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.

Comments

[mike m]

At $59, the Tivo HMO is a "must get" if you're a fan of music or photography... I hope that in the future they take care of a couple things though on the music side with a software update. First, I would really like if they had crossfading or better transitions between songs when you're listening. Depending on the song, sometimes you get a click or a very abrupt change (again alot of that has to do with the songs).. Also, I would really like some screen effects similar to what you get with WinAmp or iTunes to have as some background on the tv while your music is playing. That would be kind of cool for a party... Finally, I hope that Tivo allows support for AAC in the near future since this is the format of music purchased from the iTunes music store (as well as what I would like to start encoding my music in personally)...

[frank kolodziej]

"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."

Is that documented somewhere? Actually, are you saying the pictures will "appear" better because a plasma screen is a better/sharper screen? Or that the Tivo will actually display the pictures at higher resolution than 720x480 (or 640x480)? Because the latter that doesn't sound right. Aren't either component or DVI cables (which Tivo doesn't have outputs for) required to show anything higher than the standard 480i television resolution?

I guess I can find out. I have a High Definition TV. The $40/off deal is good until mid-September right? I've never really had a burning desire to look at any of my photos on a TV, though.

[Matt Haughey]

I'm just guessing on the photos looking better Frank. I was just assuming larger TV = larger images.

[Nona Myous]

"Part of me wishes the package itself was open source so other vendors could connect their devices to the HMO."

The HMO SDK includes perl implementation of the server. It should be possible to get it running on the Martian.

The SDK also includes documentation for the protocol.

[Matt Haughey]

Oh kickass, I hadn't seen the developer docs before, thanks for mentioning it.

[Rapunzel]

I agree with you on wanting to be able to stream video files from your PC to your tivo, I even wrote to Tivo about that when they first announced HMO. And since you can't it's been the main reason I haven't tried HMO. Even the opposite would be nice, if you could stream Tivo Recorded shows to your PC.

[regan]

this is way off topic.
i killed my tivo somehow while trying to upgrade. i asked a billion questions on this blog a week or two ago. i had resigned myself to just purchasing a new unit, but before trashing the broken unit, i decided to call tivo tech support to see if they would help.

the tivo tech support is the best in the country. i've never been treated so well, dealt with so quickly, and had a problem detected, and a solution given.

i called, spoke with a gentleman who was very nice. Always called me Mr. Wright when speaking to me. Always apologized when he'd click off to check on something or speak to his supervisor. he told jokes, asked questions, and did a very good job of making me feel important to tivo. my unit drive had failed (i'd figured that out) and after just a few questions and suggestions, he determined my unit was dead. it wouldn't power on, so it was a pretty easy call. there was no try another plug or make sure the cable's are all plugged in. that's my biggest qualm with most tech support; i'm not 12 years old and i've already done everything i can think of to solve this problem.

Since my unit was out of the 90 days full warranty, but still in the 1 year time period, they happily offered to replace the unit for $99 flat. I'm getting the same 60 hour unit I had for only $99; a steal considering i killed the first one. I was very impressed with their willingness to replace the unit. they didn't want to test the unit or see if they could fix it. i guess you could say they understand their product and their customer. i don't want my tivo to break and be gone for a month to be fixed.

they gave two options. ship mine to them, once they receive it, they send another. that's the one i picked since i've been out on business most of this month. the other option was cool, and the one i would have chosen if not out all month. they'd send another unit out 2-day air to you; only catch was that they'd charge your card for a new unit and wait till your old unit got to them before the refund. still a great option.

overall, the tivo support really demonstrates tivo's understanding of their customers. i felt very well treated, respected, and the solution to my problem was better than I'd hoped. Kudos to tivo.

[pb]

Does anyone ever envision Freevo, et. al. as being viable alternatives to Tivo? How about someone marketing a $200-300 box to run it? Seems like plenty of room to be the Microsoft of PVRs with Tivo producing such a crippled platform (no video extraction, etc.).

I've never understood the allure of pictures and music on my TV. Anyone?

[Matt Haughey]

I've never understood the allure of pictures and music on my TV. Anyone?

I described it in the article with some detail. If you have a home theater system, getting your mp3s from your laptop's tinny speakers and onto your home theater system is a great feature.

The photos thing is really kind of a geek thing, I have loads of photos and sharing galleries with others in my house isn't too easy (people have to crowd around my monitor, etc), so it's a nice thing to have for viewing once in a while.

[Dave]

Sorry, but I have to say that I think that the Home Media Options is "way" to overpriced for what it does. I have been taking advantage of the month long demo that they offered, and I can honestly say that we have used it a total of 4 times so far this month for music only.

Before the Home Media Option, I was using my iPod connected directly to my stereo and Canon G3 connected directly to my TV to get the same results. It's acceptable, but not very convienent.

As stated above, other options are more expensive. However, I expect that the prices will drop as more and more early adopters buy them and they become more popular.

As for remote scheduling, haven't used it at all during the demo. We don't have a second series 2 TiVo, so the ability to play recorded shows on multiple TiVo's isn't useful.

Fortunatly, the one thing that "was" useful is a free option. Getting the TiVo connected to Broadband.

Now if someone would just come out with a way to take recordings and allow me to copy them to my computer's 400GB+ of storage, life would be great. I could record every episode of Stargate-SG1 and watch them when I want to. :)

[Dan]

I had a wireless network connected to Broadband (ATTBI/Comcast) with a USB wireless network connected to my TiVo. I would use this instead of the dial-up for getting my schedule updates.

I have now moved to a condo without Broadband access. Question: Can I still set up a wireless network between my laptop and TiVo to take advantage of the HMO? (except for remote scheduling of course)

[Matt Haughey]

Dave, yeah, it's a shame the price isn't lower, and I also wish streaming movies onto and off of a TiVo was possible (I've ranted about it at length on this site).

Dan, you should be fine with dialup as long as you still have a local wireless network connected to it. Looking over the TiVo community boards, several people mentioned they had the same setup.

[Maggard]

"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."

Well, yes and no.

TiVo's are actually pretty processor-bound. The Series 1's were equipped with a decidedly low-end CPU supported by dedicated video encoding & decoding hardware. The Series 2's changed that going with a more powerful general CPU handling more functions (along with some minimal supporting chips.)

The result is that the Series 2 can support features like mp3 decompression & photo rendering while the Series 1 simply doesn't have the 'oomph' required. Indeed there are any number of features in the v.4 software available for the Series 2 that TiVo claims simply can't be back-ported to the Series 1 due to hardware constraints.

However the Series 2 quite possibly doesn't have enough resources to do general purpose video decoding. It's own highly tuned implementation yes, but random other codecs? Likely not without lots of development work, certainly more then just getting mplayer to work with TiVo's video interface.

One strategy would be to implement how TiVo handles displaying 'oddball' image formats the same for movies. Currently when the TiVo server software (the bit not running on the TiVo) serves up a format not natively supported by the TiVo unit it simply quietly converts it to something that is supported.

The same could be done for video. The server software could handle the finding, downloading, buffering, and then convert it all to the TiVo's internal format for streaming display, or even simple uploading & storage.

This alternative would require nothing more then opening up the TiVo-to-TiVo link code to accepting appropriate video files from the Server software. It could be kept upload-only to reassure TiVo's piracy concerns but yes, there would be a greater chance for abuse.

It might be worth adding to their Wish List public forum. But I wouldn't hold my breath, TiVo seems pretty focused on just being the best DVR out there and, at least with the now aging Series 2, not trying to be all things to all people.

[craig]

Why can't I get HMO with Tivo basic service? There don't seem to be any dependancies on the two options.

[JavaHMO]

Try out JavaHMO; its an open source project that replaces the TiVo desktop software.

[Mike]

Can a HMO Directv TIVO transfer recorded files from the TIVO to a computer ?

[Adam]

HMO is not available for DirecTivo.

[Courtjester]

I am also using the HMO free offer. I have a wireless adapter on my TIVO unit and a wireless adapter on the PC running XP home. TIVO does not consistently find the IP. On one of the few occassions when it did find the IP I could only hear music that was choppy and kept cutting out. If I paid for this service I would have been outraged. Am I doing something wrong here? I can't imagine it is a setup issue as it randomly toggles between finding the PC and not. Anyone else see this?

[tivo dude]

i expected to see a web interface that would let you control/manage everything on your tivo. i think they really need to put some development into this and the $99 HMO will be worth it.

they also need to get thier act toghether with the speed of the remote scheduling. the 1-4 hr update window is a joke.

people just EXPECT anything to do with the internet to be instant.

while i agree that is a high level of expectation, it's already been done so the bar has already been raised.

what you get for the $99 HMO option should be free cause it really doesn't do a lot.

[Bob Tabor]

Just wanted to update those considering the purchase of a TiVo (or two) that as of yesterday (6.9.2004) they are giving away the Home Media Option FOR FREE, which is awesome because I do have two TiVo's and then was too cheap to pay the $99/per unit for the HMO. It took me just a few minutes to get started (already had some spare wireless Linksys USB adapters laying around) and I'm in love all over again with TiVo. Apparently, they did this because last week their stock was dumped by DirecTV and are anticipating that DirecTV is creating their own pvr.

BTW, this is a great blog ... if anyone is aware of a way to backup and even watch video downloaded to/from a PC/Mac, please let me know.

[Josh]

Bob: If you want to extract video from a TiVo, check into the forums at dealdatabase.com. It's not for the faint of heart. You'll have to install some software on the TiVo (voiding the warranty of course) but once it's done, you run a client on the PC (yes, Mac tools exist but aren't as user friendly ironically enough) and save the MPEG-2 files to your desktop. Works well enough.

PTVUpgrade.com offers this installation as a service, but they don't do it for Series 2 units (yet?)

[steve]

No, PTVupgrade does not offer networking for the series2. No plans to right now either.

[John]

You said "The HMO-equipped TiVo is the first one to offer the ability to transfer shows from one TiVo to another in your house".

But, ReplayTV had the ability to transfer shows from one Replay to another first.

You said "It would have been nice if TiVo gave users the option to use the features in the original ReplayTV devices (now removed)."

The ability to stream shows between ReplayTVs has not been removed. Only the ability to share shows over the network.

Further, ReplayTV allows you to freely stream shows around your network. There is no "lock-out". An excellent cross-platform app called "DVArchive" allows you to trivially trnasfer shows to your PC (as MPEG2), and then watch them locally, or stream them back to any of your ReplayTVs.

[Bernie]

I am thinking about purchasing another TiVo to take advantage of the (now free) HMO to share recordings from my original Tivo to the second. Does anyone know whether the second Tivo has to have a subscription to the Tivo service in order to have the HMO? I suspect that you have to have service in order to get the HMO SW initially installed (on a new unit), but if I were to purchase a used unit that already has the HMO SW installed, I wonder if I have to have a subscription in order to share recordings.

[yaoi]

Good job

[bob sacco]

I own a Series 2 Tivo - Tivo Brand.

I the HMO option but would like to take to the next level.

Considering all the options I thought this forum would be a great place to ask the question.

PROBLEM:
Too many CDs...own two SONY 400 disc changers. Want to put them on a home server so that I can listen to them as .Wav files and get better organization of playlist ect...

Too many photos...I find TIVO's photo folder organizing method lacking. You cant put too many photos under one folder or the whole program locks up.

Tivo only plays mp3s not .wav files. I use the Windows media plug in which helps in the organization area, but once again would like to find a server app to do that.

What I like to do is find a server program that can handle both music (plays .wav files and mp3s and photos.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[Stacey]

I recently purchased TIVO series 2 and would like to set up a home network from my PC to the TIVO to view photos.
I have no idea of where to begin. Can someone please advise what equipment I need and the cost (if any) from TIVO to do this.
I read that I need to set up a network but have no idea where to start or do?
HELP!!!! I'm a beginner

[Mark]

In a previous post, John asked a question:

"I am thinking about purchasing another TiVo to take advantage of the (now free) HMO to share recordings from my original Tivo to the second. Does anyone know whether the second Tivo has to have a subscription to the Tivo service in order to have the HMO? I suspect that you have to have service in order to get the HMO SW initially installed (on a new unit), but if I were to purchase a used unit that already has the HMO SW installed, I wonder if I have to have a subscription in order to share recordings."

Does anyone know whether the second Tivo has to have a subscription to the Tivo service in order to have the HMO? I heard that in order to share recordings both Tivo's had to be on the same account (meaning they both had to have subscriptions and be on the same account?) Is this true? Can anyone verify this?

[Beth]

I have 2 TIVOs and have been using HMO for the transfer feature for quite some time. I recently installed a router and downloaded the Tivo Desktop software to take advantage of the other features. The TIVO software really slowed up my PC and actually prevented me from doing a shut down most times. I would actually have to shut off manually. I uninstalled the TIVO software and everything went back to normal. I'm running Windows XP Service Pack 2, have 512 RAM and have no other PC problems. I have various Internet Security and Spyware software but did not get any error messages. Anyone else have problems on their PC's after installing TIVO Desktop? Any ideas????