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Clones Are Overwhelming TiVo
jfruhlinger writes "The first line from this CRN/Associated Press story says it all: 'Debra Baker tells people she has TiVo. But she really doesn't.' As cable companies offer their own DVR boxes to customers for no upfront cost and a lower monthly fee than the original, people are using TiVo as a verb but are frequently not using using the product or service itself in real life. The article notes that the cable company's DVRs don't have some of the archtypical TiVo features, such as the ability to guess what you'd like recorded based on your viewing habits."
All my clones own Tivos. That's seven subscribers when before, it'd only be one.
record only first runs.
as it is now, they record all showings.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Where's OpenCable when we need it?
Because that's what's really locking TiVo out of the digital cable biz. They can't directly operate on a digital cable wire, and the companies such as Scientific Atlanta are not releasing their decoding specs so that TiVo can make a box compatible with cable systems that run their backend equpiment.
Analog CATV is standardized, cable channel 27 in one town is on the same frequencies as cable channel 27 in another. OpenCable will basically do the same for digital. It should be noted however that OpenCable is leaving decryption and conditional access for others to handle... they're just defining a slot in which the system provider's choice of smart card that that will handle that stuff goes into.
Slashdot has written before that this isn't quite the same as Open Source in the way that it's usually thought of here, this is a hardware spec that pretty much gives up a single-channel digital bitstream to the device's wishes once the access card lets it go.
In the future, this could lead to "digital cable ready" TVs and devices, including TiVo that won't need the assitance of a settop box. But, of course, the present digital cable system makers don't want to give up their cash cow. That's why the current digital cable device makers can eat TiVo's lunch right now...
Similar to saying "I had a burger and coke for lunch," when you really had a burger and Pepsi. TiVo is becomming part of American culture.
Steal This Sig
I do love my Tivo, but I turned off the personal viewing feature long ago when I realized it had a twisted personality. It kept recording porn and cartoons...
TiVo's got the name-brand recognition, which is good, but it seems like they need to make some marketing efforts pinpointing what differentiates them from their primary competitors.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
I just got through building a really nice home media system with WiFi.
The centerpiece is a PC running SageTV [www.sage.tv]. It uses a hardware mpeg encoder to capture video from my digital cable box and save it on a 250 GB hard drive. Encoding at the "DVD Standard Play" quality uses about 3 GB per hour of video and the quality is definitely acceptable. Also stored on the monster hard drive is my entire CD collection ripped to very high bitrate MP3. The hardware media card also includes a built-in radio tuner. The machine has a DVD burner in it as well, and SageTV glues it all together.
Now, the really cool part of it is, I can access the mpeg video files and MP3s over my home network. With an mpeg video codec, I can use any of a variety of players to play my recorded television anywhere in my house on a laptop. SageTV also offers a separate piece of client software that allows you to remote-control the PVR from any networked computer and play any of its recorded media -- so, if I'm in the garage with my laptop, I can call up the current TV guide and select a program to record right there without having to directly interact with the media PC.
TiVo runs Linux and is hackable, but still uses a proprietary filesystem for video storage. Plus, the folks at TiVo don't want you accessing the video externally anyway...
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
One phone call to either TiVo customer service (or DirecTV's customer service if you own a "DirecTV DVR powered by TiVo" device) is all it takes for them to send your device a signal to stop uploading the viewer-habits data. True, that's opt-out rather than opt-in... but at least they're making it easy to get out.
Me... I kinda like the fact that it reports what I watch. I've always wanted to actually count in the ratings...
Tivo is doomed because they don't have access to the unencrypted but still encoded digital video stream. Because the cable television companies have this access they can make lighter weight Tivos that don't need to do a reencoding of the stream. This gives them an unfair advantage that spells the doom of tivo for that market segment. They can also mix the functionality into their already required encoder box such that few people will want to pick up an extra redundant tivo even if it does offer more features.
The one thing tivo does have is the best remote control of any DVR. It is just beautifully engineered.
I have a TiVo and a friend with a Scientific Atlanta DVR. I can tell you that the Scientific Atlantic user interface isn't any where as nice as the TiVo. I can do without TiVo surprising me with programs it decided I wanted to see, but it sure is nice to be able to do wish lists. The differences between the user interfaces on the SA and the TiVo seem to me like comparing a Mac to DOS 6.0.
Yeah, the subject looks dorky. But I'm a computer geek. I have an x86 box that's useless (Mac owner here) that I could simply turn into Myth or Freevo or whatnot. But you know what? It's not TiVo. They look nice, they work well, and yeah, they do things that TiVo doesn't. But... I can do all that with Linux anyway. TiVo is to television what Mac OS X is to the computer world.
And no, this isn't flame-bait, and I don't want to get into a philosophical argument about my choice of metaphor. But... Mac owners that are also TiVo owners that are also x86 owners will truly know exactly what I'm talking about.
--Jim (me)
"Such as selling your personal viewing habits to advertisers? I'm no tinfoil-hatter, but this is one of the main reasons I chose ReplayTV. I understand TiVo's data collection is aggregate, but the thought that someone keeps a record of everything I watch (or re-watch), and uses it for profit is a bit off-putting.
Kudos to the newcomers!"
Why do you care? TiVo hopes to use the information they can sell to increase their profitability and hopefully lower the subscription costs for their customers. How is that bad? Its not like they are going to tell advertisers and the government that "Joe Average" at 123 Average Way watches Cinemax (aka "Skinamax") every single evening. It is aggregate. And speaking as a TiVo enthusiast, I am happy they will be reporting viewing habits to advertisers. I want advertisers to know that they shouldn't advertise feminine hygene products during action programs and the like. I want to encourage advertisers to actually make decent commercials. And most importantly, I'm tired of 6,000 Nielsen homes dictating what is shown on television. There are over 1 million TiVo subscribers vs. 6,000 Nielsen homes. I want our numbers to count for something because I'm tired of seeing shows that I like (such as "Angel") getting cancelled. The other DVR/PVRs on the market, such as your ReplayTV (which has bankrupted two corporate owners and is now on its third and still has yet to get over 100,000 subscribers), do not have the power to save favorite television programs from cancellation. So in my book, TiVo's aggregate viewer data collection is a reason to sign up.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*