Slashdot Mirror
The Programmer Who Could Save Tivo
Damon Darlin from Business 2.0 writes "We just posted a story on Arthur Van Hoff, the programming legend who now works at TiVo. He was one of the Java geniuses at Sun (has almost as many patents as Bill Joy) and started Strangeberry, which Tivo bought in January.
the story tells how his Strangeberry software will be given away to developers of web content. The next generation Tivos will then be able to recognize web content and direct it to the appropriate home device. This could be the stuff that saves tivo because none of the set top boxes will have this ability.
Yeah, they were doing poorly, but have enough subscribers that they have a decent revenue stream. In fact, on the second page they even explain this. So this guy isn't 'saving TiVo', he's simply trying to make it enormous.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
But competition is coming on strong, with each of the major cable/sattelite providers trying to get in on a market untappedd by tivo (uk) and moving into it's territory (US) i wonder how long Tivo can stay number 1
Business Voyeur
I'm thinking that the idea is to build something that works like the news broadcasts in Babylon 5. You watch your news stream like you do today, but occasional "hot links" will be overlaid to take you to a "more info" website.
Personally, I'm not so sure about the idea. Television works by turning your brain off. The Internet works by turning your brain on (or at least the semblance of a brain that some people seem to carry). As with most situations where things are mixed, I fear you'll end up with the worst of the two instead of the best of the two.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Exactly. Since getting DirectTV in January, the amount of TV I watch has plummetted to virtually nothing. You can't channel flip when it takes fifteen seconds for the channel to change. The DirectTV Tivo doesn't even work right. The only thing it has ever recorded for me randomly are Spanish language movies, no matter how many thumbs down I give it. Several times, it has flat out not recorded items I told it to. Frequently, it records from channels I don't even get and then auto-deletes the recording as soon as it finished. I had a normal Tivo before this and swore by it. I'll be hooking it up again when my DirectTV subscription runs out in January and I can go back to cable.
Media extenders (for XBox or standalone), which is supposed to ship this Christmas season, will allow this in conjuntion with a Windows Media Center.
That device was stupid for so many reasons. First of all, most TVs dont have a line level audio out. And the ones that do, when you connect to it, disables the TVs internal speakers. So now you can't hear TV unless you redirect it through those cheapass lil speakers on your computer desk.
All so you can put ads for the same products being advertised on TV on the screen...
What was the thing where they'd broadcast URLs with the programming? I remember WebTV for windows could snag those URLs, and I thought it was a cool idea (some documentary on Discovery Channel could give me a bunch of links to good sites on ancient egypt). Or if there was a link to relevant subject matter for every Jeapordy! question (answer). That'd be cool too.
Only time I ever saw it used was when a Ford commercial came on, I got a link to ford.com.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Pressing Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select for 30 second skip on the remote doesn't qualify as "hacking through configuration screens".
The death of TiVo is greatly exaggerated. Time Warner offers the DVR in my area. I got it after using TiVo for 3 years. I sent it back within a week. The thing sucks.
TiVo's wealth of advantages are it's software. Season Passes, rating show thumbs up/thumbs down getting other shows based on your ratings, etc. I've used them since 2000. With the recent price reductions in the monthly charge it's well worth it. I've got one on both TVs and use my wireless network to connect for the updates/transfer files between them.
When I wanted to upgrade, I get a new one for $199 - $299 or whatever and keep paying the $12.95 for the first / $6.95 there after makes more sense than the $299 up front because I've yet to keep a TiVo for two years due to upgrades, change in whatever, etc.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Change the channel guide like this:
* Go to your guide,
* Hit the "info" button on your remote,
* Change the style from DirecTV grid to Tivo Live Guide.
The Tivo style guide is better (IMO) and super fast. I'm guessing that they had to include the DirecTV grid for some contractual reason, but really want to folks to use their EPG.
Jonathan
Arthur Van Hoff's resume replete with list of patents here.
For something that cost so little, it kicked ass in the functionally department.
After sitting and trying to remember what's on a channel by its 3-4 letter name (and having no easy way to flip to the channel to see what's on it) so I can delete it, I want to go to Direct TV and kick some ass in their Department of Functionality. I really don't want to spend the ample amount of time and effort that this worthless 'Channels I Receive' demands. Crap - I'd have to take notes, for god's sake.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
ITs called astroturfing.
Caveat Lector.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
For a less press release style suck up to TIVO, and more insightful, informative take, let's see what
Business Week has to say about TIVO.
Indeed, much of TiVo's installed base has come from its exclusive deal with DirecTV (DTV ), which has been hawking digital recorders as a differentiator from cable providers such as Comcast (CMCSA ). TiVo's agreement with DirecTV doesn't expire until 2007. But NDS (NNDS ), a sister company to DirecTV, recently revealed it has struck a deal to offer its competing digital-recording technology to new DirecTV customers. Sources say by as early as November, set-top-box makers such as Samsung and Thomson (TMS ) could begin shipping NDS digital recorders to DirecTV, which is considering offering them to new customers for free.
Meanwhile, TiVo has been stymied in its efforts to sign a major cable provider. Comcast, Time Warner (TWX ), and other cable companies have asked for better deals than TiVo is willing to accept, people with knowledge of the negotiations say.
Still, Ramsay remains confident that in a few years TiVo can boast as many as 10 million subscribers. It can reach profitability with 3 million standalone customers if its plan to diversify its business model with licensing and advertising revenue also takes shape, analysts predict.
In the interim, the losses continue. For the current quarter, analysts estimate TiVo will report a loss of 24 cents a share on revenue of $25.8 million. For the fiscal year ending January, 2005, they're expecting a loss of 95 cents a share, on revenue of $115.8 million. If TiVo keeps losing money and consumer mindshare, it could become takeover bait. Worse, it could become another forgotten pioneer of the new digital age.
Yep, I setup my appointment to get an Explorer 8000 from my cable company to play with. I'm sure it's not as nifty as a TiVo, but I'm not a fanatic. As long as I can select listings from a menu and tell it to record them I'll be happy.
Now, my MythTV can do that and more of course, but I don't want to fsck around with trying to control a digital cable box via IR blaster to record content on my premium channels like HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, and TMC since I'd need to front end each tuner in the mythtv backend with a digital cable box and IR blaster, make sure they don't conflict, etc. It seems like it'd be more of a pain in the ass than it's worth for me.
So, for 90% of my content I'll still use the MythTV, but for recording stuff off of pay channels and pay-per-view I can use the Explorer 8000 which has dual tuners built in.
I'm not so sure they necessarily meant web content as in web pages but more online resources. For example, they mention being able to pull a movie from a Netflix like website and view it whenever you please, the same could be done for other online videos or news sources. At least, this is what I hope they mean. I don't want to read any websites while watching something either. I think what really needs to happen first is for more publishers to put good content online, then devices like TiVo can make the most of it.
SIGFAULT
Want to (temporarily) save TiVo? Add a feature that will take a certain segment of the recorded video to an on-board dual-layer DVD recorder. Let the viewer have the option of cutting out the commercials, starting the recording at a certain spot and ending at a certain spot, pick up recording when the actual program restarts, etc. Once you are all done, you have a DVD for your collection.
What, you mean like the Pioneer DVR-320-S and Pioneer DVR-520H-S?
Okay, they don't have editing out commercials capability yet, and I doubt they are dual layer. So it's not totally there. But they do have Tivo+DVD Recorder.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
maybe even a less invasive phone-home spying scheme
Seriously, take off your tinfoil hat and shut the fuck up. If you can't see that TiVo aggregates data for your benefit, then you just tell them not to do it.
The privacy policy is exceedingly clear about this. Please come back with you have read it.
http://www.tivo.com/5.11.3.asp
We had an Explorer 8000 through Charter Cable. The thing was absolutely worthless.
The first one we had would record shows, but they would record very choppy. The audio and video would play a half second or so, then freeze for 2-3 seconds continually. Nothing recorded was even watchable.
They replaced that one with a new one. The new one would play back shows ok, but it would reboot itself 10-15 times per day. When you've got two kids under the age of 3 wondering why they can't ever watch their shows, that gets real annoying, fast.
They replaced that unit with a third one. It usually worked, but would occasionally forget to record a show, or scheduled recordings would be unscheduled for some reason.
The entire thing seemed really buggy, and was SLOW. It would take a few seconds to change channels, to pause, or do anything. That may not sound bad, but it gets frustrating when you change the channel, and it doesn't respond for a few seconds, so you press the button again, and you end up going past what you wanted.
Since then we dropped Charter (Except for the internet service), and now have Dish Network. Their DVR is better, but it still sucks in my opinion. We're planning on cancelling Dish Network pretty soon, and just getting a Tivo or Replay TV with basic cable.
The DirectTV Tivo has dual tuners. You can watch one live channel and record another, or you can watch a recording and record two live channels. I have had my unit for 3 years, so this really isn't new. FYI, the HTDV TiVo has four tuners.
What you are probably referring to is the TiVo stand-alone unit. The problem here is that TiVo has to encode the analog signal, something that the DirecTV or HDTV units (or your generic digital cable box) don't have to do. Dual tuners in these analog TiVo boxes would likely be prohibitively expensive.
"If I am such a genius, how come that I am drunk and lost in the desert with a bullet in my ass?" --Otto (Malcom ITM)
Paid $600 total for my 20 hour TiVo two years ago:
$200 for the TiVo itself,
$100 per 80 GB hard drive (2 of them)
$200 for the lifetime subscription
Everyone forgets to factor in that subscription cost. Had I gone with the recurring monthly fee, I would have paid $110 more than the above by now. I expect to have my series 1 TiVo for at least another two years. I figure by then I will be convinced by new features to spring for a new one. Now the new TiVos are $99 each, but I would still have to get another subscription to support it, and that is what keeps me from doing it. Were that fee 1/2 of what it is now, I feel many people would trample their friends to get a TiVo in the house.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
TiVo has a published API for the existing Home Media Option, which JavaHMO takes advantage of. It wouldn't be surpising if they do the same for their next generation Home Media offering.
Most modern TV's have multiple inputs and you can watch one program and record another for about 5 dollars at radio shack.
What I have done with mine is I put a splitter on my cable line before it reaches the Tivo Box. Now I have two coaxial cables that both carry cable for one TV. Run one into your TV's coaxial cable input and run the other into Tivo. Then take your yellow video cable and red and white audio cables that come out of Tivo and plug them into a second input jack on your TV.
Now on your main TV input you have your plain old cable(without movie channels:( ) and on input1 you have Tivo with everything your cable box descrables. I agree it's not the best solution but it's super easy and I use it all the time.
If you ever decide to drop your TiVO subscription and centralize your capture efforts and media collection, MythTV is really the way to go. I, too, have gone through the nightmare of trying to get it to work. BUT -- someone has made a working Knoppix-based Myth installer, called KnoppMyth. You boot up raw hardware (no OS needed) off this CD and it takes it from there. Basically converts any PC with a tv capture card and s-video out into a tricked out no-sub TiVO. Try it sometime. You might be impressed.
Intelligent Life on Earth
How user friendly is MythTV? My 3 year old knows how to watch and record shows with TiVo. I think the 6 year old taught him how. The only problem I have is he's filling up the disk.
It's pretty good -- my wife learned to use it without any 'formal' instruction, just playing around. Of course, getting it set up is a different matter -- but there is good documentation for that too.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
OK, what about the cost of the dedicated PC? Surely you can't find a PC of the required capability for $99, or even $99+$200 for the lifetime subscription. Or am I missing something?
Nope, you do need a spare PC. But it doesn't have to be particularly speccy; when I upgraded to a cheap eMachines Athlon workstation, I used my old machine as the basis for my MythTV box: 700Mhz Pentium III, 256Mb RAM, Voodoo 3 graphics card. The only outlay for me was the capture card ($150) and the 80Gb hard drive ($60 after rebate). Given that I was upgrading my computer anyway, the net cost to get my MythTV box going was therefore $210 -- not hugely cheaper than TiVO, but the box does quite a bit more than TiVO can (it acts as my home network's music server, and I also run various other services off it, since it is always up).
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Not dying, but definitely beginning to flounder. DirecTV is most likely going to switch to a homegrown box in the next year or two. TiVo has no other deals (at least none that are public yet) with large providers and that is really what would keep their current business afloat for the long-haul.
I still have hopes that they'll make a digital cable version of their HDTiVo and that then they'll be able to ink some serious deals. However if that doesn't happen they are in serious trouble in the not too distant future. Between Moxi, NDS (the DVR that DirecTV will begin using next year in conjunction with TiVo boxes if rumors are true), embedded players like MontaVista (who don't sell anything direct but have been working with Japanese DVR manufacturers) and various knock-offs and cheap (cheap being good in the mass-market STB world even at the expense of features).
Perhaps TiVo will cut out a new niche, but it will be alot harder to do that with something other than TV since that is what 99% of the consumers think of when they think entertainment.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
While the MythTV software may be free, how much money did you spend on the hardware?
If you look at my post here, you'll see I built my system for $210 -- with the proviso that I had an old computer knocking around to use at 'zero' cost, and I also had a lot of time on my hands. But all in all I still think it was a good deal; I saved a little money, learned a lot, and had fun.
Oh, and my MythTV box isn't a sexy mico-ITX; it's a midi tower with huge HD fans on it, sounding like a small vacuum cleaner. It sits in my basement, with three cables coming up (discreetly, mind you!) through the living room floor to connect it to the TV: picture, sound and IR remote. Boy it's ugly, but it works!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Having looked into this a little bit, it appears that the cheapest decent PVR box constructable with retail components and MythTV is still going to run you around $250 plus labor to assemble and install. Compare this to $270 for an 80-hour Tivo, with a $100 mail-in rebate.
Now, with Tivo there is still the subscription price, but the best bet economically would be to go with Tivo. (or other commercial PVR) Of course, if you have many of the expensive components for a PVR already lying around and assemble PC's all the time (and enjoy doing so), then I guess MythTV could be for you.
Also, if you're willing to hack and fiddle with things to achieve some particular purpose not available with an off-the-shelf Tivo (I don't know - integration with your internet-enabled toaster or something), then the choice is clear. (but if so, then you knew that)
But for everyone else? Tivo. Were I in the market for a PVR, I'd just get a Tivo, and I say that as someone who just a week ago had three computers disassembled all over the office, messing with dd and hexedit to turn a toasted machine (physical read error on the sector with the root directory) back into one which not only boots again, but appears to be in perfect working order. With other people, it might be the time or computer hardware/software fiddling involved; with me, the hardware prices just don't favor building it myself.
And then there's the radical option of simply not watching TV at all...
Just to keep the facts straight, I spent $500, did absolutely zero research, dug up a dusty old Hauppauge WinTV PCI card, and it "just worked" (TM). Only after that did I spend time trying to get it working by hand because I wanted to know how it worked. Nothing about days or weeks spent setting it up. Just boot up, choose the option to reformat and install on the PC, let it install, enter my zip code, choose my cable provider, and I had a PVR in 30 minutes that also had news headlines and a local weather radar loop as a screen saver. So no, its not hard to compete with your TiVO setup time. Not at all.
And after 2 1/2 years, the two will cross each other at cost effectiveness. A LOT sooner if you order the home media option for your TiVO to get half of what Myth offers.
And I do have a tricked out TiVO so I didn't keep Myth. I am planning on going back, though, since I need a content server for my CarPC project. Just saying, don't be so dismissive. KnoppMyth works very, very well and is quite easy to setup.
Intelligent Life on Earth
TiVo is as much a service as it is a box. You can buy the box and dig up the data yourself, programming it to blindly tape channel 59 every Friday at 8, and then having to guess on the Now Playing list which manual recording is the one you want, or you can pay a few bucks a month to know that you're going to record Stargate SG-1 every time a new episode comes up.
Personally my time is valuable enough that I can pay someone $13 a month to help me find shows I will enjoy watching in the limited time I allocate to television watching, plus alert me to things I might enjoy watching that I wouldn't otherwise know about, plus automatically search for shows I want to see that aren't currently on the schedule (my current list includes watching for The Seven Samurai, the musical Damn Yankees! and anyone who decides to rerun Due South), plus the ability to skip through commercials . . . but of course you are the one who is competent to judge what your time is worth, and your mileage may vary.
As for DirecTiVo . . . I'd check into that before I buy, based from what I've read in this article. It might be perfect for you, or you might find that it takes 30 seconds to change channels and you get to pay extra for the TiVo data anyway. (I don't know, I don't have DirecTV and I'm happy with what I have.)
Someone you trust is one of us.