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Can TiVo be Saved?
ChipGuy writes "TiVo's death watch has begun. The company is having a tough time finding traction in the marketplace, as more and more competitors rush into the market, most of them deep pocketed satellite and cable companies. But is all lost? What if the company went private and became the anti-cable, letting us download, store, organize, and serve media from both cable and -- this is the important part -- the internet.
Others believe that TiVo should get into the content aggregation business."
I have held off from getting TiVo or the equivalant as I had figured that this would happen. Just like most types of technology things get smaller and cheaper. (then the big boys take over)
I figure that the Cable companies are going to move very quickly in this arena. My own (Comcast) offers "On Demand" programming right now for free. I can view programs, store and play later as if it were a movie/DVD. It sounds like the next step is to watch what ever you want, when you want as long as you pay what they want.
I can wait for it all to come together, I know how to program my VCR.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
I work for TiVo.
Believe me, it can be very disheartening to work for an innovator in a marketplace where large established companies have such control over the distribution channels.
Cable companies and satellite companies already have a "lock" to a large extent on their customers and for them to sell an additional service such as a DVR requires so much less capital investment in marketing, and let's face it, making a good product, than it takes for a company like TiVo.
And those companies already have much deeper pockets than a small company like TiVo with which to absorb the losses associated with pushing this rather expensive technology out to users.
It's kind of funny to me that people will pay $80 cable bills without a whimper but will cry foul at the concept of paying $13 a month to TiVo to make the cable service so much more worthwhile.
Cable DVRs suck. Most people would be much happier with a TiVo and would find the extra expense to be justified. I know I'm biased but I honestly believe that.
My comments are my own and I do not speak for my employer.
Maybe if TiVo has patents on their system, they can use those to make enough money to stay afloat for a while?
That would be focussing on the consumer. This approach sounds good, but it never works. All you end up with is greedy consumers wanting more and more.
The only way to do business these days is to court other businesses, and work with them. Those are the ones with all the money.
Whoever this ChipGuy fellow is, he sure hates Tivo! Not only is this story a dupe, but ChipGuy submitted both of them. I wonder how many were rejected. ; )
Here's the original.
Tivo's problems are proof that you can not meet the RIAA/MPAA/advertisers halfway. They will screw you.
You either have to roll over completley or get ready for a long hard battle that you will win. TIVO wimped out and tried to make everyone happy, in the process making very few people happy. They'll get bought by someone. I'd like it to be Apple, but I'm skeptical.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
... They'll be bought out by Google, of course! http://www.broom.org/epic/
Free of Flash! Free of Flash!
Pick your poison:
1. "My cable company's DVR works just fine, why should I pay extra for a TiVO?"
2. "I don't watch TV, why do I want a TiVo?"
3. "My MythTV box only took me 3 weeks to get working, and I will probably only have to mess with the guide data stream a few times a year, and the hardware only cost twice as much as a TiVo."
We've heard them all before...
Say we should read it its rights, drag it out in the back and shoot it.
1. Tivo licenses content.
2. Tivo provides nice search interface for Tivo BitTorrent client.
3. Tivo provides centralized Torrent servers and includes content in $12.95.
4. Goodbye cable!
Has anybody tried the new SDK? It's pretty cool...they should have done it from the beginning.
Tivo's something I've always found neat, but the cost and/or monthly fees has always made me want to roll my own with MythTV
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
Wow, I barely even have broadcast TV. Seriously, every time I call my friend, he's watching a movie. Have we become a world of protoplasm living by proxy, entertaining ourselves to death? Who cares if TiVo dies? Who the hell can watch SO MUCH TV, you need a COMPUTER to track it all?
Mostly random stuff.
ReplayTV is probably not going to survive either, which is really sad given that not all cable companies are offering bundled PVR services.
i've tried a few and they aren't even close to as usable as the TIVO, but its hard to compete with the price. From my experiences, TIVOs surprises have all be pleasant but with my cable and sat. I once told a friend, woudlnt it be cool if TIVO could... "yeah, it does it already" but with my dvrs, i start yelling at the boxes... WHY DID YOU DO THAT! its like no one has ever tried using their products. one of my second gen sat dvrs was far worse than a first release tivo. thats just my opinion, i know several people who would agree.
But, since we've been told to start sharing our unininformed opinions:
1) I don't see where turning TiVo into an Internet storage device is a huge win. Yeah, maybe it's a good idea and they should do it, but that will be just as easy for others to duplicate as the PVR business.
2) I'm not sure whether Jarvis is hinting that they should become a warez enabler, but if he is, that's a dead-end business plan. As surely as piracy will continue to exist, that surely will it remain impossible to run a major business on that model in developed countries.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Would be nice if they could stream the TV shows off the internet so you could buy what channels (or what shows) you wanted ala-carte. I hate paying $40 a month for my cable when I only watch one network (ESPN) that isn't on the basic $10 a month list.
The single primary reason I haven't purchased a DVR is it's hard to get one without a service attached. I want a digital VCR, nothing more, nothing less. I don't have time to tinker something together, so I've been waiting for a package deal that will literally give me the functions of a VCR, but on a hard drive.
TIVO doesn't; it sells you a service and controls you and what you put on the box.
No wonder their business model is failing.
Content aggregation sounds like a great idea, but remember that cable companies have a lot of exisiting ties with the media companies that actually produce the content. Even if Tivo starts doing this, the second they turn profitable the cable companies will play their relationships (I've worked in entertainment... the whole industry is about the relationships) with the media companies to undercut Tivo and get them out. I like the idea of Tivo, but I think the company is fighting an uphill battle.
I say they get bought by Comcast or Time Warner before the end of the decade.
There is no DVR out there better then Tivo. I know some people think their $1000 MythTV box is great but that aint for the masses. Windows Media center def isnt there yet. Tivo rocks and I dont know why everyone has put this death sentence on it. How can Tivo survive, release some new boxes with enhanced features ie. a mass market HD Box w/ Multiple tuners(like the one they have for direct tv already), a regular box with multiple tuners, integrated wired or wireless networking. Add some of those features and heck, I will even buy another one. LONG LIVE TIVO!!
Seriously Tivo, make it happen - screw cable companies, start making deals with history channel, discovery, etc. and provide their content on demand. That will be the only way forward. And when is this netflix deal going to be a reality in terms of service? Hurry, there's not much time for you guys...
As I recall, ReplayTV has the most relevant patents on this technology. That is part of how they've been able to hang for so long with a smaller market share; their competitors (including the cable DVR makers) pay them royalties on every sale.
I am curious why you categorize this as a "hater"?
I do not watch TV, I do not have cable or satellite. I do watch DVDs for which I have a suitable TV for them.
I think TIVO is a nice technology but I have zero use for one. Best of luck to them. Don't classify those of us who do not watch TV as "haters"
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Not to sound pessimistic, but what happens to all the Tivo boxes if the subscription Tivo relies on goes away? Can they be converted to work with other schedulers? Would they at least maintain a basic 'dumb' disk-based VCR like capability?
Apple had the first GUI, but it lost to the Windows. Dreamcast came out first, but lost to the PS2. Sony was first with Beta, but lost to VHS. And Diamond Multimedia came out with the first MP3 player, but TOTALLY lost out to Apple!
I would be MORE shocked if Tivo actually survived.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The sad truth is this: TiVo will fail.
The reasons are simple:
1. The cable companies are rolling their own DVRs. TiVo failed to get traction here, and it will kill them.
2. TiVo has hobbled itself. There were features out there that could have helped them (essentially value adds above and beyond the cable company DVRs), but they were too slow to market, and too restrictive in their implementation. Examples: TiVo to Go. Network-able TiVos. Commercial skip. Good features, but TiVo hobbled them (or implemented them late) either through proprietary standards or by not officially advertising them to Joe Sixpack.
-EvilMagnus
Can TiVo Be Saved? - Feb. 22 (Answer: NO)
Will New Apps Keep TiVo Afloat? - Feb. 16 (Answer: NO)
Has TiVo's Fate Been Sealed? Jan. 17 (Answer: NO)
The No's have it now Die TiVo Die!
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
The "blogs aren't news!" meme is so January.
Be ready for March, we all decide that Firefox sucks for some reason.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Is TiVo free? Last I heard no.
In which case expect me to take no part in it.
Sorry TiVo, but I like my money in my pocket.
With all these online petitions to save these series with cult followings, you'd think that TiVo would see that as an opportunity. Imagine buying shows at $1 an episode. Or a full season for a discount. TiVo really needs to turn itself into a delivery platform if it wants to survive. I'm surprised they haven't done it already. I hate to say it but with my ReplayTV, I effictively get free cable via Poopli . I do this because such a service is not available. I would pay if one did exist though... less work!
This isnt anything like The death of BSD or the Ipod Killers is it. ,I was shocked to discover that this claim of the death of tivo actualy has some foundation in reality. .If i were to ask my family if they wanted a tivo they would reply to me "Whats a tivo" , I know alot of people who could really use a product of this nature , they just have no idea it exists .
After reading partialy over the artical it apears not
It would be a shame to see it die , I would own one except for the fact i dont really own a TV and they are not commen in my part of the world.
If tivo wants to be saved , tivo needs to get its name out there , and it needs to start selling(obvious statment of the year)
Adding functionaly and features may help it get some positive marketing , which i belive is really lacking (as much as i dislike marketing , i know its needed). the last i heard of tivo on the news was a few years ago(regular news , not tech sites)
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Obviously Tivo needs to be bought-out by one of the major cable providers, but it would appear the window for that is closing fast since they seem to be opting to compete with rather than usurp Tivo.
but they already teamed up with DirectTV so they should stay alive if not just through that service.
I have a few DirecTivo units and honestly, I was on the verge of cancelling DirecTV until I got them. Now, I don't want to give them up. Has DirecTV licensed the Tivo software permanently or is it licensed per system? I know DirecTV is actively promoting DirecTivo sales. The ability to record two shows at the same time is a big win! And the Tivo interface is far superior to the other options (say from Dish).
The SA8300-HD PVR is really quite good. And it has an HDMI output to boot.
It sounds like TiVo need to get financial backing of investors if they are to compete with the big cable comanies. Then if they ever need to sue for patent violation etc. they would at least have the money. I hope this doesn't happen though. The best thing might be to merge with a cable company and completely redefine their product.
Let's be honest, a Tivo that depends on Internet video content rather than cable providers will not sell. As much as I like watching 2 minute Star Wars Kid videos, the content just isn't there. When I come home from work, I want to watch last night's Daily Show, or 24, etc. This is a dumb idea until you get the networks to provide quality content over the Internet, and good luck with that.
Kinda funny that I finish reading an article on news.com about them exceeding 3 million subscribers, to find out on slashdot that it's dying.
Is it dying faster or slower then Apple and BSD?
Disclaimer: Not a Tivo subscriber. I'd like to, but you can't get some of that in Canada.
1. "My cable company's DVR works just fine, why should I pay extra for a TiVO?"
A cable DVR from Crime-Warner is like $8 a month and does several things SA Tivos don't do, like digital sound and HD, and doesn't require hackery like IR emitters and glacial channel changing speeds.
I'll agree that it's substandard software to be sure, but when ordinary people make decisions it comes down to money -- an SA Tivo takes YEARS (box + lifetime) before its ROI exceeds the cable box, and the cable box can be traded in through a cable retail store any time for a newer box.
It's not that Tivo isn't better, but to most people the "better" doesn't matter, the worse does (IR hackery, no HD, etc), and it's a much more expensive hardware INVESTMENT.
So, when DirecTV releases information like this about them releasing their own DVR later this year, TiVo proper stands to lose a lot of its market share. There was also the issue between TiVo and Comcast where TiVo pulled itself from a deal with the cable company. Lots of folks believe this was a bad move as well.
The only good news on the DirecTV side is that DTV is currently rolling out a new software update for those who own the present DirecTiVo machines. What impact they feel this will have on the forthcoming DirecTV branded machines is uncertain. (i.e. Is this the first of a string of new updates to DirecTiVo... or is this the final nod to the collaboration?)
The key benefits of a DVR are to let people time shift their viewing, and to let people skip portions of a show they're not interested in watching (e.g. commercials, boring scenes, innane commentary). The key features of a DVR are the ability to easily record a scheduled show or a scheduled series (first run only, or first run and repeats), and to provide VCR-like controls on live TV. Even the most rudimentary cable DVRs provide that functionality, and that's good enough for most people if it's cheap.
Comcast charges $5/month for a Motorola HD DVR with only two tuners and 14 hours of high definition recording. The difference between having that mediocre DVR and not having one is huge, and well worth $5/month. The difference between having a Tivo and the motorola is small and not work more than $0.50/month. If so, then why would anyone pay $200 for a low end Tivo box that can't record high def plus $12.95/month for the mandatory Tivo channel guide?
Tivo is seriously deluded about the value of their product in a world where DVRs are a commodity item. They had the first mover advantage, but they blew it. They are going down.
Oh my bad timing! I just bought a TiVo yesterday! Actually, I've been concerned about whether or not TiVo would survive for a long time now, especially with the cable companies beginning to offer DVR services. But I weighed everything and decided on TiVo because I think that it is likely that the service will survive in one form or another. TiVo is a relatively strong brand which I'm sure someone will pick up, if the company fails. I also wanted to actually own my own DVR rather than renting it from Comcast. I thought about building my own using MythTV or something similar, but I don't have time for that and the TiVo service itself is what made the final sale for me. Besides, the various TiVo hacks that have developed will make the box useful to me for a long time.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
...since Apple's strategy is to be in the content storage/management business [iPod], how cool would it be to have a Tivo-pod [tPod?] for all your video content?
or is that just crazytalk?
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
The stock is indeed low, with upper management changes happening fast. Excellent product, and they don't get involved with crap they don't need to.
I just pushed $15,000 from my portfolio that wasn't doing anything into TiVo stock. We'll see where it goes. Could disappear, could go up in a fiarly significant manner.
I believe in TiVo's product whole heartedly. Maybe TiVo will more agressively attack the market, perhaps they will be bought out at a fair price. Both cases I win.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
After all, TV cancelled Firefly and Family Guy. Wait, just Fox. Just Fox needs to die.
www.kiwilyrics.com - a wiki for lyrics
It seems to me that Tivo is another intermediary, just the sort of thing that the internet was designed to replace. Sure it's a cool intermediary, but why would I want a piece of quasi-computer equipment, when my computer would very easily do the exact same thing? Granted, I don't really watch television, and watch movies on my laptop, but I fail to see the attraction. I actually find the possibility of watching, or downloading, movies on my mobile!
So, what can Tivo do form me, that a Mac-Mini-profile computer cannot? This is the crux of the discussion in my oppinion.
I have a widescreen TV and my cable company gives me 18+ HDTV channels. I hardly watch the regular, or even allegedly 'digital' channels anymore. TiVo doesn't fit into the picture here. They should have started doing HDTV PVR's. To quote a very wise cartoon character, the Scientifc Atlanta boxes still suck a**.
Tivo made a certain kind of impact, the kind where their name has become a verb for recording TV. That does not guarantee long term success of course.
Today we xerox on a Canon. It's probably a bit previous-generation, but every refrigerator was a Frigidaire, even when Frigidaire's market share had dwindled. In lots of places, every soft drink is a "coke". I've heard different convenience stores being referred to as "the 7-Eleven". And so on.
Tivo might have lasted just long enough to spawn this effect. "I missed the show but I Tivo'd it."
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I like this concept. Ever since I got a Tivo, I only watch things I've recorded previously. I no longer sit and just see what's on. So rather than pay for all the shows on all of the channels, why not let me pick the SHOWS a la carte? I have about 4-5 shows a week I watch on a regular basis, and my wife has about the same. At $5 a month per show, we would actually pay less than what our monthly cable costs.
You're posting on and I presume reading slashdot, therefore you have no right to judge anyone's choice of time-waster.
I own a Tivo. Sony SVR2000 with two upgraded hard drives and a hacked in network card.
First off, Tivo sues people for having backup images of Tivos online. Thanks for not allowing me to easily restore my base software image.
Then Tivo charges OUTRAGEOUS rates for HDTV capable devices.
Then Tivo wont transfer the lifetime sub. to a new unit - thanks jerks. Better hope my motherboard never dies.
Then Tivo doesnt provide official FAIRLY priced second hard drive and network card kits.
Then Tivo wants to spray ads during fast forwarding and secretly provides data to marketing groups. Tivo said how many times the nipple was replayed the superbowl before last with stolen privacy invading data.
I think there is no way to use TV without Tivo, but Tivo has pissed me off and I cant wait until Freevo and others destroy you.
And the icing on the cake - you cant even get the data you recorded off the Tivo.
Dont bitch when you are in the unemployment line, you did it to yourself.
And get that stupid whiney ugly bitch off my Tivo that keeps begging me to get relatives to buy a Tivo. I hate that woman. Who the hell is she? Everyone with a Tivo knows her, the Whiney big nosed brown haired bitch. Here is a tip: cut the crap with the $300 buyout. It used to be a hell of a lot cheaper. And here is another tip: EVERYONE hates another monthly, so make the buyout cheaper.
- Tsarkon likes the Tivo a lot, but thinks the company is foolish and is pising off its own fans.
Maybe the best bet for Tivo's survival is to get acquired by DirecTV. The Tivo/DirecTV (or "DirecTivo") integration is excellent. I can't even remember how I watched tv at all before I had my DirecTivo box.
Anyone who has tried Comcast's alternative to Tivo knows that the interface is completely horrible. It actually makes me angry just to think about it.
When I move this summer, I'm planning on continuing with DirecTV service rather than switching to cable strictly because of the tight integration with Tivo. The Tivo partnership is already a huge asset to DirecTV, they might as well add Tivo to their balance sheet and make it official.
Tivo is my favorite robot friend (next is Roomba). Tivo has made TV fun and interesting again. I discovered Battlestar Galactica thanks to Tivo. I think I'd cry if Tivo died... seriously.
anyway?
Once it's done and dusted it'll be just another
dead "technology" that's better left in history books. YAY - for media hype.
I really, really like my 1st-gen Tivo. Streaming the whole world's content is probably not in their cards, because of the enormous legal costs to get that started (and defended).
A good first step would be a CableCard-enabled TiVo, so that it can sit directly on those DRM-laden digital cable nets. But there has to be a significant [b]perceived[/b] improvement over the existing cableco-owned PVR. Multiple tuners, better UI, HD... but it's going to be awfully hard to generate revenue when the cableco's give their boxes away.
Too bad there's no CableCard equivalent for DirecTV, VOOM, and EchoStar.
Design for Use, not Construction!
I want nobody to ever mess with 30 second skip. DO NOT FUCK WITH 30 SECOND SKIP.
I got the Charter DVR service from Charter Communications as a test, which is a Motorola BMC9012 running Digeo's MOXI software.
When first set up, the skip button was a 30 second skip, and replay was a 7 second reverse jump.
After the box downloaded its first software update, the skip button stopped working. It became a 15 minute skip. What the fuck purpose is a 15 minute skip?
I called Charter to inquire about this. I asked what the purpose of the 15 minute skip button was; they responded that it was to jump quickly into a program (WTF?). I asked them why it was no longer a 30 second skip. The person I was talking to responded that it was "illegal" to have a 30 second skip.
After I recovered myself from this egregiously wrong statement, I informed him there was no state of federal law prohibiting a 30 second skip on a PVR, and further informed him of other PVRs that do just that. He insisted there was "a law". I asked to speak to his supervisor, who again told me it was "against the law" to have a 30 second skip, and that Charter had to "obey they law". I again informed him there was no such law, and asked him to cite any such law. The conversation essentially went nowhere. I tried the next day with the same result.
While pondering the absurdity of it all, I got a call back from a manager at Charter who had apparently become aware of my call. He apologized for the phone representatives saying that it was "illegal"...he said, essentially, that they shouldn't have said it was "illegal" or "against the law", but that Charter had "legal concerns" with its content providers and advertisers. I pointed out that Charter's corporate "legal concerns" are a lot different than something being "illegal", and that the phone agents might not want to tell people that.
But ultimately, how many people will get DVR services like this and never know there was such a thing as a 30-second skip? They'll be tickled that they can record 40 hours of video (not knowing they could record 400 by just adding a drive, which of course is disabled on this box) and fast forward through commercials like a VCR, and that they can pay Charter an extra monthly fee to watch the recorded content on another TV in their own home (not knowing that it's technically possible to also watch it on their laptop, PDA, portable media player, or anywhere else they should be able to watch it). And the ones who do know about the 30-second skip will probably swallow Charter's "we can't do it because it's illegal" copout.
And when July rolls around, those same people won't wonder how we're unable to do things we could do 30 years ago with the VCR when their DVR box tells them they're not allowed to record ER in HD (and that they must watch it live), and a call to Charter only elicits the blameless "Well, we have to follow what the TV networks make us do - it's not our fault..."
The cable and satellite providers might be in the best position to provide DVR services that can tune all of the subscribed channels on their networks directly, without having to have some kind of convoluted IR Blaster setup or multiple settops, but they're also in the best position to severely restrict the featuresets and functionality of those boxes as well...
Take a page from Apple.
Build a content sales and distribution network to feed you hardware business.
Apple uses iTunes to promote iPods. Tivo should build an internet version of a cable specialty channel, and distribute content. Bittorrent does it now, Tivo can do it for the Tivoted.
Apple are you listening? A repackaged Mac Mini (Mac PVR) with TV tuner, more storage, a dedicated remote control and a bittorrent flavoured version of iTunes. And while you are at it buy Tivo. And remember, do it with STYLE
"What if the company went private and became the anti-cable, letting us download, store, organize, and serve media from both cable and -- this is the important part -- the internet."
And they could include networking hardware for free, and networking software for free, and share TV over the Internet, and share it to the PC using free open source software, and then they could change their name to ReplayTV since they have been doing all of that for years?
Yes, sharing and auto-commercial-skipping is disabled in the new ones, but who buys the new ones.
But seriously, if Tivo copied everything my Replay does (and maybe call it "innovating" like they did with Tivo To Go) and let me **store** and play my MP3s from the Tivo, I would covert in a heartbeat. I have yet to see a stereo component that lets me store my MP3s - I either have to use my portable, or spend $300 for a fancy LCD that needs my computer running 24/7.
... question is, has NetCraft confirmed it?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
1 have an original series Sony SVR2000, and 1 still prefer it to my Dual-tuner HD cable box. Sure, HD is heads and shoulders better than SD, but the cable box (Motorola) is so incredibly sucky as to be nearly worthless as a DVR. Basically, it misses about 20% of all recordings, either because the box locked up (my TiVo has locked up once in 4 years) or the time changed, or the HD signal got screwed up. I have to keep TiVo around just so I don't miss shows. TiVo has a huge opportunity to pounce here, but it all hinges on the support of CableCards. If TiVo came out with a reasonably priced CableCard/HD box, I would buy it tomorrow. (and would have no trouble talking my wife into buying it, which is really saying something.)
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
One of the greatest things about HDTV is that it is sent over the air. Why pay for a cable service at all if you can get the shows you want via antenna and get the highest quality available. Not to mention, you can search shows and get a guide of what's on through your Tivo.
I think *because* of HDTV that Tivo will come back.
Cable/Satelite $65 per month with DVR functionality
Over the Air HDTV $14 per month with Tivo service
I'll save the extra $50 a day gladly.
IMHO, the release of the SDK and TivoHME (http://tivohme.sourceforge.net/) is their best chance to attract new business.
Why is my SA Series 2, bought in 2002, no more technically capable than a new SA Tivo right now?
To me this is the killer -- where's digital audio? CableCard? Expandable storage via firewire? Digital RF remotes?
Sure, all those things have baggage and problems, but they all get me spending on Tivo (and moving the other boxes to other rooms). HMO and 2Go just make me tired.
The current Tivo is limited to the cable tv and similar stuff, i.e. you need to subscribe to some company to be able to use Tivo. If Tivo can be used with a regular TV, support multiple formats, allows transfer of the "open format" saved media files, then I will buy several for me and my parents.
As long as they stick with unpopular formats, they are doomed.
Do you know what I would like? A portable Tivo. Something you could carry in your luggage (smaller and lighter is best), and connect to your motel TV. It wouldn't even have to store a lot of video or anything - just provide recent guide data and let me pause and rewind video. I've been traveling a lot lately, and screw my house and neighborhood, the only thing I really miss is my Tivo. If it could take advantage of WiFi when it's available, that'd be great - I'd expect full functionality. But if not (or in case the motel doesn't offer WiFi) it ought to turn it on at home and at least download an up-to-date database of the cable systems across the country . That way, whenever and whereever I hook it up on the road, I just tell it identify my location, and it can correctly identify the channels. Not having the channel data on the screen when I travel really bothers me. If I could also pre-download an up-to-date program guide that, at least for the cable channels, works everywhere in the country, that'd be great. If it contains national broadcast schedules, even better. If it contained local schedules for the whole country, though... wow. I'm not saying that such a unit would save Tivo. On the other hand, look at iPod sales....
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
Not every single last one of you, just all the fools who have posted bitching about the TiVo monthly fee.
TO THIS DAY, TiVo offers a lifetime subscription option, where you pay them a chunk of money once and that's it. When I got it, it worked out to about 24 months at their monthly rate.
I've had my TiVo three years now, so I effectively haven't paid for my service for the last year, and as long as my TiVo doesn't need to be replaced, my service will continue to be free.
Why can't you get that through your THICK FUCKING SKULLS????? If you don't like paying monthly indefinitely, you HAVE THE OPTION to pay ONCE. You have ALWAYS had that option, it is not new!!!
You're right in that On Demand pretty much sucks. There are hardly any programs that you would actually want to watch - unless if you have HBO, I guess. Also, the VCR-style buttons are very laggy and very annoying to use.
You're wrong in that On Demand is Comcast's answer to TiVO. DVR is Comcast's answer to TiVo. They don't advertise it yet, but if you call Comcast, they will have a DVR box installed in your home soon. For $9.99 a month you get a dual-tuner HD box with a 120GB HD. I've had it for about 2 months now and apart from the non-intuitive remote and the fact that Comcast won't implement or allow the 30-second skip, I haven't found a single thing to complain about with the box. You don't need to buy any expensive equipment and the subscription cost is loser than TiVo for what is a more capable box. That is what will kill TiVo.
Did I mention, it's HIGH Definition? I don't even have an HDTV but the HD signals are so much better than the analog signals that I find myself not wanting to watch any shows on analog anymore.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Hard to say. The "oh crap, they're dying" most likely comes from the fact that the majority of their subscribers are through DirecTV, and that DirecTV has chosen both not to renew their contract with Tivo and to pursue their own DVRs.
They're probably still raking in customers, but the majority of them are still DirecTV folks. And those will start to disappear as DirecTV drops support and people start upgrading in a few years. I believe the contract is through 2007. With DirecTV's impending move to MPEG4, the existing tivo units won't even work once the transition is complete. The HD-Tivo owners will get screwed first, as HD locals will be the first to move to mpeg4, followed by non-local HD, and finally by all the SD channels.
I'm hoping tivo succeeds, though-- I've really liked the two tivos I've had, despite the sluggishness of the directv models. I'm hoping that the upcoming dual-tuner cablecard unit (buy it and use it on any cable system) will finally do what i want. Dual tuner, fully digital recording, all the SA tivo features, and the ability to move from network to network.
TiVo doesn't have direct access to the broadband cable stream. It has to rely on stupid little dongles like IR transmitters to communicate with the cable box and change the channel.
This means that dual-tuner TiVos won't work unless you have two cable boxes, too.
And then there's the HD problem: TiVos other than DirecTiVos can't record it. This is a big deal for those of us who have switched over to HDTV. I like being able to time-shift a prettier picture.
I have the Motorola HDTV dual-tuner DVR at home, on Comcast cable. It may not do exactly what a TiVo does, but it's very close. I can set it up to record every time a new episode of a show comes on. I can make it record 2 TV shows, in HD, simultaneously. I can get on-demand programming. And you can even hack the remote (and I use "hack" loosely here) to give you back your precious 30-second skip.
It doesn't make show recommendations for me, but honestly, I don't care. It does everything else, and it does it well. My parents have TiVo, and they can't record one show while watching another, nor can they time-shift HDTV content.
TiVo has to fix these shortcomings somehow. It may be that the only way is to partner with the cable companies to get access to the cable box hardware.
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But has Netcraft confirmed it?
My cellphone ringtone is a ring tone.
2. "I don't watch TV, why do I want a TiVo?"
This is not a nonsense excuse, it's a real reason not to pay for television.
I've watched television since my parents got their first set in 1964. I was watching eight hours a day in the early 1970's.
But no more. Television is an extremely limited medium. there are only five things:
1: Sentimental pseudo-dramas with endless close-up shots of actors overacting under heavy lights and heavy make-up.
2: Canned laughter situation-comedies that are rarely if ever actually funny.
3. Talking heads going on endlessly; saying nothing.
4. The Game. Televising 'da game, man' hasn't changed much in fifty years. Turn on a TV and within a half-second you know if you have on 'the game'. It never stops; it never changes. You either like it or not.
5. Commercials. They used to be 60 seconds, now they are all 30 or 15 seconds. Some people consider them to be a unique American art form; some people consider pissing on a electric wire to be an art form. Nearly everyone thinks commercials suck and trys to avoid them.
That's it. That's all television is. And, it is all that it will ever be. Because of its institutional structure and technical limitations, it is all television can ever be.
Myself, I would rather watch DVDs, ride bicycle, write code, dance, make love, or eat pizza than watch television.
Nothing that the television industry can do could make me go back to watching television. It's not hatred or contempt. It's just that television is simply too limited for me anymore. I've seen everything that it can possibly do. I've just gone beyond it. It doesn't matter any more how cheap that it is or what format it is.
5.
Anonymous Coward wrote: Tivo said how many times the nipple was replayed the superbowl before last with stolen privacy invading data.
No, Tivo did not invade your privacy. Tivo announced some time ago that it was going to provide Nielsen-like ratings information to television stations about which shows were recorded and played on its subscribers' Tivos. However, personally-identifying information about those subscribers was not disclosed. How does the general statistic of how many times that scene was replayed invade your privacy, AC? Just how many times did you replay it, anyway?
It is actually a good thing that Tivo captures marketing information about shows that are watched. Otherwise, the television stations are going to think that no one is watching those shows that you love and record for later viewing-- Niesen only captures information about shows that are being watched at broadcast time. Remember, you the viewer are not the customer of the television stations-- the customer is the advertisers who actually pay for the shows. No audience watching ads, no advertisers to pay for shows, no TV except for public television and infomercials.
...all standalone DVR companies are facing similar hurdles. I have been a long-time ReplayTV user, and when Charter Cable began offering Digeo's new MOXI box, I had to jump at the chance. Yes, it is lacking a few missed features like the ability to offload shows to a PC and "keyword" recording, but the ability to have a dual tuner DVR with fully integrated Digital Cable box (which has virtually eliminated all recording conflicts) along with HD recording, and digital audio outputs for under $10.00 per month with no upfront equipment costs is simply stunning. Neither ReplayTV nor TiVo can touch it from a price/performance perspective. Yes, I am now at the mercy of how the Cable company actually configures the box (for example, I'm patiently awaiting Video On Demand to be rolled out) but the overall experience, feature set, and price point is, to me, excellent. I still have my ReplayTV boxes for offloading shows, but my main DVR is now MOXI.
(Not affiliated with Digeo, just a satisfied customer running a MOXI Tips & Tricks site.)
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Tivo's problems have nothing to do with the RIAA/MPAA/advertisers. Tivo's problems have everything to do with the fact that cable companies are offering a better product at a cheaper price without requiring you to buy expensive equipment that might become obsolete soon.
Tivo was first to market with their solution but the competitors are now offering a better product (dual tuners, HD) for a lower price. Tivo is failing because it was not able to translate its market-mover advantage and brand recognition into being able to offer a consistently better or cheaper product. If Tivo was always a step ahead or cheaper than what the competitors were able to do, they'd still be successful. Unfortunately for them, their offering has stagnated while the cable companies have beaten them not only in features but also in price.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Well, I feel that in order for TIVO to survive depends on a few things 1. Cable Cards - This essentially can integrate the cable box with Tivo. 2. HDTV TIVO - Tivo really miss the boat on this one. 3. Dual tuners - As many tuners as possible.
I'm a thrilled TiVo owner. Absolutely. But I'm going to jump ship really, really soon now. Not because I don't love my TiVo, but because I now need more flexibility. I wish -- oh I wish -- that TiVo would release some propriety x86 binaries to the Linux crowd. This would let them keep their subscription model, but it would let me build the box I want. The box I want is what's going to replace my TiVo. It's going to a pain in the butt, cause me lots of heartache, trouble, and money, but in the end it will be so much more than the TiVo. The only thing my new box won't do that makes TiVo "extra" special is learning my preferences and recording things by itself. Well, maybe someday.
--Jim (me)
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Directv charges $5/month for one or more tivos. You *also* pay $5 month for them as receivers (except for your first receiver).
Regular tivo gets something like $8/month extra for your second, third, etc. tivos.
The $5 extra is worth it for what a tivo does. I certainly wouldn't pay $13.
I'm looking at giving it all up for analog cable and mythtv after I move this summer.
hawk
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on it's name.
I remember the 80's and the "I want my MTV" slogans that forced cable companies to carry the channel. I've been WAITING for 2 years now for a "I want my TIVO" slogan. Nada.
Tivo is STILL ignoring features that would make it unstoppable. Wishlists are nice. Personalizing them would be better. Allowing people to share/use their wishlists would even be better.
Shrug.
It's NOT illegal, and it's not semantics.
Something being "illegal" means it's against the law. It's not an issue of semantics. What they said was an outright lie; a fabrication; completely inaccurate.
Do you honestly think that's what they should be telling people? That there's no 30-second skip because it's "against the law"?
Just when I finally got TiVo because it was included in the DirecTV package I just signed up for...
I used one of those cable box / DVRs at a friend's house and it made me very glad that I have TiVo.
When Buck Rogers was cancelled.
Make love, not reality television.
The regular tivos are certainly expensive. THe directivo, however, can be had for $99 installed. Or, if you already have directv, you can still get it for $99. Sometimes $49. Even free sometimes if you already have directv, possibly with a tivo, and ask for it.
Then add the $5/month for tivo service through directv.
hawk
DVRs are obviously here to stay no matter what happens. People who own TiVos are addicted to them and the satellite and cable guys are moving to emulate them, not supplant them. So far, most of their offerings are lame from what I've seen so TiVO clearly has an opportunity.
Granted, stand-alone DVRs may not survive. Instead, your DVR will probably be integrated into your paid-TV pipe as more and more of those pipes go digital. I have a DirecTiVo and it rocks. If it stopped working, I'd drop my whole satellite subscription entirely and stop watching regular TV entirely. It wouldn't be much of a sacrifice as before my DirectTiVo, I didn't have regular TV, I just watched DVDs. I only got regular TV after 9/11, and since then I've found that the regular news coverage is so bad that you're better informed if you DON'T watch TV. Bottom line for me is that TV is only worth watching with a DVR.
So I see that TiVO could easily survive simply by being the standard "operating system" for set-top boxes and satellite recievers. The subscription fee can then be rolled into the fee for the monthly service, or subsidized like mine is. (DirectTV only charges $5/month for the TiVO part). Assuming its even necessary as my DirectTiVO gets all its program information from the satellite anyways.
However, at 3 million subscribers, that's easily enough to keep the company afloat no matter what happens.
So TiVO as separate box you buy at Circuit City? Probably not going to last. TiVo as a "feature" of your cable/satellite box? Inevitable.
TiVo can't sell content unless they have distribution rights. But that won't happen unless the media corporations divest themselves of their distribution businesses. AFAIK no government of any major developed country has so far had the balls even to ask the media corps to play fair in the marketplace, so I can't see this sort of unbundling happening soon.
The only thing you've moved beyond, mate, is sanity. Wow! You've move beyond television! You must be ready for Godhood, now, right? I'll alert the media! Hey, media! We have a self-righteous wonderboy here who has moved beyond television! Shall we just make him King Of The World now or do we need a referendum?
Get over yourself, kid. I know you think you've got it all figured out, but your posts reveal a pattern of extreme ignorance. You really are a sad sack of egotistical nothing.
I have no problem seeing this happen in the not to distant future, but only after the mass adoption of multicasting on the public Internet. The BBC opened the doors in the UK. Other content providers are pushing ISPs to deploy multicast in other places too.
Once Multicast is available to most people, the content will be there. If you build it, they will come.
If there is anything that would be well-received by a great many people, it would be a Tivo. Everyone has (and can operate) a vacuum. Everyone also has and can (for the most part) operate a TV.
Can the same be said for a Tivo?
Tivo should look at Dreamix. Www.dreamix.tv
I was a long time Tivo subscriber. Then I bought an HDTV.
I knew that I would need to upgrade my Tivo to support HD. I was hit by sticker shock!!! $1000 smackeroonies for the Directv-Tivo unit that supports HD. I explored other options. Low and behold, Dish Network had a similiar unit which i could rent for $5 a month.
I will spare you the details since you can do math. But my thought process was this, the useful life on something like this is 3 years before new tech is needed.
$1000 over three years versus $5 a month over three years. That's an $800 dollar difference. You can guess what this Tivo subscriber did.
Those who can do... Those who can't get a certification from Cisco or Microsoft.
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Every week there's something here on the death of Tivo - keep posting about it and 'maybe' it will happen?- is that it?
Anyways, Tivo has changed the way i watch TV. I pick what I want to watch and thats it. Its extremely frustrating to go back to watching live TV - take NASCAR yesterday, ads every 4 minutes, Jesus - now there is time that I can use to do something else instead of watching another erection ad or car ad or whatever other crap they want to sell you.
Tivo or the concept of Tivo will be around for awhile me thinks.
If Tivo became anti-cable and allowed downloading, etc., they would be quickly squashed with lawsuits. It's the American Way... as is well-funding companies that dominate market share. Tivo probably realized in the beginning that their domniance in this market would be short-lived, it was only a matter of time. At the very least, we can he thankful that Tivo started this revolution of PVR in the home, and inspired projects like MythTV, Freevo, et al.
Replay TV seems better, its what I have. It has built in networking, and there are already open source programs out there to download recorded shows to your workstation, and do whatever you want with them. No hack required.
Look at the directivos . . . $5/month for tivo, and you get it for $99 . . .
hawk
Is it me or do these "TiVo death watch" things come up every 6 months or so for some reason or another? I know people who work at TiVo, and the last time I asked them about the whole "TiVo is dying" thing that showed up a couple of months ago they told me they come up now and again usually because people who write those articles are obviously oblivious to new and strange things that are happening on the inside without their knowledge. Granted I don't work for TiVo myself, nor do I even own one or watch tv but when these things run like a bi-annual bell I think its kind of silly.
Chicken fried butter sticks? Do
I have direct TV and I have a TiVO in it. It provides 2 inputs and is very good.
The reason standalone TiVOs wont work is due to the multiple feed of a specific type. In order to get HD you have to have HD recievers.. etc.
The dual input is rocking.. I want a QUAD INPUT!!!!
and why is Direct TV not wanting to renew a profitable deal with TiVO? Sounds like TiVO is shooting themselves there.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
For you fan boys that say you can opt out, if tivo cared about our privacy they'd make it opt in. And wouldn't bury that they are spying on you, deep in their terms of service.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
I have computer running Window Media Center 2005.
I have programmed in all the show I like and indicated to record only new showings etc. I can leave town for a week or a month and know the shows I care about are recorded. Combined with the media range extender I can watch the play back on my 57 inch TV downstairs.
What did I pay for this... a fair amount (at least twice the price of a TIVO - which is illegal in Canada). But considering it is also a computer (despite running windows), and I have no subscription fee to pay to get the TV schedule, and I can burn shows off to DVD, and I can upgrade my hard ware any time.
My ultimate choice would be a stand alone device. That would have:
- Standard outputs
- Able to load the schedule via the internet
(via wired-Ethernet or wireless-Ethernet - 801.2 b/g)
- Provide a nice interface
- A very large hard drive with the ability to replace/upgrade later on.
- A DVD/CD burner to record directly to DVDs or to burn/achieve recorded shows.
- A built in battery (in case the power fails it could safely shut down or finish recording the program).
- No maitaince fee for the TV scheule or a one time fee for the product (one time subscription fee included in the base price).
- Able to have limited internet access (play internet radio, load firmware upgrades).
- A big bonus would be able to wirelessly access and transmit content from the device to other locations in the house (most like via remote access points).
- Another big bonus would be able to record two programs at once.
- Allow cable passthough
- Allow picture in picture (or side by side pictures. I love being able to watch two football games at the same time on one TV).
- Typical VCR controls when watching LIVE TV.
- A nice sleek looking box.
For a product like that all nicely intergrated into one sleek looking box with a remote I would definetly pay for.
It seems to me that it will get there. All of it is possible with off the shelf part right now but to full integrate it into one sleep box always takes time. The Company's will produce half ass stuff for years and make slight upgrades to continue to selling their junk. Or they will offer something so far above what a typical person needs and charge an arm and a leg for it (but when it fails to sell they say their is no market and refuse to sell a cheaper model that did not offer the useless costly features).
It will take a company like TIVO to really listen to what customers want. Bigger companies all ways seem to like tell the customers what they need/like.
Maybe TIVO needs change their business model so they just sell the hardware to the Cable Companies and maintina the TV scheduling aspect.
Ah... Maybe someday a company will achieve what I can do with desk top computer and some software/hardware.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
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St. Thomas Aquinas had a dickens of a time proving the existence of the human soul. I think he'd have an even harder time proving that TiVo had one.
As a TiVo user and someone who has seen Cable DVR, here's what I can tell you:
Compared to TiVo, Cable-provided DVR just plain sucks. The interfaces are generally nightmarish, and they are lacking featuers that TiVo has. The difference is so great that I dropped digital cable shortly after getting a TiVo. I mainly had digital cable for the channel guide, but the channel guide on TiVo is so vastly superior to the one that comes with digital cable in every way, that I fail to get any real value for my money with digital cable anymore.
Given that the cable company provided ones had plenty of time to sit back, take a look at TiVo, and consider what they would improve and what they wonldn't, and that they quite obviously didn't do this, I think it is quite obvious that Comcast et al have no interest in providing a superior product. They simply plan on letting vendor lock-in win the day in this market.
I think that TiVo is a better buy than people realize, too. Going back to digital cable, it cost me about 13 bucks a month to get digital cable. Digital cable is a product that provides you with a channel guide, video on demand, and a solution to the "nothing's on" problem in the form of a huge mess of channels with lower quality programming.
TiVo gives you a channel guide, a sort of video on demand in the form of playing back stuff you've recorded, and a solution to the "nothing's on" problem in the form of being able to record stuff on the channels you already have at times when you can't normally watch TV.
In that respect, digital cable brought me about 60 or 70 per cent more content, while TiVo more than quadrupled the amount of content that is available to me. For the same price. With overall higher quality additional content, too.
Seriously, why use a locked device with DRM. I rather use a hard disk recorder in MPEG-2 that i stored easily and transferrable without a subscription. I pay for directv so why do i need to pay tivo, i think the technology is great but a subscription is just stupid, you wouldnt pay to use a VCR each month would you? So why for a hard drive.
The problem I've always had with Tivo is that, with the way I prefer to connect my A/V components, Tivo can not record anything but Basic Cable. It cannot view, nor record, digital cable programming.
So, when Time Warner rolled out the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 (and now, 8300) DVR boxes, complete with dual tuners, I knew that I'd found the device for me. One device can record two digital programs simultaneously, while watching a third. No IR transmitters, no headaches of any kind.
Now, I'll be the last to sugest that the Explorer 8000's interface is better than Tivo. Quite the opposite in fact. But the integration of the DVR and Cable Box outweighs the negatives. Also, the Passport (the Explorer's UI) interface is getting much faster and more intuitive.
In addition, TWC is currently rolling out the Explorer 8300, which can allow multi-room viewing. You only need one Explorer 8300 DVR box, and then you can watch programs recorded on the 8300 from any Explorer 2000 (or better) terminal in the home. No ethernet, no wireless, just the same ol' coax that's already installed.
Integration wins. Even with CableCard and other such innovations empowering newer TVs and DVRs, Tivo will have a VERY hard time holding up to the infrastructure of a large cable company, especially Time Warner.
And the best part? The live broadcasts would be of any channel in any part of the country. Moved away from your home town? Find the station's call letters and watch the local news live via video stream, or download it, or get a season pass.
Man, it would be as revolutionary as VoIP. TVoIP. Heh. Maybe they should think about a desktop package, too, like Vonage's SoftPhone. SoftTiVo.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
I have a Tivo by Toshiba, (with dvd player) I'm still on basic service (never paid the 300 or the 13$ a month) and I've disconnected it from the network- for more than months at a time..
After the initial setup of the box, a persistent connection to the net/phone is not necassary
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Or, an off-the-shelf DVD recorder with built-in hard drive like I did. I can do everything (that matters) that a TIVO can do, with no membership/monthly fees, and I can archive stuff I want to keep on DVD-05 discs. The recorder's "EP" record mode still looks 10 times better than VHS, and that lets you put 6 hours on a single sided, single layer disc where the quality never degrades over time. Only idiots fall for the TIVO line of crap on "Pause live TV!" Who cares! I don't WANT to pause live TV. And I don't want the stupid thing going out and recording stuff on it's own based on my "viewing habits" either! I already know what I want to record and my satellite reciever has a timer function that works just like programming a VCR. Easy Peasy! My recorder has a neat function that starts recording automatically when the video input from the satellite reciever detects a signal. It's a bit of a manual process, but I will restate: "I can to everything a TIVO can do, with MY OWN equipment!"
Woke up, turned on tv and there's a message from tivo informing me they've added tivo2go. That allows me to copy recorded shows from the tivo too my pc or laptop.
I think so, Brain. But where will we get a duck and a rubber hose at this time of night? --Pinky
I need a new PVR. I don't want a TiVo since their death is predicted so often. Right now I have a ReplayTV...how are they doing? The frustrating thing is that the specs on the cable and DirecTV PVRs are better than TiVo and ReplayTV. I want two tuners...I want to record two shows at once. And the only boxes that allow this are tied to specific content providers.
I mean if they had went with BSD, they would be dead already!
Sometimes my arms bend back.
But that's me. I'm a geek. How are they going to make money from that, does anybody know? Is there a plan to start buying applications from the community and selling them as add on services or something? Or perhaps licensing them so that I as an author make some money based on how many people subscribe to my application? (Imagine the horror show of technical support THAT would be!)
Surely they can't have gone through all this trouble just to keep we coders thrilled. How does this scale to the larger audience and get Tivo back in the game?
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
letting us download, store, organize, and serve media from both cable and -- this is the important part -- the internet.
ummm, can you say replaytv?
So...for the sake of argument, let's say that TiVo goes bankrupt and are unable to find additional financing. What's gonna happen? They'll be bought, probably by one of the larger content distributors (Comcast, DirecTV, Charter, whoever).
Anyone buying TiVo wants two things:
1. The TiVo brand. Can you even name another PVR brand? Nobody says "I've got to PVR that show". TiVo is the ONLY product with any name recognition in the marketplace.
2. The TiVo functionality. As anyone who as ever used one knows, there's no comparison to other PVRs. It's got a great interface and is remarkably stable (not perfect, but pretty close).
To mess with either of those threatens to devalue what they've purchased.
Sure, there might be some rough spots when the new owners cow to pressure from content providers, but ultimately the marketplace wins on these things and it will become incrasingly hard for content providers to explain why they want to sue distributors for allowing their customers to do what they've come to expect.
- ReplayTV doesn't store content which you don't specifically request. No Tivo commercials or content taking space you allocated to a show you wanted to record.
- Tivo's season pass works better than ReplayTV which doesn't understand episode repeats.
- ReplayTV has the 30 second skip missing from cable/dish PVRs
- One ReplayTV model had the commercial skip feature.
- Newer ReplayTV models let you share content with other ReplayTV boxes or PCs.
I've been considering the Dish 921 PVR with two HD tuners. You can record two shows and watch stored content from a third. They recently cut their price in half to about $500. I'm told the menuing sucks and the record function works like a VCR by time and misses a show if the time changes after programming. Anyone else using the Dish 921?signature pending slashdot approval
Conditions of use
A product lifetime subscription to the TiVo service covers the life of the TiVo Digital Video Recorder (DVR) you buy--not the life of the subscriber. The product lifetime subscription accompanies the product in case of ownership transfer. The subscription remains in effect if your DVR needs to be repaired or replaced due to a malfunction (see manufacturer warranty details). Because a product lifetime subscription is linked to a particular DVR, it cannot be transferred to any other DVR (unless the DVR is replaced due to a malfunction covered by the manufacturer's warranty). Each DVR purchased requires its own service subscription and activation.
Of course, hardware products don't last forever and their lifespan will vary among individual products. TiVo makes no representations or warranties as to the expected lifetime of the product aside from the manufacturer's warranty.
So you see what I mean. Don't be confused about "lifetime" membership. When my friend asked how long Tivo boxes last, the representative on the phone said "Well, about 2.5 to 3 years". If you do the math, it's pretty close to what you'd pay for the lifetime subscription.
Oh, and linkage for those that'd like to see the actual text:
Click on the "Product Lifetime" link
Betamax
No, really. Better product, we-can-do-it-without-anybodies-help mentality.
Where was the $4.95 (or $2.95 or $1.00)/ month deal when the cablecos made their DVRs? There is (nominally) a fixed amount of work TiVo has to do each month. Programming, software fixes (okay, there's some CS, too). Is it better to get 100,000,000 boxes at $1/mo or 1,000,000 boxes at $12.95/mo? Ask billG, he'll tell you.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Futurama and Enterprise are cancelled a lot of good Tivo did saving the world.
I do not want ANY info leaving my Tivo, and you didnt answer ANY of the other gripes.
You get a grade of F, failure to argue properly.
Prepare for Freevo and an EDD form, butthead.
It's a damned shame that Tivo isn't doing better than they are. I had a Tivo receiver for a long time, but after I moved, I've been using another brand's Tivo-like recorder. I can tell you from first hand experience that anything other than Tivo is trash. What I have now is a glorified VCR like scheduler. With Tivo, if I wanted a program, I could just tell Tivo to find it, anytime, anyplace and record it. I can sort of do that with my new system, but it locks it into a schedule (time/channel). With Tivo, you just had to tell it what you wanted, and it would find it. Ooops, you changed the channel or cancelled the scheduled recording? No problem, it would go find it someplace else for you. Damn right! That's what I'm talking about. You have a regular schedule, like South Park every night on Comedy Channel? What if you want to record a one off program that conflicts, Tivo would let you do that. My new system forces you to cancel your entire recording schedule for the program in order to record the one off, then you have to go back and schedule the series again. WTF is that?
Tivo also allows you to record X number of episodes of something, so say you like to watch reruns of Twilight Zone, or something, you can tell it to find you those episodes, and keep 3, or 5, or 1, whatever. It'll gets rid of them oldest recorded one to make room for new ones as needed. With my new system, you either get everything until you turn it off, or you don't record any of them. What trash.
I can accomplish 90% of what I want to do with my new system, but it's 3 times as much work, and it's really that last 10% that really made Tivo nice. Trust me, if you have a choice between Tivo, and some Tivo wannabe, take the Tivo, even if it's more money, which I don't know if it is.
I won't pretend I know very much about the dirty world of television and hollywood, and I am probably talking out of my ass here, but hear me out anyway. I might say something that gets you thinking. Particularly if you work for TiVo, please give this a once over and a few clock cycles of thought. You've probably already had these ideas, and if so, I'd love to hear why you haven't implemented them yet.
To start with, people have become sick of television. Simply sick of it. I don't mean there are no good shows, because there are plenty (although, IMO, the signal to noise ratio only gets worse). I mean sick of it in the sense that they are tired of being locked into rigid time schedules and watching advertisements. They use time shifting, and buy DVDs (or rent netfilx) to avoid the advertising. I guaran-fing-tee you that if someone, somewhere, has the balls to provide a pay-for television-on-demand service that has no advertisements, they'll steal back a lot of the people who have left television behind, and probably a good portion of the people watching it now. That's the grand scheme, the ten year plan. How do we do this?
The best thing about the PVRs is their time-shifting capability. Trouble is, cable companies can provide that just as easily, and without the cost inclusion of a subscription model like TiVo uses. It's not that the subscription model is a bad idea or is unfair; it's merely that people see it as an extra cost that they can easily get rid of by switching to a cable-company product bundle. Time shifting is simply not enough.
For the subscription model to work, a further service has got to be added to the bundle. If someone can find a way to provide everything the cable companies provide (movies on demand via netflix, time shifting, scheduled recording, basically what we are used to now), as well as some new services the cable company can't match, they become viable again.
So what can we put in a box like a TiVo that we know a corporation like Time-Warner is incapable of supplying? Freedom, of course. The paradigm that gave birth to the free software movement is a strictly human phenomenon; it has nothing to do with software fundamentally. Read Eric Raymond's collection of essays (and the excellent ones he links to) on the topic for further insight into this little known human phenomenon. It will work anywhere that copying content and distributing it can reach tolerable cost levels and maintain legality.
First, we need to make the TiVo capable of supporting its own distribution network. This means lots of disk space (say, 500GB a box, shouldn't be unviable given today's drive technology, and it'd be nice to be able to mod it with upgrades, some will want to do that to help broadcast). It also means a backend capable of moving data across the internet between many TiVos. Bittorrent would probably be a good place to start. Ideally one should be able to connect to the network, see what's available, request it, and have it arrive within a day. There is no reason TiVo could not provide backend server support for this and set it up in a centralized manner, controlling what gets released into this alternative distribution system. As long as they retain approval for what is on the network, they can ensure that no copyrighted material enters it. This is very important.
So, TiVo now provides you with everything the cable TV can provide, and there's now a "Search the TiVo Network" feature with a bittorrent backend and a pipe to TiVo's central servers. What do we do with this? Where do we get the media to put on it?
There is an ocean of content out there that has no home. How many shows are rejected for every one that is accepted? How many guys in basements could pull off a Saturday Night Live sketch, or Wayne's World? One creative guy could easily duplicate Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. Take a look at the idea behind the Cable Science Network sometime. There's plenty of universities that would allow taping of their lectures, to be uploaded into an alternative
Hell is being intelligent in a world full of idiots.
REPLAY TV!!!
Very insightful and as a long time tivo user exactly how i feel. I just haven't pulled the trigger yet on dumping my tivo, but I keep thinking about it.
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As of today, TiVo's market cap is only about $325M. Apple should buy TiVo and incorporate the functionality of the TiVo into the Mac Mini. It could be a new model or a firewire add-on. I don't know about anybody else, but I'm already planning on using my Mini for games (NES/SNES/etc emulators, old DOS games with DOSBox, wireless USB controllers, etc) and watching movies. The only reason I don't use MythTV is that I don't like the kludge that's required for Myth to control my satellite receiver.
"There is no night so forlorn, no mood so bleak, that it cannot be infused with pleasure by tender meat..." - R.W. Apple
We'll see how this plays out. Either the technical superiority of TiVo will win out or the lower-cost, lower-quality options that the cable companies can offer will win out. Actually it's likely that both will win and retain some part of the market, the question is, how large a part for each respectively?
If you haven't already it sounds like you need to read The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. The DVRs the cable companies put out don't have to be better to put TiVo out of business. They just have to be good enough, cheaper and easy to get. Being a technology leader is only valuable if three things are true. First, that you can stay a technology leader and protect that position. (through futher innovation, patents, etc) Second, that your technology leadership either lets you be the low cost provider OR that customers value your technology such that it lets you charge a premium for your services. Third, that you have economicly viable access to the right distribution channels. TiVo is arguably the technology leader in the DVR industry but I think it is failing on the maybe the second and definitely the third conditions.
Let me give you an example. Most of us criticize (rightly IMO) Microsoft for a lack of innovation. But being the leader isn't always the best business strategy. Economists call Microsoft a fast follower. They don't innovate. They don't know how to. And if they tried, they'd fail. But what they do very successfully is watch the leaders in the market and then copy their innovations while leveraging their strengths in marketing, distribution. OS/2 challeged Windows NT a few years back. Result? Windows 95. It wasn't better than OS/2 technologically but it was good enough and Microsoft controled the distribution channels. (plus IBM shot themselves in the foot repeatedly) They can learn from the innovations and mistakes of the innovators and come out with a good enough product that most customers will buy. Sure, it's not a glamorous strategy but being a fast follower can be very, very effective.
The downside of being a fast follower? You might not be able to catch the market leader if you aren't quick enough. Microsoft hasn't been able to catch Intuit with their Microsoft Money product despite years of trying. They got caught on the wrong side of an installed base. Being a successful fast follower requires lots of resources and an acute ear for what the market is telling you. But it also means that if there is a fundamental shift in the market or if you misread the market, you're screwed. Microsoft may have be screwed because Open Source could be one of those tectonic shifts ("disruptive technologies" in my Christensen's terminologies) that fundamentally alters the market place such that their own organizational structure no longer permits them to compete effectively. Whether this is actually the case remains the be seen.
The other problem with being a fast follower is that if you are too good, you end up a monopoly with no on to copy from. As a result a successful fast follower either stagnates or has to move into other industries to grow. Microsoft is in this position right now. Their core OS and Office products are stagnant monopolies. Very profitable but unlikely to provide massive growth. So Microsoft is having to branch out into other lines of business. Dell is doing somewhat the same thing. They're so successful in selling PC's they are having to branch into printers, PDAs and other technologies to continue to grow.
Of course, usability is irrelevant - if they can push out competitors because of their market share, they win. Then when technology catches up, they will be able to leverage it.
Think "fiber" connections. People always wonder how we could possibly use such a huge pipe, just like we used to wonder how we could POSSIBLY fill a 100MB hard drive. In general, people don't think far enough ahead. The internet isn't about just email and web-pages anymore.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Never give customers a stupid reason not to buy. Don't get heavy on people with big decisions. Make it easy for them to say yes and give you money. TiVo should offer: * All up front (current with lifetime) * A mix of up front and subscription (current model with monthly). * All subscription (no up front cost at all) Let customers try the low up front cost, then upgrade to all up front cost in a couple of months when they are hooked. Brendan
The cablecard standard fixes this problem, allowing standardized access to digital and HD cable programming across different providers. Tivo's got a two-tuner cablecard box coming, but it's not due out for a year, and we all know that nothing ships on time, so expect it to be a year and a half.
It's just what I want, but the big question is "will it be fast enough to save tivo from their loss of DirecTV and all the cheaper competition?"
I don't know if the all the telco's already have plans for their own DVR's (probably) when they rollout TV service on their new fiber networks. It looks like Verizon is using MS, but perhaps this is an opportunity for Tivo to secure some new subscribers/revenue. Of course, they should still be pursuing some of the other options discussed here too. As a current Tivo user, I'd hate to see them go under!
Once you lick the lollipop of mediocrity, you'll suck forever!
We have three TiVo units and pay the fees. I must be unusual in that I believe in paying for services that people provide me. The TiVo systems have saved me a lot of fuss and bother between different family members trying to remember to start different VCR units when someone is not able to watch their favorite show.
The Season Pass function, coupled with the ability to shared shows between the three units, more than makes it worth the monthly fee.Heck, the Season Pass feature has a habit of discovering copies of shows being broadcast on unexpected channels -- keeping the Red Dwarf fans very happy.
For every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious and wrong.
See that automatic record feature that Tivo has? The one where it guesses what you'd like. Improve it, make it smarter - a neural network or Bayesian filter or something. It is a killer feature that none of the competitors have, but it's not strong enough at the moment.
Other than that, license your technology cheaply to everyone who wants it, be promiscuous. If you don't then the technically inferior and cheap systems will win.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I know with ReplayTV, their prices are the same for Tivo for the monthy or lifetime subs, but if you get a second unit (or 3rd... up to 5) the monthly sub is half price if you have either the monthly or lifetime on the first one.
Absolutely correct. The fact that it searches through hundreds of hours of *CRAP* for stuff that you are likely to find interesting and automatically record it for you is *the* killer feature of Tivo.
It just isn't quite clever enough at it and needs to take into account the programme descriptions and channel information as well.
I reckon a bayesian filter would do the job, the ones I use are 99%+ accurate at determining if I'm likely to want to read emails that I get.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I can change your mind with one word. Deadwood
Cheers
Reverend Billy Bob
bamph
The biggest problem is that Tivo has pretty much stopped innovating. Over that last 2 or 3 years, very little has changed in the core abilities of the Tivo. They've added small bells and whistles like playing MP3s and pictures on your TV and streaming shows from one Tivo to another, but the box hasn't really gotten better. Basic functionality hasn't gotten better at all in the last 2+ years I have it. Not even on the new units.
I've got the connections to get the content but I have no idea how to go about getting the uplink equipment and the sat channel.
Now if a company like TIVO got behind that idea, I'm guessing they could develop a market for their product via the back door route of becoming a content provider. Sort of the opposite of what DirecTV did with their DVR's.
I think there's a lot of potential for FTA. Think about how ESPN got started. They started with off the wall sports no one else wanted to carry. Now that ESPN is main stream they don't carry the oddball sports anymore. But FTA could.
I don't know, seems like it's worth a shot. Any satellite wizards out there know anything about uplinking content and how to get a sat channel?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The way that both cable and SAT are received into the home is so stupid to begin with anyway. If it were fixed (which would probably take government intervention to make companies do it right), TIVO's fortunes would probably be better.
I have long believed that the providers should only have to install one box in my house in the basement where the cable enters the house. That box should decode all the channels that I have contacted for with my provider. Then those signals should be sent to all of the cable outlets in my house. They used to do something similar to this (I lived in an apartment in Marlborough, MA that did this up until 1999) with the channels effectively de-scrambled at the pole. Only the cable entered the apartment and any TV could watch any channel including the premium ones. Alas that ended in early 2000 when they sent us a letter saying would have to get boxes for continued premium service. (Might I add right after we got the box and all was well for a brief time, we also had to 4 day outage when the screwed the whole transition up, that's another story.)
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
A TIVO would be useful to me...The tivo monthly service is of no use to me. Without the subscription I can justify spending $200 for tivo and programming my own channels. I dont need the $12 a month service!
1. Get rid of stupid restrictions.
2. Allow me to mount the drive as a share over my home lan and access the content stored on board. Since you run on linux it should be fairly easy to allow for multiple mounting options. Then I can transfer the data files on and off at will. Or even record in the living room and play back on my computer.
3. Make the Storage drive user upgradeable in a bay..better yet two bays...put the OS and applications on a small internal drive put the content on drives that I can swap in and out at will...in fact you could ever offer the unit with a bring your own storage package.
4. Restore original pause, fast forward, commercial skipping functionality. Stop kowtowing to the media industry.
5. NEVER EVER comply with the broadcast flag. I realize that you might have to in the face the law, but make the broadcast flag support easily fooled and "leak" the bypass on the net.
6. Here is a big one. Do just software releases, and provide TV listing subscriptions same as always. provide me the software and I will build the box myself the way I want it...this is the true way for you to put yourself back in the back, Sell TIVO as a software package, that I can then adapt to my needs. I have no issue with you keeping whatever you want as binary only release, you can even code it to specific hardware (TV decode/decode cards)...just let me build my own linux box then install your recording playback software eon to it.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
I would have bought a TiVo or a ReplayTV years ago, had they not succumbed to the urge to gouge with their enforced subscriptions. I'll spit on their graves.
I think Tivo should position themselves with the cable and sat companies. i.e. sell the boxes as add ons through the cable vendors (maybe even allowing the vendors to bill for Tivo, like RIM does fro BlackBerry devices).
Ultimatly, the cable and sat companies are good at distribution, they have always been bad on the subscriber equipment side.
Here in Canada all of the cable and sat companies have very poor excuses for PVRs. I remember from the days of grey market US sats here that the Tivo kicked butt!
I've been trying to get one up here in Canada forever!
There was that whole discussion with NetFlix a while back. Hopefully they'll be able to get that up and running by the end of the year.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
My Tivo Thinks I'm Gay!!
People pay $50 a month for internet access(content provider). Do you think people would pay $13 a month for them to use their computer?
For people to pay $13 a month, tivo has to add value. Guide service isn't enough. For $13 a month I can get sat radio(content).
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
I'm also a ReplayTV subscriber. Recently my ReplayTV had a hard drive die. I've had it for 4 years now, but I didn't expect it to go this soon. The device is so integrated into my life style that I was emotionally upset when I couldn't time shift TV shows. I stoped watching TV to install a new hard drive! And I was up and running the next night. Then I used the Internet Share feature of ReplayTV to catch up on the shows that I missed. Gotta love it!
My co-worker's cable company DVR can't Internet share shows. So this yet another advantage to having your own DVR service.
lifetime is -important- because the subscription model prevents anyone from giving a TiVo as a gift. Nobody would like it if you bought them something than then required them to make regular payments to even turn it on.
they should ditch subscriptions.
It might not have the "wishlist" feature, but it has:
a "season pass"
integrated 30-second skip and 10-second rewind features
search
scheduling
dual-tuners
100 hours recording time (might be more now)
themes
Tivo is still a bit easier to use and has a nicer interface, but I'm a satisfied DISH customer. (However, if my apartment complex allowed Cox or Chartered to provide cable instead of their horrid no-name provider, I might be an all-in-one cable PVR/Internet customer.)
I'm not a big DSL fan, but I'd consider the DSL/satellite combo in the future.
Pause live TV is more important to 'new' parents than you can imagine.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I've noticed recently it takes a very long time for my DirecTivo to finally respond after clicking the Record button and confirming it. The delay is roughly the timespan of a commercial. Have any of you noticed this delay?
I thought I had an appetite for destruction, but all I really wanted was a club sandwich. --Homer J.
I have been using Dish Network's DVR for one year now. All I can say is that their DVR sucks ass. It crashes all the time. When the show times change my DVR just tapes what's on in that slot. I'm constantly recording crap because the times are always changing.
I was just getting ready to switch to Direct TV with TiVo so that I can record the shows I like and not miss them. Plus the dual tuner is a very nice option when you want to record two shows at the same time slot.
Now I'm being told that TiVo is going under? I sure hope not. The subscription is worth getting to watch the shows. Basically they are working to keep the program guide updated. I don't mind paying for that.
The only reason I signed up with Dish Network is because all my neighbors switched to them, and said they were better. From what I've seen about Direct TV, they have better, cheaper programming. Heck, I'm paying $50 a month and I don't even get TechTV (now gone and I never got to see it).
The above is not worth reading.
As a recent TiVo customer (who bought a lifetime subscription) I can't say I'm enormously impressed.
First, key features that loyal customers raved about have been removed from more recent products (preseumably as a result of pressure from content-owners). So we have a product that in some ways is getting worse rather than better.
Second, I find the interface quite clumsy. (Sure, it's PRETTY.) It seems like every operation has extra, pointless steps (many of which are confirming non-destructive operations). There is no undo (you can't undelete a program you just deleted in error). The remote control is almost axially symmetric, meaning that in the dark it's quite easy to point it in exactly the wrong direction.
Third, the out-of-box experience is terrible. It initially needs several hours just to start working (I have no idea why) and it initially incorrectly identified where I live and refused to download the right TV timetable. Even when this was corrected, it continues to record infomercials and label them "Scrubs".
Finally, TiVo persistently tries to sell stuff to you.
TiVo's problems, I think, lie in (a) a failure to decide who their customer is and serve their needs and (b) a lack of attention to usability.
Item (a) is a strategic problem (they seem torn between wanting to partner with content providers, wanting to become a content provider and sell their own advertising space, and wanting to become a video napster 1.0), whereas (b) is tactical (they simply need to stop paying attention to their fawning fans and do some serious self-criticism).
We gave Tivo as a gift with a gift subscription for the monthly fee... If they don't want to pay the monthly fee when the subscription is over, the Tivo is still more intuitive than a VCR without the guide data.
What the fuck is wrong with all of you?
You are too cheap to:
1. buy TiVo with lifetime subscription
2. buy TiVo with month to month
3. buy anything new 'cuz it'll get cheap later
How again do you get to complain about their services if you are not using them?
I chose to support a cool company buy buying their box for $99 and then paying the monthly subscription for however long. Funny that... if others did the same this thread would not exist.
Their competetition can keep putting out new DVRs, but as long as they're a pile of crud, i'll stick with my Tivo until the end of time. An HD PVR with really crummy guide data is entirely useless to me.
I love my Tivo, there is no other way to watch tv. What do I do when they go away? How do I get my updates?
You cant really look at it as a $9.98 charge though ($4.99 additional reciever fee $4.99 DVR service fee) for 2 reasons. First: If this is your only reciever or your primary reciever, you are not paying the $4.99 additional reciever fee. Second: if it is your second reciever you would be paying the additional reciever fee even if you didnt have a DVR reciever. The $4.99 DVR service fee covers the DVR funcionality for all the recievers on your account, so you only need to pay it once. Also the DVR service fee is waived if you subscribe to DTVs Total Choice Premier package which includes all the premium services (HBO, Showtime...) for $90.99 with local channels.
The menus of "On Demand" are hard to navigate. And once you start playing a program, you end up back at the top menu again, not where you were, near other similar programs. You can't search. You can't skip forward into a program faster than 3x or so. It's just plain slow and ugly. And you can't view or save arbitrary content (like every episode of SG-1): you get only what they want you to get "on demand".
I see on-demand as a (poor) complement to TiVo, but definitely not a replacement.
Sell a box after this summer that easily allows me to mod it and override the controls of the damn broadcast flags. Become the crowbar of the 21 century.
Open Source Sushi
It just needs to be a platform. They are selling it as a hardware+software bundle. They need to decide what they do - provide a service or make hardware. If they opened the interfaces and provided good tools, to make it easy for $50 Chinese hardware to access their pay service, I think they'd do a lot better.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I can wait for it all to come together, I know how to program my VCR.
Also totally missing the point. Do you program your VCR? I know how to, but I rarely did.
Right now, TCM ( Turner Classic Movies, I think ) is showing a long, long list of old ( and less old ) Oscar-winning and nominated movies, which our TiVo list has maybe 8 or 9 of right now. Would we have recorded those on our VCR? If I had a 12-hour tape... no. Not ever. Neither would you.
Simply put, On Demand and VCR just don't compare to a good DVR, and folks who think they do just don't get it, because they don't have it...
Hey, TiVo ain't dead yet, they've got a base of 3 million or so users...
I am sure it is tough competing with the cable companies. I hope cablecard works out.
And I never understood the lifetime subscription complaints. I do not like subscriptions but just think of the price of the Tivo as $300 higher.
And I think the "Why buy Intel chips when sand is so cheap" crowd either have never used Tivo or have an extremely low value of their time/convenience
I just got Moxie from Charter but also kept my series 2 Tivo. The Tivo season pass is clearly better. And the EVIL cable company changed the 30-second skip button to be 900 seconds The 30-second button is HUGELY important to me.
But the Moxie is dual tuner and HD. Those are big features that IMHO Tivo is way late in addressing.
Tivo needs a dual tuner, HD recorder with either huge disk available or preferablely a way to add Firewire drives. If it has to wait until 2006, then early 2006 would be better. Mac support for TivoToGo would be nice as would wired ethernet instead of 802.11b.
And if Tivo decides that their leaning towards the Dark Side is not getting them any friends and gets desparate, then perhaps they might risk making more consumer-friendly decisions in regards to DRM and Tivo-to-go and moving video around the network.
ReplayTV is probably not going to survive either
ReplayTV has been part of the company that does Denon and Marantz, among others. The ReplayTV functionality has been rolled into their high-end, $4000+ audiophile media servers. And for them that's the low-end. So yeah, I don't know if ReplayTV the low-end consumer brand will survive or grow, but the technology itself seems to becoming integrated into their home entertainment suite.
Da Blog
I thought Replay was out of business. Am I wrong?
SonicBlue did go bust and sold off its assets. ReplayTV has been part of the company that does Denon and Marantz, among others, for a few years now. The ReplayTV functionality has been rolled into their high-end, $4000+ audiophile media servers. And for them that's the low-end. So yeah, I don't know if ReplayTV the low-end consumer brand will survive or grow, but the technology itself seems to becoming integrated into their home entertainment suite.
Da Blog
the anti-cable, letting us download, store, organize, and serve media from both cable and -- this is the important part -- the internet.
ReplayTV tried this a few years ago. Automatic commercial skip, sharing shows without DRM over the internet. *Massive* online database of shows stored on other ReplayTV owners' hard drives - nearest damn thing to VOD I've seen working!
All it got them was sued to death and a 3% marketshare versus the industry cum-sucking yes men at Tivo.
Da Blog
Say what cable company have you got?
A product thats dieing.. based on Linux...
t -had-Open-source-support-behind-it people.
Its cool.. many try to imitate it , frig, if it was opensourced it would be like the wrt54g router. start out with one fork then before you know it have like 5 firmwares and software better then all the original stuff.
Heck the company could start concentrating on hardware and selling just harddware.
Hello out there, can anyone hear me.
Well there pride will die with it then I guess..
It had to be said... From the you-know-its-true-and-would-buy-one-if-you-knew-i
ahh what was I thinking we live in a world where one can patent something they never made cause its never been patented. and scare people into paying for it. now wait maybe vote for bush..
You may not be aware, ok, actually you aren't aware that getting Tivo to run in Canada (or anywhere outside of the U.S.) is an extremely easy process!
All you need :
You get full Tivo functionality, including livetv pause, adaptive recording, seasons pass, etc.
I would happily pay for this service gladly in Canada. Unfortunately, its not available nor are there plans to do so, so I don't even get the choice. But, with obtaining cable tv guide info on the web and using this little program, my tivo is as happy as if it were in its home country. I will tell you, using Tivo has made me actually watch TV, versus having gone for years without. Incidentally, I am more exposed to television advertising (since, well, I'm actually watching the thing now).
The archaic days of blind tv broadcasting are essentially, and gladly, over.
Cheers,
Kafka
You've got a limited satellite HD PVR that will cease working in six months when DirectTV goes MPEG4 for all their HD broadcasts.
They'll replace it with a nice non-Tivo HD unit for you, however.
Is the service still available for people who, for instance, buy old boxes on ebay?
Well, you can buy new boxes if you like. But yes, people do buy the older boxes (RTV5040 models) because they feature the auto commercial skip and show sharing without any hacking required...
No ReplayTV info is complete without mentioning DVArchive, Poopli (like Napster for RTVs), and PlanetReplay.
Da Blog