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Will the Broadcast Flag Break Your TiVo? - The FCC ruling explained.

Paul Boutin has a great article at Slate today answering a popular question around here: "Will the Broadcast Flag Break Your TiVo? - The FCC ruling explained."

Paul does what he does best in his articles, cut to the chase and get a real-world analysis of something most armchair critics (myself included) conclude must be doom and gloom. The outlook doesn't look as bleak as you might have heard (I'm still not happy to see it), but there will be some crippled functionality and buying HDTV gear pre-July 2005 might prove to be a great investment eventually. Boutin rightfully observes what everyone in the tech industry has been saying, that basically this won't curb piracy, and at best might only add a step or two to those truly wanting to pirate shows and movies.

November 28, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Tivo at crossroads, needs cable partner says analysts

This interesting syndicated article on Forbes "Tivo at crossroads, needs cable partner-analysts" comes right before TiVo's third quarter earnings report, which is set to be released tomorrow. My favorite quote from the article:

The danger, Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff says, is that Tivo could end up like Apple Computer Inc. -- a highly profitable company with a fervent crop of users but whose market share lags far behind others in its market.

It's exactly the same point I outlined in August of this year: TiVo's Apple Problem. The problem for TiVo is that they probably do (and should) ask for a pretty stiff licensing fee in exchange for their software and brand, while cable companies would rather cut costs and write their own DVR software or purchase off-the-shelf generic units.

November 19, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

SuperTiVo project for sale

I recently got a new series 2 DirecTiVo unit that I've upgraded (full tutorial and review later), and that means I no longer need my standalone TiVo that I used here to cover various upgrades and feature reviews over the past few months. I've put it up for sale at eBay and added a note to the index page that will be up for the next week. If you're looking for a new TiVo and wary of doing your own upgrades, consider bidding on this machine as it runs perfectly and is ready to go, right out of the box.

November 19, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

HDTV-recording TiVo

Earlier this year, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, TiVo was showing off a prototype of the HDTV-capable TiVo. Here's a shot of a standalone HDTV TiVo. Here's a photo of the front of a DirecTV/HDTV/TiVo device, and here's a photo of the rear hookups for the same unit, though there are rumors the production units will have DVI connectors as well.

Word on the street is that they are going to go on sale first quarter of 2004 (March-April it looks like), at a cost of about $700-800 for the receiver.

November 18, 2003 in Products | Permalink | Comments (41) | TrackBack

Pinnacle Systems - Product summary - ShowCenter

The Pinnacle ShowCenter is a new entry into the network media devices arena. It looks like a bit of a hybrid system, with a $299 silver box that goes into your home theater setup, acting as a wired/wireless gateway point to your PC's library.

It does music, movies, and images with the added twist of including music and movie ripping into the package. There aren't any thorny piracy questions with this device, as they encourage you to encode your CD and DVD collection for playback from your computer. It's nice to see fair uses of copyright figure largely into a new device, as this is essentially a $300 super CD and DVD changer than can hold as many albums and movies as you have hard drive space for.

November 17, 2003 in Products | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

MobiTV and Mobile TiVo?

MobiTV is a new startup in the Bay Area that is partnering with SprintPCS to offer live television to owners of Sprint phones. They are aiming for commuters stuck on trains or in traffic and it definitely sounds like a cool feature that doesn't require one of those Japanese personal video displays or some future video-capable iPod.

After seeing a demo of it, Russell Beattie is convinced mobile TiVo should be the next obvious feature for MobiTV and that it's not a question of if, but when the technology will be available. By the way, SnapStream is the only PVR technology I know of that automatically creates PDA-friendly condensed versions of recorded shows. If you had an iPaq and a SnapStream library, you could script an automatic download to your docked device every morning. I'm sure some of the phones running the microsoft operating systems could also be tweaked to do the same. [thanks Andy]

November 14, 2003 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Home Media Option on series 2 DirecTiVo

Everyone that owns a series 2 regular TiVo raves about the Home Media Option, and every series 2 DirecTiVo owner curses under their breath while DirecTV sits on their hands and doesn't release an update or support for HMO in their new units (a lot of owners want group sorting and usb-to-ethernet support as well in the new OS).

There are rumors that eventually DirecTV will add HMO capability and a few enterprising hackers have figure out ways of lighting up a series 2 DirecTiVo's USB ports, but someone simply tried restoring an existing standalone TiVo with HMO image to a new DirecTiVo and claims that 4.0 features work flawlessly (they can't figure out how to "purchase" the HMO though). While many were skeptical, but folks on the TiVo Community boards have also reported that it worked (thread since deleted).

Hopefully DirecTV will come to their senses soon and turn on the $99 feature so many people are clammoring for and light up those USB ports that have gone silent for the past year or so.

November 12, 2003 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack

TV viewers find TiVo addictive

Reuters (via Forbes) has a piece on how TiVo and DVR technologies have changed the way we watch TV. If you are a regular reader of this weblog, this is not news to you. The main themes that I took away from the article were that,

1) many Tivo users feel the need for much more HDD space than is currently available
2) TiVo and related DVR technologies often enable people to watch more TV than they currently do

In the long run, the ability for TV viewers to control their viewing experience should enable marketers and advertisers to better target their audiences in a self-selective manner, whether it be through product placement or some new form of advertising. The transition period may be rough, with networks crying foul, and advertisers whining for olden days, but if the future means more pertinent-to-me, relevant-to-me, advertising, I look forward to that more than I do to the TV of today.

PluggedIn: TV viewers find TiVo addictive

November 11, 2003 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

TiVo Upgrade Instructions

The folks at Weaknees have created a great little web application to help with TiVo upgrades.

I myself have found that in the past the comprehensive how-tos require you to wade through many paths and sidenotes that don't usually apply to your specific situation, since they are written to handle all of them. This app succeeds by only showing you what you need to know for your particular brand of TiVo and your type of upgrade.

I just took delivery of a new DirecTiVo box and I have my upgrade drive ready, so I'll be taking this site's instructions for a spin in a few days.

November 11, 2003 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

A life where TiVo has always existed

Alan Taylor writes about this three year old daughter that happens to be 3 months older than their three year old TiVo, and how that has affected her view of what TV is. It's hard to imagine what it must be like to use a regular tv if all you've ever known is being able to watch, pause, and fast forward any show you like.

November 11, 2003 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

TiVo w/ DVD recorder review

Mark Evanier recently bought one of the Pioneer DVD recorders with TiVo and has posted his first thoughts and a more thorough review of how to import video into TiVo and burn to DVD. Sounds like a great setup. [thanks Steve]

November 10, 2003 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack

Note to Rupert: don't kill DirecTiVo, please

In an investor's call yesterday, News Corp (and DirecTV) owner Rupert Murdoch was asked directly whether his other satellite company (that has a free DVR) and DirecTiVo would continue to co-exist and he gave a cautious non-answer:

"We're looking at it very closely," he said, indicating that News Corp. is still torn between the PVRs developed by its own NDS Group PLC and TiVo, which has a partnership with Hughes' DirecTV unit. "Maybe we'll be offering both," Murdoch said. "There's been no decision taken on that."

This news comes at a particularly bad time for me personally, I just ordered a brand-new Phillips DSR7000, a Triple LNB dish, and DirecTV to install at my new home (note: I'll be selling my SuperTiVo project box on eBay -- stay tuned for info on that if you're in the market for a new standalone TiVo).

November 6, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack

FCC Adopts Hollywood Tech Mandate

Crud. Despite the plea from thousands of home theater enthusiasts (like me), today the FCC approved the "Broadcast Flag" mandate. The worst provision of the mandate (summary pdf is here) is that any new technology set to record over-the-air digital TV will need FCC approval before coming out. One of the EFF's responses sums it up well:

"The broadcast flag rule forces manufacturers to remove useful recording features from television products you can buy today," said EFF Staff Technologist Seth Schoen. "The FCC has decided that the way to get Americans to adopt digital DTV is to make it cost more and do less."

What this will mean for HDTV recorders like upcoming TiVo products and other software/hardware products is unknown, but it will definitely delay products going to market and might prevent products from ever hitting the market if they don't obtain FCC approval.

The biggest shock is that public affairs and news programming are not exempt from the rules. This means that public domain programming like CSPAN and PBS will need to also be encrypted, which seems like nonsense, since the Broadcast Flag was designed primarily to protect Hollywood movies.

update: Ernest Miller weighs in with a good summary.

November 4, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

TiVo hits one million mark

TiVo recently signed up their one-millionth subscriber, hitting a milestone they have been working towards for the past five years. Echostar did beat TiVo to the million mark earlier this year, but thanks to recent growth in both satellite and cable service providers uptake of DVRs, the space looks like it will be quickly exploding into everyone's living rooms.

November 4, 2003 in News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Using large disks with TiVo

While doing research into building a new 200+ hour DirecTivo unit, I stumbled across the current state of the art in large disk hacking.

Many trails lead to Todd Miller's guide to using large disks with TiVo, which includes his own hacks and even a patched kernel he's hacked together. Unfortunately from everything I've read, support for large (>137Gb) disks is largely limited to Series 1 TiVo devices, and these kernel hacks are a bit fragile, as TiVo OS upgrades may render your hacked box useless (or require a restore from backup).

TiVo Community member das Monkey has produced a detailed step-by-step how-to on his upgrade of a series 1 DirecTivo system with a 160Gb extra disk.

November 3, 2003 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Designtechnica Forums: List of Known Networked Media Devices

In my last post, I mentioned my search for a home media device, but I didn't list my feature wishlist:

• 802.11g capability
• stream DiVX, MPEG, and quicktime video from any networked PC or mac
• stream MP3 (any encoding including variable bitrate), WMA, iTunes purchased AAC files, and streaming MP3/Realaudio from net radio stations
• streaming Slideshows of jpegs and tiffs from my PC and macs
• RCA connectors to home theater box, would be nice if it had S-video and digital audio as well

While continuing my search, I stumbled upon this comprehensive list of networked media devices at Designtechnica. Nothing quite fills out my wishlist, but it looks like the technology is catching up. The Joyport (at a pricey $699) does almost everything but 802.11g.

November 1, 2003 in Products | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBack

SMC's EZ-Stream Universal Wireless Multimedia Receiver

While searching for wireless multimedia adapters for my home stereo setup, I stumbled across the SMCWMR-AG from SMC Networks. It looks to be the first 802.11a and 802.11g compatible media receiver. It handles jpegs, mp3, mpeg 1 and 2, and internet radio streams (through a PC server interface), but unfortunately doesn't handle DiVX video, AAC audio, or WMA audio. It's available for pre-order on Amazon, though I'll have to keep looking for the perfect home media adapter.

November 1, 2003 in Products | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack