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TiVo Will Stream Content From The Web
Patik writes "According to an article at the NY Times, 'new TiVo technology... will allow users to download movies and music from the Internet to the hard drive on their video recorder.' This is TiVo's next big push for subscribers after being dumped by DirecTV Tuesday. Blockbuster, Netflix, and Real are also looking into distributing feature-length movies over the web."
What will the terms of service be? Same rules as using this over satellite, or is the **AA going to have a fit over this (though I think we may already know that answer)?
Seriously I can do all this stuff now. These companies are so far behind the curve technologically one would be forgiven for thinking they don't deserve to make any money out of this. I'm struggling to see where they are adding value to the consumer.
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Are they really prepared for this? Assuming that the movies are compressed down to 600-700MB, what happens when the 'latest blockbuster' is released an everyone tries to download it at once. Few companies can cope with bombardments of this nature, and Tivo would have to have an awful lot of capital ready for an investment of this size.
Now I get to pay $x for a tivo subscription and $y for a broadband connection when rental is $x, which happens to be a lot less than $x or $y.
Still, I can see it working. There are a lot of people (hello, #divx on irchighway) who probably would pay for movies if they could download them easily and at high quality because of the unreasonable exertion that walking to the shops causes and the long queues for new releases on the fservs. These people probably all have fat pipes anyway, so it's not an extra cost.
My only problem is that I would have to buy a TV card as the A/V set up on my computer is far better than that on my TV. Bigger screen, much much better resolution and nicer speakers. Makes renting/borrowing DVDs nicer than a video-output-only device.
Beep beep.
Actually, Tivo wasn't 'dumped' by DirecTV. It was their stock in Tivo that they dropped (they had held 3.4 million shares).
This quote from the ArsTechnica article should elaborate:
"Though confirming the recent sale of TiVo stock for $24 million, DirecTV spokesman Bob Marsocci denied it indicates a change in the companies' relationship. "It's consistent with what we have done earlier this year in liquidating some of our portfolio of investments,'' Marsocci said. DirecTV sold its entire stake in XM Satellite Radio earlier this year."
As Ars mentions, this is certainly a bit of bad news for Tivo (and people like me, who love the extra features in DirecTivo units as compared to normal Tivos, and thus fear a full seperation...) but not as much of a 'drop' as this post implies.
"Stumble before you crawl"
I've never seen a digital video - either a downloaded DVD rip or something more official - which can compare to the quality of rips I do myself. There's no discussion over choice of codecs, nor what kinds of resolution to expect (and does anyone have the patience or room for HDTV-resolution movies?)
Replay allows users to share programs they've already recorded with others via the "Send Show" feature. This transmits up to 15 digital copies of shows over the Internet to other ReplayTV owner.
This also allows people who have not paid for premium channels to watch premium content for free.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
This should be 'redundant', since DirecTivo has long had the ability to record the porn from the On Demand channels (PPV), not to mention that Stand-alone Tivos have always been able to record from the cable boxes that have porn channels...
"Stumble before you crawl"
the head of the MPAA was quoted as saying, "Make the bad men stop!!!"
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
And iiinnn the red corner is Tivo a small but deeeaaaadly black box, iiinnn the BLUEE corner, is the huuuulking eiight huuundddreeedd poound gorillla motionpictureassociation OF AMERICAAAAAAAA!
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Tivo should become a cable company...bare with me for a moment. Big hard drive and good compression, fat pipe into the house, customers trained to watch things at odd ball times and not necessairly at the time of broadcast. Get a couple of networks together and will send the favorites to your Tivo box and you can watch them at some other point. Delivered shows without having to have a satelite or cable package! Send my wife House Hunters from HDTV, send me some History channel and I don't have to go spend 50 bucks for cable because I get it sent directly to me.
It would be a very interesting business model to employ something similar to Bit-Torrent for their distribution system. I immediately thought of the same problem, until I realized the incredible transfer rates you'd achieve with thousands of customers using an automated distributed content system.
A caveat would be that they'd have to have a large number of servers to handle the load of "esoteric" titles - that is, movies that only a very few people will download at any given time. Also, the distribution would be much faster for popular movies - Bit-Torrent relies on swarming and things.
But it'd be really interesting to see this kind of an implementation, even if they did rewrite the original.
Yeah, Tivo users will be able to download such internet classics as:
Fat Kid imitating Darth Maul
Drunk guy lighting fart on fire
Black guy talking about Whistle Tips on Car Muffler
Boy, You Tivo users sure are missing out on the latest in internet based video.
I was about | | far from ordering a "directivo" as they called it from Directv. (yes i know they are RIAA evil and sue anyone). There just isn't an competition in my market. Charter runs the cable company and they can't keep the cable up without an outage for longer than 24 hours. That left me with a choice between Directv and Dish Network.
Where is Directv going with this? I don't see anything in the article about a directv PVR replacement for the Tivo partnership.
Speaking of partnerships are we now allowing &partner=google on the main page?
-mck
On the surface this sounds great! I imagine this will be a ligit subscription service with parties lined up to play content provider in order to avoid them being the next Napster.
But how feasible is this?
Licensing media for internet is a complete pyrhia as far as the MPAA/RIAA is concerned -- though they have seemed to be a little less rabid towards those who try to play along and pay up as of late.
Also -- what quality can we be expecting.
People like me are all about HD content and with new services like Voom who focus on HD and are providing their own integerated tuner/DVR hardware (not yet released should be out within the next 2-3 months, how many devices are we expected to purchase?
Sure, if net-ready TiVo comes out, I'll be one of the first to buy -- but what's to keep the others from bullying them out? If DirecTV does kick TiVo to the curb, what's to prevent them from cross-licensing to the content providers themselves? I mean if BlockBuster or others start streaming, why would they limit themselves to TiVo owners only when any DSL/Cable/Satelite carrier can offer up a clone of the hardware/firmware and offer it to their hundreds of thousands of subscribers?
So while this sounds like a great move for TiVo in the short run, I'm not too optimistic about them not getting swallowed up/beaten to death by the big hitters who'll wait to see how it does in the market and then swoop down for hardball when/if it takes off.
For $3 a movie I can go to my video store and rent the DVD, rip it, and then burn as many copies as I want. This video on demand and Pay Per View stuff will never take off until they offer movies significantly cheaper than I could rent them for. I can watch a movie I rent as many times as I want for 5 days, make recordings of it, etc. With video on demand you get one shot and if you have to go to the bathroom, forget it.
I got the wireless network adapter for my TiVo last week and it already streams music from a folder called TiVo Online in the trial subscription of the "home media option." It has about 10 songs from "In Da Club" to "Stupid Girl."
Indeed, as Netflix practically begs you to make copies of your "rentals". I live about 10 miles away from a distribution center, so even USPS first class is next day for me. With their 5-disc $30 plan, I get about 20 new movies a month. And while such ripping violates the CDMA, it is an unenforcable aspect of copyright law. Back in the VHS days, rental stores assumed that most tapes were dubbed, and the MPAA did too, but there was nothing that could be done there, and little than can be here.
The article states that you need over 5 Mb/s to stream DVD quality video to consumers. Sure...if you are using Mpeg-2...
I've used the VideoLan player to stream a 3 Mb/s Xvid + 5.1 Surround AC3 stream with little or no buffering directly to my cable modem.
It works, and it's as good as DVD. Most cable modems are capable of at least 2.5 Mb/s. The only problem is network conjestion.
Now I get to pay $x for a tivo subscription and $y for a broadband connection when rental is $x, which happens to be a lot less than $x or $y.
Ya know, there are more than two letters in the alphabet to choose from.
My solution would be this:
Look, people say that they want television on demand... but as a Tivo owner of less than a year, I will tell you straight that they don't know what they want, but as a Tivo owner, I do. They just want to watch their shows when they sit down. When the shows get there? Not an issue.
They should make channels to take the programs and run them at something like ten to twelve times as fast as normal, or put them in file format and stream them exceedingly fast similar to a network.
In a few minutes you could have it. More importantly, this solves the whole commercial skip issue. You could have custom commercials dropped in based on the person you were marketing to. Imagine they know I am a computer geek by my Tivo, and they can hit me with a custom Half-Life 2 commercial. Would I watch it? HELL YES I WOULD.
It is not like I don't want to see ads. I scan the Sunday ads for bargains. I look at the local bargain newspapers. The problem with ads is that I am seeing ads that aren't my thing. I don't care about pantyhose. I am a man. If you give me a new barbecue sauce ad, I'll watch it. If you give me ads for a new processor, YES, I'll watch it. Gimme a movie trailer. I'll watch it.
Yes, I know it is not truly "video on demand," but the network needs would be exponentially increased for a true video on demand system... it would get worse until there was packet gridlock. If you ran four channels at ten times speed, you would have the content of forty channels for four band slots. Think about all of the channels this way. Would the public care if it said please wait five minutes for delivery? Only if the TV had no way to hold programs and search for them, lying in wait. Or would they like to delete a whole slew of programs and have the Tivo pick out another ten of them for them while they were browsing? You could repeat content through the day, have a fast delvery, and still not have to drop a huge network on top of a cable system.
My issue is that I think that video on demand is overrated. I think with a hard drive on my end I don't care when I get it... I am not enough of a brat to need it "NOW! Mommy! NOW!" If you speed up television delivery, and as the hard drive TVs have already shown, that video on demand WON'T MATTER AT ALL when your system knows what you like and gives it to you in anticipation. If you think that I want to press a button and get a crystal clear movie instantly, you're wrong. I want to browse. But whether I browse on a network or in my box is irrelevant... because currently my Tivo gives me a slew of choices. There is just not that much content.
Imagine the network architecture issues when people start "browsing" video on demand, because in essence, their slapping around giant files like people slap through channels.
Sure, video on demand can be done. It just looks so cost prohibitive right now that it is insane. The only real benefit of video on demand would be for news. Then I can custom my newscast. Lose the biased reporters. As a newsman, I admit, that would rock.
It should be mentioned that DirectTV did not "DUMP" Tivo, they instead dumped the shares of tivo that they owned. They will still be using tivo technology in thier receivers.
Also. the home media option is now available to every Tivo2 owner for free. No more $99. YAYYYY. Also, they have dropped the rates of seperate Tivos. While the first Tivo is still $12.95 per month, each extra Tivo in your house is only $6.95
3) DirecTivo units record and playback Dolby Digital 5.1 content (though this relates to #2 that you mentioned-- because Tivo doesn't modify the original stream). DirecTivo units have optical digital output, standalones do not.
4) DirecTivo units are available that support HDTV. They are expensive, and they have 250GB drives, but there are no standalone high-definition Tivo units yet. Also, the HD DirecTivo units have FOUR tuners... two satellite, and two antenna inputs for local HD channels. I'm not sure if it's capable of recording on all 4 simultaneously-- that's a lot of hard drive bandwidth!
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
... I really do.
Windows XP Media Center
breaking into market or crushing market. either way it's here or nearly here. as usual, everyone has to go nuts. it does the tivo thing, it does the windows thing, and it also does the crushing competition thing. did they miss anything?
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
Then promptly watch ISP's shut down these early adopters for actually using their broadband connection at full capacity...
going to tank cause of all the folks on my node d/l-ing movies! Thanks a lot! It's bad enough with the Linux distros and pr0n d/l-er's. What happens when the broadband ISPs start limiting everyone to X Gigs of d/l per month? Go rent the friggin DVD. It's a lot quicker.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
What % (roughly, back of napkin rules apply) of your customers subscribing to these various TV on demand schemes would it take before you would start to lose money on bandwith increases over what you are facing right now?
Might work if not for the MPAA/RIAA they will screw it up some how.
I look for them to start redoing the comercials of the 80's that were done for polution. hmmm "A MPAA guy (older man looking haggard) looking over a of poor hollywood types that are starving and turns to the camera with a tear down running down his cheek" Sigh...
Like others have already said, Tivo announced that they are considering offering on-demand-style programming separate from live broadcast network fare. This is no different from normal on-demand material, except that it is a Linux box smartly going out over your net connection to retrieve the content.
Tivo is struggling, now, to keep their customer base and to get others. They know that any geek with a Linux box and a tuner can pull together a new product that could displace them, so they are trying to keep the value of their product intact.
They have done some incredible things, and created a whole new disruptive technology, which I love. But they are making several mistakes. For one thing, I can't be the only person on the planet who wants separate folders for my search lists and content. I want all the 'Mail Calls' I can get, and my girlfriend wants all the 'SpongeBob' episodes. How about multiple users, Tivo?
Most Tivo hacking has been concerned with getting more disk space into the box. How hard would it be to allow my Tivo to archive or store overflow content on one or more networked shares?
And they are finally getting around to HDTV capability.
It will be interesting to see where Tivo is one year from now.
Make the Play bar disappear faster so you can read text on the screen.
This code take the format of "Select Play Select Something Select". These do not require backdoors to be enabled for them to work. The best way to do this type of code is to start playing a recorded program and do them while the recorded program is playing. They can be done from LiveTV as well, but people generally have a hard time getting them to work when trying to do that.
Select-Pause-Select-Pause-Select - Toggles the fast disappear of the Play bar. Appears to have no other major effect, but who knows.
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne