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TiVo to Go -- Finally!!!

Huge TiVo news has been coming down the CES newswire today, some highlights:

TiVo is committed to launching a few new products in 2004, including the long-awaited HDTV DirecTiVo which they are still claiming first quarter 2004 for release. I can't wait to buy one of those. They've also signed up Toshiba and Humax to make DVD burning standalone TiVos like the ones that Pioneer is currently producing. The biggest news of all is that they're finally going to allow video extraction:

TiVo to Go is what they're calling their new video extraction, which sounds like it will be some DRM protection scheme applied to recordings you can download to your PC from your TiVo. They'll also allow you to burn downloaded shows to DVD. It'll be interesting to see how the TiVo hacking community uses/modifies/cracks this technology. If they wanted to prevent all piracy, I'm surprised you can burn DVDs, as it seems the content is pretty much fair game for DVD rippers at that point, but perhaps they won't allow DVDs to play on anything but computer DVD drives that carry your encrypted TiVo key. It doesn't launch until Fall of 2004, which seems like a long time in such a lively marketplace. Hopefully they don't deliver it too late to market.

That said, this is the biggest news of all and many a TiVo owner is probably dancing in the streets after hearing this news. I can't wait for it, though ideally, I'd want a HDTV DirecTiVo that did it but I bet they continue lagging their DirecTV devices behind the standalone product line.

Lastly, BravoBrava has announced some sort of technology gateway that will allow you to remotely schedule your TiVo recordings using alternate PDA and cell phone interfaces, though frankly it's not the most useful (programming grids are a pain to navigate on a tiny cellphone screen) or innovative feature (snapstream has had this for ages, and TiVo should have just made a wap gateway for their existing web service).

by Matt Haughey January 8, 2004 in News, TiVo

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