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Netflix, TiVo to Develop Internet Movie Product

It's official: Netflix, TiVo to Develop Internet Movie Product. I talked about this at length back when the Newsweek article came out, but in the past month or so of silence from both sides, I had a sinking feeling that maybe the rumors in Newsweek weren't true. It's great to hear word that this deal is really going to happen and make a lot of Netflix and TiVo customers happy.

Some have speculated that this deal would never happen, due in part to Netflix not having the rights to sell streaming movies, but a few weeks ago they scored a deal with Warner Brothers Studios for the rights. Hopefully the other studios will join them and let Netflix offer their full catalog to TiVo owners.

September 30, 2004 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

New sponsor: Beyond TV 3

I'm happy to announce that SnapStream's Beyond TV 3 is the newest sponsor for this site. I reviewed their software PVR product last summer, which I found to be a feature complete home theater PC package.

Their version 3.5 software is coming out in the next few weeks and offers a bunch of new features. They've added multiple tuner support (for as many as you add to your PC), a thin client network system to share files throughout your house, and a full API that exposes all the features letting you write custom apps to tie into Beyond TV.

September 30, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Guide to hacking your series 2 DirecTiVo

There are plenty of guides out there to upgrade any TiVo's hard drive space (I wrote here last year), but the more robust hacks like getting a web browser to control your TiVo and transferring recordings from your TiVo to your PC have historically been limited to older Series 1 devices.

On top of that, DirecTiVo owners have been largely left out in the cold when it comes to hacking, since newer devices are locked down by DirecTV. Series 2 DirecTiVos can do everything standalone series 2 TiVos can do -- DirecTV just doesn't let it happen. But last Fall someone figured out that the TiVo 4.0 OS could be loaded on a DirecTiVo with the home media options and ethernet networking enabled.

While cruising the depths of the other TiVo forum, I found a great guide to hacking the Series 2 DirecTiVo.

For the most part, these hacks are innocuous things that customers want, and don't take any revenue from DirecTV. Many folks (myself included) don't have a phone line anywhere near my DirecTiVo box, and would rather use a wireless network connection. Many folks (again, me too), would love to see the HMO music and photo streaming enabled on their devices. The other major feature enabled by these hacks is getting video off your TiVo, which is something many people want and should be coming soon to standalone TiVos, but again, DirecTV folks are left in the cold.

I haven't tried this hack out on my own DirecTiVo yet, but if I do, I'll certainly take photos and notes and post a full report afterwards.

September 29, 2004 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBack

VOOM Demo Video

VOOM has been capturing headlines for so long at one point they were considered vaporware, but their nascent HDTV network offers 30-something channels of HD content and a host of other standard satellite channels.

But they've got some killer hardware coming out. Check out this VOOM Demo Video.

It'll center around a HD DVR with networking that will allow to view content from any monitor in the house. They do this with a thin client network box on each of your other TVs.

It's a great way to organize DVR content at home. Personally I've never had more than one TV in the house, but if I did, I would find the use of multiple TiVos within one house to be kind of silly. Instead, viewing your main DVR as more of a home server that all can access is the way to go.

The demo shows off how well their prototypes can do this. You can independently stream the same video to multiple locations in the house, all over IP. My only worry is how much network bandwidth this would require to stream HD content to multiple places using the same wired or wireless network. The other really cool feature they show off is the "move to another room" option. So if you're watching a movie in the living room, choose to move to the bedroom, you can turn that TV on and see the movie paused on the very last frame you looked at downstairs.

It's great to see this much innovation in a single new product, though I can't wait to see what the Hollywood industries have to say about this wicked cool technology. [thanks Greg]

September 24, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack

PVRblog on MSNBC/CNBC

A few people emailed me earlier today to mention they saw this site mentioned on a financial show, talking about Google's adsense and blogs, and showing screenshots of the site on TV. If anyone happened to TiVo it (ha!), and can get a rip to me, I'll be forever in your debt.

September 23, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Washington Post on HDTV DVRs

I don't know why I missed this a few weeks ago when it first went up but the Washington Post tested out the current crop of HDTV recorders, including the Hughes HDTiVo, the Dish network's offering, and comcast's HD DVR box. The TiVo powered unit comes out on top as the easiest to operate but they mention the Dish Network's PiP features which sound pretty interesting.

They also point out that permanent archival isn't easy and just barely possible with a $800 D-VHS unit hooked via firewire to a Comcast HD DVR. It's great to hear a typical user ask for this very basic feature that I suspect will never make it into HDTV recorders. Hollywood and the TV networks are freaked at the prospects of perfect beyond-DVD quality recordings being saved by customers when they'd much rather resell you a show's series on DVD for $50 a couple years from now.

I suspect the war will continue between basic customer expectations of what they can do in their home, and what Hollywood studios will let the industry do. [thanks Thomas]

September 23, 2004 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

TiVo Desktop 1.1 out

I ran across a news item on DesignTechnica annoucing the TiVo 1.1 Desktop software for the PC, but the TiVo.com download site says the update came out last month.

Nevertheless, if you've got a standalone Series 2 TiVo with a network adapter attached, you can download these packages and stream music and photos to your TiVo for free, since TiVo stopped charging for the Home Media Option months ago.

September 17, 2004 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

ATI Theater 550: PVR-on-a-chip

Om Malik points us to news that ATI has launched a new chip that is specifically designed for synchronized audio and video decoding, in other words a PVR-on-a-chip.

The 550 Pro provides audio and video decoding on the same silicon - a first for the Theater family - which ensures audio and video remain in full synchronisation. The 12-bit video decoder features 3D Comb Filtering for NTSC and PAL, and five-line 2D Comb Filtering.
...
The chip was designed to operated on both PCI and PCI Express add-in cards, but ATI is also pushing the product's scope for integration directly onto a PC's motherboard. In the notebook market, in particular, Acer, Compal, Quanta and Wistron have committed themselves to building the 550 Pro into upcoming laptops.

If NVidia doesn't have a similar product in the pipeline, I'd be surprised. I look forward to more competition in this space. Getting one of these chips into a big laptop will be interesting.

Between Tivo/PVR functionality (now integrated into one chip), P2P file sharing platforms, Hi-Def. TV, BitTorrent, broadband Internet, falling HDD costs, rising CPU power, we're seeing a confluence where entertainment should continue to be interesting and challenging for both the content providers as well as us the customers. Any thoughts on this confluence would be appreciated.

Om Malik on Broadband: PVR on a chip
also
ATI Theater 550 PRO [ati.com]

September 14, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Windows Media Center 2005 to support high def TV

Great news: Windows Media Center 2005 to support high def TV. Seems obvious at this point, but good to hear official word on it.

I'm curious how the HD TiVo vs a new media center box would stack up, as Thomas' review highlighted the lack of high def support for media center. In terms of upgradability, I bet a windows media center box would be much easier to dump an extra 250Gb drive into. We'll have to wait until these are released and in the wild before knowing if Microsoft finally has a hit on their hands.

September 14, 2004 in Windows Media Center XP | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Dedicated Devices

Reuters has a piece that focuses on the "hotbed of entrepreneurship" that is Boise, Idaho by profiling Dedicated Devices, a startup that is moving into the home server market. ComputerWire notes that Dedicated Devices has raised $2.5m of A1 funding, "led by Highway 12 Ventures and UV Partners, along with angel investors, and private investor Oaas-Laney."

Dedicated Devices' Moeser, who moved to the Boise area from Austin, Texas, made his name as chief technology officer of Micron Electronics, a spin-off of Micron Technologies. The maker of computer memory chips set up operations in Boise in 1978 and has become one of Idaho's great success stories.

Moeser's latest concept, which will be unveiled publicly later this month, involves installing a massive hard-drive brain at the point where cable, Internet and other wiring join in new homes. From there, the 120-gigabyte device would serve up music, film, television shows and family photos to any room in the house and also oversee the home alarm system.

Dedicated Devices says the device will be easier to use and far more robust than computers. The company would not name an exact price, but said it would range in the thousands of dollars, making it more expensive than most computers.

"A massive 120-gigabye brain"? 120GB seems small to me these days if I want to have movies, TV shows, as well as music and personal photos. Am I being unreasonable? Also, would you want to control your home alarm system via your PVR? Not me, thanks.

Land of Potatoes Aims to Be High-Tech Hotbed [reuters]

September 13, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Broadcast flag coming in 10 months

Here's a great visual reminder that you won't be able to build a linux-based HDTV personal video recorder after July 1, 2005, thanks to the broadcast flag.

Remember, if you wanted to make a computer-based PVR of your own, better buy that HDTV card before July 1st.

September 12, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Wish lists, filters, and the upcoming TV season

(this post features occasional guest author and time-saving maven Merlin Mann of 43 folders fame, and how he uses his TiVo to improve his watching habits)

I’ve only recently learned to appreciate the “wish list” functionality that allows you to view all upcoming programs by keyword, actor, genre, or even movie director. It was during the Olympics that I saw some good reasons to view available shows by Type. Want to see just sports shows or R-rated movies? Not a problem. Just walk through the wish list steps, and you can even set it to record future programs for you automatically. Now our household won’t be missing another TV appearance by Charles Nelson Reilly—no sir, not on my watch.

A more practical application exists if you’re thinking about sorting through some of the fresh leavings that the networks will ease out over the next few weeks. Try making yourself a couple wishlists for “SHOW TYPES/Season Premiere” and “SHOW TYPES/Premiere” and you’ll have a quick guide to what’s new on the low end of your dial. That rascal Joey will be yours to enjoy again and again.

Also remember (at least on my Series I DirecTiVo), you can use “Show Options” to filter the Live TV channel guide for any given genre or show type, greying out any channel whose offering doesn’t meet your craving for the evening. Hello, documentaries!

September 10, 2004 in How-To, TiVo | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack

Anand builds a MythTV

Kristopher Kubicki of Anandtech.com has gone to some considerable work and effort to document the building of a SuSE Linux-based MythTV PVR using a Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250MCE for the TV tuner card. He summarizes:

And finally, after several hours of turmoil and despair, we have installed and tested our Linux device. Its far from perfect - we cannot readily work with digital TV broadcasts, for example. What we do have is a machine that will readily emulate all of the basic Windows MCE or TiVo functionality at a reduced cost - and we can hack/configure/manipulate it to any extent that we wish to in the future. On the downside, it did take us over four hours to set up and install everything.
...
Other drawbacks of MCE devices include the inability to play back the video content on anything but other MCE devices, and the inability to re-render the recorded files into a different format to save space. With MythTV and Linux, on the other hand, we can capture, re-encode and playback on completely separate machines, even Windows systems. For the truly crafty, Myth allows us to connect the front end of a different machine to the first MythTV system and play video files/streams in that manner.

Me? I'd buy a Tivo and be done with it :)

Building a Linux PVR [Anandtech.com]

September 6, 2004 in Products | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Newsweek: Netflix and TiVo to announce partnership, offer downloadable movies

Tomorrow's Newsweek carries a story about a new Netflix/TiVo partnership that sounds perfect for anyone that has a subscription to both TiVo and Netflix.

Subscribers who belong to both services will be able to download their Netflix DVDs over the Internet directly into the TiVo boxes in their homes, instead of receiving them in the mail.

There aren't many details, but the article makes it sound like the downloading and viewing will be instant when even on a good fast cable modem, it's likely a ~700Mb DivX encoded movie would take around an hour to download for viewing. Still, it beats having to wait several days for discs in the mail and having to return anything.

I'm curious how TiVo will be able to do this, given that it's likely to cut into movie studio profits from the sale of DVDs to home customers and video stores. Will Netflix be required to only allow x number of copies of a film downloaded, where x equals the physical DVDs they have purchased? Will they only let you have another movie when you delete the film off your TiVo?

And I hate to be an asshole that goes around saying "I told you so!" but I did float this idea two and a half years ago. I really wish my DirecTiVo could do this, because this feature alone would turn me back into a Netflix customer. It definitely sounds like a win-win for both companies, especially since just about everyone I know that has a TiVo also has a subscription to Netflix.

September 5, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBack

How to Enable web based viewing and remote control over your Tivo.

"How to Enable web based viewing and remote control over your Tivo" is a geeky guide to controlling and streaming your TiVo from a website. It involves hacking together an IR remote that can be remotely controlled, and combined with output sent to Quicktime's streaming server, it certainly looks like a plausable way to do intranet sharing of your TiVo.

After getting it to work with a handful of simple parts, the author reports that internet viewing was possible, at 10 frames per second, and even possible on his phone when the stream was reduced to 3 fps. It mentions that there is a 10-15 second lag when controlling it remote, which would make surfing through TiVo menus time-consuming and tedious, but once video is streaming, it sounds like a great hack. Also, the coolest thing about the use of IR blasters is that it'll work with any TiVo, including new ones. [thanks George]

September 3, 2004 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

XM Radio is totally taking its ball and going home over TimeTrax

While not directly TiVo related, recently on a few threads here mentioning the radio features of networked appliances and Microsoft's Media Center, we've talked about how great it'd be to get a "tivo for radio."

Everyone has their favorite radio shows, but we've all got our own schedules that rarely allow us to catch them. Well, someone heeded our call and made a program called TimeTrax that schedules recordings off your PC-based XM satellite radio and saves them as MP3s you can listen to later.

So let's look at this for a second. XM radio is a subscription-based satellite radio network that runs $9.95 per month. There are several types of receivers but one of the cheapest is a USB-based unit that works on Macs and PCs, costing around $50. Simply put, folks that get XM radio are big fans of radio.

XM radio is fairly well scheduled, with daily talk programs, super hip DJs on music channels, and various bits of esoteric comedy and news programs. I myself tried it out for about 5 months earlier this year. I originally got it to hear some BBC and Air America, but quickly found myself spending more time enjoying the various jazz and alternative stations. In addition to talkshows, the music channels are superb, almost seeming like a college station where all the DJs are way into their kinds of music and the boring corporate stuff is nowhere to be heard. Eventually I gave it up when I couldn't always be around to catch various comedy and talk shows on time.

TimeTrax not only lets you schedule recordings, but you can have it search for keywords like bands you like and people you want to hear on shows. Basically, it gives big time radio fans a powerful tool to let them enjoy their radio even more. So what did XM radio do when they found out?

They decided to stop selling the USB-XM radio hardware altogether. They claim piracy, but if someone's paying $10 a month just to save a few MP3s, I seriously doubt they are redistributing it to thousands of folks that would otherwise be XM customers (unless someone can show me an XM radio archive somewhere of all these pirated MP3s). XM shouldn't be pulling devices off the market that get them new subscribers (duh, the units are inoperable without a subscription), they should have bought the TimeTrax product and incorporated it into their PC control software, which did allow you to set alarms when your shows were on (you still had to actually sit in front of the computer and listen to them though).

XM dropped the ball, picked it up, and is now taking it home instead of giving their most loyal customers a chance to further enjoy their subscriptions on their own time. But at least for me, there's now an upside. I can take my $40 XM radio PCR unit and sell it on eBay for upwards of $400.

September 1, 2004 in News | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBack