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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."
Cable companies are generally not known for their ability to innovate technology or to produce compelling products such as set top boxes like TiVo with new and advanced features
... Not even the telcos can touch that (for the moment - they're getting DAMN close)
tee hee. Thanks for the morning laugh. You've obviously been at Tivo too long. What the cable companies have done with their little one-way coax network defies belief... Trust me. I work for one (sort of... long story). Try to find another single service provider who can give you everything the cable plant does on 2 conductors. Cable (analog/digital), VOD, Broadband, VoIP, FM radio, other misc data services (ie Alarm monitoring)
However, the lack of a decent set-top box on our own network (Rogers, Canada) is frustrating. Its far superior to the dish folks - dual tuners, and the ability to record VOD programming etc. However, the user interface is lacking these days... And that I blame entirely on the manufacturers. In our case, Scientific Atlanta. They keep innovating - using the same software. For instance, the new SA 8500 (i think?) box that is coming out will be able to serve video off its hard drive to any other SA set-top... ANY explorer set top. That's saying something. The exlorer 2000 is one outdated piece of kit. But guess what, its still supported by the latest feature sets.
PowerKey is the base, but SARA - the top-level GUI, looks like somethiing out of 1994. It is so long overdue for an overhaul I've generally stopped complaining about it.
That being said, the SA boxes have one SERIOUS advantage over other solutions - they're a bit bucket. When you record the NFL game in HD on an 8000HD, it is simply caching the stream. No transcoding. When you play it back, the signal is identical to the live broadcast. So... until CableCard 2.0 comes out (ETA: 12 months?) TiVo and others are left in a bit of a lurch. But, if you survive the wait, there will be NO excuse for giving the cablecos a run for their money. I hope you do. Maybe SA will finally update SARA!
How about this one. Seems like he's got a chip on his shoulder...
I've never owned TiVo, only used it a few times. Does TiVo provide free updates to the UI/features that are useful on a regular basis?
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Not only free, but they happen automatically.
From time to time, you end up with downloads of updated software. This tends to be piecemeal for regular tivos that get it by phone, and all at once on satellite. If it needs to, it reboots at some obscure time of the morning (I think it even worns you first).
As far as competing with cable, look at their deal with directv (which may or may not be ending, depending upon which rumors you believe). Someone is subsidizing hardware costs ($99), and it's only $5/month. And look at the portion (huge majority) of tivo subscribers with directivo . .
hawk
Actually, the TiVo "lifetime" subscription is min(the TiVo unit's lifetime, company lifetime). Of course the only parts of the TiVo prone to failure are the hard drives and modem; the hard drive is replaceable, and the modem is circumventable. So you could say the effective lifetime of a TiVo unit is unlimited.
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce
It probably isn't being modded up because a Tivo/NetFlix coop is already in the works.
e k/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5915470/site/newswe
-9mm-
But here's the question... how the hell does a Tivo box that's sitting on a shelf above the satellite reciever change the channel as needed? What kind of weird wiring hack did you have to do to get that to work?
The same way a Tivo sitting on the shelf above the cable box changes channels - there's a little IR emitter that you position in front of the box, and the Tivo sends the appropriate commands to change the channel.
With some model satellite receivers (DirecTV only, I think), the serial port on the back of the Tivo hooks up to the serial port on the back of the receiver and changes channels that way.
Good Eats was bouncing all over the schedule, and I never missed a single new episode.
That's a good show, BTW.
My DVR is the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300 (I think) offered by Cox. Perhaps Time Warner offers a better service, but when you have over 200 channels, browsing by title or genre is, for me, a frustrating waste of time.
This is especially true when the "genre" is just "Movie". I mean, there is a big difference between, say "War And Peace" and "Earnest Goes To Camp".
The TiVo Wishlist function is fantastic. For instance: I was watching the "Foyle's War" series on PBS last year. The star of that series is Michael Kitchen. I liked it so much, that I set up a wishlist to find any programs with Michael Kitchen in them.
The cable-supplied DVR probably looks great to anyone who has never used a TiVo before, but I've become spoiled.
Proverbs 21:19