"Paying" for it means different things. The tiny, un-dorm-connected university I attended had a "technology fee" which only let you use the labs. I just found it insulting the highest technology they had in these labs was 486 dx/33's. When I left in '96, they replaced one lab with pentium/133's. Still, what do I expect for twenty-some dollars. But, with an ethernet port in the dorm room, the university has to pay more for the total bandwidth used every month. No doubt having your personal connection, those student will download more content, likely more than that $4/month. So, they limit student's access by giving them stupid rules like no irc, email, giving them 486s, etc in the labs. It keeps their costs down, plain and simple.
And the buy-your-own-AC-unit analogy doesn't really work, as that would mean they pay for it themselves. A better analogy would be to tap an air duct and re-route cold air into their room from the AC dorms. If they subscribe with a local ISP, that would be more like buying their own AC unit. Tough titties that they don't want to pay $4/month for the net-connected dorms.
Uh huh. I see I insulted you. Beta 6 is perfect, except for some flaws. You are the mightiest player in the land, except for those better than you. Yes, so many people cannot aim at a non-moving target in front of their nose, but you are still mighty. And like I said, everyone claims nothing has changed. I'm just reporting my side, which is I notice differences. Modemers whine about ping because it makes a difference when facing folks with 100ms pings. I've sniped plenty of them with my impressive 300ms. But really, no need to take it personal. Well, unless you are thirteen years old still, and take my experiences with beta 6+ as "You suck at CS." That would explain a lot, my friend.
You asked what I didn't like about it, so I complied. And b6.1 isn't an improvement on anything. Now, back to my hot grits.
Mostly the deal with bullets not going where the crosshairs are. In a game like this, that one little feature will ruin the entire thing. It's ok for a while, but get in some firefights at two feet standing still, and both of you go through a few magazines of ammo, it gets dull. I see they have a b6.1 now, maybe it's better. Other minor things made it annoying, but this was the deal breaker. Servers I've frequented for ages went up a good 50ms in ping. For me with a 56k modem, that is a huge difference. Of course, everyone claims they didn't do anything to either side (server admins / CS team).;)
Engines and buzzwords are one thing (hopefully it'll have full tri-linear bilateral transmogrification though, that one's important), but what's it supposed to be about? What spin do they think they can put on these other run-get rocket launcher-shoot like crazy-die games?
Quake 3's demo didn't impress me for the very dull gameplay. I don't get a chubby racing for a rocket launcher. I bought UT recently, figuring that would motivate me to toy with 3D in Linux. So far I've payed it quite a bit in Windows, it's cute, but more of the same. After a week, I'm better than the robots in the practice games, and nearly every (literally, I've gotton onto one server in about 30 tries) server I try to join boots me before finishing downloading it's map. I've never had more trouble downloading 1-2MB. I think I'm done with it now. Half Life has kept my attention over it's 16 months with good single player storyline, nice updates and mods like TFC, CounterStrike (but not beta6), Action HL. TFC2 is now about a year late, and I'm pretty indifferent to it as well. Half Life doesn't have the pretties graphics/lighting, but it is enjoyable, even for a modemer like me.
Look how wonderful Tiberium Sun was. They had nearly as many delays and crap, there was a trailer back on the first C&C, and when it was released, the world had long ago left the 2D RTS genre. Though I doubt the world will leave this first-person genre, unfortunately, anytime soon, expectations get raised with each day. What will this thing have over HalfLife, Unreal Tournament, or Quake 3?
I've talked about starting a project like this before here on Slashdot. You can go to my web page above there, and see some of my blathering about it. This weekend I'll sit down and finish writing a little paper on it. If anyone has any ideas for it, feel free to email me.
What's driven me to do this isn't about civil liberties or what-not, but accidentally running into the con-porn type sites, you know the ones, whitehouse.com or other mispelled words/products, off-topic meta tags, the 40 popups with banners, etc. Also, I've talked with a few parents of young ones that get pissed about them too.;) If the RBL can do its thing, and do it well, the same can be applied to web surfing.
I highly doubt it. With all the hubbub going around regarding MP3/DVD/IOpeners, in the home of the future, not only can't you open anything up, but if you get out of bed, you will be bitchslapped by the robot maids. After all, it takes a big corporation with zillions of dollars to invent anything, the least you can do is let them take away any "freedoms" you may cling to.
You won't have to go to their office, that's too much work. Everything will be hooked into a ventilation system. The toilet uploads your stool sample to a "doctor" computer, it decodes it and comes up with the diagnosis, it shoots back down the medication to the air ducts, they quietly emit the appropriate medication which you breathe in, and done, you're cured. Of course, first we have to come up with cures to stuff, when was the last time you saw that? It seems like everything bad was cured in the early part of the century, polio, small pox, etc, and then they stopped. There's a conspiracy in there somewhere, I bet ya.
Of course, advertising is needed. And it all started with a bunch of those Linux hippies. Whirlpool was kind enough to let you have that refridgerator/dishwasher/stove/etc for $9.99. But no, some people weren't content with that, they had to go install Linux and not display their wonderful ads. See what you Linux people have caused?? Trust the corporations, they only want what's best for you.
Well, I think I speak for everyone when I say the environment controlling your house has to come from Redmond and be as closed as possible for this very reason. Maybe something original, like WinHE. You can't have all those 14-year-old hackers around the world breaking into your house like they do to Yahoo. Besides, only if it's by Microsoft, it will be integrated into the kernel of your computer. We will see unprecedented performance boost when your entire house's power is combined using a new unique technology code-named Beowulf to display web pages even better. Your toaster will be tasked to grab a GIF, your refridgerator will crunch some ActiveX applet, the carpet will work on a Flash thing, all displaying the web page directly to your retina. And don't believe any of those posts by people claiming they were blinded by this stuff. They are just lunatics. WinHE devices have been known to work as long as an entire week with a 92% accuracy rate. Oh, and as Bill Clinton/Algore/any liberal type would say, if you don't equip your house with WinHE, millions of children/elderly/poor/homeless will starve/die/be crucified. Do you want to be the one that caused a holocaust larger than anything seen during World War II??
but very rarely, if ever, do I get real spiritual input from the mainstream media.
Heh, if you believe what the media tells ya, imagine how many people will be killed by this $940,000. Or, my favorite, the limited sum of money theories, since this guy gets $940,000, bunches of poor families will get $940,000 taken away.;) If there's one thing the mainstream media has taught me, it's, "Don't believe everything you read."
I'm curious, how does that work? Do you mean to say that when an advertisement for a show comes on the network, you can click a button and Tivo knows which show to tape based on the ad? That's pretty damn cool. No, Replay can't do that.
That's the idea. I know some channels can broadcast other information outside the audio/video signal, PBS sends the current date/time which some VCRs can use to set their clock. This press release says they partnered with NBC, Showtime and Encore (to start) to implement this. I don't have Showtime/Encore, but I haven't seen it happen on my NBC channel yet.
Though I've been much too lazy to pick up the phone and order one, the idea of a really small PC had me intrigued. I've had a few things flying through my head where something like this would fit the bill. So, has anyone seen something else that could fit the bill? I know I've come across some real small motherboards, but they often wanted more than what I paid for my Athlon motherboard.:) I'm just not that dedicated to it.
On another note, are any of those webtop things available yet? I've seen a few mentioned (even before the Transmeta announcement), but can't see any sign of them actually being sold. I hate having to get off the couch to see what's new on Slashdot.:) A laptop is just even more expensive. A kiosk style thing with a TV out is really what I want. This IOpener would have been fun, let me spend several hours monkeying with it. But since it's now out, what's left?
Does the Replay save what you watched forever (or other long time), so it never records something twice? Tivo's problem is it doesn't, and so it can only check the list of recordings that are on the drive. When you delete the episode, it's gone and as such, liable to be recorded again.
And just what "more direct control" does their software give you with recording? I mean, with Tivo, you go up/down (or page up/down) through the channels and listings, hit Select, and voila you can record it. Other than a speech/mind recognition bit, I just don't see what could be more direct. I'm sure the user interface is different, but is that what makes it more direct?
And with this new thing in v1.3.0 where you can record a show when you see a preview of it, that's just even easier for us lazy folk.
Then you'll have to take out the various patented technologies. Everything related to MPEG is patented any more, so that has to go, yay for AVI. Isn't that very original idea of having menus and tv listings patented too? Someone has got to have a pantent on adding a series of +1 and -1 to do all that suggestions stuff. Plus who knows how much more behind-the-scenes stuff. Let's face it, not everything will be open sourced. This is a nice little device, just go with it.
Enjoy it while it lasts, and when it does, kindly ask them to GPL all the software. Then we can just right programs to pull the info from web pages and what-not. Or, God forbid, someone comes up with the bright idea of starting a business to further feed Tivo users with listings...
What if the world ends tomorrow, am I out the $499 I paid for my Tivo? That just can't be right. Time for a nasty email to Tivo to see what their post-apocolyptic business plan is. Not just that, but this TV I have is rather new, I don't want to be out that money. Damn you Sony! Why didn't you sell me a television that was impervious to the aliens that blew up Earth?! Is that too much to ask, I mean, really? And I want a full refund for my rent that isn't used. Those commie bastards don't need to keep my rent when there's 8 days left in March.
Well, invent a device that does what Tivo does with ethernet and all the other geek features. Then build a business around it. Then be swamped with billions of clueless users who you now have to tell what a network is, how to set up a network, IP addresses, subnetting, etc. Tivo's business is making a simple that's sort of the next generation VCR. That's it. If you want a different device, then well, invent it or pay someone to invent it.:) I'm sure there's all sorts of big corps that would jump at the chance that a user could access the filesystem on a device like this and copying movies all over the place. As we see with that Apex 600A deal, even if the access is hidden, they'll still sue your ass off.
All these "I won't buy it until it does X, Y, Z" is pointless. It is a product right now. If it fits your budget/needs, go for it. Otherwise, go away. That said, I refuse to buy Snickers until they add peanut butter. I like peanut butter, and by golly, they had better address the peanut butter enthusiast crowd. Reece's Peanutbutter Cups do, dammit. I want snickers to as well!!
Nope. Well, you can buy two Tivos, or record one on Tivo, and switch to your TV or VCR's tuner and watch it live, the old-fashioned way. Or, just stop liking that other show.:)
Yes, selecting programs depends greatly on the accuracy of those program listings. I believe they get their listings from this national service. I know my cable company does, and the descriptions on both the cable box and Tivo often are word-for-word exact. I just forget the name of that service company.
There was to be some sort of offset that could be put in around version 2.0 of the software, so that when broadcasts are put off after a long sporting event, you could say "start recording this show 35 minutes later than it's listed." But for now, you're just stuck to watching live in those situations. For my cable here, it's 99% accurate. I can only recall a handful of times (certainly less than 5) that I selected something to be recorded and it wasn't that program at all.
Sure, if you consider the live tv features worth the money, go for it. Tivo lets you use the server for a couple weeks free, use it, love it.:) $10 isn't too much, same price as those big multiplayer games, and I have yet to get junk mail to my "special" address I gave them.
I recently got the ActiveHome kit from X10. That includes this 8 device learning remote. I have another OneForAll learning remote that only lets you learn these four buttons across the top for each device. This X10 one lets you program just about any button on the thing with functions of other remotes. I was able to put in all the necessary functions from my Tivo remote into it. I do miss the nice contour of the Tivo remote, so maybe buying another one would be worth it.
X10's remote and video sending kits are wonderful for this apartment life. Stupid place only has one cable connection, and so I had to run an approximately 50 foot coax all the way to the bedroom.
The Tivo forum on www.avsforum.com had a posting yesterday or so by a guy that put in a general IBM 17GB drive in as the second drive. Of course, just doing a drive copy from another 30hr unit makes the filesystem only 13GB. Maybe someone, sometime, will give Mandrake's little partition expanding thing a whirl, and try expanding it to the full size of the hard drive.
The software and serial number seem to be only on the first drive, so that would be harder to upgrade. And, well, you have to get someone to buy a 30hr unit so you can copy from it. The guy that did this said several drive copying programs didn't work, but told the one that finally did. I'll watch the forum for a while, see if his thing blows up or anything too bad before trying it myself. I certainly worry about how it would handle software updates (like to 1.3) with a hacked system like this.
I don't know what sort of box you mean, cable/sat. But with my cable box, I just hookup Tivo's infrared transmitter in front of the cable box's sensor. Just subscribe to every channel in Tivo's listings, and it will change to that channel when you want to. I don't see anything that even cares about anything else in the box.
Of course, if you're paranoid like the other poster, then that's a separate issue.:)
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"Paying" for it means different things. The tiny, un-dorm-connected university I attended had a "technology fee" which only let you use the labs. I just found it insulting the highest technology they had in these labs was 486 dx/33's. When I left in '96, they replaced one lab with pentium/133's. Still, what do I expect for twenty-some dollars. But, with an ethernet port in the dorm room, the university has to pay more for the total bandwidth used every month. No doubt having your personal connection, those student will download more content, likely more than that $4/month. So, they limit student's access by giving them stupid rules like no irc, email, giving them 486s, etc in the labs. It keeps their costs down, plain and simple.
And the buy-your-own-AC-unit analogy doesn't really work, as that would mean they pay for it themselves. A better analogy would be to tap an air duct and re-route cold air into their room from the AC dorms. If they subscribe with a local ISP, that would be more like buying their own AC unit. Tough titties that they don't want to pay $4/month for the net-connected dorms.
Uh huh. I see I insulted you. Beta 6 is perfect, except for some flaws. You are the mightiest player in the land, except for those better than you. Yes, so many people cannot aim at a non-moving target in front of their nose, but you are still mighty. And like I said, everyone claims nothing has changed. I'm just reporting my side, which is I notice differences. Modemers whine about ping because it makes a difference when facing folks with 100ms pings. I've sniped plenty of them with my impressive 300ms. But really, no need to take it personal. Well, unless you are thirteen years old still, and take my experiences with beta 6+ as "You suck at CS." That would explain a lot, my friend.
You asked what I didn't like about it, so I complied. And b6.1 isn't an improvement on anything. Now, back to my hot grits.
Mostly the deal with bullets not going where the crosshairs are. In a game like this, that one little feature will ruin the entire thing. It's ok for a while, but get in some firefights at two feet standing still, and both of you go through a few magazines of ammo, it gets dull. I see they have a b6.1 now, maybe it's better. Other minor things made it annoying, but this was the deal breaker. Servers I've frequented for ages went up a good 50ms in ping. For me with a 56k modem, that is a huge difference. Of course, everyone claims they didn't do anything to either side (server admins / CS team). ;)
Engines and buzzwords are one thing (hopefully it'll have full tri-linear bilateral transmogrification though, that one's important), but what's it supposed to be about? What spin do they think they can put on these other run-get rocket launcher-shoot like crazy-die games?
Quake 3's demo didn't impress me for the very dull gameplay. I don't get a chubby racing for a rocket launcher. I bought UT recently, figuring that would motivate me to toy with 3D in Linux. So far I've payed it quite a bit in Windows, it's cute, but more of the same. After a week, I'm better than the robots in the practice games, and nearly every (literally, I've gotton onto one server in about 30 tries) server I try to join boots me before finishing downloading it's map. I've never had more trouble downloading 1-2MB. I think I'm done with it now. Half Life has kept my attention over it's 16 months with good single player storyline, nice updates and mods like TFC, CounterStrike (but not beta6), Action HL. TFC2 is now about a year late, and I'm pretty indifferent to it as well. Half Life doesn't have the pretties graphics/lighting, but it is enjoyable, even for a modemer like me.
Well, there is some company remaking Wolf3D. So we can once again take out nazis and german shepards, only with all the fancy 3d buzzwords.
And a "quarter" lasts three months. So, it could April 1, or it could be June 30. Well, unless they delay it or something. :)
Look how wonderful Tiberium Sun was. They had nearly as many delays and crap, there was a trailer back on the first C&C, and when it was released, the world had long ago left the 2D RTS genre. Though I doubt the world will leave this first-person genre, unfortunately, anytime soon, expectations get raised with each day. What will this thing have over HalfLife, Unreal Tournament, or Quake 3?
I've talked about starting a project like this before here on Slashdot. You can go to my web page above there, and see some of my blathering about it. This weekend I'll sit down and finish writing a little paper on it. If anyone has any ideas for it, feel free to email me.
;) If the RBL can do its thing, and do it well, the same can be applied to web surfing.
What's driven me to do this isn't about civil liberties or what-not, but accidentally running into the con-porn type sites, you know the ones, whitehouse.com or other mispelled words/products, off-topic meta tags, the 40 popups with banners, etc. Also, I've talked with a few parents of young ones that get pissed about them too.
I highly doubt it. With all the hubbub going around regarding MP3/DVD/IOpeners, in the home of the future, not only can't you open anything up, but if you get out of bed, you will be bitchslapped by the robot maids. After all, it takes a big corporation with zillions of dollars to invent anything, the least you can do is let them take away any "freedoms" you may cling to.
You won't have to go to their office, that's too much work. Everything will be hooked into a ventilation system. The toilet uploads your stool sample to a "doctor" computer, it decodes it and comes up with the diagnosis, it shoots back down the medication to the air ducts, they quietly emit the appropriate medication which you breathe in, and done, you're cured. Of course, first we have to come up with cures to stuff, when was the last time you saw that? It seems like everything bad was cured in the early part of the century, polio, small pox, etc, and then they stopped. There's a conspiracy in there somewhere, I bet ya.
Of course, advertising is needed. And it all started with a bunch of those Linux hippies. Whirlpool was kind enough to let you have that refridgerator/dishwasher/stove/etc for $9.99. But no, some people weren't content with that, they had to go install Linux and not display their wonderful ads. See what you Linux people have caused?? Trust the corporations, they only want what's best for you.
Well, I think I speak for everyone when I say the environment controlling your house has to come from Redmond and be as closed as possible for this very reason. Maybe something original, like WinHE. You can't have all those 14-year-old hackers around the world breaking into your house like they do to Yahoo. Besides, only if it's by Microsoft, it will be integrated into the kernel of your computer. We will see unprecedented performance boost when your entire house's power is combined using a new unique technology code-named Beowulf to display web pages even better. Your toaster will be tasked to grab a GIF, your refridgerator will crunch some ActiveX applet, the carpet will work on a Flash thing, all displaying the web page directly to your retina. And don't believe any of those posts by people claiming they were blinded by this stuff. They are just lunatics. WinHE devices have been known to work as long as an entire week with a 92% accuracy rate. Oh, and as Bill Clinton/Algore/any liberal type would say, if you don't equip your house with WinHE, millions of children/elderly/poor/homeless will starve/die/be crucified. Do you want to be the one that caused a holocaust larger than anything seen during World War II??
but very rarely, if ever, do I get real spiritual input from the mainstream media.
;) If there's one thing the mainstream media has taught me, it's, "Don't believe everything you read."
Heh, if you believe what the media tells ya, imagine how many people will be killed by this $940,000. Or, my favorite, the limited sum of money theories, since this guy gets $940,000, bunches of poor families will get $940,000 taken away.
can record a show when you see a preview
I'm curious, how does that work? Do you mean to say that when an advertisement for a show comes on the network, you can click a button and Tivo knows which show to tape based on the ad? That's pretty damn cool. No, Replay can't do that.
That's the idea. I know some channels can broadcast other information outside the audio/video signal, PBS sends the current date/time which some VCRs can use to set their clock. This press release says they partnered with NBC, Showtime and Encore (to start) to implement this. I don't have Showtime/Encore, but I haven't seen it happen on my NBC channel yet.
Though I've been much too lazy to pick up the phone and order one, the idea of a really small PC had me intrigued. I've had a few things flying through my head where something like this would fit the bill. So, has anyone seen something else that could fit the bill? I know I've come across some real small motherboards, but they often wanted more than what I paid for my Athlon motherboard. :) I'm just not that dedicated to it.
:) A laptop is just even more expensive. A kiosk style thing with a TV out is really what I want. This IOpener would have been fun, let me spend several hours monkeying with it. But since it's now out, what's left?
On another note, are any of those webtop things available yet? I've seen a few mentioned (even before the Transmeta announcement), but can't see any sign of them actually being sold. I hate having to get off the couch to see what's new on Slashdot.
Does the Replay save what you watched forever (or other long time), so it never records something twice? Tivo's problem is it doesn't, and so it can only check the list of recordings that are on the drive. When you delete the episode, it's gone and as such, liable to be recorded again.
And just what "more direct control" does their software give you with recording? I mean, with Tivo, you go up/down (or page up/down) through the channels and listings, hit Select, and voila you can record it. Other than a speech/mind recognition bit, I just don't see what could be more direct. I'm sure the user interface is different, but is that what makes it more direct?
And with this new thing in v1.3.0 where you can record a show when you see a preview of it, that's just even easier for us lazy folk.
Then you'll have to take out the various patented technologies. Everything related to MPEG is patented any more, so that has to go, yay for AVI. Isn't that very original idea of having menus and tv listings patented too? Someone has got to have a pantent on adding a series of +1 and -1 to do all that suggestions stuff. Plus who knows how much more behind-the-scenes stuff. Let's face it, not everything will be open sourced. This is a nice little device, just go with it.
Enjoy it while it lasts, and when it does, kindly ask them to GPL all the software. Then we can just right programs to pull the info from web pages and what-not. Or, God forbid, someone comes up with the bright idea of starting a business to further feed Tivo users with listings...
What if the world ends tomorrow, am I out the $499 I paid for my Tivo? That just can't be right. Time for a nasty email to Tivo to see what their post-apocolyptic business plan is. Not just that, but this TV I have is rather new, I don't want to be out that money. Damn you Sony! Why didn't you sell me a television that was impervious to the aliens that blew up Earth?! Is that too much to ask, I mean, really? And I want a full refund for my rent that isn't used. Those commie bastards don't need to keep my rent when there's 8 days left in March.
Well, invent a device that does what Tivo does with ethernet and all the other geek features. Then build a business around it. Then be swamped with billions of clueless users who you now have to tell what a network is, how to set up a network, IP addresses, subnetting, etc. Tivo's business is making a simple that's sort of the next generation VCR. That's it. If you want a different device, then well, invent it or pay someone to invent it. :) I'm sure there's all sorts of big corps that would jump at the chance that a user could access the filesystem on a device like this and copying movies all over the place. As we see with that Apex 600A deal, even if the access is hidden, they'll still sue your ass off.
All these "I won't buy it until it does X, Y, Z" is pointless. It is a product right now. If it fits your budget/needs, go for it. Otherwise, go away. That said, I refuse to buy Snickers until they add peanut butter. I like peanut butter, and by golly, they had better address the peanut butter enthusiast crowd. Reece's Peanutbutter Cups do, dammit. I want snickers to as well!!
Nope. Well, you can buy two Tivos, or record one on Tivo, and switch to your TV or VCR's tuner and watch it live, the old-fashioned way. Or, just stop liking that other show. :)
Yes, selecting programs depends greatly on the accuracy of those program listings. I believe they get their listings from this national service. I know my cable company does, and the descriptions on both the cable box and Tivo often are word-for-word exact. I just forget the name of that service company.
There was to be some sort of offset that could be put in around version 2.0 of the software, so that when broadcasts are put off after a long sporting event, you could say "start recording this show 35 minutes later than it's listed." But for now, you're just stuck to watching live in those situations. For my cable here, it's 99% accurate. I can only recall a handful of times (certainly less than 5) that I selected something to be recorded and it wasn't that program at all.
Sure, if you consider the live tv features worth the money, go for it. Tivo lets you use the server for a couple weeks free, use it, love it. :) $10 isn't too much, same price as those big multiplayer games, and I have yet to get junk mail to my "special" address I gave them.
I recently got the ActiveHome kit from X10. That includes this 8 device learning remote. I have another OneForAll learning remote that only lets you learn these four buttons across the top for each device. This X10 one lets you program just about any button on the thing with functions of other remotes. I was able to put in all the necessary functions from my Tivo remote into it. I do miss the nice contour of the Tivo remote, so maybe buying another one would be worth it.
X10's remote and video sending kits are wonderful for this apartment life. Stupid place only has one cable connection, and so I had to run an approximately 50 foot coax all the way to the bedroom.
The Tivo forum on www.avsforum.com had a posting yesterday or so by a guy that put in a general IBM 17GB drive in as the second drive. Of course, just doing a drive copy from another 30hr unit makes the filesystem only 13GB. Maybe someone, sometime, will give Mandrake's little partition expanding thing a whirl, and try expanding it to the full size of the hard drive.
The software and serial number seem to be only on the first drive, so that would be harder to upgrade. And, well, you have to get someone to buy a 30hr unit so you can copy from it. The guy that did this said several drive copying programs didn't work, but told the one that finally did. I'll watch the forum for a while, see if his thing blows up or anything too bad before trying it myself. I certainly worry about how it would handle software updates (like to 1.3) with a hacked system like this.
I don't know what sort of box you mean, cable/sat. But with my cable box, I just hookup Tivo's infrared transmitter in front of the cable box's sensor. Just subscribe to every channel in Tivo's listings, and it will change to that channel when you want to. I don't see anything that even cares about anything else in the box.
:)
Of course, if you're paranoid like the other poster, then that's a separate issue.