Courts don't pass laws. At best, they set precedent.
My $0.02 on Dish's PVR & TiVo
on
Comparing the DVRs?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
We (the wife and I) bought a TiVo last year when we were trapped in an apartment with AT&T Broadband's digital cable (ick). We both fell in love with the thing, even more so after we received the software update last spring.
When we moved out of the apartment and into a house, we had a DishNetwork dish installed (I'd been a satisfied customer of theirs in the past, which is why I went with them over DirecTV), and went for the deal with one of their PVR boxes. So, we have one of each now, and I think I can provide an objective analysis from the perspective of an existing TiVo owner.
On the whole, we're disappointed with DishNetwork PVR. Yes, it records at full quality, and the PVR unit (unlike the cheaper decoder we hooked the TiVo up to) has an optical digital audio output (note, though, that DishNetwork currently only sends AC3 on pay-per-view programs, AFAIK). So, those are some obvious perks to the cheap box/TiVo combination. However, that's pretty much where the line is drawn.
My biggest gripe about the PVR is that mine is unstable (DishNetwork offered to swap it for another, but I've been waiting until after the holidays to ship it back). The software is also amateurish compared to TiVo. It has no concept of anything like TiVo's "season pass" or "suggestions," no program data beyond roughly two days, the playing interface is horrid (it's impossible to tell where you are in a recorded program). The unit is also considerably noisier, though it does spin the hard drive down when inactive (which my TiVo doesn't do, since it's *never* inactive).
Just so I can say that I haven't knocked the PVR completely, it does have a couple of goodies over TiVo. Namely, it has a 30-second skip button, and it has slightly more storage than my 30-hour Sony-branded TiVo (about 35 hours, to be exact). Also, the PVR is cheaper, overall. I pay $10/month for it, and I didn't have to buy the box. After I got finished paying for my TiVo and the lifetime programming subscription, I'd forked over $400 (it's more now).
In other words, the PVR is really just a glorified digital VCR, and probably should be considered a first generation unit (which I guess promotes TiVo to second generation?!?).
On a somewhat-related note, the new DishNetwork boxes have no serial remote control port. I was rather disappointed when I discovered I'd still have to use the IR blaster on my TiVo. However, with my custom-made "fort," I rarely encounter problems with TiVo changing the channel properly.
When TNT stepped up to fund/broadcast Babylon 5's fifth season, this issue came up, and was addressed by Dean Treadway of TNT programming. So, here's a broadcaster's perspective:
Bugs (Logos) on Screen/Voice-Overs During Closing Credits: The strong leaning in programming (and we know this won't be a popular decision with fans) is to leave the TNT logo on the corner of the screen throughout a large portion of the episodes. This is something that we have to start doing to foster recognizability of the TNT brand, not just during B5, but during movies and Lois and Clark and everything on TNT. Why? Look, there are 70 channels out there for the average cable subscriber to choose from (let's don't even get into satellite). In the age of remote controls, people don't pay attention to chennels or numbers or anything like that. The days of "ABC's on 2, NBC's on 11 and CBS is on 5" are over. Networks must do something to make themselves and their locations on your "dial" much more noticable (Sci-Fi Channel keeps their bug up 24-7...). Therefore, the logos (bugs) will be a regular fixture on B5. Same goes with voice-overs during the credits. B5 is programmed where it is because we want it to lead in to our prime time programming; we want to create an audience for what we have on the rest of the night. Voice-overs are necessary to keep people tuned into the network, to let them know what's coming up next. Again, we know this won't be a popular decision for people looking to tape the show for posterity. But remember: we are not an archival service designed to provide the public with programming they can tape so they never have to watch our network again. That's the kind of thinking that will send television out of business for good forever, and then you won't have any B5s or Crusade or anything to enjoy ever again, because we won't be able to pay for it. In short: we are not a taping service, we are a network, and that means we'll be carrying all the trappings of any other networks, including bugs, commercials, and voice overs. Sorry...
The full discussion is here -- page down to the entry from "97/07/18" (that's 07/18/1997 for us 'mercans).
I love the identification card that Safeway hands out (i.e., the "Safeway Club Card"). I can not use it, and I end up "volunteering" to pay more money at their stores for goods whose prices have been inflated so that the "Club members" can have them for a reasonable price. All I have to do is get on their bandwagon, be tracked, and I have the goods at the correct price.
Similarly, last time I checked, it was good enough to be born in the US to be a US citizen (a piece of paper sitting at some far-away health department was enough to prove it for the occasional job or welfare application). And having some money in your pocket was enough to get fair treatment in the grocery store (well, at least since the late 60's). Does this mean I'll have to have a "national ID card" just to be allowed out of my house? After all, that air out there is the property of the US government, right?
I suggest that MAPS provide an additional "map" of all the IPs used by parties that they've lost law suits with (or simply agreed not to list). The documentation for the map should include rules to explicitly allow mail from those networks, and discourage you from tampering with that ruleset.
As I understand it, TiVo (the company) gets very little in return for the hardware you buy. Their bread 'n butter comes from selling the listing service. To boot, they give you upgrades once in a while.
Being a programmer myself, I can see how and why some of this functionality disappeared. The new OS/app improved the record-button functionality by allowing you to pick up the current buffer, but it needs to know when the program started in order to do that. When you've got a project manager breathing down your neck, you've got to cut some corners. If I were looking to cut a corner or two, I'd drop support for the freloaders.
I sympathize with the time-setting issue, though. There should be an option to manually adjust the time, and I don't think they should have upgraded your unit if you hadn't subscribed to the service (heck, they wasted even more dial-up time on you to send down the bits).
On the other hand, they're still stuck supporting the OS when people call in (regardless of whether they paid for the service or not). It's expensive to support multiple versions of a product. Plus, they probably want to drop support for transferring data to units with the older app at some point.
For what it's worth, I'm a happy TiVo owner. My VCR is collecting dust, and I never worry about racing home to catch a program that I really like. There's something to be said for that, "don't be a slave to your TV" campaign they ran. Then again, I spend a lot of time saying, "Ack! I have to watch this soon or it's going to disappear!"
Play...watch TV for hours...grow more fat...
Okay, so maybe I'm still a slave to the tube. But it's more fun now.
Big name, no-business-plan failures hurt small companies in the open-source world who *do* have a business plan. It's still common to "start-up" with hopes of VC funding to get you through development to profitability. When the VC's get burned on other open-source companies, the funding dries up, even for legitimate companies who made the "mistake" of allying themselves with the open-source movement.
bottlerocket (br) works just fine for me. I had to fiddle with the timings on my Pentium III machine, though, since the author used simple loops to slow things down.
The kicker with the firecracker is that it's transmit only. You can't watch the wire, say, to see whether a motion sensor has tripped. However, I still think I got my money's worth out of the firecracker kit. The remote, lamp module, and tranceiver (which also has one switched outlet, hard set at device 1 or 9), was a good deail.
This really depresses me. I had it in the back of my brain that Red Hat was a good bunch, some folks who made the free software model work. And I'd ignored most of the "is Red Hat turning into the next Microsoft" comments because I figured that was just the nature of their position in the Linux market.
If what Rasterman says about Red Hat trying to push out a Windows clone, that really changes my opinion of them. I hate seeing applications that seek to be exact Windows knock-offs. How can we say that Windows is a bad thing if we just turn around and emulate it? This is the time for rethinking things, lest we become the beast itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Courts don't pass laws. At best, they set precedent.
We (the wife and I) bought a TiVo last year when we were trapped in an apartment with AT&T Broadband's digital cable (ick). We both fell in love with the thing, even more so after we received the software update last spring.
When we moved out of the apartment and into a house, we had a DishNetwork dish installed (I'd been a satisfied customer of theirs in the past, which is why I went with them over DirecTV), and went for the deal with one of their PVR boxes. So, we have one of each now, and I think I can provide an objective analysis from the perspective of an existing TiVo owner.
On the whole, we're disappointed with DishNetwork PVR. Yes, it records at full quality, and the PVR unit (unlike the cheaper decoder we hooked the TiVo up to) has an optical digital audio output (note, though, that DishNetwork currently only sends AC3 on pay-per-view programs, AFAIK). So, those are some obvious perks to the cheap box/TiVo combination. However, that's pretty much where the line is drawn.
My biggest gripe about the PVR is that mine is unstable (DishNetwork offered to swap it for another, but I've been waiting until after the holidays to ship it back). The software is also amateurish compared to TiVo. It has no concept of anything like TiVo's "season pass" or "suggestions," no program data beyond roughly two days, the playing interface is horrid (it's impossible to tell where you are in a recorded program). The unit is also considerably noisier, though it does spin the hard drive down when inactive (which my TiVo doesn't do, since it's *never* inactive).
Just so I can say that I haven't knocked the PVR completely, it does have a couple of goodies over TiVo. Namely, it has a 30-second skip button, and it has slightly more storage than my 30-hour Sony-branded TiVo (about 35 hours, to be exact). Also, the PVR is cheaper, overall. I pay $10/month for it, and I didn't have to buy the box. After I got finished paying for my TiVo and the lifetime programming subscription, I'd forked over $400 (it's more now).
In other words, the PVR is really just a glorified digital VCR, and probably should be considered a first generation unit (which I guess promotes TiVo to second generation?!?).
On a somewhat-related note, the new DishNetwork boxes have no serial remote control port. I was rather disappointed when I discovered I'd still have to use the IR blaster on my TiVo. However, with my custom-made "fort," I rarely encounter problems with TiVo changing the channel properly.
-Scott
The full discussion is here -- page down to the entry from "97/07/18" (that's 07/18/1997 for us 'mercans).
-Scott
I love the identification card that Safeway hands out (i.e., the "Safeway Club Card"). I can not use it, and I end up "volunteering" to pay more money at their stores for goods whose prices have been inflated so that the "Club members" can have them for a reasonable price. All I have to do is get on their bandwagon, be tracked, and I have the goods at the correct price.
Similarly, last time I checked, it was good enough to be born in the US to be a US citizen (a piece of paper sitting at some far-away health department was enough to prove it for the occasional job or welfare application). And having some money in your pocket was enough to get fair treatment in the grocery store (well, at least since the late 60's). Does this mean I'll have to have a "national ID card" just to be allowed out of my house? After all, that air out there is the property of the US government, right?
"Where are your papers?"
I suggest that MAPS provide an additional "map" of all the IPs used by parties that they've lost law suits with (or simply agreed not to list). The documentation for the map should include rules to explicitly allow mail from those networks, and discourage you from tampering with that ruleset.
It's the right thing to do...
As I understand it, TiVo (the company) gets very little in return for the hardware you buy. Their bread 'n butter comes from selling the listing service. To boot, they give you upgrades once in a while.
Being a programmer myself, I can see how and why some of this functionality disappeared. The new OS/app improved the record-button functionality by allowing you to pick up the current buffer, but it needs to know when the program started in order to do that. When you've got a project manager breathing down your neck, you've got to cut some corners. If I were looking to cut a corner or two, I'd drop support for the freloaders.
I sympathize with the time-setting issue, though. There should be an option to manually adjust the time, and I don't think they should have upgraded your unit if you hadn't subscribed to the service (heck, they wasted even more dial-up time on you to send down the bits).
On the other hand, they're still stuck supporting the OS when people call in (regardless of whether they paid for the service or not). It's expensive to support multiple versions of a product. Plus, they probably want to drop support for transferring data to units with the older app at some point.
For what it's worth, I'm a happy TiVo owner. My VCR is collecting dust, and I never worry about racing home to catch a program that I really like. There's something to be said for that, "don't be a slave to your TV" campaign they ran. Then again, I spend a lot of time saying, "Ack! I have to watch this soon or it's going to disappear!"
Play...watch TV for hours...grow more fat...Okay, so maybe I'm still a slave to the tube. But it's more fun now.
Big name, no-business-plan failures hurt small companies in the open-source world who *do* have a business plan. It's still common to "start-up" with hopes of VC funding to get you through development to profitability. When the VC's get burned on other open-source companies, the funding dries up, even for legitimate companies who made the "mistake" of allying themselves with the open-source movement.
bottlerocket (br) works just fine for me. I had to fiddle with the timings on my Pentium III machine, though, since the author used simple loops to slow things down.
The kicker with the firecracker is that it's transmit only. You can't watch the wire, say, to see whether a motion sensor has tripped. However, I still think I got my money's worth out of the firecracker kit. The remote, lamp module, and tranceiver (which also has one switched outlet, hard set at device 1 or 9), was a good deail.
This really depresses me. I had it in the back of my brain that Red Hat was a good bunch, some folks who made the free software model work. And I'd ignored most of the "is Red Hat turning into the next Microsoft" comments because I figured that was just the nature of their position in the Linux market.
If what Rasterman says about Red Hat trying to push out a Windows clone, that really changes my opinion of them. I hate seeing applications that seek to be exact Windows knock-offs. How can we say that Windows is a bad thing if we just turn around and emulate it? This is the time for rethinking things, lest we become the beast itself.