The other thing about Myth TV, is that it is only *free* in that it relies on getting guide data from Zap2it. I have no idea why Zap2it provides all that data online for free, but the one thing I do know is, that without the guide data, Myth TV or any other home brew DVR is nothing more than a PC with a capture card, and that doesn't equal a Tivo or a ReplayTv.
The day Zap2it stops being so friendly is the day Myth TV users are up the creek. Whether or not you agree that the cost of the Tivo subscription (which is largely paying for your guide) is reasonable or not, at least you know you're going to get guide data, so that your subscriptions and programming searches are going to work, and match what is playing.
And the people who make the content want to control how you get it, and what you do with it. Tivo is in the unfortunate position of being squeezed by the entertainment conglomerates who own most of the content, and don't like the fact that Tivo exists.
To placate them, Tivo engineered in anti-extraction technology into the series-2, and now are working on the Tivo to go addition which is a content encryption locking/unlocking technology that will allow you to move content from your Tivo to a PC or other device, that is only playable on a player that has the Digital Rights Management software allowing you to unlock it.
Many people who have Tivos also have broadband, and home networks, allowing them to get their Tivo updates through the Internet, and this already includes "content" in the form of Tivo ads which come up in the guide. It's not hard to see where this is going... video ala cart. Note I didn't say on demand, and quite frankly, unless everyone gets fiber to their house, on-demand will never be viable.
What Tivo has proved convincingly, is that most people don't *really* want on-demand programming. What they want is to select as much programming as they're interested in, and let the DVR aquire that programming and store it, so that at some later time, when they have time, they can enjoy the entertainment.
This is where the entertainment conglomerates are typically short sighted and leave a lot of money on the table, because unless it's available at blockbuster, there's a tremendous amount of entertainment material that people are willing to pay for, which just isn't available. All the studios need to do is make this material available in a broadcast quality format, and the cash will come flooding in. Would you rather go to blockbuster and wander the isles looking for the great indie movie your friends all raved about (which Blockbuster has 2 DvD's that will be checked out until next year) or would you rather take 10 minutes to order them on friday morning, knowing that when you get home friday night, they'll be sitting on your Tivo waiting for you to watch them when you have time?
The entertainment conglomerates are so obsessed with the money they think they're losing to pirating (and the fact is they've been losing this money for years, and nothing has changed whatsoever) that they treat their customer base as if they are all potential video pirates, rather than looking at what customers want to do with the content.
Tivo can see the future very well, and they know that they have the potential to be the delivery endpoint for all this content. They can't afford to piss off the media companies. Fortunately they have "Tivo" brand recognition, customer loyalty and excellent word of mouth going for them. Strangeberry has certainly got them a lot of press, but I doubt they see it as being much more than a speculative R&D group, perhaps in the end not unlike Xerox Parc. Most people know that Tivo is a MIPS based Linux box under the covers, and there's no magic to what they're doing technically. What's more important in the long run is not the gee-whiz technology, or even the user-friendliness, which most people agree has been Tivo's strongest selling point. In the end, it will all hinge on where the most content is available, and the way things are going, I certainly wouldn't bet against the box with the brand name recognition, and best relationship with the content providers.
I've had DirectTV for over 5 years now. Since I live atop a canyon ridge in Los Angeles, once and a while during extreme winds, the picture will skip a bit. Also if it's delugging rain, this can also happen. Obviously in SoCal, this doesn't happen very often. I have no idea what you are referring to in regards to sunlight.
In comparison to my years as a Cable subscriber... I can't begin to tell you how much better the picture is, or how much additional programming is available at far less the cost than what was every available to me via cable. Of course I made the switch prior to Digital cable, but I think Sattelite TV is a pretty good example of how much better a service one can receive when market conditions exist, in comparison to a closed/monopoly system.
One issue that you don't address in regards to the "subscription" fee, is that what you are really paying for is an accurate program guide. Aside from the PVR technology, much of what makes Tivo great is the way it makes it easy for me to find programs I'm interested in, or make subscriptions to programs I want to record every "first run" episode of. I don't ever see anyone getting around the need to pay for this type of service. What's the alternative... a "volunteer" service.
"Gee well, the guy that usually types in the guide data for your area went on vacation for two weeks, so unfortunately you all missed the season finale's of Alias and 24. Ooops."
I liked your Bobo page, very amusing. I think you need a little work on the PR however. Bobo is maybe a good name for a dog who's not too bright. You would probably do a lot better renaming it to "the Cannihilater" or something with a similar ring.
Game economics are terrible. Unlike Movies, which have a long exploitation life cycle (theatrical, ppv, pay-cable, home video, free-cable, network TV, syndication, recurse) computer/video games are released in consumer channels, must be a hit nearly immediately, or they come back as returns.
Then companies throw co-op/mdf money at the problem, followed by price protection, followed by repackaging as "bargain" software. Ugghhhhhhh. A few large hits keep the whole business alive - barely.
One of the best selling entertainment titles of all time: Myst, would have disappeared from the current game market a few short weeks after its release, because it didn't sell off the shelves immediately. And yet, what has the industry at large been able to do to bring new consumers to the market?
In my experience marketing people are disdained, and seen as dummies. Marketing is not seen by developers as being intrinsic to the business of making their games, with the possible exception of the frequent demand that marketing pay for the hiring of the project manager's room mate as a web developer, so that the pm can throw his dev journal up on the website once and a while. Oh yeah, and don't forget that absolutely gripping "Developers Cam" that points at an empty chair next to the coke machine. I don't know about you, but nothing works better on me as a consumer than visual proof that a large percentage of the development staff obviously doesn't bathe regularly, as evidenced by the candid developer at work snapshots on the website!
What a surprise then, when a game is released and not "properly marketed" thus languishing in the channel.
For example, consider the sad story of Grand Prix Legends. GPL features an amazing physics engine and detailed simulation. Unfortunately, unless you have actually been a GPL developer, or you have driven a GPL car professionally, you probably can't make it around the track once without crashing.
Marketing advised that "you know guys, a training/beginners setup would make this game sell a lot better." No such trainer was included. Hindsight is certainly 20/20, but GPL is both a beautiful simulation product and a financial disaster as of this moment.
Consider the game company with a burned-out expensive development staff. An average game is a multi-million dollar investment just to bring it to market, nevermind the marketing costs. The chances of that game making its investment back are 1-20 against. Who in their right mind would invest their own money in such a thing?
These economic realities now tend to trickle down to developers in the form of management request like:
"we need you to ship this game by Christmas so that we can make our financials this year!"
When Talin states he believes the only project he would find acceptable is one with no time table, I have to laugh. The discipline and devotion to planning and timetables that is described in the software engineering books he claims to subscribe to, certainly don't teach you to start coding, and finish when its done.
Face the facts: game development is a young man's pursuit. Note I stated man, and not woman. We all know that women are too rational to involve themselves in developing idiotic juvenile male teen product.
There is tremendous financial risk for the backers, and no surprise, when something actually makes money, since they payed for the development and assumed all the risk, they tend to be stingy when it comes to sharing the profits.
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The other thing about Myth TV, is that it is only *free* in that it relies on getting guide data from Zap2it. I have no idea why Zap2it provides all that data online for free, but the one thing I do know is, that without the guide data, Myth TV or any other home brew DVR is nothing more than a PC with a capture card, and that doesn't equal a Tivo or a ReplayTv.
The day Zap2it stops being so friendly is the day Myth TV users are up the creek. Whether or not you agree that the cost of the Tivo subscription (which is largely paying for your guide) is reasonable or not, at least you know you're going to get guide data, so that your subscriptions and programming searches are going to work, and match what is playing.
And the people who make the content want to control how you get it, and what you do with it. Tivo is in the unfortunate position of being squeezed by the entertainment conglomerates who own most of the content, and don't like the fact that Tivo exists.
To placate them, Tivo engineered in anti-extraction technology into the series-2, and now are working on the Tivo to go addition which is a content encryption locking/unlocking technology that will allow you to move content from your Tivo to a PC or other device, that is only playable on a player that has the Digital Rights Management software allowing you to unlock it.
Many people who have Tivos also have broadband, and home networks, allowing them to get their Tivo updates through the Internet, and this already includes "content" in the form of Tivo ads which come up in the guide. It's not hard to see where this is going... video ala cart. Note I didn't say on demand, and quite frankly, unless everyone gets fiber to their house, on-demand will never be viable.
What Tivo has proved convincingly, is that most people don't *really* want on-demand programming. What they want is to select as much programming as they're interested in, and let the DVR aquire that programming and store it, so that at some later time, when they have time, they can enjoy the entertainment.
This is where the entertainment conglomerates are typically short sighted and leave a lot of money on the table, because unless it's available at blockbuster, there's a tremendous amount of entertainment material that people are willing to pay for, which just isn't available. All the studios need to do is make this material available in a broadcast quality format, and the cash will come flooding in. Would you rather go to blockbuster and wander the isles looking for the great indie movie your friends all raved about (which Blockbuster has 2 DvD's that will be checked out until next year) or would you rather take 10 minutes to order them on friday morning, knowing that when you get home friday night, they'll be sitting on your Tivo waiting for you to watch them when you have time?
The entertainment conglomerates are so obsessed with the money they think they're losing to pirating (and the fact is they've been losing this money for years, and nothing has changed whatsoever) that they treat their customer base as if they are all potential video pirates, rather than looking at what customers want to do with the content.
Tivo can see the future very well, and they know that they have the potential to be the delivery endpoint for all this content. They can't afford to piss off the media companies. Fortunately they have "Tivo" brand recognition, customer loyalty and excellent word of mouth going for them. Strangeberry has certainly got them a lot of press, but I doubt they see it as being much more than a speculative R&D group, perhaps in the end not unlike Xerox Parc. Most people know that Tivo is a MIPS based Linux box under the covers, and there's no magic to what they're doing technically. What's more important in the long run is not the gee-whiz technology, or even the user-friendliness, which most people agree has been Tivo's strongest selling point. In the end, it will all hinge on where the most content is available, and the way things are going, I certainly wouldn't bet against the box with the brand name recognition, and best relationship with the content providers.
I've had DirectTV for over 5 years now. Since I live atop a canyon ridge in Los Angeles, once and a while during extreme winds, the picture will skip a bit. Also if it's delugging rain, this can also happen. Obviously in SoCal, this doesn't happen very often. I have no idea what you are referring to in regards to sunlight.
In comparison to my years as a Cable subscriber... I can't begin to tell you how much better the picture is, or how much additional programming is available at far less the cost than what was every available to me via cable. Of course I made the switch prior to Digital cable, but I think Sattelite TV is a pretty good example of how much better a service one can receive when market conditions exist, in comparison to a closed/monopoly system.
One issue that you don't address in regards to the "subscription" fee, is that what you are really paying for is an accurate program guide. Aside from the PVR technology, much of what makes Tivo great is the way it makes it easy for me to find programs I'm interested in, or make subscriptions to programs I want to record every "first run" episode of. I don't ever see anyone getting around the need to pay for this type of service. What's the alternative... a "volunteer" service.
"Gee well, the guy that usually types in the guide data for your area went on vacation for two weeks, so unfortunately you all missed the season finale's of Alias and 24. Ooops."
I liked your Bobo page, very amusing. I think you need a little work on the PR however. Bobo is maybe a good name for a dog who's not too bright. You would probably do a lot better renaming it to "the Cannihilater" or something with a similar ring.
Then companies throw co-op/mdf money at the problem, followed by price protection, followed by repackaging as "bargain" software. Ugghhhhhhh. A few large hits keep the whole business alive - barely.
One of the best selling entertainment titles of all time: Myst, would have disappeared from the current game market a few short weeks after its release, because it didn't sell off the shelves immediately. And yet, what has the industry at large been able to do to bring new consumers to the market?
In my experience marketing people are disdained, and seen as dummies. Marketing is not seen by developers as being intrinsic to the business of making their games, with the possible exception of the frequent demand that marketing pay for the hiring of the project manager's room mate as a web developer, so that the pm can throw his dev journal up on the website once and a while. Oh yeah, and don't forget that absolutely gripping "Developers Cam" that points at an empty chair next to the coke machine. I don't know about you, but nothing works better on me as a consumer than visual proof that a large percentage of the development staff obviously doesn't bathe regularly, as evidenced by the candid developer at work snapshots on the website!
What a surprise then, when a game is released and not "properly marketed" thus languishing in the channel.
For example, consider the sad story of Grand Prix Legends. GPL features an amazing physics engine and detailed simulation. Unfortunately, unless you have actually been a GPL developer, or you have driven a GPL car professionally, you probably can't make it around the track once without crashing.
Marketing advised that "you know guys, a training/beginners setup would make this game sell a lot better." No such trainer was included. Hindsight is certainly 20/20, but GPL is both a beautiful simulation product and a financial disaster as of this moment.
Consider the game company with a burned-out expensive development staff. An average game is a multi-million dollar investment just to bring it to market, nevermind the marketing costs. The chances of that game making its investment back are 1-20 against. Who in their right mind would invest their own money in such a thing?
These economic realities now tend to trickle down to developers in the form of management request like:
When Talin states he believes the only project he would find acceptable is one with no time table, I have to laugh. The discipline and devotion to planning and timetables that is described in the software engineering books he claims to subscribe to, certainly don't teach you to start coding, and finish when its done.
Face the facts: game development is a young man's pursuit. Note I stated man, and not woman. We all know that women are too rational to involve themselves in developing idiotic juvenile male teen product.
There is tremendous financial risk for the backers, and no surprise, when something actually makes money, since they payed for the development and assumed all the risk, they tend to be stingy when it comes to sharing the profits.