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Microsoft Takes on TiVo
CatsCradle writes "The Seattle Times has an article about Microsoft's Foundation and their new partnership with Comcast to provide a TiVo-like service."
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Didnt' they already try this?
Yup thought so
I have Comcast's current HDTV/PVR offering, and it pales in comparison to my series 1 standalone TiVO. To get a season pass, you search by title, and individually record each episode that shows up in the search results.
Just about everything you like about the TiVO ain't there yet for "Com-assed". The one big thing the box has going for it is direct firewire access to the current video stream including on demand content, hdtv, and stuff from the dvr library. Of course, once MS gets loaded on the box, you know they're going to lock it down.
Intelligent Life on Earth
Seriously? It was yesterday, during boot-up. I had to power it off. Thankfully, it did not blue-screen during the next boot.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
This is all available now with Windows XP Media Center Edition. Once the price drops down to $500 for a VCR like unit, I think we'll all have them.
Not a huge Microsoft fan, but I'm developing a channel for this system, and I gotta tell you, it's pretty slick.
Lets see:
Microsoft + Echostar = DishPlayer
Microsoft + DirecTV = Ultimate TV
Microsoft + Comcast = ?
I actually owned a DishPlayer. The problems with it to me wern't horrible, but it did cause a class action lawsuit to be brought against Echostar. Their new PVRs never matched the features of the DishPlayer, but they at least were stable.
According to the article you'll be able to "pause and rewind live television broadcasts" and record shows. There is no mention of any ability to fastforward or skip commericals. Thus it is highly unlikely that any such feature exists.
Tivo was a huge giant step forward for consumers, Microsoft's taking us a couple steps back.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
My Tivo automatigically calls home and downloads updates and has been doing this since day one years ago. DirectTv has already changed the logo that used to say Philips Tivo to Direct TV. They've made updates to the UI which were (thankfully) an improvement. So what's new?
Mmmm, secure HDTV. Don't want any of those pesky users exercizing their rights! Let's make sure that we can keep them from recording what you don't want them to. That way you can target them with even MORE advertising because they will be forced to watch what WE want them to watch.
Timeshifting be damned!
"Sell and Secure HDTV Homes" means "get people who use HDTV to use our cable system, and keep them from switching to satellite". This should be clear from the context, as the next sentance reads "Microsoft TV Foundation 1.7 helps you attract and retain your most valuable consumers by highlighting high-definition TV programming".
Your rant about timeshifting rights is poorly informed. People who actually HAVE a Motorola DCT6412 set-top unit (the kind being used with the MSTVF1.7 rollout) report that it allows recording to the built-in hard drive for all content, and allows HD transfers out to other devices over Firewire.
Sure, there might be a gotcha in there somewhere about 5C or broadcast flags, but none is mentioned anywhere I've found. Care to tell us what it is? Is it any different if the DCT6412 has, say, Pioneer Passport, or iGuide, on it instead of MSTVF?
-- Jeff Paulsen
They had a review of MCE2k5 (and MythTV) and Myth vs. MCE2k4).
You're right. You don't ever see a BSOD on XP because Microsoft "fixed" it by having it automatically reboot as soon as it does it by default.
Yup, no more BSOD! Just random reboots instead. Good work team!
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I'm far from the first to get excited about an MS product. But at the end of the day, ya gotta be objective.
I've had MS' earlier attempt at a DVR, UltimateTV, integrated with my DirecTV service for awhile now. Truth be told, it's pretty good. MS hasn't updated the now-orphaned software in a long time, so it's a platform with no future. But from all I read in other forums, those DirecTV users who've had to switch to DirecTivo are less than thrilled with the change. The UTV software is quite stable, the guide is fast, and it organizes shows in logical folders. As Apple users like to say, "it just works". You don't hear that often about MS products, but credit where its due.
The one gripe I do have with UTV is that its not hackable. If I had a DirecTivo, I could hack it up to the latest Tivo OS, and pull recorded shows off the unit onto a PC. There is no way to do this (in the digtial domain) with UTV. As far as I know nobody has figured out such a hack yet.