See, you *say* drying a cat in a microwave is easy, but that's just because you've never had cat dried in the traditional smokehouse way. Trust me, while microwave-dried cat may be okay for a quick get-together, if you're worried about impressing your fiance's parents, you don't want your father-in-law-to-be choking on an overly-chewy bit of cat!
Certainly a reasonable point. However, in the 4.5 years I've had Tivo/Tivo service, there have been a number of these things that seem to start a "slippery slope," and get people all worked up. So far, none of them have come to pass.
At one point, for example, there was an uproar over the "yellow star" advertisements that would show up on the main Tivo page. Once they were shown to exist, people started saying that soon they'd be everywhere -- you'd have to view an ad before watching a show, or an ad would come up every time you switched, etc. None of that ever happened, and I've happily ignored the ads on the main menu ever since.
So... yes, if Tivo *does* start using these to restict viewing more and more, I'll start shouting. For now, though, I'm happy to take it as a bug, and I'll wait until it erases my two-year-old Southpark episode before I really curse:)
The fact that 5 of the most liberal voting judges in the history of the Supreme Court sided with the rich fat cats tells you all you ever needed to know about the truth of liberalism.
Ooh, that's a good one! Can I use it against conservatives/other-people-I-don't-like as well?
"See that woman who just spit on the sidewalk over there? She's a conservative, and that tells you all you ever needed to know about the truth of conservatism."
*sigh* I'm as angry at this opinion as anyone, but your last sentence was just too much to pass up.
Okay, first the obligatory note that I've done my share of Microsoft bashing in my time. I'd also be the last person to stand up and declare an MS box "secure" in almost any regard.
That aside, there are enough problems with TFA that I feel the need to point out some issues with it.
Heck, let's look at the first sentence: "So about a year ago..." We're in the computer field here, folks. Have I complained about things that took place with Windows ME? Yeah, I have. But I also acknowledge that what's out today can be a lot different from what was available a year ago.
Certainly if I were writing an article about what was wrong with something, I'd check to make sure I was reviewing a recent edition. SP2, while not the ultimate solution to everyone's problems, is a darn sight better than what the author is writing about. Would I put my parents online with just the built-in firewall? Probably not long-term, no. But I certainly wouldn't be afraid that within four minutes they'd be "DOA."
Also, when the author is posting the rhetorical "why not a Mac?" questions, he throws out lines like: "I know Macs are (well, were) more expensive, even though they're really not..." which is, well, disingenuous at best. I've had several Macs, and loved them all -- but yeah, guess what? They were several times more expensive than the beige-box PCs I'd put together from my local shop, even after all the "video cards and sound cards and disk burners to make it comparable to a Mac." There are lots of reasons to love Macs... let's not exxagerate just because it makes the article sound better.
All in all, the article reads as a whiny post to me, rather than anything well thought-out. There are reasons Windows sucks in many ways, but this article just rehashes the tired old "my hardware is better than your hardware" stuff we all (I hope) got sick of years ago.
Actually, they're owned by different companies -- Everquest/Verant is owned by Sony Online Entertainment, while WoW/Blizzard is owned by Vivendi Universal.
For the previous two E3s, Sony wouldn't even let any of us from Blizzard get near their private EQ2 booth, which we found somewhat amusing:) Believe me, even at the top levels, they're only competitors, not the same company.
I just noticed your mentioning Rubies of Eventide. When I was just out of college, I worked for the company that was making that, way back in 1995. It was... interesting! The president of the company was convinced that the internet would go away (to be replaced with dial-up BBSes), and that AT&T was spying on the company, using a 14-year-old boy, so that they could steal his ideas before we published. For data packet processing, we were re-writing UUEncode routines, since (remember!) the internet was bad, and everything had to be strictly X-Modem connection..... and then there was the day we got our first beta tester (a friend of mine in California)... he finished the current content in about a day, and said, "Er, what now?"... this was the content the designer had thought would take three months.
Ah, good times! Our final conclusion was that the company was just a money-laundering front, but we could never prove it:)
The answer is really pretty simple -- it's a question of where the merchant is able to get their money.
As others have pointed out, you can purchase a DirecTivo for $50 as an existing customer, with a $5.00 per month charge -- and there are various deals around to make that cheaper.
The reason DirecTV can do that, and that cable companies can offer similar deals on their DVRs, is that they're getting you to commit to their service. They can afford to take a loss on the single sale, knowing that you're paying $50.00 (usually more) per month for several years following.
That's why it's not a Tivo versus non-Tivo thing... the Tivo as subsidized by DirecTV is as cheap, if not cheaper, than the cable alternatives. However, any stand-alone system that's not tied to your provider not only has to at least cover its costs, but it darn well better make the company some money!:)
For myself, for example, I work with a web comic called Sluggy Freelance. It's a popular site, and we need people to contact us. That means that, even if it's not on the front page, we have contact information such as "tom at sluggy dot com" spread around the site.
Now, let's say I'm clever and obfuscate my address in various ways. That still doesn't help, because of the 1,000 people who decide to contact us this week, 800 of them end up with a copy of my address in Outlook's address book. So then, when *they* get hit with a virus, off go the spoofed e-mail notes, and here come the notes telling me that "The note you sent contained a virus!"
Not that I'm saying users don't cause much of the trouble themselves... but many of us who need to be contacted just don't have the option of not having a visible address.
My fear there -- so now, when I click on a link and get re-directed to some arbitrary site, I'm supposed to click the "click here if you're not interested" link? Haven't we spent the last thousand posts making fun of users who fall for that?
Personally, I will go back to MMORPGs the second one manages to pull off true permanent death. MUDs have been able to pull it off and keep the game enjoyable, yet MMORPGs have not even been able to make the effort. Permanent death forces the game world to be coherent and for combat to less then mindless.
The problem with permanent death in an MMORPG is that players treat a for-pay service using different standards. I've played MUDs for years, and if the dreaded lag monster killed me, oh well, I cursed my crappy university connection for a few minutes and got on with life.
However, if I'm playing a game that costs $10 a month to play, and I just lost my uber-character because of network lag or (even worse) a server bug / character hack / pretty much anything... well, now I'm much more likely to call up and demand my money back. I may not get it, but I'll probably cost 'em plenty in calls to their support lines.
Anyway, none of that means it can't be done... but it's not as simple as just saying, "hey, let's make death permanent!"
I'm not sure why Electrolux would be selling them in Britain for so much, but the standard version of Roombas have been cheap here for quite a while. We picked ours up at a "Bed Bath & Beyond" shop in January. It was listing at $200.00, with a 20%-off coupon (widely available), so that was $160.00, over six months ago. --Tom
According to the article:
(a) The recorder comes with Tivo "Basic" service, meaning there's no on-going charges. It acts like an intelligent VCR, but without any of the wishlists and season passes you get for your monthly subscription.
(b) Once your content is on the recorder, you can edit it before burning to DVD.
Again, I have no personal experience, I'm just going off what's reported. But it's right there in the article if you bother to read it:)
You know what TiVo feature I'd like? I'd like the ability to specify that I only want X episodes of a show recorded, but to not keep replacing those X episodes unless I've deleted them. Right now, you can specify that you want 2 episodes, but the TiVo will keep recording the latest aired episodes regardless of whether you've touched those two.
Actually, TiVo already does that -- we use that feature quite often. Just set the "Keep Until" date to the "Keep Until I Delete" option (green-dot mode). That will make it record the shows, and since it won't erase them until you do it manually, it will stop recording any newer ones; it won't overwrite them. Works like a charm!
It's really one of those, "how nice and simple would you like it to be?" questions...
Sure, most everything I have my Tivo do, I could do on my own with an old VCR and a copy of TV Guide. But the sheer simplicity of it all, and how much nicer it makes watching television, is worth every penny. A few examples... - Coming in at 9:15pm on a Wednesday evening, and watching West Wing from the start, without commercials. - Having watched every single darn episode of The Simpsons that's been on (new or rerun) in the last few years, since the Tivo just grabs them, whenever they happen to be on, whatever channel they happen to be on, etc. - Watching the news live, and hitting the "8 second skip back" to see/hear exactly something I missed while eating a bite of pizza.... and there are a billion more. However, it probably won't convince you -- it certainly didn't convince my wife until we actually had one. And that's really it... if there's any way you can try one out for a while, and then return it if you're not interested, I'd say go for it. If it doesn't rock your world, go back to the VCR... but I'm betting you'll become as addicted as I am:)
1) The Tivo system is *always* uploading new code to your Tivo... that's why the software went from 1.0, to 2.0, to 2.5, to 3.0, etc. If the Tivo system *didn't* do this, you'd be stuck with three+ year-old technology. In other words, they do this all the time, and it's a *good* thing!:)
2) Notice that the software doesn't do anything except for Nielsen households. In other words, just like Nielsen families have special hardware on their TVs to let the system automatically report what they're watching, the new Tivo software lets Nielsen see what they're watching (or re-watching, etc.) via Tivo, rather than just that "the TV appears to be tuned to channel 3 for 72 hours straight."
So, if you're not a Nielsen household, this means nothing to you -- no activation, and no use for it even if there was. If you *are* a Nielsen household, it's just an improvement upon a system you've already signed up for.
I spent a few years and well over a thousand dollars struggling with this same problem. I finally realized that analog video capture simply does not work.
I'm not trying to be one of those people with the same response to every post, but... have you looked at the (analog captured) results that a Tivo or Replay TV get you?
The older systems run on something like a 50MHz processor (I'm not sure of the exact value), and with one hardware encoder, they manage to generate great looking output on a standard television. Would it compete with any HDTV output? Nope. Would it look good on a 50-inch screen? Probably not. But I think that blaming analog video capture as the culprit isn't the answer in this case.
(Disclaimer - I don't work for Sonic Blue or Tivo, but I do have a Tivo, and love it!)
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See, you *say* drying a cat in a microwave is easy, but that's just because you've never had cat dried in the traditional smokehouse way. Trust me, while microwave-dried cat may be okay for a quick get-together, if you're worried about impressing your fiance's parents, you don't want your father-in-law-to-be choking on an overly-chewy bit of cat!
Certainly a reasonable point. However, in the 4.5 years I've had Tivo/Tivo service, there have been a number of these things that seem to start a "slippery slope," and get people all worked up. So far, none of them have come to pass.
... yes, if Tivo *does* start using these to restict viewing more and more, I'll start shouting. For now, though, I'm happy to take it as a bug, and I'll wait until it erases my two-year-old Southpark episode before I really curse :)
At one point, for example, there was an uproar over the "yellow star" advertisements that would show up on the main Tivo page. Once they were shown to exist, people started saying that soon they'd be everywhere -- you'd have to view an ad before watching a show, or an ad would come up every time you switched, etc. None of that ever happened, and I've happily ignored the ads on the main menu ever since.
So
The fact that 5 of the most liberal voting judges in the history of the Supreme Court sided with the rich fat cats tells you all you ever needed to know about the truth of liberalism.
Ooh, that's a good one! Can I use it against conservatives/other-people-I-don't-like as well?
"See that woman who just spit on the sidewalk over there? She's a conservative, and that tells you all you ever needed to know about the truth of conservatism."
*sigh* I'm as angry at this opinion as anyone, but your last sentence was just too much to pass up.
Okay, first the obligatory note that I've done my share of Microsoft bashing in my time. I'd also be the last person to stand up and declare an MS box "secure" in almost any regard.
... let's not exxagerate just because it makes the article sound better.
That aside, there are enough problems with TFA that I feel the need to point out some issues with it.
Heck, let's look at the first sentence: "So about a year ago..." We're in the computer field here, folks. Have I complained about things that took place with Windows ME? Yeah, I have. But I also acknowledge that what's out today can be a lot different from what was available a year ago.
Certainly if I were writing an article about what was wrong with something, I'd check to make sure I was reviewing a recent edition. SP2, while not the ultimate solution to everyone's problems, is a darn sight better than what the author is writing about. Would I put my parents online with just the built-in firewall? Probably not long-term, no. But I certainly wouldn't be afraid that within four minutes they'd be "DOA."
Also, when the author is posting the rhetorical "why not a Mac?" questions, he throws out lines like: "I know Macs are (well, were) more expensive, even though they're really not..." which is, well, disingenuous at best. I've had several Macs, and loved them all -- but yeah, guess what? They were several times more expensive than the beige-box PCs I'd put together from my local shop, even after all the "video cards and sound cards and disk burners to make it comparable to a Mac." There are lots of reasons to love Macs
All in all, the article reads as a whiny post to me, rather than anything well thought-out. There are reasons Windows sucks in many ways, but this article just rehashes the tired old "my hardware is better than your hardware" stuff we all (I hope) got sick of years ago.
Actually, they're owned by different companies -- Everquest/Verant is owned by Sony Online Entertainment, while WoW/Blizzard is owned by Vivendi Universal.
:) Believe me, even at the top levels, they're only competitors, not the same company.
For the previous two E3s, Sony wouldn't even let any of us from Blizzard get near their private EQ2 booth, which we found somewhat amusing
Can't help it ... must post reply...
... interesting! The president of the company was convinced that the internet would go away (to be replaced with dial-up BBSes), and that AT&T was spying on the company, using a 14-year-old boy, so that they could steal his ideas before we published. For data packet processing, we were re-writing UUEncode routines, since (remember!) the internet was bad, and everything had to be strictly X-Modem connection.. ... and then there was the day we got our first beta tester (a friend of mine in California) ... he finished the current content in about a day, and said, "Er, what now?" ... this was the content the designer had thought would take three months.
:)
I just noticed your mentioning Rubies of Eventide. When I was just out of college, I worked for the company that was making that, way back in 1995. It was
Ah, good times! Our final conclusion was that the company was just a money-laundering front, but we could never prove it
The answer is really pretty simple -- it's a question of where the merchant is able to get their money.
... the Tivo as subsidized by DirecTV is as cheap, if not cheaper, than the cable alternatives. However, any stand-alone system that's not tied to your provider not only has to at least cover its costs, but it darn well better make the company some money! :)
As others have pointed out, you can purchase a DirecTivo for $50 as an existing customer, with a $5.00 per month charge -- and there are various deals around to make that cheaper.
The reason DirecTV can do that, and that cable companies can offer similar deals on their DVRs, is that they're getting you to commit to their service. They can afford to take a loss on the single sale, knowing that you're paying $50.00 (usually more) per month for several years following.
That's why it's not a Tivo versus non-Tivo thing
--Tom
I wish it were that simple.
... but many of us who need to be contacted just don't have the option of not having a visible address.
For myself, for example, I work with a web comic called Sluggy Freelance. It's a popular site, and we need people to contact us. That means that, even if it's not on the front page, we have contact information such as "tom at sluggy dot com" spread around the site.
Now, let's say I'm clever and obfuscate my address in various ways. That still doesn't help, because of the 1,000 people who decide to contact us this week, 800 of them end up with a copy of my address in Outlook's address book. So then, when *they* get hit with a virus, off go the spoofed e-mail notes, and here come the notes telling me that "The note you sent contained a virus!"
Not that I'm saying users don't cause much of the trouble themselves
--Tom
My fear there -- so now, when I click on a link and get re-directed to some arbitrary site, I'm supposed to click the "click here if you're not interested" link? Haven't we spent the last thousand posts making fun of users who fall for that?
--Tom
Personally, I will go back to MMORPGs the second one manages to pull off true permanent death. MUDs have been able to pull it off and keep the game enjoyable, yet MMORPGs have not even been able to make the effort. Permanent death forces the game world to be coherent and for combat to less then mindless.
... well, now I'm much more likely to call up and demand my money back. I may not get it, but I'll probably cost 'em plenty in calls to their support lines.
... but it's not as simple as just saying, "hey, let's make death permanent!"
The problem with permanent death in an MMORPG is that players treat a for-pay service using different standards. I've played MUDs for years, and if the dreaded lag monster killed me, oh well, I cursed my crappy university connection for a few minutes and got on with life.
However, if I'm playing a game that costs $10 a month to play, and I just lost my uber-character because of network lag or (even worse) a server bug / character hack / pretty much anything
Anyway, none of that means it can't be done
--Tom
I'm not sure why Electrolux would be selling them in Britain for so much, but the standard version of Roombas have been cheap here for quite a while. We picked ours up at a "Bed Bath & Beyond" shop in January. It was listing at $200.00, with a 20%-off coupon (widely available), so that was $160.00, over six months ago.
--Tom
According to the article:
:)
(a) The recorder comes with Tivo "Basic" service, meaning there's no on-going charges. It acts like an intelligent VCR, but without any of the wishlists and season passes you get for your monthly subscription.
(b) Once your content is on the recorder, you can edit it before burning to DVD.
Again, I have no personal experience, I'm just going off what's reported. But it's right there in the article if you bother to read it
Actually, TiVo already does that -- we use that feature quite often. Just set the "Keep Until" date to the "Keep Until I Delete" option (green-dot mode). That will make it record the shows, and since it won't erase them until you do it manually, it will stop recording any newer ones; it won't overwrite them. Works like a charm!
--Tom
It's really one of those, "how nice and simple would you like it to be?" questions...
... and there are a billion more. However, it probably won't convince you -- it certainly didn't convince my wife until we actually had one. And that's really it ... if there's any way you can try one out for a while, and then return it if you're not interested, I'd say go for it. If it doesn't rock your world, go back to the VCR ... but I'm betting you'll become as addicted as I am :)
Sure, most everything I have my Tivo do, I could do on my own with an old VCR and a copy of TV Guide. But the sheer simplicity of it all, and how much nicer it makes watching television, is worth every penny. A few examples...
- Coming in at 9:15pm on a Wednesday evening, and watching West Wing from the start, without commercials.
- Having watched every single darn episode of The Simpsons that's been on (new or rerun) in the last few years, since the Tivo just grabs them, whenever they happen to be on, whatever channel they happen to be on, etc.
- Watching the news live, and hitting the "8 second skip back" to see/hear exactly something I missed while eating a bite of pizza.
--Bleck
Just a few points...
... that's why the software went from 1.0, to 2.0, to 2.5, to 3.0, etc. If the Tivo system *didn't* do this, you'd be stuck with three+ year-old technology. In other words, they do this all the time, and it's a *good* thing! :)
1) The Tivo system is *always* uploading new code to your Tivo
2) Notice that the software doesn't do anything except for Nielsen households. In other words, just like Nielsen families have special hardware on their TVs to let the system automatically report what they're watching, the new Tivo software lets Nielsen see what they're watching (or re-watching, etc.) via Tivo, rather than just that "the TV appears to be tuned to channel 3 for 72 hours straight."
So, if you're not a Nielsen household, this means nothing to you -- no activation, and no use for it even if there was. If you *are* a Nielsen household, it's just an improvement upon a system you've already signed up for.
--Tom
I spent a few years and well over a thousand dollars struggling with this same problem. I finally realized that analog video capture simply does not work.
... have you looked at the (analog captured) results that a Tivo or Replay TV get you?
I'm not trying to be one of those people with the same response to every post, but
The older systems run on something like a 50MHz processor (I'm not sure of the exact value), and with one hardware encoder, they manage to generate great looking output on a standard television. Would it compete with any HDTV output? Nope. Would it look good on a 50-inch screen? Probably not. But I think that blaming analog video capture as the culprit isn't the answer in this case.
(Disclaimer - I don't work for Sonic Blue or Tivo, but I do have a Tivo, and love it!)
--Bleck