Slashdot Mirror
The Trouble With TiVo
BobCratchit writes "Multichannel News has an interesting take on TiVo: The DVR company has incredible mindshare but is totally dependent on cable providers to survive. Cable does not have many good reasons to let TiVo thrive. As a result, TiVo is destined to fade away unless it can carve out a niche as the cool kids' DVR (a la Macintosh) with products like the $299 HD DVR it just announced. From the article: 'TiVo has long been a darling of consumer-tech reviewers -- check out, for example, these happy hosannas from BusinessWeek, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. These guys are constantly befuddled that TiVo hasn't been more successful. Yes, TiVos make cute little popping noises when you click the remote. And they definitely provide cool features, like suggesting shows you might be interested in. But the cognoscenti enamored with TiVo's whizziness ignore a certain reality. It's easier to get a DVR from your cable company. And most people prefer to rent, not own, a set-top.'"
MythTV or... MythTV. It's all the same to me as long as the commercials are deleted before I watch the show.
Except for the few-times-a-year offer where you can get a Series 3, and transfer the lifetime sub to it. Everyone knew about the one that ended Jan 1, 2007, but since then, I have seen at least 2 more (one that ended last week, too!).
Basically, if you have a Series 2 with lifetime, they will for $200 let you transfer it to a Series 3. Bonus - the old Series 2 gets 3 years of prepaid service (nominally $300). So your old TiVo still gets service, and lifetime is moved to your shiny new Series 3.
Badass Resumes
Sigh. Every time a TiVo article gets posted, I have to do this. Here we go.
Have you looked at any of TiVo's features in the last, oh, 7 years? TiVo can do a large subset of what you can do with a MythTV box, "Media Center-ish" PC (whatever that means), and has a service to download stuff. With a TiVo, you can use it as a DVR, transfer recordings to your PC, play your own music, play music on the internet, play purchased movies that are downloaded to your TiVo, check traffic, check weather, check movie listings, buy movie tickets, and that's just using their out-of-the-box supported features. They have an open API for application development that makes the possibilities nearly endless.
And as a bonus, since it's "done right", people like me can watch TV without worrying about my guide data provider vanishing, or my wife calling me because the damn front-end needs restarting.
Based on every cable company's DVR I've seen, they better be looking elsewhere for lunch.
It's simple, MythTV is never wrong. Seriously. In over a year of extensive recording with the new commercial detect engine, it has only erred toward caution, and an extra commercial creeps into the playback. Trust me, it beats the hell out of fast forwarding.
Plus, they aren't really 'gone' like the other poster said.
Amazon Unbox can now be accessed directly from your TiVo.
With the right (TiVo-provided) software, you can tell your TiVo where on the local network it may find your MP3s and photographs, which you may then play or browse at you leisure. (That feature is at least three years old.) Dunno about video on your local network. However, I can check that out this evening.
In the mean time, if the cable companies "eat TiVo's lunch", we won't get a better TiVo. TiVo will be gone, and we'll be stuck with mediocre, cable company DVRs and over-priced HTPCs. And AppleTV, which isn't the same thing at all. Well, and ReplayTV, but I can't recall the last time I actually saw one of those in a store.
You can crack open your TiVo and upgrade its hard drive right now. Takes some know-how, but not that much more than doing the same thing to a PC, from what I recall. There have been versions which included built-in DVD burners (they were $$$, so didn't sell so great, IIRC, ca 2004, when DVD recorders were $$$). And it's easy to use. It may not be a general computer, but there's really no good excuse for making it one, either.
Canthros