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Why Hasn't TiVo Improved?

It's not too hard to find a daily essay predicting the demise of TiVo, but they're not all bad. Ed Felten is convinced it was due to product stagnation while TiVo spun their wheels making deals with networks, which is a popular criticism. Essentially no major feature was deployed in 2004 to the OS, but 2005 looks promising with loads of new features (hopefully the developer API lets a million add-ons bloom).

Felten notes TiVo is looking to a new CEO that focuses even less on technology, which is disheartening news, but commenters on Felten's site rightfully point out when ReplayTV worked on innovative technology, they were sued into bankruptcy.

I believe the reasons are a bit of both. TiVo certainly has stagnated and appeared to have their hands tied behind their back for the past couple years, though I sense a reawakening. But I also believe TiVo held back time and time again because they spent so much time wrestling with the movie industry and the TV networks (and it looks like the cable companies are still dragging their feet on CableCARD support).

Lawsuits are killing innovation. It's a common story in the world of technology. Any time a company produces a disruptive technology that does something cool, they have to have a legal department that is bigger than their engineering unit to survive, and that sucks for business, sucks for customers, and sucks for the technology industry. I work around lawyers all day and I wish this was a bigger issue with the public.

Anything that helps customers enjoy TV, movies, or music is a target for lawsuits. We saw it with the Rio mp3 player (what, exactly, was illegal about playing a mp3 on a portable player?). We saw it with ReplayTV and TiVo. We see it in the entire DVD region-coding disaster that gets region-free players pulled from the US Market. The content company dinosaurs are so wed to their antiquated business models that they'll send off their legal department to attack at the slightest provocation (this includes imagined potential profit losses).

At this point, TiVo has a lot of customers and a lot of supporters in the US. I believe if anything, they need to move more of their resources into technology innovation and damn the torpedoes -- continue to make technology that makes customers happy, regardless of what Hollywood thinks. I believe if there is a concerted effort by the content industry to kill TiVo, it would not be successful like it was with ReplayTV, as there are just too many (happy, well-off, voting) TiVo customers to grapple with, much less the court of opinion that rarely goes to Hollywood's advantage.

TiVo, every day it's looks more and more like you're finally on the ropes, but it's time to start fighting back.

by Matt Haughey January 21, 2005 in News

Comments

Well, it didn't succeed with me (yet) because of the monthly service fee. I didn't feel it worthy enough to pay ANOTHER bill on top of existing cable service, so I rolled my own BTV3 box (comparable economics when considering the TiVo lifetime contract cost).

Posted by: Jason at Jan 21, 2005 12:03:47 PM

I second Jason's comment. Why pay for their service and $400 for their box when I can build my own that does more, and that I completely control?

The litigation issue is only a concern when you build your business on selling a product that copies the copyrighted works of others. The VCR had its landmark litigation in the early 80's (the Universal case), but Tivo has chosen to avoid a confrontation and instead cut deals. This is not a problem for every high tech company. I don't hear nvidia or ATI complaining, for example.

Those deals will have a short lifespan, because Linux-based PVRs are going to eat Tivo's lunch and as a home-grown solution, they are outside the reach of traditional litigation.

Posted by: Pastabagel at Jan 21, 2005 12:36:22 PM

What I want is a 'Tivo' that:

1. Will enable me to record what I want by either 'time and channel' or [VCRplus or whatever 'helpful' tool someone likes].

2. That enables me to easily delete commercials, etc. (Ideally this would include the ability to tell the machine to find other instances of the deleted material [commercial] on the disk and delete that too - even if it is in unwatched or 'not yet recorded' material.)

3. That will enable me to organize the contents of the disk so that I can watch a season of a show all at once. (With automatic classification a possibility.) This would include the ability to classify commercials, scenes, etc. however I want, and to delete any classification of them as part of a program. (Selling a bowdlerized version is properly a reuse that would usually require permission, but people should be able to make thier own, even if I think their version 'lacks esthetic value'.)

4. The ability to record from multiple channels at once.

5. The ability to copy material from the disk for long-term archiving or sharing with friends.

6. And the ability to record and display contact information for the copyright holder (and facilitate contact) so that I can get permission and/or pay for non-personal uses of what I record and find out about purchasing other material from the copyright holder.

If legal/paid access to television and films is easy enough then television and film companies/producers/directors/actors will be making enough money off of me that they won't have an economic justification for being annoyed about the 'unapproved' uses I'm putting their material to.

Posted by: Christopher Gwyn at Jan 21, 2005 12:36:34 PM

wow, I feel better about my plans to build a Freevo now... looks like Tivo has set its sights firmly on the toilet. as far as I can see, the TV networks have no reason to *want* to cooperate with PVR manufacturers, if they don't have to.

Posted by: Justin at Jan 21, 2005 1:08:47 PM

Here is the frustrating thing to me...i had a tivo, i have a directtivo.

I'd buy a new DirectTivo *IFF*:
* it was substantially faster
* I didn't have to hack it to add disks
* I got any additional services worth a damn.

But instead because of the DirectTV/Tivo relationship problems, the only product i can buy adds comparatively little to my existing experience. Tivo does not have a product to sell me....and that is not good business.

Moving to MediaCenter probably.

Posted by: Adam at Jan 21, 2005 1:18:28 PM

This is as good a place as any...

Chris, what you're talking about is Freevo or mythTV.

Justin, I'm curious, why Freevo over MythTv? My plans are to build a Myth box, but the supported hardware is limited. Is Freevo better?

Posted by: Pastabagel at Jan 21, 2005 1:37:44 PM

Chris:

ReplayTV (which isn't totally dead) actually meets a number of your criteria.

1. SORT OF. You can schedule recording through either a channel/time specification or through the onscreen program schedule listings (which require the subscription and download, but the download also syncs time and software updates). No VCRplus code.

2. SORT OF. The commercial auto-detect capabilities of Replay are what got it into hot water in the first place, and they work pretty well. For instance, when I switch "Jeopardy" on, I hit a single button and it continues pretty seamlessly through the three segments without me seeing a single ad. You can record with that option on to save disk space, but I prefer having the control, since it's not 100% perfect.

3. SORT OF. The organization of shows is pretty good. You can set up "Zones" for various types of programming. I never bother. In the default mode, multiple episodes of a show are grouped in recording order already. There are a number of options about when to record over shows (including manual only).

4. NO. Can't record multiple shows.

5. NO. While Replay can share files with another Replay machine on an Ethernet network, it doesn't have a "To Go" feature.

6. NO. This would need to be a part of the video datastream, like closed captioning.

I got my Replay about 2 years ago, gambling on a lifetime subscription (which has just about paid off). So far, so good.

Posted by: darrelplant at Jan 21, 2005 1:43:20 PM

"when you build your business on selling a product that copies the copyrighted works of others"

I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that personally recording my own TV that pay $50 a month to receive was a breach of copyright. Are you going to tell me that putting a show on DVD for later is "stealing"?

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Jan 21, 2005 2:28:28 PM

RE: Replay. With DVArchive pulling shows off a network replay and putting them on your laptop is TRIVIAL.

REPLAY gue sued over internet show sharing mainly, the comercial advance technology was just a distraction to that.

I gave up my replays. I run a dual tuner XP-MCE rig now and a Comcast "Can't record Alias" DCT6412 /w Microsoft TV Foundation "Bug Farm" Edition for HD stuff.

Posted by: Ian at Jan 21, 2005 3:06:31 PM

Check us out: www.ipaction.org

We're on the case but we need help!

Posted by: Matt Stoller, IPac at Jan 21, 2005 4:07:43 PM

"I second Jason's comment. Why pay for their service and $400 for their box when I can build my own that does more, and that I completely control?"

The reason why is that most people aren't geeks (I use the term lovingly). Tivo is a CONSUMER product. Almost inevitably, that means it is a compromise. It is a balance of features, ease of use and a sellable price point. The vast, vast, vast majority of people are not going to build their own DVR. They don't have the knowledge or the desire to do so. They want something they can buy at the store, plug in the cables and learn to use in an hour.

Or, put more simply, your mom and my mom can't roll their own, but they can pony up the $400.

Posted by: themediablog.blogspot.com at Jan 21, 2005 5:21:22 PM

Point taken from 'mediablog.blogspot.com', my initial meaning was that I think consumers hit a wall when confronted with paying monthly fees for a hopped-up "VCR" with built in TV guide. Heck, millions of consumers just got their first DVD player within the past few years (doesn't even record TV!) and now they gotta get a new-fangled VCR with a subscription fee!?

Posted by: Jason at Jan 21, 2005 8:33:14 PM

Matt: For the life of me, I can't comprehend the complaints about technical stagnancy. Basically, the PVR services TiVo released years ago in 2.x are still the gold standard... nothing else, on any platform, from any vendor, even comes close. Anyone who is actually interested in watching television has no other reasonable option.

No question, they've stumbled with distribution deals, but the bottom line is that they're still miles ahead when it comes to recording the programming I want, reliably and predictably.

Posted by: Roger Benningfield at Jan 21, 2005 11:15:26 PM

"I can't comprehend the complaints about technical stagnancy"

If you ignore the recent TTG release, in the last two years, the sum total of technical innovation from TiVo was what, the Home Media Option and DVD player/burners in the hardware lineup? It seems that in the 2000-2002 phase, the updated the OS often with new capabilities, but the last 12-18 months the product didn't see too many new features.

It's still by far the best interface, user experience, and ease of use, but it'd be nice if they continued galloping forward into the unknown.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Jan 22, 2005 1:47:34 AM

I agree. All except for the basic premise: that "lawyers" and "lawsuits" are killing innovation.

This kind of blather just plays into the Rethuglican "lawyers bad . . . must . . . have . . . . tort reform" mantra.

Look, it's the handful of vertically- and horizontally integrated mega-corporations like Viacom, AOL Time Warner, (Rupert Murdoch's) News Corporation Ltd., Bertelsmann, Walt Disney, Vivendi Universal, and Universal Music Group - who own virtually all global production and distribution in TV, movies, music, and books - who are choking off technological innovation in the name of proprietary rights.

Lawyers and lawsuits are merely tools to the desired end. And if those tools didn’t exist, these companies would find other ways to protect their interests. You can bet your life on that.

It’s the concentration of wealth and ownership - not the existence of litigators - that allows these few companies to aptly thwart innovation. Please stop shooting the messengers.

Posted by: Chainsaw at Jan 22, 2005 3:58:03 AM

Yeah, if it wasn't for all that copyright and patent law we'd all have neater gadgets to play with, and for free, too.

Why should property rights keep me from enjoying technologies that other people invent and selfishly profit from? After all, shouldn't they invest their time and money into things I can steal?

Except for all that legal nonsense that gets in the way.

Posted by: Jon Koppenhoefer at Jan 22, 2005 9:11:32 AM

"The vast, vast, vast majority of people are not going to build their own DVR. They don't have the knowledge or the desire to do so. They want something they can buy at the store, plug in the cables and learn to use in an hour."

Right, few consumer-level people possess the skill or resources to build a DVR. And you're sure not going to build a DVR for $99. You'd be hard-pressed to build one for $400 that was powerful enough to exceed the capabilities of a $99 TiVo box.

The interface and ease of use factors of TiVo always seem to be far underestimated by techno-geek types. I build & support networked PCs for a living and my wife is a webmaster, but we both still appreciate not having to roll up our sleeves and tweak some half-baked freeware to use our DVR. I'm sure that Freevo and MythTV are fine and functional products, but I also know that they aren't hassle-free.

Posted by: Rob O'Daniel at Jan 22, 2005 3:33:15 PM

"I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that personally recording my own TV that pay $50 a month to receive was a breach of copyright. Are you going to tell me that putting a show on DVD for later is "stealing"?"

Matt:

Well, the shows are still copyrighted, just like a book is still copyrighted when you buy it. You aren't allowed to photocopy a book you buy.

And no, even under the Universal case that put the supreme court's stamp of approval on the VCR, placing a show on DVD is NOT legal. VCR's were only allowed as time-shifting devices, and the court took it under advisement that people wouldn't keep libraries of shows. Of course that reasoning was circa early-80's, and a lot has changed.

And while I realize most people won't build their own, someone is going to build and sell, now that the market is proven.

Consider this: a Media Center PC is a high end PC with a $150 tv tuner card. We all know, form experience, that PC hardware get's cheap fast. What is $1500 today will only be $500 in a year or two.

Tivo can't survive selling a service + hardware when others can sell you just the hardware. On the other hand, cable companies are going to get smart and start offering hard disk recorder set top boxes as part of the cable package, and tivo will get squeezed from that side.

Think about this: What does tivo offer that's unique? Do they have anything that others can't easily duplicate. No.

Posted by: Pastabagel at Jan 22, 2005 10:12:43 PM

"What does tivo offer that's unique? Do they have anything that others can't easily duplicate. No."

The interface, and the software. I've talked to a lot of people that cancelled their TimeWarner DVR, their Comcast DVR, and their Dish Network DVR due to a shoddy system that crashed, was difficult to use, and frequently forgot to record their programs.

As a last ditch effort, hopefully TiVo licenses their technology and UI to others.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Jan 22, 2005 10:59:54 PM

Pastabagel,

Undoubtedly, a sub-$1000 Media Center PC will become available eventually - and the vendors may even be able to get them down to $500 (sans the fancy wide-screen LCD) by the end of '06. But that's still a far cry from $99 and the functionality of Media Cneter PCs still seems sub-par when compared to what TiVo offers today. This will shift as Microsoft scrambles to (and likely will) dominate yet another market, but in the interim 2-3 years before it gels and becomes a viable "average Joe" consumer-ready platform, I've already got something that's providing lots of value... TiVo!! In the nearly 5 months we've owned our TiVo, we've yet to have to reboot. We've not had to apply security patches or fret about keeping the antivirus DATs up-to-date - the thing just works.

Several cable companies - such as CableOne - have indeed begun offering combo DVR set-top boxes but they lack much of what makes TiVo such a gem - the easy to use interface and the array of scheduling options... "Season Pass" namely.

Rob

Posted by: Rob O'Daniel at Jan 23, 2005 3:13:20 AM

"In the nearly 5 months we've owned our TiVo, we've yet to have to reboot. "

Dunno about TiVO but Replay units reboot in the middle of the night automatically and on purpose for "maintenance."

I prefer my Media Center PC over TiVO or Replay. Fast, better UI (IMHO) dual atsc and dual NTSC tuners. Easily expandable.

My brother-in-law has a DirecTivo. Using it made me feel like my brain was being sucked out of my skull. It had 1/10th the power of my MCE rig and as far as a PVR goes about 1/20th the power of my old Replay units. I hit the guide button on the remote and got to wait for the guide to paint then found out it only went out about two hours. Someone told me there's another 14 day guide in there somewhere but I sure couldn't find it. How useable is a DVR when the "real" guide requires pressing some other buttons other than the "guide" button to find it?

OTOH the MCE rig didn't cost $99. :-)

Posted by: ian at Jan 23, 2005 11:03:33 PM

I think people really underestimate DVR capabilities offered by cable companies and what their appeal is. Look, main innovation by TiVO was not their UI: it was an idea of easy time-shifting for TV programs. As long as other devices make this possible and TiVO does not have a patent for time shifting idea in itself (does it?), most of consumers make their choice on OTHER parameters:
- what will it cost
- what will it take to get it working
- how does it look in my living room
- ...

Despite its famous interface TiVo has shortcomings which might explain why it's not in 80% of homes.

- It's one more box in the entertainment center (and one more remote) - I need to think where I should put it, how to fit it into existing setup etc.

- Single tuner. You can probably get around this with line splitters etc, but it kind of defeats the purpose...

- No HD capability (or $$$) when everyone talks about HD this and HD that.

So, when Comcast says: 'here - have this new cable box with dual tuner DVR and HD for 9.99 a month (less than TiVO) and no upfront cost' - guess what people do? And no, it has not been rebooted once so far, has a very fast guide and (surprise!) has a SeasonPass functionality. So, why do I need TiVO?

And here is a thought: 80% of customers only need 20% of the features, i.e. record me all "Desperate Housewives" or "Nova", no matter what. I suspect watching archived show in the office via Internet is not high on their list (but may be it is for you), and perhaps burning DVDs isn't as well - who needs all these commercials preserved anyway.

So, TiVO created a market, but I doubt they will own or even dominate it.

Posted by: PG at Jan 24, 2005 7:16:46 AM

I think we're talking about different things. I'm saying the Tivo *device* is headed the way of the dodo, but not the company. There's no reason the company can't get the Tivo system running on a full blown pc, considering it already runs a Linux variant on a 30 MHz processor or whatever it is.

The MythTV's and MCE's of the world may not be ready for primetime yet, but they will be in 3-5 years. By then there will also be a new Xbox that's rumored to have PVR capabilities, and there's the new Playstation to worry about also. I don't see Tivo doing what it has to do now to stave off that future competition. 3-5 years is not a long time.

In my opinion, there's an opportunity for Tivo to be the OS of television. As Matt suggested, maybe they license the interface and the listings feed to all comers the way MS does with PC software, but get out of the hardware business themselves.

Spec out what a Tivo PC must include, and let the hardware manufacturers drive prices down. This way, they can leverage the ever declining price of PC hardware to spread the adoption of their technology.

I don't really have the answer, obviously, but it doesn't take a media visionary to look at the morass under the TV set, the DVD player, game console, cable box, PVR and think "Maybe we can combine all this stuff together?"

THEY CALL ME PASTABAGEL

Posted by: Pastabagel at Jan 24, 2005 8:19:30 AM

Speaking of "Anything that helps customers enjoy TV, movies..)

Read my post on why I love TiVo. http://blog.eriklane.com/archive/2005/01/21/353.aspx

I've had a DirecTivo for about 3 years now and I'm not still not real interested in all of the hacking/advanced applications that most here are speaking of. For heaven's sake - it's TV. TiVo allows me to watch TV I like and when I'm ready to watc TV.

Posted by: Erik Lane at Jan 24, 2005 8:23:20 AM

TiVo is a dumbed down consumer electronics device - it hit a sweet spot early with a good UI, good enough functionality and a smart licensing deal (DirecTV).

So now they face some competition - the action is who is going to be the home media hub. In this they face the big bad Microsoft, as well as all the PC hardware vendors, the huge consumer electronic manufacturers, Apple, as well as open source alternatives and a bunch of VC-funded aggressive small guys nipping at their heels.

So the business model has to change - big surprise - and it has taken a while.

TiVo (the company) will be bought by someone for no other reason than the subscription base - it's a matter of time.

I understand the reason its taken so long - but the functional limitations are certainly due to the threat of content "stealing" lawsuits. These are so expensive because the law is being made as we speak - so you need to get the most expensive lawyers possible - alas for TiVo.

I've wondered why they couldn't add FM-radio recording capability (perhaps it is there?) so I could time-shift NPR or FreshAir while I sit on the recumbent bicycle.

Posted by: peBird at Jan 24, 2005 9:52:55 AM

Is it possible that TiVo has years worth of unreleased core TV time-shifting (eg: non-Tahiti) technology, and is just waiting for whatever behind the scene reason (eg: legal, business, etc.) to finalize / release it?? Everything that users have suggested on TiVo Community, etc. - it just seems like the TiVo developers have probably already coded an entire new release (perhaps in their spare time)...Perhaps theyll spend '05 finalizing it and include it in the CableCard product due in '06...

Posted by: New York at Jan 24, 2005 5:22:43 PM

"Well, the shows are still copyrighted, just like a book is still copyrighted when you buy it. You aren't allowed to photocopy a book you buy."

IANAL, but I think you are eliding an important distinction here:

I am not allowed to photocopy a book I buy, *if I distribute the photocopy*. If the photocopy is for my own use I can photocopy it as much as I damn well please.

In other words, if I want to stand at the copier and make a page by page copy of the book so that I can read the copy on the train in the morning, and leave the original safe at home, that's cool. Which is kind of like what most people want to do with Tivos (and why they get upset when their options are locked down by DRM that prevents them from doing so).

Posted by: Jason Lefkowitz at Jan 25, 2005 9:16:43 AM

"We see it in the entire DVD region-coding disaster that gets region-free players pulled from the US Market."
Whereas here in Australia the Consumer & Competition Council mandated that DVD players MUST be region-free. Australians travel a lot, and I'd be really annoyed if I quite legally bought a US or UK DVD while overseas and couldn't play it at home due to the DVD region.

Posted by: PeterQ at Jan 25, 2005 4:42:26 PM

TiVo might be headed not the way of the dodo, but Apple. Better, easier system, but so poorly marketed that only moneyed "geeks" buy them. They should have dealt not only with Comcast but manufacturers to license their OS in more products. Then we would have seen TiVo-guided DVD recorders, TV sets, maybe even FM radios and VCRs (yes, a lot of folks still use them, to play their videotape libraries. I've amassed a 25 year collection). Other manufacturers would have introduced dual tuners, digital tuners, HD, even a way to free it from the damn land-line phone! TiVo couldn't have afforded to develop all that on its own.

Posted by: Jerome Nicholson at Jan 25, 2005 10:50:22 PM

C'mon, think outside the PVR here people.
Here is just one possible scenario for Tivo success:
First, you have to recognize that Tivo is now at odds w/cable, that's just the way it played out.
As they say, the enemey of my enemy is my friend.
Who is cable's enemy? Phone companies. Why? VOIP
Hmmmm.
Wait a second, maybe the phone company can just offer content via the Internet using Tivo as the magical all in one connecting device/waystation/interface. As any respectable PVR user will attest, after a while one only really watches the shows that they've recorded.
Talk about a natural love affair.
Or even better, slap a wimax card onto the Tivo (ok, 2 years out on this one) and, well I'll let you fill in the rest. . .

Posted by: jeff krup at Jan 26, 2005 3:05:21 AM

After reading all this, I'm still surprisingly pleased with my UltimateTV -- the precursor to ReplayTV, which I bought in 2001 because TiVo didn't have dual inputs that would allow me to record two programs at once. I can skip commercials, record two channels at once, record all the shows from a given series (and exclude the repeats) and a variety of methods to search the database. No, I can't delete commercials, but that's OK b/c I have the 30-second skip.

Posted by: The Monk at Jan 26, 2005 7:57:25 AM

Personally, while I could build my own, I'd gladly buy one for convenience. The reason I don't is that no one sells one that will work without a monthly service I neither need nor want. People may not be able to build a Freevo system, but that doesn't mean they can't read the TV listings in their newspaper or tell time. There are still MILLIONS of homes where people easily read a TV guide, and then program their VCR with time and channel. The VCR manufacturers could have incorporated all the programming interface a Tivo has, but they didn't see demand. While VCR+ is still included, it hasn't been touted as a feature since the first six months since it came out. The voice programmable VCR (a frightening move to accelerate our descent into national illiteracy) went over like a turd in a punchbowl. Clearly, if there was a real market need for the service, their business model wouldn't need to be based on coercing people into having the service by making the hardware require it. It's not just cost - it's a safe bet someone is data-mining Tivo owners' viewing habits, and the service requires a hard wired phone line, something I and many other people have done away with in the wireless age. Give people a choice.

Posted by: dweeb at Jan 27, 2005 9:26:58 AM

How many vcr owners ever learned how to program their vcr's to record, even with VCR Plus? I can't count the number of friends whose vcr's I set up who only used them for playing prerecorded tapes. Or playing tapes of shows they asked me to record for them, because they never learned (or forgot) how to record. To them, the cable company's dvr is a godsend.

Posted by: Jerome Nicholson at Jan 27, 2005 10:39:55 PM

BTW, the IR blaster for the cable co.'s digital tuner never worked for me. I never could convince the TiVo help line that my city (Richmond, VA),has two cable systems. Not in competition with each other; just different systems for each jurisdiction. Each with a different channel lineup. And TiVo only recognized the wrong one for me. That's why I have a Comcast DVR. But Richmond being the way it is, the unit only has one tuner.

Posted by: Jerome Nicholson at Jan 28, 2005 11:50:39 AM

While Tivo's monthly service is overpriced, it isn't valueless.
Not having to read the TV guide and figure out when all the shows
I want are on, and then programming Tivo to capture them
would destroy the experience.

I love being able to tell it "record all showings of Jeopardy"
and then sitting back and having it track all the scheduling
issues: Monday Night Football, Times moved around, stuff shown on Saturday.

This has real value. The problem is that you're getting the info
from a mononpoly provider, and they are extracting monopoly rents.

I signed up for the lifetime subscription. Steep at 200 bucks, but
I'm making money on it now, having had the Tivo for
more than 2 years.

The cost of providing the schedule/programming data
isn't zero. Every web page has to be served. Every
entry has to be edited. The marginal cost
is very small, much smaller than the 10 bucks a month,
but it isn't zero.

What I hope DVR's will do is disintermediation. Of course,
the intermediaries are the powerful ones now,
and they are definitely NOT interested in
disintermediation.

Posted by: Jay at Jan 28, 2005 12:02:35 PM

I got the first TiVo for my mom because she was not very good at programing a VCR. TiVo made it easy for her. I liked the TiVo so much that I got one too. The when the series 2 come out I got that one. I got in to hacking them. It's super the good stuff the hacking adds to them. All 3 have the live time sub. They did not start like that. The first TiVo I got did start with life time. I got one on ebay too a series 1 with no hard drive so I could just mess with it and I had a nother Ethernet type card because I got the one with ram and did not want to send the other Ethernet card back. It was not worth it to send it back.

I did not know TiVo was not making $ good. I hope TiVo stays and keeps with the times by keep adding good things to there TiVo's with updates and new TiVo's like a series 3. This time put a CPU in it that can do like 3 times the speed! My sister has a Direct TiVo now. Wow does there guide go slow! It's a big guide you think they put a faster CPU in it. CPU's now are cheep. At lest the speed TiVo needs.

I think the best would be that TiVo sells the TiVo's were all VCR's and DVD players are sold. In K-mark, Meijer, Walmart stores like that. Lots of people will see them and tell others. I think they would then sell a lot more. Give like 1 mounth free of the guide. I think they did that when we got are first TiVo. Or at lest 2 weeks free.

Wow what would happend if TiVo went out? I guess we would get the guide data for free. Maybe some one would even put up a server and have a lot of people help type the things from a news paper guide or some place. But I think there are free guides on the Internet now. Maybe TiVo just has to make there TiVo's work with that and they don't have to spend any $ for the guide data.

That's the thing I think why people don't buy TiVo's because speeding the $ for the guide. Maybe they should try and sell them for $300 with life time TV guide data.

I guess we will see something good if TiVo is not making $.

I did both the Linux PVR freevo and the other. I could not get them to work! I putty good at Linux but they were to hard for me!

Lets see I know linux stuff like

ls
ls -l
cd
cp
ps aux
kill -9 (number to stop after listing ps aux)
mkdir
mount
mv
rmdir
rm
mkdir
ln -s
fdisk
ifconfig
./ (file name to run)
cp -rpf (copy a folder)
pwd
df
rpm
find / -name (name to find)

I think that's about it. So I think I am putty good at Linux and still could not make the free TiVo type programs run!

Freevo even said how a up2date would all most auto install things. I got it but could not get the video. I have the hardwere too. I just use a small hard drive to load linux on my PC to try but could not get it working.

Maybe with some more time. But TiVo how you contol it is so easy and good. Very good remote too. The best I seen!

-Raymond Day

Posted by: Raymond Day at Feb 3, 2005 2:52:05 PM

I watch a lot of TV. For many years I had 4 VCR's going all the time.
Kept hearing about how great TiVo was. So 3 years ago when 1 of my VCR's died I bought a series1 TiVo. Grew to hate loading, rewinding, changing VCR tapes.

I didn't buy another TiVo because of the $13 monthly fee. For 3 years I kept sending TiVo emails telling them they were crazy for not offering discounted monthly fees for mulitple units in 1 home. They finally did offer it. I then bought a Series2 unit. Paid $99 for it after TiVo rebate, which I have already received (fastest rebate I've ever received) Costs me $20 a month total now.

Decided I wanted to burn DVD's of movies on my TiVo. During my search for DVD burners I ran into the Pioneer and Toshiba TiVo/DVD burning combo units. After reading reviews on both I bought new (sealed box from mfg) Toshiba TiVo/DVD burner combo ($400 incl shipping on eBay) which has the free TiVo Basic Service (no monthly fee). It's in the mail right now. Also found a Toshiba TiVo/DVD player only (no burner) refurbished unit (has TiVo Basic Serv also so no monthly service fee) . Cost $198.99 with $100 rebate so the unit cost only $98.99. Since it is a refurbished unit I bought a 4 year extended warranty for $69.99. If it dies I get a new one.

Gave away VCR's.

I have 4 TiVo's. Total cost $868 ...... Only pay $20 monthly fee

Series1 ......$200 (3yrs ago) ........................... $13 monthly fee
Series2 ......$ 99 (after rebate) ....................... $ 7 monthly fee
Series2 ......$169 with DVD player (after rebate) no monthly fee
Series2 ......$400 with DVD player/burner .........no monthly fee

Love TiVo! I watch anything and everything I want when I want!
Attached a wireless connector to 1 unit. Any music or photos on my MAC desktop I now have on my TV to look at or listen to.

Posted by: Karl Kennedy at Feb 28, 2005 6:14:02 PM

The only company that could beat the DRM cartell is Microsoft. They can't sue MSFT into oblivion. Bill would just buy them all.
Or make them an offer they can't refuse.
If only Tivo thought all this stuff ahead when they were still darlingk. Microsoft's media center pc's do tivo plus surf the web, which lets me see websites quite nicely on a 36" TV screen, and I can't wait till I get me a 60" flat stunner! woah boy! they even added dual tuner capability eventually.
Hey, that's all I need. If I could just find four for free when I sign up for Directv service.

Posted by: Negrito at Dec 11, 2005 10:07:43 AM