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ReplayTV May Drop "Commercial Advance"
An anonymous reader writes "Wired News is reporting that the new owners of ReplayTV are considering dropping the Commercial Advance and Send Show options features." I had bad luck with that function chopping out bits of show anyway. Between that and the 30 second skip function, I'm surprised ReplayTV has lasted this long!
I've thought of Tivo and Replay TV in the past, but as time goes on the companies degrade their products by getting rid of useful features like this.
How feasable is it to do something as good, but without the crippling, on a computer with a large hard disk and good video card?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I don't understand why ReplayTV would even consider removing those features, especially seeing as those are two of the HUGE advantages it has over its (winning) competitor Tivo.
Sure, Tivo has the 30 second skip if you have the right model and you enter in the Easter Egg, but most people don't surf around for Easter Eggs and therefore aren't aware of it (plus it isn't advertised as a feature for drones shopping at Best Buy, etc.).
They already declared bankruptcy and were bought out by another company, so somehow by eliminating some of its most compelling features they are going to rise to the top?
Would you rather have cat^H^H^HTV detector vans running around?
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
I used to wonder the same thing, until a friend of mine who is messing around with mythtv pointed it out to me (and he's going to be pissed he didn't get to post this):
There are the screen changes, as you mentioned
Commercials are usually a set length: 30 seconds, 1 minute, per ad
Sometimes you get the network logo when the show comes back on
I think there are other ways...sc00p, post 'em up.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
I'm sure it'll be a big hit.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
The V4 software for Tivo supports the USB Ethernet cards. The one I just bought was V3 software, so I had a phone cord running across the house for 3 or 4 days until it got the V4 download. And I bought a Replay over Tivo, just because of their stand against the Media companies...but the product just doesn't compare. Changing channels is ass-slow, there's no multi-user guide/preference setup, nothign other than the cool sharing feature, which is likely going away. Go for the Tivo, you'll be ahppier.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
Actually, the new TiVo kernel (4.0+) finally makes use of the USB ports in the back. You can connect either a Wireless or Wired Ethernet device (http://customersupport.tivo.com/tivoknowbase/root /public/tv2006.htm?) and you are good to go. I do this with my TiVo and wouldn't go back to regular TV, ever.
Software solutions such as MythTV and Freevo (both run on Linux) require fairly hefty hardware to do the encoding of TV to MPEG-2, MPEG-4, etc. Then they need to decode it to play it to the screen. Both encoding and decoding is necessary in order to do the time shift.
However, MythTV is leading the charge to offload this processing to the WinTV PVR cards, freeing up the system CPU for other stuff, or just allowing the user to scrape by with minimum requirements. So the feasability is improving quite rapidly right now.
MythTV has also been doing some impressive work on their GUI (check out the screenshots). This was one area I previously thought Freevo had a leg up on, but that advantage is going away.
Links:
MythTV
Freevo
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
I believe there was a Ask Slashdot a few weeks ago regarding building your own PVR. The majority of the comments seemed say "Why bother, just buy a TIVO/Replay TV, its already done for."
Well, this is why you roll your own. Yes, its a little more work, the cost is pretty much the same, but there is no monthly fee, and features don't get yanked out from under you.
MythTV is absolutely amazing, and its evolving incredibly fast. If your lookinng for a PVR, I recommend giving it a shot.
Open Source Time and Attendance, Job Costing a
Extraction to the PC was never a feature TiVo made available it was a hack made by people that have TiVo(s).
"Money didn't "flow" like that at all when cable was in its infancy. One of the selling points was that aside from the local stations, none of the other channels had commercials because you were already paying for it."
I've had cable since the late 1960s. Its real infancy: there were no channels without commercials other than the one at the bottom of the dial where the camera panned back and forth across weather dials.
The selling point was that you could receive stations period. Without cable, the broadcasters were too distant to see.
In 2003, I still have cable since it the only way to see the broadcast networks.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The commercial skip works great on sitcoms that are on the main network stations. That's about it. On TechTV and G4 it doesn't skip past the long commericals (video professor, that air filter thing). On dramas like 24, Buffy or Alias it skips too far, requiring me to rewind several minutes. I probably use commercial skip on about 1/4th of all my recorded shows.
My Parents:
Watch TV all the time. Requests to turn the damn thing off are met with a confused gaze.
My Apartment:
TV gets turned on when we have friends over for the purpose of watching a movie, or we're too brain drained to do anything but sit and watch pretty colors. Oh, and when I want to play with my PS2.
How does that impact our lives? I spend most of my time with my friends. A night to myself becomes a rare and cherished thing spent reading a book I've been looking forward to or on a game I haven't played in ages.
My GF and I throw dinner parties, have nights out with friends, spend time talking to each other and interacting as adult human beings.
Hell, I didn't have cable for four years and never missed it.
Although I do admit, the Food Chanel is pretty fun. Of course, my GF and I end up trying a lot of the tings we see on the shows there.
My mother can give a run down of the entire life story of all the characters on "Friends" and "Stargate SG1" (The latter watched not for the content, but for MacGyver's presence.) Her social life consists largely of people from Church, and she doesn't see them very often.
I prefer my life, thank you very much.
And to add a slice of irony, I'll quote a character from a very bad sci-fi show: "We stopped watching movies when we realized that our own lives were far more interesting."
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I had bad luck with that function chopping out bits of show anyway.
turn off commercial advance, after the advance and rewind a couple of seconds to desired point. Turn commercial advance back on.
Commercial advance is by far one of the greatest features, it makes hour long shows into 40 minute shows saving me time and giving me more tv!
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
I have not made the move to a PVR, but we use our 9 year old VCR to tape shows and watch later. And guess what, I use the fast forward button to get through the commercials! Perhaps we should remove that button from all remotes.
The real power of TiVo can be found here: -A list of all your recorded programs (just browse through to see what you want to watch) -Program once, record forever (even if the show changes time slots) -Pausing live TV (great for potty breaks & getting a snack - you don't have to wait for a commercial) -Rewinding live TV (Whoa! Was that a boob I just saw?!) -Beautiful & instant Pause -Insanely speedy fast-forward & rewind (60x play speed by default - can be "hacked" to be faster) -Recommended programs that are automatically recorded I have a TiVo & the 30 second skip button is nice (yes it's an easter egg), but the "super-fast-forward" will generally get you through the commercials in 5 seconds (instead of the 2 seconds that it takes to hit the skip button 8 times), and it starts playing the instant you hit the play button. People who make the decision to buy a TiVo based on the 30-second skip button probably don't understand the product. It does so much more... Since I've had TiVo, I watch more television shows than I used to, but I spend less time doing it (i.e. watching American Idol takes 20 minutes instead of 1 hour, most shows only takes 20 minutes instead of 30, you can get right to Dave Letterman's Top Ten List, etc.)
TiVo had built-in support for USB ethernet well before Version 4 came out...version 4 of the software just added an "official" interface menu where you can pick static IP/DHCP.
I bought my Series 2 last year when they were still at version 3. All you had to do was plug in the USB ethernet adapter and set the dialing prefix to #401. My TiVo has *never* touched a phone line - it's been ethernet only since day 1.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Responding to all of the "I told you so" Tivo posts:
:)
The one reason that I bought a ReplayTV instead of Tivo is that I can plug the unit into my router and then download the recorded Mpeg2 files down to my primary computer, where I can then compress it into Divx or whatever.
It is the open attitude that SonicBlue represented that eventually won me over. I can only hope the D&M is good about this too. If not... MythTV is probably in my future
I'm a bit confused as to why commercial skip/advance has become so controversial all of a sudden. VCRs have had these features for years: Panasonic, Sony. So why is this a big deal when it comes to PVRs?
As a long-time ReplayTV owner (have a model 2001, 2020, and a 5040) for me, this really is no big deal at all.
First off, it only affects the 5000 or newer series. So, two of my three ReplayTV boxes will be unaffected.
Second, some have had great success with Commercial Advance, but I never had much luck, so I never use it.
And third, the Internet File Sharing for me is another non-issue. Given the upstream cap on my Internet connection, show sharing is just plain prohibitive.
Dinally, let's not confuse "Internet File Sharing" with in-house program streaming between ReplayTV boxes on the same LAN. This feature is NOT being removed. This is the one feature for me that makes the 5040 worth it--it lets me seamlessly offload shows using the DVArchive app to my PC where storage is cheap and either stream them back to the ReplayTV box or burn them to DVD.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
I'm noticing a lot of posts along the line of 'This is why you should use MythTV..'
Don't overlook SageTV!
While it's not free, nor open source, it's the most incredible PC-based PVR I've seen to date. At only $59.95, it's a bargain. Program guide data is FREE! Upgrades are FREE! And the pace of development has been outstanding.
In it's current build, it supports;
- Multi-tuner, multi-lineup recording (satellite on one card, cable on the other.. or two cable captures, or five.. whatever.)
- Recording to either Mpeg2 or Mpeg1 format (for easier portability to DVD-R or VCD.)
- Network streaming to other PCs
- Automatic recording of favorites, as well as suggestions based on your viewing history (which is easily disabled.)
- XMLTV listings import (if for some reason, free listings aren't good enough for you.)
- Dscaler support and plugins (much better quality than MythTV, Tivo, or Replay on my HDTV.)
- Audio library management..
Features they're saying will come 'soon' include;
- HDTV Support
- DVD Playback
It's not free, but it's definitely a value. The way the guys at Frey Technologies are adding features is just unbelievable. Sometimes, free solutions are not the best.
Same in North America.
A TV which does not obscure the overscan area will show the flashing white square in the top left.
IIRC, it flashes slowly for a few seconds 30 s before break, starts flashing rapidly 5 or 10 before, and goes solid during the above mentioned transition to the still frame.
Course, I haven't seen it recently on modern TVs which cover the overscan area well...perhaps it's changed...