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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.
Boxing Equipment Reviews
...how does TiVo get saved when they're really the only viable PVR in the mass consumer market?
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
come on now, don't we know better than to gauge the intellectual capacity of someone by how many patents they hold?
Isn't the fact that Tivo can't (or didn't) get patent protection for its business just as strong an indictment of the patent system as all the lame patents we complain about?
It means dumbass marketroid babble. The summary starts with "Damon Darlin from Business 2.0 writes". That pretty much says it all.
If they'd publish a SDK and you'll have *millions* of programmers saving Tivo, instead of just one.
And an easy way of deleting channels - with a thumbnail that shows what's on it?
And the prevention of third parties removing all sorts of useful features like home media option, networking, ect. (DirectTV, you dirty SOBs).
Admittedly, these are the big 3 things that annoy me about my Tivo - I don't know if they are common to standalones, but IMHO DirectTV has really wrecked something good
Direct TV is slow just on it's own. My parents had direct TV (got it after I went off to college, the bastards!) and the guide was always slow. So my guess is it's not the TIVO software, but the direct TV software. It probably has something to do with the fact that it's through a satellite uplink rather than cable. Perhaps everytime you try to access the guide, it tries to download it, rather than updating the guide periodically? My parents now have digital cable, and the guide functions work a hell of a lot faster now.
This might be a little off topic, but I think its ok since it deals with TIVO's competition. I recently had Comcast digital cable installed and have been playing around with the On Demand feature. So far it seems like a promising feature, but needs much more content. The thing I like about On Demand is, unlike TIVO, is that I can watch something that didn't necessarily air yet (although in reality almost all of the content is previously aired stuff). I think that as soon as networks start to embrace On Demand type services more, it will be a big hit, making boxes like TIVO almost obsolete. I think what they should strive for now is putting up entire old seasons of television shows. I think it would be great to be able to watch any episode of Futurama when I want and for series that are still being run, they could add the new episodes a day after they air. On Demand should shape up to be a great technology, but right now it definetly needs better content. I can't really complain seeing how it comes free with any digital cable package. However, since they do use it as a major selling point I think Comcast should work with the networks to get better grade material on it. Once they do, I will never want to use a TIVO.
SIGFAULT
were doing poorly ???
Try ARE doing poorly.
5 year stock price chart
Salient fact about TIVO : TIVO loses money. Decent revenue stream you say? Continual loses for an easy-to-clone product from an aging Silicon Valley company is bad news. A programmer from Strangeberry who invented Java is not going to save TIVO. Did Java save sun ?
Java is one of the very, very few programming languages ever created which brought no new ideas to programming. It's more or less a subset of C++, with a garbage-collector (as popularized by Lisp in the 1960s). The original intent was to compile it to a compact interpretable form somewhat like BCPL's ocode (circa 1970).
having a jillion patents means he is pretty aware of the legal system and that he in fact needs to protect is IP, in particular with which industry he is in.
it is not necessarilly a factor in "genius" in my opinion, it is however a factor in "covering of the buttocks" in a hardened and cutthroat television device busines..
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
TiVo has the mindshare and still remains the best of breed PVR out there, both in terms of technology and UI. Geeks might not think UI is important but it really is; jJust examine this account of what goes wrong when the technology is there (sort of) but the UI is not.
~jeff
There are many uses here.
An interesting point that the article speaks briefly about is advertising and how advertisers hate Tivo because it can skip adds. The article mentions using Tivo's stat keeping to target a customer more directly and deliever relevant ads. I think this is really the future for advertising, not the static model of current television. For instance, I hate most adds because I'm not interested in what they are selling. I don't care if the newest Maxi pad can absorb a whole pitcher of iced tea, as a male I'm never going to need them. I often find car commercials very, very annoying, but when I was looking for a new car it was uesful to know what companies were having incentives. If ad companies could send me ads about products or television shows that I would be interested in, I think I might actually like to view them. Hopefully services like Tivo will help to bring this about.
SIGFAULT
It seems to me that the fee is a total ripoff. Why would I want to pay for something that offers nothing?? Because I want to have shows recorded that I don't want to watch??
All I want is a glorified VCR and not get ripped off. Why is that sooo hard??
Does TiVo really need saving? It's the best PVR around... you plug it in, and it just works. TiVo gets it.
I heard someone say recently that TiVo is the Macintosh of PVR's. They were talking about ease of use, not market share. As far as I know, TiVo is pretty much the Microsoft of PVR's in terms of market share. Or at least the Dell.
If TiVo is having financial issues, I don't think it's because of lack of consumer interest or difficulty in selling units. It could well be due to regular, difficult, business issues, like having too many irons in the fire or having to worry about Microsoft's nefarious tactics. I'm sure that the cable companies are trying to horn in on TiVo's market with their various video on demand services, but they tend not to work as well as TiVo anyway.
But really, TiVo is a great device/service that already does exactly what I want it to do. They don't need to turn it into something else.
TiVo's tenacious market position and profit margins has been a frontpage business story for months now. Great product, yes, but they are in an awkward crossroads businesswise.
I am very concerned that moving forward TiVO and HD will be largely incompatible.
The movement of video enthusiasts to HDTV is a massive looming problem, as Tivo has little possibility of distribution of HDTV without a carrier deal, and their only existing one (DirectTV) is a tenuous one at best.
It has already been regulated that HD signals will be flagged for copyright and all hardware manufacturers will be required by the FCC to honor it by not recording HD flagged with it, which could cast a long shadow over OTA HD recording.
Cable companies are moving forward with making money off their own (likely lameass) HD cable box PVR solutions, and seemingly have no intention of opening their HD boxes to TiVo access.
Strangeberry is a solution i search of a problem.
The problem is HDTV. IMHO, PVR is more important than HDTV, but I sure am tired of watching TiVo programming on my 16:9 42" HDTV - its not pretty, even in Extreme Fine Quality mode.
tivo story, but its still as true now as a week ago.
MythTV is a nightmare to set up, and there's no company out there that I can buy a pre-configured one from. KnoppMyth may work if you have a certain set of hardware, but my time is far too valuable to spend a week researching the right hardware, buying $500 or $1000 worth of computing equipment and a case suitable for going in my living room, and blowing a day setting it all up.
If I could buy a decent looking unit that I plugged in and works, then I'd buy one. Until then, I've outgrown the need to blow days at a time playing with that sort of stuff. I enjoy it sometimes, but I'm just plain too busy.
At $100 for a Tivo, thats maybe an hour or two worth of my time. Hard to compete with that.