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Yahoo! Plans to Connect Services With Tivo
Mango Man writes "According to the NY Times, Yahoo! and Tivo plan to connect their services to help differentiate themselves in their respective markets. The first feature offered will be modest: Tivo users will be able to find programs in Yahoo!'s listings and send them to Tivo to record." Ladies and gentlemen, begin your merger rumours!
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
How will Yahoo know to send the info to MY TiVo? Will there be a mechanism in place to prevent me from sending record instructions to someone else's TiVo? Most importantly, can I get around those restrictions?
:-)
I mean, I wouldn't WANT to set my buddy's TiVo to fill up its 80 hours with The Horse Porn Channel, but it might at some point become necessary...
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
I wonder if this is in any way related to Google's possible entry into the DVR market as reported on slashdot?
For a company that has been teetering on the brink of obsolescence for some time now, this is great news. Like the iPod, TiVo's real edge over its competitors comes from their spectacular user interface design. Even the most non-technical of my friends and family are able to figure out TiVo easily, and the remote is a triumph of engineering. Generic DVRs are killing them, though. As a Comcast subscriber, I am granted the deep displeasure of occasionally having to use their remote and their menus. I pity those who have to use Comcast's DVR as well.
TiVo is not only a well-designed product, it's an undervalued entity. TiVo has a smart, net-connected box in the living room; this is where every media company wants to be. I'm surprised it's taken this long for a big company to get in on the action. My TiVo ought to be downloading trailers for every movie in theaters, displaying show times, and letting me buy the ticket. It should be aggregating my RSS feeds. It should have an embedded BitTorrent client that downloads the latest video feed of This Week In Tech. When I watch an episode of The Simpsons from Now Playing, there should be a link to buy the DVD box set from Amazon. The only way TiVo will survive is by embracing convergence concepts. Hopefully this partnership with Yahoo! is the first step in this direction.
domain combinatorics
Go to the Yahoo TV listings. Click on a show and look for "You can record this program to your TiVo.". Click on the Learn More Link to register for the service.
Kage_
Ah, we all lambasted Google for a supposed rumor about their DVR, but it looks like Yahoo beat them to the punch...
Don't have a Tivo, but wondered, does it require a separate internet connection or does it get the listings through the cable, like digital cable does? Either way, how long until there's some exploit and everyone has to start patching their Tivo on a weekly basis? Tivo antivirus, Tivo firewall. Surely there's enough storage and processing power inside one to be useful to someone who controls a couple thousand of them...
This is very strategic and potentially very market-disruptive.
There are any number of players trying to deliver video over the internet -- the Yahoo guy in charge of their video was quoted by the NYT as saying that we will have an unlimited number of channels in the future. The NBC Nightly news is going on-line. Major-league baseball has been streaming games all season. Every media company in the world would love the ability to sell directly to consumers without having to go through Blockbuster, DirectTV or cable pay-per-view. But, as long as the picture shows up on a computer screen and not on a TV screen, it'll be a niche market. But, if the same 36-in TV that you watched 'Lost' on ABC can be used to watch the 'Lost' you got from itunes, well, that's a different story. Tivo is perfectly positioned to allow this to happen.
One big problem with this is bandwidth. Unfortunately, the people who lose by having more TV go over the Internet are the same ones who control bandwidth. Is your cable TV company going to say "Hey. Let's take some of the bandwidth that we're using to provide high-profit pay-per-view video and use it to fatten our Internet pipes instead"? Ideally, they'd be forced to by their competitors, but the main competition to cable modems is DSL, and all the phone companies are trying to do video as well.
Connecting your Tivo to an online broadcast directory like Yahoo's is fine--essentially working with an online TV Guide to program your Tivo.
How about taking it the next step and including directories for video podcasts, iFilm, or even offloading your digital video camera while you're still on vacation, from the hotel room?
I went to the city because I wished to live without deliberation.
No thanks, TiVo. I've been boycotting you since you denied me the right to save my shows as long as I like and forced me to opt-out of a user profiling program into which I never opted.
I will be much happier when Google TV allows me to schedule recordings on my standards-compliant MythTV DVR that I built myself.
I'm not Seth Finkelstein. I still speak the truth.
great, and when will TiVo be available in Europe?
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The headline would read:
MICROSOFT PROMISES TO RELEASE DVR SOFTWARE FOR XBOX 360 IN 2006
You know, right after WinFS in Vista and Hi-Def compatibilty in the XBOX 360
Ladies and gentlemen, begin your merger rumours!
... but what will the call the new company?
Interesting
Tihoo! or Yahvo!?
You use XPMCE? Hello!! MythTV is 500 times better than Windows XP Media Centre Edition. It's free, extensible with all sorts of skins and plugins that are also free, and it imposes no content restrictions. I can't believe you paid $2,000 for a device that requires that you accept a restrictive EULA.
However, I approve of your choice of search engine. Thank you for using Google, the most popular and therefore best search engine there is. Please continue not to use Yahoo!.
I'm not Seth Finkelstein. I still speak the truth.
C'mon, that would be an acquisition not a merger.
As handy as that would be... X-Box 360/PS3/Revolution Don't have tuners.
And when is Tivo going HD anyway? That's going to seperate it from the rest... Especially some of the new cable company DVRs that already have HD tuners in them. Honestly that's the main reason why my friends and I haven't picked up a Tivo and I think they're missing out on business that way.
-=JML=-
I don't know about other moderators but I see a $hit load of comments modded at +5. Looks like we have a repeat of the MOD point plague.
Tivo is going to be hard to resurrect. Their death started accelerating when they started their DRM schemes recently (i.e., machines deleting recorded programs after a certain amount of time).
sig here
.. but I've been able to do that on my ReplayTV for years! I go to myreplaytv.com and can browse my shows, marks for record/deletions, etc. Of course, ReplayTv has been marketed for crap and has been sold/went bankrupt several times... oh well.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
I still don't think that this is going to change anything for TiVo (good or bad). "Tivo users will be able to find programs in Yahoo!'s listings and send them to Tivo to record", but AOL users have been able to do this for quite some time, and I don't think that it has much benefit over Tivo's own selection page. I doubt Yahoo's will either.
I don't use Yahoo for search, but I do use it for email, weather, movie showtimes, Yellow Pages, maps, and other things on a daily basis. Yes, google provides some of these, but I like Yahoo's YP and maps better - and gmail always seems to be really slow for me. I use Google for a lot, but I also use Yahoo daily.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
On Yahoo! TV you cannot add channels from two sources, such as satellite and cable, even though you can with the Tivo online scheduling service.
I was going to show this Yahoo! thing to my wife to show her how to record shows by herself, but not anymore!
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
And how much more money did you spend on your XPMCE? A TiVo costs $50 and fits nicely right above my cable box. Do you really like the huge box sitting next to it and cost what $1500? XPMCE isn't going to be replacing people's TiVo's until the price and form factor actually work in the living room.
I think this is such an excellent idea. Let's award them a statue for all their hard work. I think we just need to give this guy a remote, and it will fit the bill... http://www.flickr.com/photos/kentbrew/60225257/in/ photostream/
THIS SPACE FOR RENT Call 1-800-555-CARL
Instead of "Google's announcement," you should have said "that blog post I read speculating about Google." They're not the same.
For more information, click here.
TiVo has several HD models already - at least in conjunction with DirecTV. I have an HD TiVo with 550GB storage and it is great!
Tivo connect services to you!!!
If you haven't looked at yahoo in 5 years, you're hardly in a position to form a valid comparison. Besides you seem to be comparing Yahoo's search engine to Google's.
Google chat's user base is dwarfed by Yahoo. There is likely an order of magnitude more Yahoo mail users than gmail. And I believe that Yahoo's index is larger than Google's.
It's all fine and dandy to be a google fanboy though I suppose.
P.S. If google is all that, why the hotmail address?
That's because in Europe they have naked people in their commercials. Who would want to Tivo through that!?
"Ladies and gentlemen, begin your merger rumours!"
No, ladies and gentlemen, this is kinky sex at best. It's an all physical affair where the sex will seem very good and the couple might seem to click, but there's something missing there that will keep it from being a successful relationship. Yahoo sure looks good and may have all the physical features you want, but doesn't have what it takes inside to make the "merger" work.
Tivo should have held out for Google - beautiful outside and beautiful inside.
I use my PDA phone for everything (including slashdot). If I need yellow pages or weather or movie showtimes, I send an SMS message on my phone to 46645 (googl). I get back the info I need in seconds or less and its always accurate. Weather, stocks, movie listings, phone numbers, etc. Yahoo (and Google) online are too bulky.
As for maps, my PDA has a GPS with up-to-date maps and I'm very happy with it. I believe I paid $69 for the GPS and the mapping software. Prices continue to drop.
More on the death of TiVo after this commercial break!
C17H21NO4
I have TiVo (and now can't imagine life w/o it 11 months later) and I don't understand why this announcement is even remotely important. Why? Because when you have a TiVo and register your DVR through their web site you can do all the internet scheduling you want (https://www3.tivo.com/tivo-tco/index.do). This Yahoo deal just duplicates that. What am I missing?
...or is TiVo one step away from being squashed by Apple's iTMS? What's to prevent Apple from offering a monthly subscription service with content from weekly TV shows (commercials included) being downloaded to your machine overnight through iTunes? After which, you can either sync it to your video iPod, or send it directly to your TV set (see the the new iMac models). Or, even better, run an s-video cable from your iPod to your set -- essentially giving you a super portable TiVo box that you can take with you on vacation, to pacify the kids. Am I crazy, or is this a likely scenario?
Don't know why the TV producers don't embed their their content with some kind of banner advertising (that's either difficult of not worth the effort of removing) and distribute the content themselves over the net using P2P (like bittorrent). Thus bypassing Tivo, Microsoft, Yahoo and all the others and letting consumers decide how they watch it (big screen, laptop, mobile phone, etc.). Presumably they'd reach a wider audience and make more from advertising.
Of course this would also bypass the current Neilsen rating system and confuse advertisers but I'm sure they could find another method of rating popularity (e.g. number of hits/downloads, etc.).
Tivo's also been able to do it for years. Now, instead of using Tivo.com to do it, you can use Yahoo's listings.
The standalone HD Tivo comes out in 2006. They are waiting for the CableCard 2.0 spec to be finalized, which IMO, is the right thing to do. CableCard 2.0 truly allows you to replace your cable box with Tivo since you'll have access to on-demand programming and the other interactive features of digital cable service. CableCard 1.0 is half-assed--it will let you decode the premium channels and that's about it.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
As much as I would love to get excited about this and hope that it gives me new things to play with on my Tivo, I'm doubtful. Tivo already has their home media extensions library where apps on a computer can publish themselves on the network and display custom screens on the Tivo. From what i've seen so far, cool things can be done but it's very hard to make the interface useable.
The highly regarded tivo interface already seems to be falling apart. They're trying to tack on too many sources for additional ad revenue. The main screen usually has two extra advertising items, which by no surprise are the ones that stand out the most. They're desperately trying to add on features to make the tivo more of a home media box than just a tv recorder. Which is cool, but they must have fired all their original developers and outsourced to india or something, cause the new features feel like tacked-on afterthoughts.
For example, there's a cool new feature that will share a directory on your PC with video files so that it shows up in Tivo's now playing list. Very cool, until you try using it. First off, the files need to be in a format the tivo understands, and I can't fault them for that, it'd be hard to allow the tivo to decode every possible codec. Although, if they're serious about this home media thing, they really should at least try. I think it'll just play MPEG right now. Second, once you locate a video you'd like to watch, selecting it and hitting play doesn't play it. You need to first select the video so that you see the details, then you need to select "Transfer this video". After doing this, you will be given an option of watching it while it transfers, but on my 802.11b wireless network, the transfer isn't anywhere near fast enough to watch on the fly. Trying to do so seems to confuse the tivo, since this whole watching as a show downloads from the network feature is really just a crappy hack. If you do wait for the transfer, you can then watch the show, but it's now taking up space on your tivo, so what's the freaking point of having it on your PC?
I'm sorry for getting a bit sidetracked on one particular feature, but I think it's indicative of a growing trend over at Tivo. They're trying to make a feature list instead of a good product. All the new features that sound really cool, starting with Tivo ToGo, end up working like total crap. I still can't transfer videos recorded on my tivo to my mac without hacking to the tivo. It's been almost a year.
So I guess what I'm trying to say with this rant is don't bother getting excited about this. It'll just be a few tacked on a features that nobody will ever use because they're just a kludge implementation so that they can list it as a feature on their website.
FiGZ.COM - A waste of perfectly good web space
Yahoo is investigating partnerships with other DVR makers in order to deliver content to the set-top box. Any DVR that has broadband capabilities would in theory be able to deliver vast catalogs of movies on demand, siphoning all the revenue left from the Blockbusters and NetFlixes of the world. That's serious bank.
It's not just the Yahoos and DVR makers who are maneuvering around this eventuality: broadband providers, most notably SBC, will be aggressively marketing DVRs with enhanced services like Yahoo's to their subscriber base when they roll out HDSL. SBC's HDSL service is called LightSpeed and it's expected to beta in central Texas within the next few months. Good stuff.
*shrug* That's $69 more than I've paid for all software total in the past probably year. You also had to pay for the PDA/phone and its internet access.
Yahoo is free. So was my cel phone, so it can't do any of that fancy stuff. Hell, I can't even send/receive test messages without paying 5c each. But I don't use text messages, so it doesn't bother me.
Some of us have a limited amount to spend on gadgets and their connectivity.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Obviously, I'll take just about anything that can resurrect some of the money I pissed away on them.
Don't get me wrong, I love TiVo. I have the HD DVR, several DirecTV DVRs, and some standalone boxes in my closet. I can't imagine not having it. Myth, Freevo, and all the other clones are ok, but you can't beat TiVo for simplicity.
However, TiVo is dying and will soon be dead. For the average person, the DRM isn't as bad as some other posters have pointed out and will be temporarily viewed as a nuisance until the behavior is commonplace. The nail in the coffin will come when the DirecTV contract expires and they're dropped as the sole DVR. DirecTV is sending up new satellites for local HD channels, they'll push HD harder than ever, new equipment will be necessary, and even the current HD TiVo will be incapable of taking advantage of the new signals. When the push comes, DirecTV would be crazy not to have a new, non-TiVo DVR and not a damn thing will save TiVo, then.
Remember when Saturn started making cars and they were on top of the game with their no-haggle, reliable, safety-first, "made in the USA" reputation? They got complacent, cranked out the same boring cars year-after-year, and now even their sweet, new roadster can't pull them from a destiny of medocrity. That's TiVo, now.
It's been possible on my.tivo.com for some time as well. I find the integration with Yahoo convenient, because my.tivo.com was designed by congenital morons.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
ah! didn't know that. well, I wouldn't call the myreplay.tv.com site a shining example of UI, either. Interestingly, after they were sold, there was a posting on avsforums.com about how they had an ad wanting someone to reverse-engineer the site (I think all they had were the compiled java in a .war file) and document it. Guess they didn't get the source repository! Sounded like an interesting job.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
I just want to know when I can get to my Yahoo mail and other web pages on TiVo. I've got a broadband connection. TiVo is a linux box, right? I just don't understand why I can't surf the web on it.
Sean Lane Fuller - The truth is out there!
Some day, Tivo will do something dumb enough that I'll kick it to the curb and roll my own. But, for now, the hijinks are below my pain threshold.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Just curious, how much did your XPMCE cost? I am guessing it was a tad bit more then $50 from circuit city. Also, did you have to spend any time to set it up to work with dual tuners?
As a final bit of information, please list all the reasons it is 500 times better. I *REALLY* want to see all these reasons.
Do people still use Yahoo? I guess being the number 1 most trafficked site on the internet doesn't mean much to Google fanboys.
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http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=la
Until they re-support Macintosh, TiVO is "dead to me"
ReplayTV's DVArchive is Java-based and platform agnostic.
Da Blog
I happened to notice this last night as soon as it went live. This is nothing more than what already exists with TiVo.com and a Series 2 connected to the Net.
When you're on a tv.yahoo.com page, you'll see links to TiVo. You click on that link and you're presented with the old TiVo.com web programming pages, only with the tv show you selected from Yahoo.
From a tech perspective this was probably somebody's weekend project. Nothing to see here kinda thing.
From a biz-dev perspective, this probably took a lot longer, and the result is actually a nice win-win.
TiVo.com sucks. It has always sucked. Yahoo, IMHO, is a pretty decent site. As a Yahoo member, I'm now far more likely to go to Yahoo to program my TiVo. The experience is much better and fits in with what I'm already doing at Yahoo.
Of course, it would be nice if Yahoo could show what I have recorded on my TiVo, but maybe that's phase 2.
Oh, and as for security...it appears as though you need to log in to your Yahoo account *and* have your TiVo account activated for Yahoo, as well as your TiVo activated for Web programming.
We used to all think that Yahoo! was going away soon. Now they're pretty much safe.
We used to all think that AOL was going away soon. Now they're pretty much safe.
We used to all think that Apple was going away soon. Now they're pretty much safe.
We all think TiVo is going away soon, but they've partnered with Netflix, Yahoo, Comcast, etc. They're inking deals and still quite active. I think people would like them to die based off of their courting of the industries through DRM but perhaps that's a false sense of security for the networks?
If TiVo keeps it going at this rate for a few more years, will they ever be considered "safe"?
Schnapple
I'm wish there was some sort of open standard for this kind of thing. Personally, I don't like to use Yahoo (Using http://www.tviv.org/ ) and I think I should be able to use any indexing service I like. Should be easy for Tivo to create some simple web service.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wake me up when a PVR plugin that allows people to search for and record content on a *network* of PVRs is available. Mass integrated schedule service on a global scale, all accessable via my PVR remote, compressing files to XviD before transmission, and some sort of bandwidth limitation/quota system to make sure that bandwidth isn't abused (recorder only has to transmit file once, downloaders need to re-transmit twice, for example)
I've got a hankering to watch the Australian nightly news, I'm sure someone in Australia has an insane desire to watch Canadian television like "The Beachcombers".
(Let's not mention the Battlestar Galactica posibilities though, OK?)
I think the Slashdots mucked up your link. Try Alexa Global Top 500.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Trying this again: Alexa Global Top 500.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Galleon already uses the Yahoo search API to show artist images, internet slideshows and upcoming events on Tivo: http://galleon.sourceforge.net/
If you can, don't pay for any business tool you can't make money on. I bill for all business phone calls, SMS and e-mails. Every one. My phone bill is probably $150 monthly and my biggest customer pays ~ $250. Why not have your customers (or employer) do the same?
GPS is a must have for me. I have seen 60,000 miles-driven years. I've added a lot of travel business, so GPS enhances that. Yahoo maps looks good, though (just checked it from a PC). Looks bad on my PDA.
'Limited amount" includes me, too. I'm not wealthy! But I'll buy items that save me time, reduce stress/clutter, or pay dividends for owning.
MythTV is garbage, so far. I've built 4 MythTV PCs, and they excel at not needing big processors, but everything else is subpar.
With MCE, I have 5+ MPEG2 decoders to choose from. They cost money, but they display gorgeous output that IVTV+Myth never challenges, yet.
I'm a business man. I pay for products that work. I won't donate to Myth in hopes of it working better in the future.
Do I like MS? Not really. Do MS products work for me? 90% of the time.
When MythTV matures, it will have huge potential. For now, it's too complex with subpar output.
Not to be a Google sympathizer, but Alexa ranks websites based on where people go who have their toolbar installed. Alexa-toolbar-who? I don't think there's any way to get a good answer on how many visits anyone's getting.
Exactly! The good-to-bad ratio is still high enough (by far) that it just isn't worth it to replace it.
Shit. Now I've got a TiVo-dude version of the good-Stitch/bad-Stitch graph from Lilo and Stitch 2 in my head. Gah.
Yahoo's new service only works with TiVo version 2. Due to copyright restrictions, DirecTiVo has never been able to be networked -- a constant source of annoyance to me.
The alliance between DirecTV and TiVo is on shaky ground anyway, because DirecTV has begun to market its own DVR. But then, these days, who doesn't? My 2-year-old son should have his DVR ready for distribution soon. He's named it after his favorite toy: FiretruckVo.
Jeremy Butler
www.ScreenSite.org
www.TVCrit.com