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Seagate drives use new video streaming standard

Seagate has announced new drives and a new ATA format specifically for video streaming in PVRs. The new standard is optimized for the storage and type of data access required of video streams and should result in smoother playback.

Eight manufacturers stepped up to the plate to support it in their devices, and those include companies that have manufactured TiVo devices in the past, though no specific mention of TiVo is made. Echostar is also one of the companies looking to move to the new drives and ATA7 standard so maybe this could be another plus for the Dish network PVRs over DirecTV's offerings.

August 29, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

New 120Gb Echostar/Dish network DVR

Hot on the heels of Samsung's news of a large DirecTiVo, Echostar has announced their own 120Gb DVR offering. News.com claims that EchoStar will be giving them away for free, to undercut DirecTV's sales potential.

August 28, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (45) | TrackBack

Home Media Proposal

I'll lay off the Home Media Option posts for a while, but I had to mention this: possibly the geekiest marriage proposal ever was included in the last TiVo newsletter:

"This is not a joke," subscriber Ted Linhart’s e-mail began. "I proposed to my girlfriend yesterday via my TiVo DVR." Say what, huh? Using the Digital Photo feature included with Home Media Option premium package, Ted streamed a picture of himself holding a sign that read "Will You Marry Me?" to his living room DVR so that his gal Rachel would see the on-screen proposal as she walked through the door on August 5th. Ted happily reports the question garnered an enthusiastic "yes!" (See photo.)

Nothing says romance like bringing a television into your deepest and most personal life moments.

August 28, 2003 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Home Media Option sharing

A post on the TiVo Community Forum points out that the music and photo sharing in TiVo isn't limited to your home's local network. Remote IPs work the same as local ones, according to this account:

I have family, friends and co-workers who also have a Series 2 Tivo, with HMO. We log unto each others IP address and stream each others MP3s, and pictures. Every once in a while I'll get a phone call from one of them saying something to the effect of: "Hey Erick! Have you heard the new <enter band name here>?" I'll in turn say "No". Friend: "Log unto my IP with your TiVo and check it out.". And so I'll do that. Same things with pictures. They'll tell me about a cool concert they went to that I missed, but they are able to share the pictures, all of this, without having to see each other. Just gotta log unto their IP address.

I'm surprised music and photo sharing sites haven't popped up like they have with iTunes, where people could post their IP and a description of their collection for other TiVo HMO owners to browse.

August 27, 2003 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Samsung's new TiVo

Samsung has announced a new 100 hour DirecTiVo reciever with dual tuners. About the only innovation is the shipping hard drive size, being the largest offered directly from a manufacturer, and much larger than the standard DireTiVo 35 hour size on competing units.

The announcement features speculation about future HDTV capable versions and they even hint at throwing a home networking ethernet router/firewall into it, and of course a Samsung spokesperson dodges the obvious question of why it doesn't come with a DVD recorder by saying:

With a 100 hour capacity disk do you really need an external recording device...There is enough room on the hard drive to store some programs.

Sure, some programs could fit on a 100 hour device, but they won't last forever and you can't archive them outside of the box, so of course people really do need an external recording device. [announcement link via Gizmodo]

August 27, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBack

TV Week on Tivo's recent stock dip

TV Week's article "TiVo's Been Outflanked" echos a lot of the themes I covered in my post about TiVo's Apple problem, and even wraps up by comparing TiVo's future to Apple. Though TiVo's demise is far from imminent, thanks in large part of competing cable and satellite companies brewing up their own DVRs, TiVo's future subscriber numbers don't look as rosy as they used to.

August 25, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Connecting your TiVo Series 2 via Wi-Fi Review

Although I had good luck with my linksys wireless adapter and my TiVo, This review describes the hell one owner went through trying to find other supporting wireless products (apparently the Netgear MA101 did the trick). [via gizmodo]

August 25, 2003 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Fool.com: Et Tu TiVo?

A new TiVo article at Fool.com [via library planet] serves as a nice optimistic counter-point to my warnings below. Fool.com columnist Rick Munarriz is convinced once TiVo surpasses the million subscriber mark, substantial growth and profitability will be soon to follow for TiVo.

I hope he's right, and although TiVo posted losses today, their rise in subscribers produced a stock jump.

August 22, 2003 in News, Op-Ed | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

TiVo's Apple problem

As the digital video recorder space begins filling up with companies aiming to provide more features and lower prices, I can't help but see obvious paralells with the computer industry.

Apple created the first personal computer real people could use, and a few years later they followed it up with the first computer with an operating system made for humans. But over the years other companies offered products that were "good enough" and "not the best, but cheap!" and the IBM PC clones totally dominated the space. Apple has always stuck to being a hardware and software company, so they could never really meet the prices that a competitive PC hardware market created. While they did allow clones to spring up for a short time, they quickly put the kibash on the companies that undercut their own sales.

Apple still does their own hardware (though many components are cheap off-the-shelf PC parts) and their own software, but they are definitely the Betamax of the computer world. While they arguably offer a better interface and are easier to use, they hover around 5-10% 3% (thanks gen) of the marketshare while most consumers prefer the VHS of the computer world: the $400 plain boxes running windows. Even the places you buy computers reflect this. Apple has a line of bright, beautiful stores that you can spend thousands of dollars in, while you can walk into any Wal-Mart, muscle past the screaming kids and throw a nameless PC into your cart that'll set you back a few hundred bucks.

Like Apple, TiVo pioneered the market. TiVo has been around since 1998, and their first systems stored just a few hours and were quite expensive, but their software was revolutionary. Being somewhat of an interface designer myself, I was in immediate awe of the simplicity and functionality available in my first TiVo system. While the prices have fallen somewhat, the market sector is still a little stagnant, with TiVo just barely in the red, and a whole host of new competitors arising. Cable companies, startups, and even open-source projects have taken dead aim on TiVo's market and will make the space quite competitive very soon.

The consensus of everyone I talk to that uses these alternate DVR devices is the same: they rave about the features and/or the price, but lamment the lack of a simple to use and stable operating system that TiVo offers. But as prices fall and companies like Time Warner start offering DVRs for only a couple extra bucks a month, you have to wonder what combination of low price and "good enough" features it will take to gain lots of new customers (customers that TiVo will lose to the cheaper offerings).

As the competitors circle the market like vultures, I wonder if TiVo will resign itself as the Apple Computer of DVRs, where its snooty users will put stickers on their cars, make up 5 or 10% of the DVR space, and tell you all about how refined their TiVo operating system is. Or, will TiVo become the Microsoft of DVRs, acting more as a software and service company that licenses their OS to anyone that wants to throw together some basic parts?

Word on the street has always been that TiVo loses money on every unit they sell for $249-349 — that the hardware costs them more than the price, and their real business model is the reoccuring monthly service fee. It seems to me that due to ever-falling prices for basic commodity computer hardware, the prices of TiVo boxes must fall, or TiVo should send in the clones. Anyone can throw a hard drive, motherboard, and cheap processor into some plastic, but it takes real work to produce an operating system that works wonderfully and features an interface both geeks and grandmas can like.

Seeing the first of new TiVo-licensed products and reduced cost through TiVo Basic is a good sign, and they've even hinting at built-in DVD writers — something that would probably take TiVo another year to release in-house on their own boxes. I'm hopeful TiVo learns the lessons of the PC world and considers going the software, service, and licensing route. I'd hate to see them flounder in a tiny corner of the market they helped create.

August 22, 2003 in Op-Ed, TiVo | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Time Warner's DVR signup

A small update to the earlier post about Time Warner's DVR rollout: a signup sheet is now available.

August 19, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (50) | TrackBack

The Linksys Wireless-B Media Adapter

Linksys' Wireless-B Media Adapter adapter seems to do everything TiVo's Home Media Option does.

It's not too expensive (Amazon is selling it for $169), though the amazon reviews point out the installation is a bit flakey and it doesn't say anything about video streaming support. [via jrobb]

August 14, 2003 in Products | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

VentureBlog: TruckWidth

A great post over at VentureBlog covers the cable industry, Video on Demand, and how services like Netflix and TiVo have sprung up to route around the faltering cable companies.

The post also mentions the bandwidth of a DVD in a postal truck, which is something the CEO touched on in this Wired interview: "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with backup tapes"

August 14, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

myHTPC: Home Theater PC frontend

myHTPC looks like a free clone of the Windows Media Center XP interface, available for free personal use. It's a generic front-end to PC apps and allows for mouse, keyboard, and/or remote input.

I'm downloading it and giving it a spin this week, I'm hoping it's fully customizable and I can run winamp and snapstream through it. [via Anil].

August 11, 2003 in Products | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Tivo's Home Media Option Review

One of the key things I was looking forward to when I upgraded to a Series 2 TiVo was the opportunity to try out their new Home Media Option (HMO). The $99 optional package consists of several features that exploit a home network and let you connect to other TiVos and other computers. After setup and signing up, you can play music and look at photos on your TV, schedule recordings online through a web interface, and transfer recordings to other Series 2 TiVos in your house.

What follows is my full review of HMO after testing it out for the past month.

Getting your TiVo on the network

I've covered this integral part of setup in other posts, but the features in HMO require a home network. Ideally you'd have a broadband connection, either cable or DSL, going into your home, with a home router that offers either extra ports or wireless. The Series 2 TiVo has built-in USB ports that can accept either a USB-to-ethernet adapter like the linksys USB100TX or a USB-to-wireless adapter like the linksys wusb11 or wet11 (see also: TiVo's recommended adapters). Once your TiVo is on the network and can get an outside connection, you're ready to plunk down the extra $99 (now only $59) to get the HMO.

Getting your computers talking to your TiVo

After signing up for the HMO, I was a tad disappointed by the purchase process after finding the TiVo desktop package wasn't linked from the final purchase page, nor was it even mentioned in the confirmation email sent after I bought it. I had to search the TiVo site to find the page that has the packages for download. I installed the TiVo desktop on both a powerbook running OS X and a PC running XP pro. It was pretty seamless, with the TiVo desktop found on the start menu of Windows that launches a taskbar application. On my mac, it installed a package available only in the System Preferences. From reading about the TiVo desktop package, I'm under the impression they are using the open source zeroconf protocol that the mac OS has dubbed rendezvous. Part of me wishes the package itself was open source so other vendors could connect their devices to the HMO. At home I'm using a Martian netdrive as a backup device and it also stores all my music and photos from both of my other computers. The Martian drive has rendezvous running and can talk to my Mac, but not my TiVo directly. I ended up using Windows XP's simple network drive mappping to make the photo and music directories available to the TiVo desktop which worked fine.

Photos on your TV

I've been using digital cameras for going on six years now so I have a lot of photo archives, and I was looking forward to seeing how the HMO handled them. On my PC and backup drive, I generally manage my photos with a predictable folder naming convention. I start with the date, then a short summary, like "030211 Portland Zoo" to denote the photo set was taken on Feb 11, 2003 and consisted of photos taken at the Zoo in Portland, OR. Surfing through my directories on the TiVo was straightforward and easy to do.

On the mac side of things, I'm not really in the habit of making photo galleries for every single "roll" of shots I take, instead relying on iPhoto's simple "last photos shown first" interface. I've got about a thousand photos in iPhoto available in the default sort, and it's still quite easy to use, but in the TiVo interface it was rendered largely useless. Unfortunately, the HMO lists photos with three different sorting criteria, either alphabetically by photo name, photo date taken, or by date modified. The problem with iPhoto is that its internal naming convention for jpegs makes all three sorts identically ordered in the HMO. Basically, looking at my thousand pictures in iPhoto on my TiVo was pointless because it showed the oldest photos first, the opposite of how iPhoto works on my powerbook. I went back into iPhoto and made a few galleries of my lastest shots to get a feel for how it worked, but I wasn't happy to find that using the HMO required that I change my workflow in iPhoto in order to make it work.

The photo slideshows themselves are easy to launch and fairly simple to navigate. Once a slideshow is going, you can use the pause buttons to freeze on a photo as long as you want, and the fast forward and reverse buttons let you jump between photos, but the operation is a bit clumsy. I find I prefer to go through slideshows at my own pace which can be done by viewing the first photo in a set and using the channel up/down buttons to navigate between other photos in the set.

Viewing photos on a TV is pretty nice, and house guests have been impressed to see large vivid photos of what took place earlier in the day when I transfer images off my camera. If I ever get a giant plasma screen TV, I'm sure I'll enjoy this feature even more, as the higher resolution screen will likely make the photos all that more enjoyable.

TiVo offers some default photo sets each month that look like the average output of a stock photo agency, with no meta information about where they came from, so I don't know if they are promoting an agency or just using photos they licensed for distribution to users. If TiVo is ever short on available photos, it'd probably make sense for them to showcase online photography by using one of the several photo galleries licensed for commercial re-use by Creative Commons.

Music on your TV

The music features in the HMO are also straightforward, letting you play songs in a given (shared & networked) directory, with all subdirectories underneath. You can shuffle song order, making it fairly easy to say "play everything I have in a random order". On my pc, I follow a convention of making directories for artists and subdirectories for albums, which is how iTunes works, making the operation of hearings songs from either my PC or my mac identical. My TiVo is on a wireless lan, with pretty good network speed, so I've never had a problem with buffering or skipped data when streaming music.

For me, the biggest advantage to using the HMO's music feature was being able to finally listen to my music on my home theater system. In the past, I've occasionally dragged my powerbook over to my TV and connected a mini headphone-to-RCA cable up to hear music. I've also seriously considered picking up a SliMP3 device for the past few months, but could never justify the $200-$300 price tag to get my music wirelessly connected to my home theater speakers. The HMO basically gets me the same functionality (though it does require that I use the TV as an interface instead of a dedicated component).

Like the photo feature, TiVo offers built-in music from a variety of artists. My TiVo loaded up with Universal artists and included quite a few songs I hadn't heard before. I'd love to see this feature expanded to other music labels.

Oh, one tip for TiVo music users: hit the "clear" button to prevent screen burn on your TV.

Remote Scheduling

The HMO also offers a remote scheduling feature, which lets you login to tivo.com and scedule recordings, create season passes, and search for shows to record via the web. On the downside, it's not quite instant. Due to network configurations, your TiVo won't know about your new schedulings until it gets its update, though if you are networked it should be more often than once per night. You can resolve conflicts by either recording the program if nothing else is going or recording no matter what, and unfortunately since you can't connect to your TiVo live, you won't know what is conflicting (if anything) until you get a message on your TiVo or request an email notification. Ideally, it'd be great if you could completely control your Now Playing list and Season Pass manager online. I've heard it is recommended that you give your TiVo about 4 hours leeway before requesting a new recording on the same day.

Multi-Room Viewing

The HMO-equipped TiVo is the first one to offer the ability to transfer shows from one TiVo to another in your house, but unfortunately I didn't get a chance to test this out, as I've only got one setup at home. I know quite a number of folks with more than one TiVo in their house, so this will be a welcome feature, though it does have its drawbacks. Every TiVo in your house will have to be a series 2 model in order for this to work, which is a bummer since many multi-TiVo owners simply use their older devices elsewhere in the house. Another drawback is the cost, since it requires a $99 HMO subscription on the first machine and an additional $49 subscription on subsequent machines. Adding in the prices of multiple series 2 boxes and you can see how expensive it quickly becomes. The last drawback is due to the nature of networks. If you run a wireless LAN at home for the sake of convenience, you will pay the price on the time it takes to move a show from one device to another. Compared to a ethernet cable-connected TiVo system, you may find your times 2-5 times slower over wireless.

The first time I heard about the multi-room option, I figured it was only a matter of time before some hackers figured out how to share shows with any other networked TiVo, but apparently it is close to impossible. TiVo only allows transfers to other TiVos on your account, locked down by serial number. It would have been nice if TiVo gave users the option to use the features in the original ReplayTV devices (now removed).

Downsides

The first major downside is that the HMO is only available on Series 2 TiVos, even though it is possible to get an older TiVo on a network. Another downside of the HMO is that owners of Series 2 DirecTiVo units have all the hardware capabilities to run it, but last year's purchase of the entire DirecTV sector of TiVO by DirecTV has put them in charge of software deployment and they have so far refused to offer networking capabilities, the HMO, or the newest 4.0 TiVo operating system. Owners of new DirecTiVos are essentially trapped by the decisions of an even more hollywood friendly, hacker-phobic company in DirecTV.

One big feature I would like to see in the HMO was the ability to stream movies along with music and photos from computers. With things like The Animatrix available only online (at first), watching on a computer is less than the ideal way to enjoy it. While I can move my laptop over to my TV and connect its S-video output to my home theater system, it'd be nice if I could just stream it over the network to my TiVo directly for playback. Since the TiVo OS is linux based, I'd guess it's pretty easy to integrate the open source movie package Mplayer into the HMO codebase. While TiVo executives may think this feature would only be used for pirated movies, my digital camera takes quicktime movies that I edit in iMovie. I'd love to show off the finished videos on my TV, through TiVo.

Conclusions

The Home Media Option is a somewhat expensive add-on, in my case totalling 50% of my TiVo's original purchase price, but offers a nice set of features. For me personally, the price was worth it since I saved money over buying a specialized mp3 streaming device. The photo features look great as well and I get a lot of use out of them with my thousands of photos. The remote scheduling is great to have when you're away from home. Just the other day I saw an ad on the side of a bus mentioning the West Wing was coming to Bravo next week. When I got to an office, I fired up a browser and set my TiVo to grab a season pass. While I didn't get a chance to test out the multi-room viewing, if I had the means, I'm sure it'd be a great addition.

Overall I'm quite happy with the HMO, and now that they're selling it for $59, it's an even better deal.

August 10, 2003 in Product Reviews, TiVo | Permalink | Comments (30) | TrackBack

Neighbor sharing in HMO

This post over at the TiVo Community boards contains one of the more interesting anecdotes about the Home Media Option. Apparently thanks to Apple Rendezvous and open wireless networks, it's possible to share your music and photo collection with your neighbors, even if you never authorized their DVRs. The strange bit is how the person feels weird about it, as if it is illegal or unethical.

August 10, 2003 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

TiVo Home Media Option for $59

TiVo's Home Media Option is currently on sale for $59 (a full review of the HMO to will be posted tomorrow)

August 7, 2003 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack

JD Power and Associates TV study

JD Power and Associates recently released their 2002 Cable/Satellite TV Customer Satisfaction Study results, with the two satellite companies clearly ahead of the pack. I've been a customer of MediaOne, Comcast, and DirecTV, and although I would say I was overall most happy with the DirecTV service itself (it had the best picture, best sound, and best reliability), I used to get phone spammed constantly by DirecTV when I was a customer. I swear I had weekly calls reminding me that pay-per-view and HBO existed, as if I didn't already know (and use both). [via mmmBlog]

August 7, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Media Center XP hacking

The Green Button is the Media Center XP equivalent of the TiVo community. They offer user-to-user forums complete with helpful tips like how to convert the Media Center video files to mpeg.

August 4, 2003 in Windows Media Center XP | Permalink | Comments (4)

TypePad launch

TypePad, the blogging and hosting service this site is running on has recently gone live and is offering 30 day demos of the application and reasonable rates. This site is using the Pro account, which includes all sorts of great features like the photo albums. Typepad is the easiest blogging system I've used and that's an accomplishment considering all the power-user features hidden within.

While I'm mentioning blogging instead of PVRs, I might as well mention the hilarious parody of this site by none other than internet superstar Ben Brown, who launched the ACblog last week.

August 4, 2003 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Guide to Series 1 video extraction

Michael over at Cruftbox has a great little peek at what his hacked Series 1 box looks like running TyStudio to extract movie files and convert to mpeg for storage or DVD backup. Although this is currently impossible to do on series 2 boxes, it's nice to know that hacking scripts have grown into user-friendly packages on the older devices.

August 4, 2003 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Video extraction and TiVo

Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research recently raved about Windows Media Center XP over TiVo mainly due to the ability to transfer recorded shows to his laptop. Even though Media Center XP has felt a little buggy to me and I've enjoyed years of TiVo, I would agree with Gartenberg that watching shows on other devices is indeed a killer feature. This got me to thinking about TiVo's ability to move shows around to other devices, or the almost complete lack thereof.

I've been reading the TiVo community boards for a couple years now, and early pioneered hacks weren't often welcomed. I can remember when someone started doing the very earliest hack to allow an ethernet card to be attached. Many on the TiVo boards assumed the ethernet connection was to either extract movies for pirating on the internet, or for downloading show data from the internet instead of paying TiVo. Granted, the TiVo community does have some no-no subjects, and I can completely understand why they don't like anyone talking about getting around their $12.95 monthly service charge, but oftentimes other basic hacking projects fall into the "this is taboo to talk about" category. Right now on the boards, video extraction is a taboo subject.

If you look at the ethernet hacking history, eventually after a few months of tinkering people figured out a stable way to get a TiVo on a network and then they hacked in support for talking to their TiVo. Many asked for ethernet support because the modems would often fry and in many cases an installation of a phone line nearby was required. Eventually TiVo opened up a way for people to update online and now from TiVo's own site they encourage users to buy a wired or wireless ethernet device (on TiVo's end, the cost of maintaining modem banks is high, whereas sending data over ethernet is almost free).

What I find frustrating is the kneejerk response of some community members and I suspect, TiVo employees (especially the former TV exec they have as president now) whenever a hacking project like this starts. People often assume the motivation for hacking is nefarious. It is assumed these features will enable stealing service, stealing content to pirate online, or stealing free cable/satellite. Where that attitude so often goes wrong is that a tiny, tiny minority of people may want to do things like that, but the vast majority have legitimate, responsible reasons for these features, and I would go so far as to say those legitimate reasons could convince new customers to buy one.

Video extraction on the TiVo is now almost impossible. There is a program out there to enable extraction in the old series 1 devices, but it does require some serious hacking involving scripts on the TiVo and a hacked ethernet connection. With the series 2 box, they've encrypted the stored movies and made shell access to the device difficult, so the box is essentially locked up.

The series 2 TiVo is now essentially a VCR with a giant blank tape that you can record anyting you want to, but you can never eject the tape. With a VCR, you can save the tapes in a closet for later use, you can take them on trips with you to enjoy what you taped, and you can go over to a friend's house to watch the tape. Those are all perfectly legitimate and more importantly, completely legal things that 99.999% of people do with VCRs.

When I saw the methods for copying video from ReplayTV, Media Center XP, and SnapStream systems, I realized the utility that far outweighs the piracy. Moving shows to your laptop is a great, useful thing for business travellers. It's also great to watch a show on your computer in another room while someone watches a live show on the TV. Being free to copy a show to a DVD so a friend can see something they missed is also a great feature. Putting a 1 Gigabyte show onto kazaa from my cable modem isn't exactly a feature I would want or ever use (Hey everyone, make my connection super slow by all trying to download this whopping file from me that would take you days to complete! Yeah, that sounds like a great idea!).

As I write this, I'm spending a week away from home, and for the plane ride out here I "ripped" half a dozen of my DVD movies to my laptop. I've got 30Gb free and I find it's a lot easier to use a few gigs for storing movie files than it is to lug 5 or 6 DVD cases around in my bag. Also, my laptop battery lasts longer when it's not spinning the DVD drive for two hours. While I got to enjoy a movie on my way here, and I might watch a few this week when I have downtime, I would have much preferred to have been able to grab the 5 Daily Shows I haven't yet watched on my TiVo. I would have grabbed a couple American Choppers and the Monster House marathon I missed. Instead I'll return home and probably pass on the two-week old Daily Shows.

People that are new to TiVo often find some concepts of it hard to understand. You pay a few hundred bucks to bring this mysterious black box into your house, and the box does stuff for you but nothing physical ever goes into it or comes out of it. It virtually saves and deletes programs but nothing is permanent. A TiVo is disruptive to normal TV setups because most people are used to saving things on tapes for years. Letting people transfer movies to their other devices or burn shows to DVD would probably alleviate many first-time buyers concerns about longevity of programming, and let them work it into their existing lifestyles.

Video extraction is a great feature, it's perfectly legal and incredibly useful. It would likely attract more (badly-needed) customers to TiVo and I know it'd make me a happier customer if I was allowed these uses. But what do I know? Maybe it's a better long-time business strategy that TiVo should just continue assuming their customer base consists of pirates that want to steal precious shows simply to transfer online.

August 2, 2003 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBack