 channels of HDTV. I was really hoping that tivo was going to support HDTV like it said previously, but my guess is that that will be a pretty long time off, and I could get this tivo basic to use in the meantime and I won't be chained to paying for it if/when I get the HTDV version.
Here's hoping one of these Tivo Basic's come around soon, I'd buy it in a minute, especially if you could still upgrade the HD yourself.
Because, sometimes they just have to touch the stove.
-YY1
Frankly, season passes are what makes TiVos cool. Without them, they're just sort of neat gadgets. With them they become tremendously badass devices that change the way you interact with television and media.
TiVo Basic will be a failure. If they even allowed perpetual timeslot based recording (i.e. grab all episodes of Buffy on Tuesdays at 8:00), but didn't let me get things that air at multiple times on different days (i.e. grab all episodes of Good Eats that ever crop up on the Food Network), it would be a worthwhile service that would hook me, but ultimately make me want to upgrade.
But this is just too gimped to even convince people that the service is worthwhile, I think.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
Does anyone know if this new "Basic" service will be available on the UK version of TiVo, which is called Sky Plus?
...of people that does not see that ther are parts of the world where it it impossible or very very hard to obtain a TiVo. Like here in Sweden for example. I would very much welcome if someone sold MythTV boxes. I also want this!
And how about Australia?
I'd prefer a Tivo, but how about any DVR with a supported programming guide? (One that doesn't involve modifying an American one, I'm not too handy with a blowtorch...)
Anything on the horizon?
This sounds great. I've wanted Tivo since I first saw the coolest infomercial ever (you know, the one with the '50s sitcom family), but I hate anything I have to make payments on and it's just a bit too expensive to be worth it. I'lll definitely be considering this.
It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired. - Robert Anson Heinlein
Hey, your Playstation 3 is in my TiVo!
Get your TiVo outa my Playstation 3!
Seriously though, I think it would be really great to combine my (future) PS3 and TiVo. After all it already functions as my CD & DVD player why not add live TV functionality. Throw in a DVD-R drive and a FireWire port and I'm in heaven!!!
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
What I find odd is that Season Passes don't cover a show if it jumps channels. I've had two experiences with this: Robbery Homicide, which was on Saturdays on CBS jumped to Monday Night on USA, and Rockford Files switched from TVLAND to WGN. Same thing with Curb Your Enthusiasm -- it was on one of the alternative HBOs (HBO-Comedy or something) and not on HBO Prime, but it didn't record.
I know a title wishlist would have grabbed both of these, but it'd be nice if a season pass would follow channels, especially if the channels are related like the HBO(s).
Oddly, I have a Season Pass for Saturday Night Live and the local affialiate runs full-length re-reuns (from several seasons ago, not the current season or show) at 2 AM, and the Season Pass picks up both for some dumb reason.
The Tivo could be hacked to allow title searches - it already has the data from the 3-day grid. Bets on when?
This amounts to a nice little recording app for the DVD player(s) it's bundled with. It has little to do with TiVO other than that the company's smart enough to put its name on it to maybe get a lower-cost entry point for people to buy into its larger service. Seems shrewd, and I bet it didn't cost them much for the "branding" it gives them.
I'd definitely think of this as a deciding feature if I was in the market for a new DVD player. It'd set that model a notch up from the others at Best Buy, no doubt at all.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I used it only 4-5 months ago and it SUCKED.
For one - It ignored any bitrate/quality settings I set. It was recording NTSC video at well beyond DVD bitrates (i.e. 5-6 gigs/hour!)
The UI sucked. Also, most importantly, the core scheduling/capture system and the UI were tied together. i.e. if I wanted to record something, I couldn't do anything else with the machine because of that damn ignores-the-windowmanager UI. MythTV needs to split scheduling/recording into a seperate background daemon. (Or have they done so already?)
It might be an OK solution for a dedicated box, but there are plenty of people who want to add PVR to their existing Linux box.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I have a HDTV monitor. I can get a pretty good picture with the S-video connector I currently use, but a progressive scan picture would be a great improvement. Now if it would only record HDTV broadcasts.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I use the NVidia binary-only drivers and TV-out quality from both my laptop's integrated GF4MX and my desktops Ti4600 are excellent under Linux.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
It ought to be possible for the Tivo to act more like a VCR in this respect, but so far it hasn't happened.
I agree; this irritates me too. However, it can act JUST like a VCR if that's what you truly want. You can set up manual timer recordings in old-school VCR fashion. I do this with a couple shows that always start early or finish late, and I want to catch an overlapping show. So I just schedule two manual recordings from 7:59-8:31 and 8:31-9:00 for example. Not really a beautiful solution I guess, but it can be done.
I could live without everything on that list except for the season passes. Oh well. At least I've got a DirecTiVo, which is $4.95/mo, not $12.95.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
There's two ways to use it right now...
1. like a vcr - no advanced features (the way I use it)
2. hacking it - and uploading guide data from zap2it.com...
Half a dozen of my friends have them - and use them one of the two ways above...
You can buy they from ebay quite easily - I found mine at an electronic liquidator for $75 CAD.
Apparently Star Choice has the license for the technology in Canada - so Tivo is contractually prevented from rolling it out in Canada...
BlackNova Traders
Ah, but with Tivo, I can go jogging/walking when I get home from work AND watch all of Buffy after I finish. I don't have go get back home at 7 sharp.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
AFAIK TiVo has always been a bundled product. Hughes, Sony, and others have made the hardware and TiVo was the service running on it. The service is the database of programming, the search features and so forth, and that's why a subscription is involved.
Progressive scan output will only benefit DVD presentation on a compatible television set. Because just as TiVo notes (when comparing the existing Series2 units to Replay), progressive output to a television won't benefit watching anything off the TiVo unit since analog cable boxes do not output a progressive signal. The only benefit would be leaving the S-Video and/or the compositve video jacks on the television available for other devices. While this would not benefit me as an existing Series2 owner, TiVo really needs to equip their units with MPEG4 decoder chips because they could get so many more recordable hours onto the same size hard drives they currently use. You'd be surprised how many more people will buy the units if magically you can get 80 hour recording at the existing price of the 30/40 hour units. Equipping the units with quieter fans and moving towards Serial ATA hard drives will both solve heat and noise issues currently effecting Series2 units in future releases...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Check out the following employment link on the TiVo website. They are in need of someone with C and assembly language programming in UNIX environments for creating device drivers. They even specifically mention Firewire (IEEE1394) as an example. I suppose this will debut in the Series3. Fingers crossed it will be the Firewire800 implementation by then. I hope a /.'er gets the job! :)
http://www.tivo.com/5.8.2.4.asp
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
I can think of two fixes.
The first would be a hash code (and Tivo would likely have to do this themselves, probably with 95% automation and 5% human intervention) that indicated the show, the season and the episode. Masking the code would enable you to determine the show or the season or the episode.
The second which I mentioned in another reply would be adding two options to season passes. The first would be "Channel: All Channels or This Channel Only". The second would be a refinement of the first run/rerun option, "This Season or All Seasons".
Setting up a season pass with "All Channels, This Season Only" would grab "Friends" on any channel, but only for the current season. So you wouldn't get the 1st and second tier reruns on other channels.
Seasons should be pretty easy for Tivo to pick up, at least within 6 months of accuracy since it seems that all the shows have a season datecode.
Perfect? No, but it would help a little.
I looked into a TiVo once. I have the money. I like what it can do. But.. Why the hell doesn't it have Ethernet w/ IP functionality? I want to be able to plug the thing into my broadband connection and have it update..Very frequently. I also want to be able to MOUNT the harddrive thats in the TiVo. You could install the software for 'sharing' the harddrive on the network on the harddrive, over the ethernet connection. Default IP=10.0.0.5 or something, change your machine to a like address, mount the drive via SMB/NFS/AFP/FTP/SFTP or some other 'normal' protocol, install software, firewall list, etc etc. The software in some certain folder could be loaded when the TiVo is turned on (like a computer boots) and it could have a large variety of options and controls. Expert or LUser modes..
Lets say I'm on vacation and I record a bunch of TV shows.. I don't want those shows to sit on the machine for too long before I get a chance to watch them.. (Oh, Wait. TiVo wants you to buy the larger harddrive, I forgot.) Newer shows will be taping and adding to the list. Maybe I want to keep a favorite episode or something too.. Maybe make a 10/100 NIC upgrade card, that you can install to any TiVo model? I mean, they don't all have to have this piece of hardware, but it definitely should be a option. Otherwise I'm just plain not interested in the thing. I'll keep using my VCR until it has a 'functional' ethernet connection. I mean, how many VCR's can I buy for the price of one TiVo? I can record plenty of TV shows if I want.
I'm one of those people that records 2-3 hours of shows per day and watches them when I get home from work. I also record a extra 3-5 hours of shows that I like, just in case I have a migraine, am very bored or something else happens and I'm sick and all I want to do is lay around and watch TV. TiVo would be GREAT for this, but I want to be able to copy recordings off of the unit. I could have full seasons of shows on my computer even. Could edit out the commercials. It'd rule.
Oh, guess what else? Network attached storage is another 'feature' that would come from this. I'm sure this wouldn't be -server- quality of a machine, but it'd be network attached storage for home users. 1-3MB/sec is fast enough for anybody at home, for the most part. Especially from a device like this, where the main functionality isn't the device being a Network Attached Storage device.
Lobby. Against. CRTC. Content. Requirements.
Will I retire or break 10K?
but it is versitle (tivos are cool
After you misspelled a word in bold print, I immediately read the next word as "typos".
Will I retire or break 10K?
Convenient user id. I've been around longer, son.
Da Blog
It's 456.4% larger than an iPod, 486.48% heavier, butt ugly, and can't synch with iTunes. It is therefore a POS, cannot possibly be any good to anyone, and is destined to fail.
Da Blog
I know what Tivo is and how it works but can someone please post a price structure? I've never subscribed and would like to understand what I get for what I pay.
Before TiVo Basic, there was no price structure to TiVo. There was whatever you paid for your TiVo box (usually between $200 and $500) plus the monthly or lifetime subscription fee.
With a TiVo subscription, you get all the features of TiVo. Without one, you get a boat-anchor (excluding many first-generation TiVos that could function in a VCR-only mode without program guide functionality and with constant nag screens).
Really, if you haven't sat next to a TiVo addict for any period of time, or gone to his house for a demo, you probably haven't the foggiest clue how insanely great[1] TiVo is.
[1] Apologies to Steve Jobs.
Why the hell doesn't it have Ethernet w/ IP functionality? I want to be able to plug the thing into my broadband connection and have it update....
When's the last time you bothered looking into TiVo, exactly? TiVoNet and TurboNet have allowed just this on Series 1 machines for at least two years. Since the 3.0 software release came out last year, Series 2 TiVos have unofficially supported several Ethernet USB connectors. The 4.0 software release for Series 2 machines makes the support official. The Home Media Option for Series 2 machines also permits sharing shows between machines in the same house, as well as web-based updating--which, unlike ReplayTVs, can be set to use your broadband to check for changes to your schedule every 10 minutes or so.
Oh, Wait. TiVo wants you to buy the larger harddrive, I forgot.
Eh? WTF are you talking about? TiVo doesn't care what you do with storage. All TiVos can have their hard drives upgraded fairly easily and TiVo doesn't earn a dime from anyone who does so. I turned a 30 hour Series 1 standalone into a 193 hour model in a couple of hours one night, and most of that time was spent transferring my unwatched shows from the original drive to the new "A" drive. Back when I had only 30 hours on my TiVo, lengthy trips out of town did result in my losing some shows before I could watch them. That's one of the reasons I upgraded mine.
I'll keep using my VCR until it has a 'functional' ethernet connection. I mean, how many VCR's can I buy for the price of one TiVo? I can record plenty of TV shows if I want.
How many VCRs can let you start watching a show while they're still recording it? How many VCRs can automatically switch days and times when your shows move around? How many VCRs know the difference between first-run episodes and re-runs? How many VCRs automatically correct for overshoot when you fast-forward past commercials? How many VCRs have keyword searching, suggestions, conflict resolution and the ability to view your JPGs and play your MP3s? How many VCRs don't require you to find a blank tape or a tape you're done watching before you can record something?
In other words, put the hookah away, go read the ten and a half billion words of praise for TiVos that are out there on the Internet and take your head out of your ass.
The leftime of the electronics. If it dies in 1 year, you're screwed
Actually, TiVo will transfer a lifetime subscription from a dead unit that's unfixable to an identical new unit (assuming you sent it to an authorized service center), and they'll trade out just about any dead TiVo that's out of warranty for a flat rate of $129 and transfer your lifetime sub to the new one, IIRC. So you're not quite screwed.
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!)
Okay, first off, five years assumes you could buy a lifetime subscription for the DirecTV models at the current standalone lifetime price of $300, which you can't because DirecTV doesn't offer lifetime subs any more. Second, when you could buy lifetime subscriptions for DirecTV models, the monthly fee was $10 and the lifetimes were $250, so the payback was just over two years. And the lifetime sub on DirecTV applied to all DirecTiVos on the account (up to 8), so you could have junked a dead DirecTiVo with a lifetime sub and as long as you didn't tell DirecTV it was dead, you were good to go.
Of course, with the TiVo charge down to five bucks a month through DirecTV, lifetime subs are pointless. But for standalone owners, lifetime subs get more valuable over time. When I bought my standalone TiVo three years ago, lifetime subs were $199 and I decided to pay for the lifetime sub about two days after I bought my TiVo because I knew I'd never want to watch TV without my TiVo again and I only had to have the TiVo for 20 months before I was saving money.
Since then, TiVo's raised the price of a lifetime sub twice, so now if I sell my Series 1 standalone on eBay, I can effectively get the full value of what a lifetime sub costs today, even though I paid $100 less for my lifetime sub. I've more than saved the difference between monthly and lifetime sub prices over that three years and my TiVo's value has actually gone up, to boot.
Does this mean a lifetime sub is good for everybody at today's pricing? Of course not. Nowadays, the payback is 24 months (not accounting for the time value of money), and it's clear that TiVo wants to start EOLing older models from the software updates cycle, which may spur more people to sell off older models and upgrade to newer ones. But my ancient HDR-312 still does everything it did when I bought it--only now it's got a lot more storage.
"The average /. reader is an idiot. Half of /. readers are below average. Are you scared yet?"
What makes you think that the average reader is an idiot?
If all readers are above average, there is obviously nothing to be scared of.
The more I read it, the less your sig rings true.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
The models were announced some time ago.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Damn, I thought they were coming out with a scripting language for TiVo...