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Reporting from CES: Going Deeper into TiVo's announcements

I was traveling on business this week and decided to make a quick side trip to Vegas to see all the new products unveiled at CES (I wanted to go mostly to see the TiVo stuff in person). 2004 has been a rocky year for TiVo -- they didn't launch a lot of new features in the product line and had to grapple with competitors crowding the space. I was starting to feel their future was uncertain and hoped they'd have a lot to show at CES.

After hitting their booth/press area and talking to a few TiVo reps (including meeting the guy behind TiVo.com -- Hi Todd!), I have to say I was really impressed with all the new ventures and directions they are moving towards.

For the past couple weeks, I've been brainstorming a big list of ideas to turn TiVo around which I hoped to publish before CES, but I'm happy to say that almost all the big ideas I could think of were hit on by this week's set of announcements. I'll go through each new piece of TiVo tech I played with and mention all the answers I got to my questions, and what it means for TiVo customers.

TiVo ToGo (TTG)

I got to play with a couple TiVos running the new OS (it was version 7.1 I believe) that includes TiVo ToGo and a demo PC they had running the new TiVo Desktop. The entire package works like this:

• You'll need the new TiVo Desktop client to interact with TTG, which is already available for download at tivo.com/desktop (it won't work fully until you get the new OS update on your TiVo though)
• On the DRM front: Once you've got the new TiVo OS (I heard estimates that even for the folks on the priority list, it could be a couple weeks more before you get it) you'll get a Media Access Key on your TiVo that you put into your TiVo desktop to interact. You can reuse this key on up to ten devices, all accessing your TiVo. You'll also have to set a password for TTG/playing your shows.

Closeup of the TiVo Desktop, with a Now Showing list read from a networked TiVo

• You basically get a copy of your Now Showing list on your PC when launching the TiVo desktop, and you have to copy the shows entirely to your PC over the network before playback (no streaming while downloading)

Full sized TiVo Desktop (click for big version)

• Shows look to be in TiVo's proprietary mpeg2 format, at around ~1Gb/hour, so moving shows around on most home networks will be somewhat slow (tough to give a good estimate but expect that a typical 30 minute show might take 20 minutes to transfer from TiVo to your PC).

WMP 10 will ask for a password every time you hit play

• Once downloaded, you can play the shows in Windows Media Player (WMP) 10 after entering your password. You'll have to type the password every time you hit play, so I suspect it'll get old real quick. You can burn shows to DVD (sans DRM) using a Sonic MyDVD burning software package. They're working on having free demo versions of the dvd burning app available soon and I believe you'll have to buy the full version to use it beyond a trial period.

Prototype Media Player Portables for TiVo (click for big version)

• You can send shows to new Portable Media Center devices like the Creative units, since they interact with WMP 10. This is good news, since you won't necessarily have to have Windows Media Center also running to work with those new devices. TiVo also showed off prototypes of two personal video handhelds that could connect directly to your TiVo, so transfers could be over USB 2.0 instead of TCP/IP, which would be much faster. It's not much of a stretch to think you'd have a simple dock near your tivo that you could drop it on each day and pull new shows from.

HME (Home Media Engine if I remember correctly)

HME is an umbrella term for opening up various parts of TiVo to developers with a set of new APIs and software. I've long wondered why TiVo didn't poach ideas for features from the official and unofficial TiVo hacking communities and I've also wondered why they never embraced them to help let developers extend TiVo.

Prototype TiVo interface with new developer apps running (click for big version)

Basically with HME, TiVo's rolling out the red carpet for developers.

Here are my notes from talking to a couple reps:

• As stated previously, this set of stuff includes a format to write apps for the HMO, including preparing video, music, and images for a TiVo. There is also a gaming platform that will let you play java games over the local network, from code running on your PC.
• HME will be available to everyone using OS 7.1, enabled with a backdoor code that will be published on a developer site along with links to sourceforge downloads of demo games and apps in several weeks. I suspect it might leak out before that, if anyone at TiVo lets it slip.
• Developers rejoice: there will be a windows sandbox app that'll let you emulate TiVo on your desktop, so you can test code against it without having to actually try it out on your TiVo (which probably isn't located where you code).

Demo game running on a TiVo, done in java that runs on a networked PC

• If you write code for games or apps in java designed to be run from a PC, you'll be able to run it freely without any agreement from TiVo. You'll be able to offer your code for download from your website and anyone running their new tivo with the backdoor code should also be able to run your code from their network as you did. Sometime this summer,  TiVo will highlight the best apps and run those from central TiVo servers instead of local PCs.

It sounded like the Video/Music/Photos stuff is mostly aimed at large content companies or people selling content through TiVo. So it's not like you'll be able to watch your own video of your child's first steps anytime soon, because TiVo reps lead me to believe only TiVo approved media apps would be deployable to TiVos, mostly for copyright concerns (without this, I guess someone could create a rogue porn video marketplace with stuff they found on the net, but didn't have rights to). That's a lot like how Danger controls the code on their hiptops -- only approved code can be deployed to other users.

The Standalone HD TiVo

Dual tuner CableCARD HD TiVo, rotating in a case

So the one big obvious thing on the cablecard TiVo accounced this week that seemed to get lost in the cracks was that it is indeed a dual-tuner HD recorder. It has two card slots instead of one, and I got to see one playing some generic HD content on a HD plasma. It looked terrific, though I'm still worried about their estimated ship date of first quarter 2006. I think Comcast will be able to get a lot of the Motorola boxes out to meet demand by then (a fellow TiVo fan that was grilling reps along side me admitted he had a new dual HD motorola PVR that he loved and couldn't wait until 2006 for this). I would have liked to see this device coming out this summer, while the demand is still great.

I'll be posting a few more bits today about Microsoft, my favorite product of the show Sling Media, and various random bits and photos from the show floor.

by Matt Haughey January 8, 2005 in News

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