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Engadget Interviews TiVo CEO
r-blo writes "We've got an interview of Mike Ramsay, CEO of TiVo, by Engadget correspondent J.D. Lasica. He's rather candid in his thoughts on Hollywood, Netflix, the FCC, the INDUCE act, their competition, and their latest technology, TiVo ToGo, which lets you take your TiVo-recorded shows with you on your laptop (or PC, as it were)."
From the interview...
How are you negotiating your relationship with Hollywood after they essentially put your main competitor out of business?
Our role is to create a great experience for people who want to watch television. ReplayTV crossed a line, and they kind of asked for it, and they were put out of business.
The Hollywood industry never really liked the Betamax VCR, so they certainly must be scared of DVRs. The features that got ReplayTV into trouble was "Show sharing" accross the Internet, and a semi-automatic skipping of commercials it could detect.
TiVo of course has never offered such features, and TiVo-to-Go will be based on a USB dongle to tie recordings to the user who recorded them and try to stand in the way of user-to-user sharing.
It's a strange world they live in... loved by consumers, but being careful to keep the Hollywood megacorps from crushing them.
High definition will become more commonplace. Five years from now, you'll be able to get television content over broadband, whether it's over satellite or cable, and it will be the start of some new and interesting sources of content which has not been available to people to date. And five years from now, the idea of electronic delivery of video rentals will be real. Blockbuster will still be in business, but the idea of getting your video rental over broadband will have started to happen.
this is an interesting and very realistic view on the future. Very often the demise of video rental is predicted within the next five years, as is the death of traditional tv. Ramsay seems to understand this won't happen overnight. As he says, it will begin to happen, but won't be as sudden as is often predicted by media outlets searching for flashy stories.
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Replay got beaten into submission by lawsuits over their ability to share shows over the Internet and their automatic commercial skipping. They eventually removed both features from their products, even the ones already sold, via a software update. Both of those features are things TiVo never had.
As a result, they're now a total also-ran being dwarfed by TiVo's market share. They still exists... but you might as well be compatible with the rest of the world and get a TiVo. ReplayTV just lacks any features that makes them stand out since they got thrown off the anti-Hollywood wagon.
Is TiVo a company that I should support with my dollars?
I recently got a Tivo and my feeling is that yes, this is a company that deserves my support. If you decide you need a PVR, then Tivo is an excellent product, with an easy interface and backed by a company that is not just a bunch of asshats.
Of course you can also roll over your own solution based on the free software that floats around th net (MythTV). You will probably have a lot of fun and a lot of headaches with it. On the short term it will cost you more, but you will avoid the monthly payment ($12.95). In my case, I just wanted to have something I could just plug in and enjoy.
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
$100 new for a 40 hour series 2 Tivo right now (with mail in rebate). See here for details.
We had two series 1 Tivos, and we just updated to 2 series 2 Tivos. The cool thing about the series 2 is, they support ethernet (or wireless) out of the box (with a USB ethernet/wireless adaptor). You hook the two up, and then you can use the Remote viewing feature to transfer shows between the two.
Oh, and if that's not enough, you can even schedule recordings online, so if you're on holiday on the other side of the planet, and someone emails you to let you know $COOL_SHOW is on, you can browse to the website and tell your Tivo to record it for you. How damn cool is that?
Before anyone responds, yeah I know you can probably do all this and more with MythTV, but for $100, you can't really go wrong, and it's a really nicely integrated solution for people who just want to plug and play.
It should be pointed out that on the semi-offical TiVoCommunity.com boards, any form of getting video out of a TiVo other than playing back the file and recording that is a verbotten topic. Digital video extraction from a TiVo is possible, but it requires modifying the TiVo software to remove intentional encryption that's being applied.
TiVo doesn't support moving files to your computer yet, and it's highly likely that TiVo-To-Go will permit storing and watching of files but nothing more.
Bottom line... if you want to get unrestricted MPEG files out of your TiVo, you can, but you have to go a long way to make it work, and you end up no longer being officially supported. TiVo's ass is covered.
http://www.tivo.com/linux/
Quote from the site:
In compliance with the GPL, we are pleased to provide our modifications to the Linux PowerPC Kernel, as well as a few new commands, and some tools to get you into the code.
Additionally, if you would like a CD-R of our modifications you may send a written request to:
TiVo Inc.
2160 Gold St.
Alviso CA 95002-2160
Attention: Customer Care - GNU/Linux Source Code Request.
You will be charged a $15 fee for reproduction, shipping and handling costs, as allowed by the GPL. Make sure that you include a bank certified check for $15.00. Otherwise, you can download the code for free from below:
This is the first I've seen it and it's already annoying. Please never do that again.
~ Aero
A probably unoriginal analogy for the INDUCE Act: what if GM and Ford got sued because their vehicles can go faster than the speed limit?
sigs, as if you care.
I have had TiVo now for years. I wish the interviewer had asked Mr. TiVo President why they NEVER improve their interface. It always is the same. Many many clicks to get common tasks done, long pauses waiting for poorly implemented algorithms to finish, lack of customizability. As much as I love TiVo, I wish they would make it more configurable and flexible. For example, I wish I could set up arbitrary filters, instead of choosing from their sets. Also, I wish I could use wildcards. And I wish I could set up shortcuts for common operations. And I wish I had a keyboard to make typing easier. Their interface NEVER improves. Did I mention that? :-)
Currently hooked on AMP
Not media consolidation. Not FCC rules over capping media cross-ownership. But this:
Will the average American (not the typical /.er, but Joe and Jane Public) be given access to Internet media in their living rooms? Or will the corporate giants continue to impose a chokehold over the content coming through those pipes? (Yes, 500 cable channels are nice, until you discover that an entire range of commentary and visual creativity are kept off of all 500 of those channels.)
1) There is no subscription fee for TiVo2Go; there never was going to be any. It's going to be part of HMO, which is free now anyway, to TiVo subscribers.
2) There is no TiVo2Go dongle. That was one idea they floated early on, when TiVo2Go was first announced, but that was dropped a long time ago. There is no dongle.
3) You pay the monthly fee, or the lifetime fee, for the total service package - guide listings, software updates (including TiVo2Go) and the rest. I've had TiVo since 2000, and multiple TiVos since 2003, and in that time I've seen the TiVo service increase in usefulness and overall excellence by leaps and bounds. By paying for the service, you get a kickass device that no one else can match. It is money well worth spending.
As to TiVo2Go, again, you are grossly misinformed. There is no extra charge, no dongles. TiVo video files will be encrypted on PCs running TiVo2Go, so as to prevent "piracy", legally protecting TiVo from lawsuits. But you can burn your TiVo2Go material to a DVD, and at that point you can do whatever you want with the content - copy back on to your PC, or whatever.
People who complain about TiVo2Go are simply ignorant. You can do whatever you want with the TV content - provided you burn it to DVD. Unless you are an obsessive packrat and are archiving every TV show you ever watched, this really isn't a "problem".
There is not that exact feature, but you can get to see if the show is being rebroadcast soon much easier.
If you actually press record, you can select Season Pass and other options. And in the following screen you can select View upcomning episodes. Done!