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Will New Apps Keep TiVo Afloat?
Dave Zatz writes "Tivo, struggling to keep customers and inch towards profitability as execs step down,
has continued to shift focus from pure PVR functionality towards digital convergence. Tivo's recently
released Home Media Engine SDK extends Tivo's capabilities as developers churn early Java apps out, including
the eBay-developed BuyItNow
and the independent Airport Express
AirTunes remote control. The recently released Tivo
To Go allows PC users to transfer shows to their computers for viewing, editing,
and burning shows. Mac users aren't entirely forgotten - a hidden feature in the
OSX Tivo Desktop 1.9 provides AAC
music playback through the television."
Legality aside, is TTG another thing that media publishers have to worry about in the future? First it was MP3 downloads, then came the movie downloads, now this TV downloads?
It reminds me of Futurama, since it was usually scheduled to be interrupted or pre-empted by the football, fans have to resort to downloading from the internet, and Fox was sending C&D letters left right and centre.
Now that people can pre-record these TV shows, edit out advertisement and "potentially" share them illegally over the internet on P2P network (there you go, I have used all "keywords" in one sentence), I'm sure companies will starting complaining about lost sales in DVDs/Ad placements.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Download times vary widely. Most people report shows transferring a little quicker or a little slower than real time, meaning if you have a one hour show it will take about an hour to transfer. Many factors impact your throughput including file size based on recording quality and your network design. For example a show recorded in high quality will take longer to transfer than a show recorded in basic quality.
:)
I finally got my Tivo2Go system upgrade about two weeks ago (it took quite a while to come down to my unit) and I tried it out. I was absolutely dumbfounded at how slow the video file transferred over.
I intended on copying over the entire Tivo contents and then coverting them w/Dr. Divx (quite the task on my slower 2x400 Celeron machine) and then watching them on my Archos. Well, when I saw how slow the damn thing copied in the first place I figured why not just keep using the "Save to VCR" function as I have been doing?
What I would like to see is a "Save to VCR" function that will let me queue up multiple shows and save them all in one shot rather than one at a time. I could set the Archos up and let it record for a couple hours over night. Wake up and be done.
Tivo2Go sounded wonderful until I realized it was in a format that was worthless to go straight to a portable media device, it was slow as hell to bring over from the unit, and then it was slow as hell to convert with Dr. Divx.
Blah. Just do as I asked and change the "Save to VCR" function for me
N attempts to turn TV into a general purpose information appliance, N failures. This will be no different - no, I do not want to shop for eBay auctions on my television.
I think it's too late for Tivo. They should have done this a couple years ago. Now everyone has their own PVR. I have had a "DVR" from DishNetwork for almost 2 years. With DirecTV and Comcast setting their own box out... that's the final 2 nails in the coffin...
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
A company out there, whos had their market influenced by competition and innovation, trying to improve their business by means other than litigation.
I'm not one who watches much TV, therefor a Tivo was never big on my shopping list, but I have to say its refreshing to see a company try to improve their product rather than sue the compition.
Heres to you Tivo, and best of luck.
#include sig.h
This could be a great thing for advertisers imagine being able to have a buy it now logo pop up during your comercial. But I guess if you are watching on a Tivo you wouldn't see the commercial.
- Tivo sells PVRs.
- Microsoft, afraid that Tivo could someday use its position as a PVR vendor to push upward into areas of functionality traditionally the sole domain of the PC, starts trying to muscle into the PVR market so as to eventually make PVR sales impossible to profit from, at least for Tivo.
- Tivo, beginning to realize that soon PVR sales will be impossible to profit from, begins to push upward into areas of functionality traditionally the sole domain of the PC in order to retain health.
And I laugh.as a replaytv owner and a software developer, I'd love to have these features.
I went for the replaytv because it had a better quality video output but now I'm starting to second guess.
I'm a loyal TiVo customer, and I simply don't get what this company is trying to do. They've basically blown it with the cable providers, so their only real hope in making some serious cash just hit the shitter. I kinda feel like the first days of Java when it was thrown out ther to "developers" who created useless applets. I have no desire to look at pictures on my TV. I can do that by plugging in my digital camera. I have no desire to share stuff with my Mac, unless I can download the videos in a normal codec (MPG) and save stuff on my computer.
What else is there to do on this thing that developers are really going to tap into to get my mom, dad, sister and in-laws to buy a TiVo?
I've said this before, but I am dead serious: they need more porn. It's always driven technology and made money. The cable companies are cashing in. The hotel chains are cashing in. The industry is cashing in. Now, that won't mak my family buy it, per se, but people WILL buy it if they see more hooters and camel toe.
This move for a "developers kit" it desperate becaue they can't think of anything else. They need a CEO like Jobs, because a visionary who can execute is the only way this company will be saved.
Fortunately, they are based on a decent OS and, by opening the platform up to the developers, can appeal directly to users.
It will take a long while for cable-companies to offer anything comparable on their proprietary boxes.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"TiVo: TV Our Way"
sulli
RTFJ.
The "PSX" combination Playstation 2 / PVR device released last year had the capability to take saved TV shows and burn them to DVDs using a built-in DVD-R drive. It was only available in Japan and sold extremely poorly, but that's something.
Tivo, struggling to keep customers and inch towards profitability as execs step down, has continued to shift focus from pure PVR functionality towards digital convergence.
I'm not sure Digital Convergence is the model Tivo should follow. Although I suppose it'll be alright, eventually, now that their primary product has entered the realm of open-source tinkering.
Oh, you mean the failure to capitalize Digital Convergence wasn't an editorial accident? Oops.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
TV viewers want a PVR, not a set top box running lilux with a bunch of custom apps (i.e. a MythTV set top box).
If the device does the PVR thing well, then it does its job. I'm certainly not going to pay Tivo a premium price for the box and the service just to be able to runa bunch of java apps, when I can get a dual tuner pvr which does everything I need for a nominal rental fee from my provider.
Tivo is doomed.
can you use, or get any worth out of, these java applets or whatever without having a PC set up there as a controller?
Because this is the big deal to me. If the Tivo becomes an actual, convenient platform for certain PC tasks... well that's awfully hard to pull off, but maybe it's something consumers can be sold on if it's done right. However if it just becomes an accessory to your PC there's no point. WTF, if I wanted to run java applets I'd do it on my PC. The only reason this would have any attraction is with people who don't want to bother with or don't want to understand PCs, people who would prefer AOL to "the internet". Require fudging with networking to a PC and hooking up software there and you've lost those people entirely.
Good idea about Jobs. I think Apple should buy TiVo. It would fit perfectly into their whole home-media-centricity. If Apple bought TiVo it would instantly put them ahead of Microsoft's Media Center and give them a real wedge into the living room. And porting TiVo's application layer to OS X should be pretty straightforward if they want TiVo 3 to be a Mac for the living room.
What really bugs me about the attempts to stop TV from being shared on the web is the lack of thought about cause and effect.
Here's a question: Why would anybody download a show off the internet?
Here's a few answers:
1.) Because I or my TiVo missed it.
2.) I didn't know about the show until after it had aired.
3.) Everybody's telling me about this show, but I want to see the original episode first.
4.) I want to have a copy I can watch over and over again.
5.) The picture quality of the downloaded version is better. (Believe it or not, I really have run into this.)
6.) I can't get that show, I don't have the right channel nor can I get it.
I doubt that an answer like "I'm sick of commercials" would be a widely used one. Who'd want to spend > 1 hour downloading a show to save 12 minutes in commercials? Not a lot.
Imagine what would happen if all of these reasons were addressed. Who would want to acquire unauthorized copies then? What if it became standard for the first episode of any series to be available for download on the show's website? What if DVD releases of TV shows happened closer to when they were originally aired? What if I could pay a couple of bucks to buy download of an episode I missed? Who'd even bother with transferring files over the net then?
Lots of business opportunities here. *Sigh*
"Derp de derp."
Could the Home Media Engine java SDK be used as a delivery platform for porn? I do not see why not.
Is the link in your sig yours, I.E. do you work there? Maybe you could look into this. As you observe, there is definitely a marketable demand for the convergence of Tivo and porn. If you act relatively soon you can meet that demand before anyone else.
a 200 gig harddrive, some video editing software that can cut & spice and a DVD +R burner, that would be groovy...
Wow, you would think that none of you had ever heard of a Replay. It's had this functionality for half a decade. And tons more! I'm soooo sick of hearing about how Tivo is trying to add functionality that Replay users have enjoyed for years and calling it "new". Get a Replay, get DVArchive, sign up with poopli, and get ReVue if you feel you must. Let Tivo die. Check out Replay and you'll agree with me. It's archaic in comparison.
It'd be different if it were on purpose...
Tivo's a great product, but they keep trying to let the users do everything they want....so long as it doesn't make any large companies sad. Here's what they need to do: 1.) Open the system fully. The Tivo started as a very hackable device, but they've been moving to a more and more closed environment. There should be guides on their own website explaining how to add hard drives. There's no reason we can't plug in a USB mouse and keyboard and run X on the thing. 2.) Open exports and imports. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to download an mpg file from my Tivo or load a new one into it. As much as I understand that they don't want to piss off corporations, TV my way is TV where I can send shows I like to my friends and archive my favorites on a permanent medium for myself. It ain't any less legal than a VCR. 3.) Offer a warranty. The TiVo is covered in stickers warning that doing anything except plugging it in will void your warranty, but the "warranty" is an offer to replace it for a small discount if it breaks. It it breaks, and I didn't touch it, and it's been less than a year or so, I want a new one, and I don't intend to pay them. 4.) Put in ad skipping. Sure, it won't endear you to anyone, but they don't like you anyway. Remember, the customer of the cable company is the advertiser. You are not a cable company. Your customer is the person who buys a TiVo. That's important. I'll repeat it. Your customers are not advertisers. They are not cable companies. They are not producers, movie-makers, or any of them. Your job is to appeal to consumers and only consumers. The advertisers will pay you for popups and the like, but if people don't buy TiVo's, you're out of business.
Second, DL times are slow because the TiVO has to wrap the video stream in DRM, and it can only do that so fast.
So, the average user finds themself having to do all sorts of gymnastics to get the benefits that the marketing material promised would come from TTG. And it STILL doesn't allow you to do useful things like put your Home Movies on (or stream them to) your TiVO.
And they wonder why their subscriber base is declining?
----
I talk TiVO and HTPC a bit here too... :-)
I just got a Tivo 2 unit from Circuit City, and I'm going to hook it up to my cable, broadband, and wireless (encrypted) network.
Any high points or gotchas?
(Yes, I'm reading the FM, but you know that stuff usually misses one or two salient points)
Will I get one of these apps when the unit updates?
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
As others have noted, the file transfer time is very slow. I guess this may be due to the Tivo's slow processor and the fact that the Tivo is still functioning (recording and playing back etc.) while the transfer is going.
Supposedly the Tivo Series 2 units have USB 2.0 ports and the drivers with the 7.1 upgrade are supposed to enable USB 2.0 - but apparently this hasn't resulted in much of a speed gain. There are some notes on this in the Tivo forums.
The media files you pull over are protected with DRM. They are linked to your Tivo device's media access key and require a password to play. There are a few methods circulating for stripping the DRM such as this one using GraphEdit:
TiVo To Go MPEG2 Decrypting
The files are MPEG2 which means they are pretty darn big. You can expect about 1.2 gigabytes for an hour show at medium quality. Despite the huge file size, the image quality on the shows I have transfered isn't that great. The output seems grainy compared to video caps I've done straight off of a composite video cable. The signal on the TV is clean.The last problem I've had is with playback of the Tivo files on Windows 2000. I have a DVD player installed and can play DVDs fine. I also have the AC3 codec installed so audio works fine (for example on Divx files with AC3 audio). But MPEG2 playback on any sort except standard DVD comes out squished. The horizontal aspect ratio is messed up, so everyone looks anorexic. Does anyone know how to fix this? I have no problems playing back on Windows XP. So while it's nice to finally be able to move stuff off when the Tivo is getting full (and no I don't want to hack it - if I broke the Tivo the girlfriend would kill me) the service certainly has room for improvement. Also the fact that the upcoming software for burning the shows to DVD (Sonic MyDVD) is being sold not included with Tivo service is pretty lame.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
"has continued to shift focus from pure PVR functionality towards digital convergence."
geez, I doubt the Cue Cat is going to inch them towards profitability.
We all know that the killer TiVo app is playing Tic Tac Toe against a chicken, on the internet, on your TV!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Not to mention that if you buy a 45xx or 50xx series ReplayTV, you still get Commercial Advance. (I've heard that there are ways to hack the 55xx series to have it too.) Despite rumors that ReplayTV's new owners might disable the feature, it still works just as well as it did two years ago.
TiVo, on the other hand, doesn't even have a "skip 30 seconds button" -- just a hack that must be re-entered every time the unit loses power (such as in a power outage). Furthermore, once you enter said hack, you can no longer back up to the beginning of a program from the middle (ReplayTV: 0 JUMP) because the button to jump from segment to segment gets re-used as 30-second skip.
For more information, click here.
In my humble, 20-20 hindsight opinion TiVo missed a big chance by not sometime earlier beginning to research TV-over-IP, in order to create something where the TiVo becomes a component in an IPTV platform that bandwidth providers-- like DSL companies-- license. This would give Tivo a clear profit model, and do so in a way that directly makes use of their products' intrinsic advantages, rather than like they do now just giving away razors and desperately trying to convince disinterested people that they want to buy blades.
Now it's probably too late for this. All the notable players are beginning to lock themselves into platforms for IPTV, and they're all choosing Microsoft's product. Yeah. Good luck getting THAT to integrate with a Tivo once it gets up and running.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
SInce you're not going to be in cable boxes for much longer, think to the future and migrate now!
But this I mean - produce the killer software/hardware add-on for the Mac Mini that really makes it an HTPC.
Let us have the great TiVo UI on this device. Let Mac Mini owners participate in the Netflix downloading alliance. And in doing so you will find a huge market even if it's not as integrated into the video stream.
Furthermore, one thing I would ask is that you let external companies define "channels" of content that TiVo owners could "subscribe" to and watch just like other TV. Slowly these other channels of media could grow to be every bit as popular as many cable channels today.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't think TIVO is going to stay afloat because it's a flawed business design. I read that TIVO is going to be forcing viewers to view pop up ads in March while they're fast forwarding. My girlfriend has Direct TV and TIVO and loves it. I have Dish Network and a PVR and I love it but hate her TIVO. I don't want an interactive recorder. I want a device that lets me record program X at time Y and then play it back at my convenience.
...of hearing about this wonderful device / service combination which I am unable to buy. Tivo stopped selling hardware in the UK years ago now, and show no signs of selling any more.
:(
I want to buy it, but don't want a possibly dodgy second-hand premodified one from some person on ebay. I want a new, unchanged, virgin Tivo box to put under my telly. I am entirely aware that there are alternatives, but all either need more time or money (or both, MythTV I'm looking at you here), or are harder to use.
I HAVE MONEY WAITING FOR YOU MISTER TIVO! LET ME KNOW WHEN I CAN GIVE IT TO YOU!
Game dev and music blog
Last year I bought a refurbished series 1 Tivo. I love it, but more importantly my wife and daughter really like it as well. When they made the home media option for series 2 free, and dropped the price for subscribing a second Tivo, I almost bought two new ones right there. But as I'm watching the moves this company makes, I've become less and less likely to invest more money in their products. It seems like they keep giving away bits and pieces of the core functionality that make up the very reason I love my Tivo! Then they team up with Microsoft, which makes me think there'll be no Tivo-To-Go for my Mac anytime soon; plus I am wondering if MS is going to start forcing them toward their typical "look at what the customer really wants and find a way to shoehorn it into a full-blown Windows box so it doesn't conflict with our corporate goals" mode of operation.
I'd really like to see Tivo succeed; but I haven't seen any evidence that leads me to think that's at all likely. So for now, I'll just keep using my old Series 1 box, and keep that VCR going out in the family room...
#DeleteChrome
Tivo is already connected to the internet, why can't it web browse?
I'm a TiVo Series 1 owner for quite a while now (bought the 'lifetime' subscription at the original price.) Don't get me wrong, I still love the Tivo; the interface is the best, the packaging and stability excellent. But, my S1 is starting to show it's age, and it was time to think about replacing it with something with more capability and perhaps allowing some hacking. The Series 2 machine isn't that machine. Propiatary formats, a closed system, low CPU power on the platform, and not-so-great expandibility are all adding up to move me away from Tivo. Plus, I don't want to deal with monthly subscriptions either, so the only way to go is with the lifetime subscription, which is priced too high.
Two weeks ago I put together my first MythTV box, and I must say that it's been very good. Sure, it's not ready for Joe Sixpack yet, but for the crowd that wants to move video around and play around with the machine some more, it's just the ticket. I'm slowing moving recordings from the Tivo to the MythTV... Additionally, the quality of video under Myth is much better than the TiVo, and I can tweak the storage options to my hearts' content.
For Tivo, it might be too little, too late to attract the hacker community, and most of the non-tech crowd only wants to watch sienfield reruns and doesn't care about moving things to their PC. Perhaps they might have captured back some of the tech market by providing open standards and decent access methods, but Tivo still hasn't figured out who their customer is. DRM is toadying to the cable industry, not serving their customers.
}#q NO CARRIER
I think that Apple should get into the media center market, once the CableCard 2.0 standard is available, but I see no point in Apple buying TiVo. What would TiVo bring to the deal?
Name recognition? If anything, Apple's is even better.
Profits? TiVo is losing money.
User interface? Apple doesn't really need TiVo's help in user interface design, and the once-innovative TiVo interface is starting to seem a bit clunky next to things like iTunes. Apple would be better advised to come up with their own from scratch.
Does anyone who has used the SDK or read more about it than me know if you can use this toolkit to access the TiVo's recorded content? From some of the comments, it seems that the TiVo can send video to your PC, but only in formats that aren't really useful. So, what I'm wondering is if you could use this SDK to write a small program that would take the content on the TiVo, compress it, and send it to the computer.
SIGFAULT
it's dumb to pay monthly
someone is using Java for what it was originally created for...set-top boxes!
TiVo nowadays (ever since the Series 2 box) does a much better job of staying afloat than it used to. Unlike the current lightweight plastic model, those original Series 1 boxes were made of a weighty enough metal that the damn things just sank like a stone.
Isn't there an open source Linux software product somewhere that does essentially the same thing? It's seems that I've heard about a program that will record TV shows to your hard disk directly off of the television.
Anyone know what that software might be?
I'm still looking for the good solution to getting my DirecTivo on the network. I have the O'Reilly Hacking TiVo book, but I never managed to get a bash prompt out of it. The drive upgrade went very smoothly though. I have TV shows from mid-december still recorded. I spent part of yesterday watching old Twilight Zone reruns.
If anyone has real hints on getting HMO or the networking hacks going on a DirecTivo (HDVR2), I'd appreciate it. And no, I won't go with the other device options. I'm very fond of the TiVo, even if I can't play with it via my computer.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Of course, this becomes less and less important as WMC-based PCs become better and OS alternatives get more polished.
Ah, TiVo, it's been nice.
No.
TiVo, on the other hand, doesn't even have a "skip 30 seconds button" -- just a hack that must be re-entered every time the unit loses power (such as in a power outage).
...no lnoger back up to the beginning of a program...
Yes, it's a whole 7-keys you have to press. How often do you lose power at your house?
Wrong again. You can still get to those ticks by going into ff/rew and then hitting that same button. Even if hitting two keys bothers you, you can ff/rew at 1 second per minute if you want.
For some reason, I see a lot of ReplayTV enthusiasts badmouth Tivo, about things which aren't true. While I can see arguing about feature differences that actually exist, making things up about Tivo to say how bad it is, says alot about your point of view.
You are mistaken. There was a time when TiVo thought that cable companies were TiVo's optimal customers. Had TiVo made more deals like the DirecTV/TiVo deal, many more customers who wanted a particular cable/satellite offering but were PVR-platform-agnostic would have been introduced to TiVo.
TiVo's original marketing plan was to build something that would become the standard for set-top boxes that cable/satellite companies provide their customers.
However, early "buzz" about the very open Series 1 turned TiVo into the darling of techies and tinkerers. Only later did TiVo customers discover that the Series 1 openness was not part of the original business plan, but was merely the convergence of not-yet-mature DRM technology and very mature tinkerers.
This left TiVo with a problem. Its natural and intended market -- cable/satellite companies -- became afraid of TiVo as a device that would steal potential corporate revenues. So TiVo felt greater pressure to make cable/satellite-friendly marketing and feature decisions. Yet it could not make those decisions without destroying its "buzz" among the tech-folks who were its earliest and most vocal supporters.
In summary, TiVo is the victim of a schizophrenic and not-well-considered business plan.
Tivo has somehow managed to pick up almost 5bil in debt. NO ONE is going to buy them. Everyone is waiting for Tivo to go under and then buy up everyone's support contract after the fact and take over from there.
I saw a few negative comments about Tivo to Go so I wanted to share my positive experience. I have been working on making DVDs not viewing on the computer.
Slow transfers:
I have installed the approved Linksys M200 USB wired network adapter. Transferring shows takes about 2/3 of the time of the show's length when recorded at high quality. My hub says it's at 100mbits. Bored during transfers? Go watch the Tivo! You can start a bunch of stuff transferring and go got bed.
This is what I do that produces pretty good results by going with the flow a bit:
Stop being a cheap ass and buy the dang Sonic software. The $50 version works just fine. You will spend that much on blank DVDs and Tivo service in no time. It's not the best DVD authoring software but once you set up the project it goes all by itself in one long, slow step (about 1.5 times show length on my Barton 2600) without user intervention. No screwing around with 27 painful steps to remove DRM, etc. With Sonic you can easily hack out the commercials in minutes. You can always leave commercials in and fast forward the DVD.
Record on the Tivo at high or best quality.
When making the DVD don't try to put more than an hour on a 4.7G DVD. Use the "fit to DVD" or High quality option. If you want to do a movie make two DVDs until dual layer media gets reasonable. There is an encoding quality option you need to turn up in the Sonic software that takes more time and increases quality.
Even if you record something on the Tivo at basic quality and it isn't repeated so you can turn up the quality if you follow the above one hour per DVD rule it's still kicks butt over dump to even slow play VHS tape.
The end result is not as good as a store bought DVD but then again the current season of the Simpsons isn't due out on DVD anytime soon.
For our friends who like to share:
Once it's on a DVD there isn't any DVD copy protection. You can make copies of the DVD. I haven't tried it but you should be able to make an ISO or Nero image and have your fun.
you can no longer back up to the beginning of a program from the middle (ReplayTV: 0 JUMP) because the button to jump from segment to segment gets re-used as 30-second skip.
Easy to jump those segments with the 30 second skip set. For Replay it's 2 buttons, just press Fast Forward or Rewind then the 30 second skip button. Will skip forwards or backwards to the next segment.
Do you Gentoo!?
wow, I previewed that 3 times and still had errors. instead of "For Replay it's 2 buttons" it should be "Like Replay, it's 2 buttons"
Do you Gentoo!?
I just bought this damn box. I put a Linksys 10/100TX usb adapter on it - the files (900 MB for 30mins) come to my machine at 400 KB/sec. (yeah thats bytes) We have a 250 gig hard drive in there for good measure. At the moment I've got 49 spongebob episodes and a crapload of other stuff.
o rd:yourmediaaccesskey
...
TIVO 2 GO works great if you dont use the software - or if you do even. Want to do it by hand? Go to:
https://[youttivoipaddr]/
username:tivo
passw
DL all the files you want from your 'now playing list'. As for DRM - well... tmpeg makes a nice VDC of it - and virtualdub has no problem manhandling the files either.
And sorry but I'd disagree with the statement 'everyone has one already'. I know LOTS of folks who just don't - you do too if you'd look outside your geek bubble.
Could I have hacked this together myself? You bet. Am I too damn lazy? Well now
For the last three years I have had a series 1 Tivo and "upgraded" to the Comcast dual DVR for a few months. I can tell you that it completly sucks. The Comcast DVR has many, many problems that Tivo doesn't suffer with. For example: -Accurate time. Comcast would drift over a minute. Tivo has never been off, in fact, Tivo is almost always dead on when a program starts. -Repeat filter. Comcast would record the same show over and over (as many times as it was aired) like when the Sci Fi channel plays a new episode of BS:G 4+ times in a few days. Tivo can figure out repeats based on more factors than if TV Guide markes it as a repeat which is all Comcast keys off of. -Wish lists. Tivo's biggest selling point is being able to place a search out in the todo list looking for some program you are interested in. This can be by keyword, actor, title - whole or part names can be used. Comcast gives you one of the worst searches imaginable. -Availability. Even though you have programs recorded on the Comcast DVR, you can only watch them if your cable is working. One day we lost cable and power. Power was restored in a few hours, but cable was out for days. The whole time the Comcast DVR was unavailable... There are more, but between Comcast DVR and Tivo, there is no compairson. Tivo wins hands down. Comcast will probably move DVR's because they will be cheaper, but they are definitly not better.
"What I need is an exact list of specific unknown problems we might encounter."
Why is this crap only -1? It should be -10^100.
My family, for whom I bought a TiVo last year, loses power maybe once a month. TiVo never informs you that it rebooted (it just keeps running, like it should) so it's a crapshoot as to whether ->| will bring you forward 30 seconds or 15 minutes.
I have to say that Replay's in-show navigation beats the hell out of TiVo's because of the JUMP button. Beginning of the show: 0 JUMP. Five minutes in: 5 JUMP. One hour twenty minutes in: 80 JUMP. And if you JUMP into the middle of a commercial block and you have Commercial Advance turned on, you get advanced to the next program segment automatically.
For more information, click here.
I have to say that Replay's in-show navigation beats the hell out of TiVo's because of the JUMP button.
OK, I guess. Seems like a non-feature to me, because I tend to watch TV shows in, you know, a linear fashion. Start at the beginning, skip the commercials, watch to the end (or delete if it's garbage). I can't think of the last time, for instance, I wanted to go to a particular timestamp in a program and just watch a part of it. I suppose if I did, and wanted to go 1 hour and 20 minutes in, I'd FFF-fwd until I got there. But, I can't imagine anything that I'd use that for, unless it was "Hey, check out what happened in the halftime show" or something.
I purchased a TurboNet card for the inside expansion slot. This gives me true 100mbit access. 900mb in 30 minutes... right.. try 10 minutes with this sucker.
Upgraded the image to 3.0 with the Instant Cake imaging CD. This also includes all the cool tools like tivoweb, tivoftp, etc..
All that remains is to extract the MPEGs to my computer. And that is handled with TyStudio. Its a client/server operation and works very well.
Now see? That wasn't so bad. Oh, on eBay my Series1 was $56 including shipping!
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
I'm kind of waiting for the "DVDShrink" application that runs continuously and keeps my HDD and my Tivo in sync, as well as stripping Tivo's DRM from the files so they can be dumped into DVDs easily, without paying even more for the privilege of burning them to CD.
Even after enabling 30 second skip on my TiVo, I find the fastforward function to be much more accurate and reliable.
Sometimes, commercials aren't exactly 30 seconds. Then I have to rewind to find the beginning of the show. With the "pop-back" fastforward feature, there is no guesswork. I thought I'd be annoyed by this feature, but it's supremely well designed.
Of course, that's not enough to save TiVo...
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I've had a SageTV PC for the past 2 years which includes all of the functionality just coming to tivo now. I can freely burn dvds of my content, transcode the content to GBA Movie Player format and watch on a gameboy (fantastic!). I can look at photos, listen to MP3s, and watch dvds. I can watch contnet with any mpeg player (WinDVD, VLC, Power DVD). My universal remote works with it and it can switch my cable box. No subscription, free EPG.
i really can't see how Tivo can beat that or mythTV
DirectTV markets a Tivo for $99 and charges only $5 / month for all of your Tivo's. Better yet, it has an integrated dual tuner so you can watch/record two different programs at once. Not a bad deal.
The rub is that it only has Version 3 of the Tivo software, so you can't use the USB connector to hook up a NIC. No plans from DirectTV in the near future for getting the Tivo software up to date. So we can all enjoy these new apps, except for those of us who bought our DVR from DirectTV :-P
I like Tivo, actually I love my Tivo. That said, I worry about Tivos business stability. A couple other points though.
1. Frequently the slashdot community will say get MythTV, get this, get that instead. Before I got my Tivo I priced out Myth based boxes and Windows Media Player boxes and they were all orders of magnitude more expensive.
2. The home media player option. Frequently, the response is "why not just plug in your PC to your stereo to view JPGs or play MP3s". That assumes your computer is close to your TV and Stereo. For some this may be the case. For many others though their TV and Stereo are in a position where they can't simply plug in my computer (or more accurately my wife has forbid me from snaking cables all over the house)
3. TivoToGo: Yes the download speed is shockingly slow. This is hardly a massive issue though. You can queue up a number of transfers and go on to something else.
At the end of the day, the Tivo interface is what wins. It is simple and clean. Anyone can use it. Couple that with no having to build a Myth system myself and it's a winner for me. Yes, you could save a few bucks here and there buy doing more yourself but to me, my time is worth more then hacking together yet another system.
Just a few thoughts....
I've found it most useful for programs like Saturday Night Live where I might want to skip to a specific segment that occurred about 80 minutes in, or in programs that I record just so I have a specific segment. For example, I recorded Good Morning America (2 hours of it) because some people I know were featured in a short blurb. I ended up remembering the time point where they were featured so I could jump right to it. An even better feature would be to crop out a segment to save space, much like how VCRs let you pause while recording.
The "skip to # minutes" feature really isn't useful for most shows. I mostly use it for "skip to beginning," and TiVo has that covered too.
For more information, click here.
Tivo has somehow managed to pick up almost 5bil in debt. NO ONE is going to buy them. Everyone is waiting for Tivo to go under and then buy up everyone's support contract after the fact and take over from there.
I don't know where you get this. There's no $5bil of debt on TiVo's balance sheet. In fact, they seem to be in OK shape, if you don't count the fact they are losing money. Their last balance sheet indicated something like $143M in cash, so they should be able to survive for quite a while, certainly until the CableCard 2.0 standard becomes final next year. This will make it possible for the first time for Tivo to market boxes that completely substitute for a cable box, saving Tivo owners the cable box rental fee. This will go a long way to making Tivo's user fees more palatable.
Actually there is a software update scheduled for DirecTiVos.
. ph p?t=222206r _upgrade.htm l
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread
http://www.directv.com/see/landing/dv
Unfortunately it doesn't look like series 1 boxes will get it, which means 2 of my DirecTiVos will be stuck with the same old software.
What if the Hokey-Pokey really is what it's all about?
I love TiVo. What it can do that no other PVR can is the Wishlist.
Example: I tell it I want anything with "Star Trek" in the subject, and I DON'T get ST episodes that I've seen 100 times, but I do get any show ABOUT Trek that airs. No Cable, Media Center, or Myth PVR can do anything like this, and this is TiVo's strength in a nutshell. Likewise, Season Passes that are smart enough to only get new episodes, or ones that it knows it hasn't gotten before.
Sadly, I agree with the posters here that TiVo is doomed. Why? Terrible (nonexistent) integration with high quality/HD signal and inputs! Sure, there's an HD DirecTiVo for $1000, but I don't use satellite, even if I was willing to spend that much. And the only connection options for the thing are Coax, composite, and S-video. I can understand no DVI, but where the hell are the component inputs?
My beloved TiVo is now the weak link in my otherwise all-digital HDTV stream. With no sign of improvement in sight.
are new apps less dense than water?
So what's so great about TiVoToGo? Everyone acts like this is some big great thing. TiVo spent the entire year in 2004 hyping the thing. I've been able to easily copy programs quickly and efficiently from my Microsoft Media Center PC since 2002. No password, no DRM, no access key, just drag and drop to my laptop over the internet. Frankly I think it's kind of stupid that TiVo spent 2004 making this their big initiative and using valuable engineering and marketing resources when TiVoToGo can only be used by less than half of their users. DirecTV users can't use it and Series 1 users can't use it (yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for very valid reasons, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah, it's DirecTV's fault, etc. etc. etc.). Instead, the company should have been focusing on 1. building a dual tuner standalone unit and 2. building a standalone HDTV unit. Good god, who would buy a single tuner DVR anymore? They have finally come to this realization and announced an upcoming unit to accommodate HDTV with dual tuners to be released in early 2006 but quite frankly it may be too little too late. When I can get a dual tuner HDTV box for a monthly fee from Comcast why will I want to shell out big bucks for the TiVo. They had a window of opportunity and they blew it. They chose instead to focus on "TiVoToGo" -- whoop de doo, I own two TiVos and can't even use it. No wonder the stock has gone from $20 to $3.63. I've got more on comments made yesterday by TiVo CEO Mike Ramsay at DEMO yesterday on my blog as well as some information on his recent personal switch from a Windows based PC to a Mac at http://thomashawk.com/2005/02/chip-shipley-speaks- with-tivos-mike.html
I recently got the Comcast cable box with integrated DVR and have been running it side-by-side with the tivo. I gotta tell ya, it's not bad. It only adds $10/month to the cable bill with no equipment to buy. And, it has the advantage of being able to record two programs simultaneously while watching a recorded program, which my standalone Tivo cannot do (yes, I know that DirectTivos can do this). It has series programming and you can tell it whether or not to record only first-run shows.
And once I found out about the 30-second-skip hack for the Comcast box, that was one less advantage that the tivo had. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=0e 5989c1d025b758ed6399bf9730be7a&threadid=449214&per page=20&pagenumber=2/
Some people have been able to transfer shows off the Comcast box using the integrated firewire interface. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?post id=3818890#post3818890/
IMHO, tivo is in trouble. Yes, tivo has a better interface and useful stuff like wishlists. But $13/month plus having to buy your own box is just too much compared to the cable company's DVR. And the cable company's DVR will be enough for most people.
... however, due to chipset limitations in the series 2 540x models (the newer, silver ones)... you will have a hard time transfering faster than 300KB. Slow as all get out for an 800+MB file.
The "older" 240 series 2's transfer at least twice as fast.
$5B in debt? What are you talking about? TiVo has all of $7 million in debt. Look: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=TIVO
At least for compression.
However if you read the AVS forums, people are getting the base Mac mini 1.25 GHz to do 1080i feeds at aacceptible framerates. I would say that's "Good Enough".
Basically let Tivo take the custom hardware they've already developed, and put it in an external box to help offload the work the Mac Mini is doing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But the Elgato software is not to where TiVo is, and TiVo is more wideley known.
I'm talking about how to help TiVo here, not the average Mac Mini HTPC enthusiast.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Tivo are doomed. They were popular because they solved a problem that pisses a lot of people off: advertising. Their customers were those who were the most annoyed by the advertising, enough to pay money to do something about it. Their customers loved the fact that Tivo was "sticking it to the man" for them.
Not the case anymore. Now Tivo is about "compromise" and "innovation" and putting ads back into their customers shows and supporting Macrovision blocking of pay-per-view shows etc.
The thing they don't seem to grasp is that their customer base are made up of those who were not prepared to "compromise". These are people who said "No, I'm not prepared to compromise on this. I will not accept shit in my cornflakes. I don't care if there's less shit and it's harder to taste, I'm not giving you my money unless my cornflakes are shit-free"
Advice to Tivo: Stop looking at ways to "innovate" and get back to "fixing your customers problem"
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
. being sued by ??AAs!
As you noted, directivo gets guide data from the satellite. So you don't need a phone line.
TiVo has never made a secret of their use of aggregate data. If you don't like, opt out. Instead of complaining about the $20/m phone line, why didn't you just not get the phone line? Then TiVo wouldn't have any way of 'spying' on you.
The Mac mini already handles most of teh computer side of the Tivo - HD, computing engine, OS, DVD/CD burner.
So the external box is basically something like the Elgato, but with Tivo expereince in engineering video products of quality. Perhaps it could even handle the HDTV output.
But really the key is the TiVo software whcih is now running on the Mac, hopefully with decent integration between the TiVo software and the rest of the system like iPhoto, iTunes (playing protected AAC files) and so on.
Basically freeing TiVo of the boxes in runs on, and distilling out any hardware parts that make current TiVo's special.
It also would make TiVo to go much simpler and not require slow transfer to another PC, since it was already on one.
Basically there are a lot of benefits for consumers and TiVo. They are dead if they do nothing, so why not that? Projects are firing up all over to use the Mac Mini as a HTPC, TiVo should get in no while the getting is good rather than watching the whole TiVo market drift to to cable PVR's, MythTV boxes, and hordes of people determined to use the Mini as an HTPC.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I purchased my lifetime subscription in early 2001.
That subscription paid for itself as of early 2003.
Laugh in my face if you must, but I'm currently about $200 ahead of the chumps who are still paying for a monthly subscription.
It's also worth noting that my Series 1 TiVo is very hackable, and will fetch a great price on eBay with its lifetime subscription if I decide to sell it while TiVo is still solvent.
There is a big difference between a $100 tivo system with a 10-13 dollar monthly fee and a $1000 PC supporting Media Center. Someone compared the Tivo-to-go features to what they use on their PC, but for features per dollar, Tivo has it in a big way right now. Additionally, my Tivo is easily expandable to larger storage drives and we expect Tivo to keep coming out with new features that will set it apart from the competition. Perhaps there is a point that today, some other manufacturers are catching up, but Tivo has a huge grass roots base of customers that it won't want to lose. I'm personally confident that Tivo won't be resting on its laurels, and that as a Tivo customer, I'll be receiving alot of great upgrades. Go tivo!
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Ever since getting the 7.1 update, the thing has been pig slow. One of the things Tivo had was a good user experience, but you can forget that now. These new apps are likely to make the thing nearly unusable.
TIVO is over, in your fairly land that you live in where spying on your activities is ok. People don't want it. Obviously people don't want tivo. Revenues are falling everyday. I sure hope you didn't pay for a lifetime serivce to your box, i can't see tivo lasting more than 2 years. Now if only gator, and other spyware would follow suit.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
The main problem with this is that Tivo would be competing in the software market along with a number of other players (sageTV, snapstream, etc.) or the convert your pc into a dvr hardware market such as elgato, haupage, ati etc. The only real advantage they would have is their high profile name and the interface.
But that is a huge advantage of a nascent market, and exactly why now is the time to switch.
And again what is the alternative? They can either be a large fish in a small pond, or certain roadkill in the pond they live in now. The end is very visible at this point.
The other thing is that Tivo's market is not the pc/Mac user who wants to play with video, its the masses who just want something easy to use to plug into their TV. And that market is going to get squished by the cable companies.
I agree that the point of the TiVo is that you plug it in and go. But there's nothing to stop them from selling a bundle with a mini, the TiVo hardware addition, and the software that you could still just plug in and go.
Probably the best thing Tivo can do is license itself to cable companies for their boxes. Unfortunately it's probably too late for this. I know so many people who say "I have Tivo" when they really have a cable company dvr. Hell, even the cable company dvrs offer some advantages over the Tivo (i.e. dual tuners).
Exactly, they did have good deals with DirectTV and so forth but those are fading away. Again, if anyone sees any alternative going forward that lets TiVo survive I'd love to hear it. Again I am not talking about this device from a consumer standpoint, I'm not sure I would buy it either. I'm just presenting the only possible solution I can see for TiVo to survive in any way rather than simply vanishing.
Perhaps it is just TiVo software that works with the exiting popular hardware like Elgato or Hauppage. Perhaps they can even survive as standalone boxes pulled up by teh Netflix integration. But I just don't think it's enough, they need to go where the customers are heading and get in front of the cable/satellite companies again instead of being dragged behind on a rope.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Go peddle your TiVo stock misinformation on the Yahoo stock boards, shortie.
Nobody mentions ReplayTV because it sucks and because it has been bankrupt TWICE and it doesn't have anything but a small fraction of the subscribers that TiVo does.
Replay never understood the concept of making time shifting easy and simple and making it absolutely painless to find and record shows without having to think about it, and by keeping "scheduling maintenance" to an absolute minimum. TiVo is a "set it and forget it" device; Replay is not.
Replay is better than some of the dumb, digital VCRs that some of the cable companies provide, but it can't hold a candle to TiVo in terms of "smarts". It's not much more than a glorified digital VCR itself; Replay users still don't "get" this.
I use both Replay and TiVo, and I hate Replay with a passion. It looks like it was designed by and for engineers. TiVo on the other hand was degigned by and for TV watchers.
Ahh.. the Great American Bankruptcy Car-Wash.
Run your corporation through it and it'll come out squeaky clean and smelling like that New Car Smell.
You even get a Judge to tell you who to pay off first, so there's no bickering amongst your debtors.
[Disclaimer: Only works for Corporate "Citizens"... regular Citizens will have their lives trashed by the Bankruptcy Car-Wash and should not partake if at all possible.]
+++OK ATH
SageTV with commercial auto skip enabled is friggin amazing. It scans and marks the recording for commercials. Playback the show and no commercials! No skipping ahead 30sec. Its pretty accurate for most shows, but occasionally you need to manually skip one or backup a few seconds. Furthermore you can hit another button and burn the show to dvd with the commercials removed. A work in progress, but very nice. I guess MythTv has something similar.
Beauty is truly in the eye of the tiger