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ReplayTV DVR to Remove Features
KarlTheGhoul writes "D&M Holdings Inc. on Tuesday said its new ReplayTV digital television recorder will not include controversial features such as automatically skipping commercials and sharing shows via the Internet." This is a confirmation of our earlier story. Their new ad slogan will be "Costs More, Less Useful".
MythTV v.0.9 was released yesterday
Works great on the 500mhz system I found in the trash a couple of months ago.
Freevo also works quite nicely.
Ryan Fenton
I've been assembling a set of PVR boxes which I'm planning to use for distributed recording/playback around the house. I never *did* get a Tivo or ReplayTV, though I came close, and now the stars are aligning in another direction. Combine the slow withdrawal of features from the commercial boxes, with the new features becoming available in a package like MythTV, and for a true geek, the answer is obvious.
In a year or two, possibly sooner, one could expect a CDROM-based distribution of Linux that makes a dedicated MythTV box out of any PC with capture and video-out.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
No, because they're not being removed from your old unit, only from the new units that D&M will release.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Someone mentioned something about an "open source" TV listings. For these free PVRs that are coming out, how/where do you get your TV listings from? Or do you just use the old school VCR method of plugging in a time/channel and get just that showing. As compared to a Tivo where you can say grab all these shows/season pass manager, etc.
Its my understanding that its the future hardware that wont have the features. If your unit, that you already have at your house, has that feature, i'm not sure they're planning on removing it.
That said, I'm not at all positive. ReplayTV has in the past removed features via firmware updates (which are forced on the user without their notice), so they could do a firmware-update that removes these features. Of course, at that point, it sounds like there'll be hacks out rather quickly.
As for suing, you'd have to be careful: the advertising materials likely make no claim that these features will exist through the lifetime of the product. If the features were there when you bought it, and you ran the hardware (including the end user agreement, which includes the statement that ReplayTV can update your hardware on their own), its not contradictory.
"Stumble before you crawl"
Tivo doesn't have these features to start with, and is doing extremely well...
I'm a TiVo advocate, but honestly, I wouldn't say they're doing "extremely well". They're yet to turn a profit, although the quarterly losses are dropping at a nice rate and their subscriber base continues to increase.
That said, TiVo does have these features... kind of. There's a secret code to turn 30-second skip on (Stop Play Stop 3 0 on the main TiVo menu IIRC). It's not quite as extensive as the newer automatic commercial Skip Replay gave you, but it's the same as their skip button on the remote.
As for show sharing, with HMO (yes, an additional cost) you can share between any TiVos that are on the same TiVo account and subnet. It's considerably more restrictive than Replay's offering, but it's also going to keep TiVo from being sued into bankruptcy. Twice. And it works quite well for what it is -- my wife and I use it all the time between our TiVos and it's great. Most of the TiVo users in the know are still hoping for collaborative scheduling between TiVos, but that's a ways off.
The issue for D&M is, what are they going to offer instead? Their pricing isn't cheaper (you can now get a brand new 80 hour TiVo for $299, or a refurb for $249), they don't have as many features (especially if you get HMO for an additional $99 or $49), and their software is buggier. I guess we'll see.
No, because your user agreement says:
" At its discretion, ReplayTV may automatically add, modify, or disable any feature or functionality of the ReplayTV Service or on the ReplayTV unit (when your unit connects to our server or at other times with or without notice)."
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
Thus, you can simply (for relatively hairy values of simply) hook up an IR transmitter and send channel change commands to your cable box.
Actually, both use Lirc to let you use a remote control to control many things. It's indirect, but effective. It's a sizeable portion of the FAQ & Documentation in MythTV at least. You'll need some kind of infrared detector on your system. You can either get an independant IR card, or many Hauppauge TV models have it included.
Ryan Fenton
Tivo has a user interface that is orders of magnitude better. Commercial skipping was the one thing that kept my housemate and I from beating down our ReplayTV like that scene from Office Space and then getting our old TiVo back. TiVo was so intuitive and easy to use, whereas ReplayTV was a nightmare. (Not to mention the "update" that Replay automatically uploaded which caused our Replay to turn off right when when we turned it on. Everyone who got that update had to return it and get a new Replay sent to them. HUGE hassle...)
WITH Commercial Advance. For the next three days, apparently they are closing out factory-renewed 40-hour ReplayTV 5040 units WITH Commercial Advance. Not only that, but the site also says that these units are coming with lifetime service. The total cost is $330(!!). You can get them at SONICblue. I'm not in the market since I'm still happy with my "ancient" ReplayTV and just can't justify buying a new one, but it's the best PVR deal I've seen for a factory renewed unit (as opposed to a used unit bought privately).
They (Tivo's) do have a 30 second skip feature that you have to "unlock". During a playback of a recording, press "Select, Play, Select, 3, 0, select". This turns the "skip to tick mark" button into a 30 second skip.
You must re-enter the code every time the Tivo reboots (software upgrade or power loss).
Better yet, with older (Series 1) TiVos, you can rip the video and do whatever you want with it...send it to someone over the Internet (as the original MPEG-2 or as something more space-efficient like XviD), burn it to SVCD or DVD, etc. The software to do this is getting better all the time...now it rips straight to an MPEG-2 program stream. With the right settings, you could burn directly to DVD or SVCD.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
There's a secret code to turn 30-second skip on (Stop Play Stop 3 0 on the main TiVo menu IIRC).
Actually it's Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select. I've only ever tried it while something is playing, I doubt it works from the Main Menu.
In addition to using an IR dongle to fire commands off to your cable box (which has already been mentioned above), you can also use a serial cable to control certain units (more details here).
This rating is Unfair ( ) ( ) Fair (*) Funny
Sigh... If only. Modding would be so much more fun.
Fair enough, though Tivo doesn't include either of these features!
That is right (apart from enabling things with secret codes). Now, with the feature set roughly the same, the decision comes down to the merits of each product, which TiVo wins hands down, in my opinion.
A long time TiVo owner and DVR enthusiast, TiVo is much easier to use in terms of interface. Plus TiVo, as a company, is generally friendly to the hacker community.
I glad the time has finally come that people can post about how much they like their TiVos without people flaming them about how ReplayTV has all these really cool, but legally questionable features (please no rants about legality).
TiVo has long been primary concerned with giving users what they want with a friendly interface and keeping itself on this side of a legal minefield. ReplayTV, in contrast, seemed to focus its selling point on its advanced feature set, despite of the lawsuits being fired at them from every angle. It should have focused on competing with TiVo from a usability perspective. Now, however, it may be too late, as TiVo is well ahead of them in every aspect now that these features will not be available. TiVo has an incredible interface and network media capability with Home Media Option, while ReplayTV is left without the slick interface.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Why would you want to pay for a monthly subscription to TIVO anyway when there a many FREE services that only require you to make a one time purchase... or no purchase at all...
Windows Based
Snapstream PVR
ShowShifter
Linux Based
Myth TV
Linux PVR Depot"
I have built my own PVR from scratch and the cost was comparable with a TIVO. Those packages offer many of the same features found in TIVO and ReplayTV... Plus, you can integrate them very easily into a home automation system or home network.
- Slew -
In case 2, the broadcaster could simply circumvent the automatic skipping mechanism by semi-randomly shifting the commercial times, or by varying the length of commercial breaks.
No, they couldn't. At least not with today's current ad model.
The commercials are not simply put in randomly. There is a very strict heiarchy of what commercials go where in the sequence. Picture a 30 min TV show. Usually, 3 commercial blocks. Just before the show, midway through, and end. The order of the commercials is actually quite important as regards audience retention. i.e. you're more likely to remember a product in a commercial in slot A than slot C. And yes...advertisers DO track that stuff, and are charged accordingly. Better placement = more $$ to air that commercial.
Also, a TV show is built around commercial breaks at specified minutes. Random insertion or different length breaks would destroy the flow of the show.
Finally, not all the commercials come from the same source. During a network show, some come from network HQ (See the new Fords!) and some come from the local broadcaster (Lo lo prices at Fred's Friendly Ford Farm out on Route 8!). No way to sync those two if commercial breaks are not preplanned.
Who cares if the auto-skip is gone. You will still be able to one-button skip past commercials.
That said, TiVo does have these features... kind of. There's a secret code to turn 30-second skip on
No it doesn't. Commercial Advance is a feature where commercials are skipped automatically without you even pressing a button on the remote. Nothing like that on a Tivo. ReplayTV also has a 30-second skip button on the remote (you don't have to remember some arcane code each time you reset/unplug your ReplayTV, and you don't lose the functionality of one button on your remote to reprogram it to be a 30-second skip button - and on the subject of secret codes/hacks, go look at DVArchive - it blows the doors off any hack I've seen for DVR's thus far and it runs on all platforms to boot!)
Sending a movie across the internet has no equal on a Tivo. In fact, in order to share a movie locally on a Tivo, you have to pay a fee for each Tivo you want to share with - so a minimum of two fees. Not only that, but if I've heard right, you can't just watch a show that's on another Tivo, it has to be sent across the network and stored on the second Tivo's HD taking up 2x the storage.
How does ReplayTV's in-home sharing work? First, no added fees - nothing, nada. Second, choose a show off any ReplayTV in the house and it starts playing instantly. It streams the show as you play it, so you don't have to wait, and it doesn't take up drive space on the second machine.
The next upgrade to the service promises to keep separate markers for each unit so that if I watch half a show in the front room, then decide to finish in the bedroom, I can tell it I want to start from where I left off in the front room. It will allow scheduling a record on any ReplayTV in the house.
they don't have as many features (especially if you get HMO for an additional $99 or $49)
huh? I can think of only 1 feature that Tivo w/HMO has that can't be done on a ReplayTV, that's streaming mp3's. What other features am I missing?
Quick pricing rundown from the tivo and replaytv sites:
Service
TiVo: $299 lifetime or $12.95/mo
ReplayTV: $250 lifetime, $9.95/mo* (after June 16th, $299 lifetime or $12.95/mo)
*customers paying $9.95/mo will only be moved to $12.95/mo if they let their service lapse and then reactivate later
Units
40 hour: Tivo, $249 - ReplayTV $299 ($50 rebate thru 6/15)
80 hour: Tivo, $349 - ReplayTV $399 ($50 rebate thru 6/15)
160 hour: Tivo, n/a - ReplayTV $499 ($50 rebate thru 6/15)
Refurb: Tivo 80hr $249 - ReplayTV 40hr w/lifetime activation $329
HMO: Tivo, $99 - ReplayTV, included free
So right now, ReplayTV's are same price as Tivo's w/o HMO and cheaper if you buy the lifetime service, or HMO. After the 16th, They will be $50 more than a Tivo w/o HMO and $50 cheaper than one w/HMO - Maybe I'm not seeing the forest for the trees, but it looks to me like ReplayTV's are competitive in both price and features, even if commercial advance and send show features are removed...
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
Maybe it's advertising that needs to improve. I don't have the answers, but there has to be a better way of doing it. Some examples:
I am not in the market for a car, yet I have to watch an endless stream of car advertising. Furthermore, I have to watch ads for cars I will never, ever buy either because they're too small or too expensive.
I am well aware of the products of the Coca Cola and Pepsi companies, what their flagship products taste like and which I prefer. I should be excused from having to view any of their ads, yet I have to watch them all the time.
I watched a movie on TBS recently and at every commercial break (every 12 minutes) they ran the SAME ad for the SAME lame looking made for TBS movie. I watched only 90 minutes of the movie and saw the same ad 8 times. I wasn't going to watch it after seeing the first ad and the subsequent 7 viewings did nothing to change my mind.
Currently, advertisers pay a lot of money to reach millions of people, of which only a small fraction might be interested in what they are selling.
Tivo ought to offer a program that allows you to cut your monthly subscription cost by 50 or 100% depending on how many ads you watch. Not the ads you recorded along with "Friends" last night, but ads that are stored on your machine and play when you access a recorded program, like the ads that play before movies these days. It can be one 30 second or two 15 second spots. No more. Furthermore, you've provided the Tivo software information about yourself or your household (whatever you feel comfortable with) so the advertising is much better targeted. The more information you provide, the better targeted the advertising. So now, you'll only see car ads if the you've told the machine you might be buying a new car in the next six months, and since it knows your preferences, it won't show you ads for Korean econoboxes or Lincoln Navigators. Anyone who doesn't want to participate doesn't have to. And if you don't want to provide any information you don't have to do that either, but the ads will be about as well targeted as regular TV. Oh, and you can give thumbs up or down to the ads themselves to provide feedback for the advertisers.
TV isn't going away and advertising isn't going away either, but they need to get rid of the clutter. The solution to people ignoring ads because there too many ads is not to have even more ads. It's to make sure the right ads are being seen by the right people. Assuming 90% of what we have to sit through is clutter, if they can figure out how to get the right ads to the right people, they can cut the number of ads I have to watch by 90% and charge advertisers 10 times as much per ad. If someone wants to spend 300k to have an ad seen by 20 million people, only 2 million of which are interested then it stands to reason that they would spend 300k to reach the right 2 million people.
My thoughts. Somewhat scattered. Serves me right for writing while trying to talk on the phone.
DD
"Can I finish? Can I finish?
Yes. El Gato EyeTV is a DVR without a subscription plan... It needs a computer (I use it with my Mac). But that is actually an advantage since the show you record become more portable than a VHS tape. It can also record VCDs of the shows for archiving...
This was beaten to death with a large stick in the TiVo article, but at the risk of repeating all that...
TiVo's business model always included the (future) sale of viewers watching statistics. They never tried to hide this. There's no identifying information in any of the viewer demographic information supplied to TiVo by your box, and hey if you don't like them selling that information then you just call up their support people and tell them to take you off that list! Again, TiVo have been completely up-front and honest with all of this information.
Sometimes there's no conspiracy, no matter how hard you look.
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.