Ten things that Microsoft and TiVo must each do to win the living room

« The Polyphonic Spree gives TiVo the triple thumbs up | Main | The Tivo LCD Project »

Ten things that Microsoft and TiVo must each do to win the living room

Thomas Hawk, the guy that wrote the in-depth test between his Windows Media Center box vs. his new HD TiVo has published a great article on engadget today called Ten things that Microsoft and TiVo must each do to win the living room.

In it are his ten biggest gripes with both Media Center and TiVo, and what they can do to produce the ultimate device. After reading about his struggles with a Media Center unit, his ten suggestions sound great, though some are certainly difficult (he calls for the creation of a TiVo-for-radio feature) and others are bordering on the impossible ("Media Center should be as stable and error-free as TiVo’s Linux-based system" heh).

On the TiVo wishlist, two gripes are about the discontinuity between DirecTV's TiVo unit features and TiVo's own featureset, which I wholeheartedly agree with. The "DVD in every TiVo" would be a nice addition as well, though I suspect content companies will never let it happen in the HD model.

I hope engineers from both companies are listening, as well as management. Thomas is an early adopter that spends thousands of dollars on these products and before you know it, his views will be the same as the mainstream as they get increasingly used to these products.

by Matt Haughey August 11, 2004 in News

Comments

"[Hawk] calls for the creation of a TiVo-for-radio feature ..."

As an XM Radio user, I think that this would be excellent. XM is more show-based than your standard over-the-air radio market; I think TiVo could easily make inroads into the XM market, especially as its users are likely, in some regards, to overlap the two markets.

Posted by: Geof at Aug 11, 2004 4:06:54 PM

From what I've heard, any and all TiVo-for-radio products have either been stalled or run off the market with legal concerns.

Griffin Technology has had a product for the mac that does this -- but it's been in the "coming soon" phase for about a year now:
http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/radioshark/

I've tried out XM radio and agree there would definitely be some overlap. Instead of the lame music channels on DirecTV, it'd be nice if they were XM instead, and it'd be great if you could program your desktop or laptop to record radio shows for you.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Aug 11, 2004 5:08:23 PM

If TiVo can hitch itself to XM, I think there's some success potential for cross-promotion as well as sharing of technology. I don't know how far in advance that every channel is programmed, but you often hear promos for shows days and sometimes over a week in advance on XM. Picking up song-by-song discrete recordings would be far harder unless a system could be worked out to have near-always-on connectivity for the PRR.

"I've tried out XM radio and agree there would definitely be some overlap. Instead of the lame music channels on DirecTV, it'd be nice if they were XM instead, and it'd be great if you could program your desktop or laptop to record radio shows for you."

That would indeed be a great solution. [Now you're making me miss DirecTV even more. Blast my north-facing apartment on the north slope of a small mountain!]

Posted by: Geof at Aug 11, 2004 6:38:19 PM

His TiVo list:

1. They already developed an HDTV reference box - it recorded ATSC - almost two years ago. It was announced at CES2003 and shown again at CES2004. They said there wasn't enough interest to build it themselves, but it was available for license. The real wait was for CableCARD to be able to do HDTV over cable without a cable box. On their last conference call TiVo hinted that this is where they're going. Maybe we'll see something at CES2005.

2. This is all DirecTV's fault. TiVo *wants* to enable networking, DTV says no.

3. This isn't a good idea. Not everyone wants/needs a DVD burner. Especially with TiVo To Go coming out, some people will prefer editing and burning on their PC. It is enough to offer a few units with DVD burners as an option. I own a Pioneer 810H, Toshiba and Humax both have burners coming out. It is about having a product range, not all the boxes being the same.

4. See #2.

5. That would be interesting - the TiVo interface as software - but I'm not sure that they want to have to deal with all the variations in HW. Maybe a USB2/FW box with the capture system and use the PC's CPU, HD, etc.

6. There have been some hints about this kind of thing, but nothing solid yet.

7. This would be nice, but it will take a major change in the TiVo software. The current system is designed for a monolithic, non-changing file-system. I think the easiest way to handle this would be to treat the external drive as 'offline' storage. It would record to the internal drives only, but could move content to the external drive to free up space. Ala MRV or TiVo To Go.

8. I think Suggestions is pretty good actually. Though the ability to have multiple 'profiles' would be nice for a multi-user household.

9. The biggest problem with My Radio would be guide data. Probably not so bad for stations with scheduled talk sessions, like NPR, etc, but how many people normally sit and listen to an entire block by one DJ? I'd want to be able to have it grab music I like. This could work with digital FM that sends the track info - title, artist, etc - but it would probably be a slam dunk with XM Radio. And TiVo already has a partnership with them that's supposed to roll out later this year, if it stays on schedule.

10. I don't see the need for them to merge, at least not yet. And Netflix has new competition - Blockbuster is jumping into rent by mail and undercutting them on price.

Posted by: megazone at Aug 11, 2004 8:44:35 PM

Ten things that Microsoft and TiVo must each do to win the living room

Comments

Post a Comment

On this site

Recent Comments

Advertising