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Apple PVR coming to next MacWorld?

Think Secret is reporting a leak that Apple may unveil a PVR in January at the next MacWorld. They say "Kaleidoscope" could be a combination of a mac mini, Front Row, and a PVR, and be Apple's first move into the living room. Given the release of the video iPod and Front Row on the new iMac, it doesn't seem like much of a leap for Apple to do a project like this. Think Secret also has a pretty good track record on getting scoops before every MacWorld, so I'd say this rumor is quite plausable. [thanks Davis]

November 29, 2005 in News | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

NBC makes noise about iPod and PSP TiVoToGo sync

In a move that surprised no one, NBC is making vague, legalish threats in TiVo's direction over the latter's push to put TV shows on iPods and PSPs.

Quoth an NBC spokesperson,

TiVo appears to be acting unilaterally, disregarding established rights of content owners to participate in decisions regarding the distribution and exploitation of their content. This unilateral action creates the risk of legal conflict instead of contributing to the constructive exploitation of digital technology that can rapidly provide new and exciting experiences for the consumer.

And here I thought TiVo was exploiting digital technology. Perhaps the subtext is that NBC would rather exploit consumers? Regardless, eWeek spoke to two intellectual property attorneys about NBC's statement. Both say NBC doesn't have much of a leg to stand on and point to the Supreme Court of the United States' Betamax judgement as the relevant precedent.

November 27, 2005 in News, TiVo | Permalink | Comments (35) | TrackBack

Update on HME Beta

I'm not in the HME Beta because of the non-disclosure agreement, but someone who is in the program was nice enough to email me this about recent HME programs:

They rolled out some more stuff -- Yahoo Traffic, Yahoo Weather, and Yahoo Photos, plus a TiVo podcatcher (I think it's audio only, so far).

The Yahoo! application sound about right, considering their recent partnership. The podcast client sounds like a smart idea. People frequently explain podcasting like TiVo for audio, now TiVo is like TiVo! It's also another avenue for TiVo to build it's internet distribution features.

I suspect it doesn't, but if the podcast client supports video files (MPEG-2 only I would think, given the existing TiVoToComeback feature) then the TiVo would act as a collection point for all sorts of non-TV content. Would anyone in the HME program care to comment on whether the podcast client supports video?

November 27, 2005 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBack

TiVo Plans RFID-Aware PVR

Slashdot is reporting that TiVo is planning a RFID-aware addition to TiVo boxes, in order to let owners have multiple profiles. Hearing that they're working on profiles is great, since everyone I know has to share a TiVo with a spouse that has wildly different viewing habits and favorites. The use of RFID is interesting, I wonder if it'll be a chip in a keychain, or maybe TiVos might come with two remotes, one for each profile.

The thought of extending profiles to other TiVos is an even better idea -- imagine being able to access your favorite shows while on the road in a hotel, or over at a friend's house (assuming someday TiVo stored or shared shows from a server). [thanks Davis]

November 22, 2005 in News | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

TiVo is coming to your iPod, PSP

Big news from TiVo this Monday: The Associated Press is reporting that TiVo will release TiVoToGo recordings in formats specifically for the Playstation Portable and the video iPod. There's not a lot of details aside from it being a beta test at first, but great to see TiVo embracing other formats and players.

This is kind of surprising to hear, given that the windows media DRM in other portable media players keeps the files locked up. It would seem either TiVo and Apple agreed to work together, or files destined for these new players will be unprotected.

The TiVo Community has more on this. [thanks Pete]

November 20, 2005 in News | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Free movie preview for TiVo users

Robert Aitchison wrote in:

Looks like TiVo is doing more testing of their video delivery over broadband technology.

Yesterday it was an offer to see free product reviews from C|Net, today they are ramping up to offer an exclusive preview of the movie "Red Trousers" which apparently is a martial arts film by Tai Seng Entertainment.

Obviously this is only for Series2 Standalone TiVo units that are connected over broadband.

For more info see http://research.tivo.com/redtrousers/

Great to see TiVo moving towards broadband delivery of shows and movies. I bet it's no accident the film being tested is outside the Hollywood mainstream. If you thought TV and movie studios were nervous about TiVo before, just wait until people no longer need either for distribution of content. It'd be great to see TiVo continue to embrace these out-of-the-hollywood-loop films. Perhaps the award winners of independent film festivals will be available for streaming to TiVos next year?

I'd love to be able to enjoy the Sundance Festival from my couch.

November 15, 2005 in News, TiVo | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

TiVo to put CNET back on the air

Remember the 90's? No, not another nostalgia show from VH-1; think back to when stock prices could only go up, it made sense to buy a 100 pound bag of pet food online and CNET was on the TV. At least one of those is coming back: the company that put Ryan Seacrest on TV is trying to get back to its roots in the form of TiVo downloadable video.

PVR Wire is reporting that TiVo and CNET have partnered to provide short product review segments for the next 6 weeks. In order to get it, you have to opt-in to get the download from the TiVo main menu and only TiVo Series 2 owners with broadband need apply. (via)

More than just the CNET deal though, this means that TiVo is using its Internet content distribution network. While the Netflix deal didn't go through, the idea of getting video independent of the broadcast networks is still sound. I wouldn't be surprised if we see something from Yahoo! on this front too, since TiVo and Y! just announced a partnership, and Y! News is now producing a video news program.

update: Dave Zatz got some good screenshots of the cnet downloads in action.

November 14, 2005 in News, TiVo | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Full Review of the R-15 DirecTV DVR

Over at the TiVo Community, user ebonovic has posted a very lengthy, comprehensive review of DirecTV's R-15 NDS based 'DTiVo killer' DVR. There are loads of screenshots and details of the signup process (no phone required, it uses the satellite!), along with testing of all the ports and even the hard drive. One amusing thing is the "TiVo Central" screen with your recordings is called "My VOD".

November 10, 2005 in DirecTV, News | Permalink | Comments (58) | TrackBack

Beyond TV 4 now available from Snapstream

Over on the Snapstream blog, they've got all the details on the launch of Beyond TV 4.

Last year we reviewed the previous version. Sounds like the new version adds more custom features, divx for saving shows, and over-the-air HDTV support. I'm requesting a copy for review and will post my experiences with it in the next few weeks.

November 10, 2005 in News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Get TiVo for only 16.95* including the box!

Interesting, it looks like TiVo's moving to the cellphone business model completely, offering a free TiVo box for a slightly higher monthly charge. No word on if the monthly changes after the 1 year contract is up, but great to see TiVo trying new stuff. [thanks Davis]

November 9, 2005 in News | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack

TiVo and Yahoo announce partnership, features

A little birdie dropped me a note that looks legit and sounds trustworthy, but I can't back it up so I'm posting this as a rumor (that I have a strong hunch is real).

It looks like there's an impending deal between Yahoo and TiVo. The Yahoo TV section will add "record to TiVo" buttons like AOL added a couple years ago to their own listings. In addition, it sounds like some sort of HME app will be launched to let TiVo users get weather and traffic maps from Yahoo.

It sounds like it will be announced very soon, so we'll see in the next couple days if the rumor was true.

update: Looks like the Record to TiVo buttons are live at Yahoo, here's their page about it. Screenshot added to this post.

another update: here's the official article

November 6, 2005 in TiVo | Permalink | Comments (31) | TrackBack

New DirecTV unit by NDS to hit stores next week

According to DirecTV's 3rd quarter report, the new NDS DVR that will replace the combo TiVo units will be shipping next week:

DirecTV said it will start shipping its own digital video recorder next week as it transitions from sole reliance on DVRs made by TiVo Inc. The new recorders use software from NDS Group Ltd., another company owned by News Corp.

Another interesting tidbit is plans to show off TiVo ToGo-type functionality at CES this January:

Carey also said the company would introduce new products at the Consumer Electronics Show in January that would allow programming to be viewed on portable devices. The company main's competitor, EchoStar Communications Corp., introduced a portable media player last month that works in conjunction with its Dish Network satellite TV service.

No word on whether the new NDS unit supports HD signals (I'm assuming it does not). [thanks davis]

November 3, 2005 in DirecTV, News | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Comcast HD DVR Review

Summary
After using a Comcast HD DVR (a Motorola 6412) for a couple months I'm hooked on HDTV. I can't help but compare the experience to using a TiVo and while this DVR falls way short of the TiVo experience, it works well enough in the basic sense to keep me using it. It has some bugs, but there aren't many choices if you want your HDTV from anything other than an antenna. I renew my hope for CableCARD support, so that alternate devices could be used.

Introduction
After five years of being a happy TiVo customer (first with standalone units, then with DirecTV units) it was time to finally try out HDTV and to do that meant I had only a couple options in my area: try a cable company HD DVR or a satellite company HD DVR.  I'd done the DirecTV thing for the past couple years and their HD offerings were pretty minimal (and required buying a ~$500 box) though they claim they will have the most programming by 2007 when their new satellites are operational. I decided to go with Comcast, since it was simple, cheap, and here right now.

I know I'm a bit behind the times here, the unit from Motorola has been out for over a year and was first covered here two years ago. There are several older posts about it, namely how to transfer content to a mac using firewire that I'll try out later on. At the moment TiVo doesn't offer a HDTV recorder except for the one that DirecTV offers, and they're phasing it out as they deploy new MPEG4 content the HD TiVo unit can't decode.

Is HDTV worth all the fuss?
I've seen HDTV demos for years now and I never really saw anything impressive about it. What I've figured out is that you can't really get a sense for how good HD content is if you're looking at an unfamiliar TV set playing unfamiliar content. The wonder of HD wasn't driven home to me until I saw a TV show I'd been watching for the past year or so in standard definition. It also helped that I looked at standard def content on my low-end plasma TV for a year before getting HD. After everything was set up and I recorded a few familiar HD shows, I got to see what all the fuss is about. HD programs look pretty incredible, especially those with lots of outdoor shots. I was seeing detail I'd never seen before. After having HDTV for a couple months, I've realized that when there's nothing recorded and I start channel surfing, I keep it limited to just the dozen or so HD channels.

Now that plasma and LCD TVs are starting at $1,500 or so, if you've ever wanted to try out HDTV, now is the time to do it.

Some of the good things about the Comcast HD DVR experience
The first good thing about this unit is that it's fairly cheap. You don't have to buy any box and they charge $9.95 a month for the DVR service. That's cheaper than buying a TiVo box and sending TiVo $12.95/month. After turning the unit on, the first thing to jump out was the interface was fairly clean and unobtrusive. The remote is pretty good and did a good job talking to my TV and A/V system, though I couldn't configure the volume to work with just the A/V volume instead of the TV volume.

Recording shows instantly is just one click without the need to confirm and recorded HD shows are perfectly crisp. There are two tuners which can independently record while you watch something else on the hard drive, so conflicts are infrequent, but just in case there is the equivalent of a season pass priority list that the Comcast unit uses for figuring out what to tape when both tuners are already taping something. One nice feature is the 30-second skip, which I use more often than the default ffw/rwd controls. I didn't have to enable a hack or anything, it seemed to just be there when I programmed my Harmony remote.

One other nice feature is that the unit tells you how full it is at all times. Whenever you pull up the recorded shows listing, you can see if the hard drive is 27% full or 77% full and you can remove shows after you've viewed them to get a sense of how much time is left. HD recording takes up a lot of space, so as a result the maximum HD recording time is about 12-14 hours total.

Now, onto the ways this unit could be improved.

Some of the bad things about the Comcast HD DVR experience
Since this unit has been out for over a year, I've heard lots of feedback from readers here and friends that have one. I've heard about lots of software bugs, buggy playback, and mixed reviews of the DVR user interface. I'll break down my biggest problems one by one.

Lag time in the interface
The first bug I noticed was one I heard about: there is a lag between when you push a button, and when something happens. As a result, you get no feedback and you assume that the button push didn't go through, so you push it again. A few moments later, and two or more button pushes get registered by the device and in some instances that cancels what you wanted to do. It's infuriating when this happens.

There is loads of research behind this frustration on my and many other users' behalf -- the only acceptable lag time is very short, and beyond that users start to wonder if their device is functioning properly. TiVo does a great job rectifying this by giving you an audio cue that it received the button push, and TiVo also does a good job of putting up temporary "waiting..." screens. The worst experience with my Comcast box was once while I was fast forwarding some commercials during a football game, only to have the play/ffw buttons not work after the commercials were over. I hit play about ten times while I watched 10 minutes of a crucial game fly past before the commands could "take" and return to normal play. The lag was about 20 seconds where no button push did anything as the box was locked in fast forward mode.

Setting season passes sucks
TiVo does a pretty good job letting you find shows and set passes. As a result, I often tracked 50 or more TV shows. I realized that after two months, I only have season passes set for 8 or 9 shows because the process is such a pain. On a TiVo, you can search pretty easily for shows by surfing around an alphabet and spelling out the name of the show. On the Comcast box, you get five boxes for letters, and they all are set to A. You then have to manually step through the alphabet on each letter to find your show. Pushing "down" 20 times to find "P" takes about 3-5 times as long as simply picking "P" from a grid on a TiVo. The process is such a pain that I rarely set season passes and usually do so from the guide interface, which adds it as an option to the set recording screen.

Since I have so few season passes and I have two tuners, I haven't run into any conflicts yet, so I can't tell if the conflict notification/resolution is any good or if it just drops lower priority shows without telling you first.

Small hard drive, so many missing TiVo features
I'll admit that I'm spoiled. I've had a TiVo with 300Gb of storage in it and I've had a completely hacked DirecTiVo box that I could stream video from and stream music to. The Comcast box ships with a 120Gb hard drive and given that HDTV storage requirements are so high (about 10Gb per hour), the drive is much too small for an active box. I barely record anything and I'm always above 50% full. It'd be nice if they could bump it up to at least 250Gb, as hard drives are still getting cheaper everyday.

I also miss all the great features from TiVo. Stuff like wishlists matching actors, genre, or even show formats, and all the suggested recording features to help find new shows. I miss having a web interface so I could tell what's recorded from the comfort of my computer, before I head into the living room to watch TV. I miss the helpful sounds, the fast guide, and all the other great little parts of TiVo.

Conclusion
Don't get me wrong, the good outweighs the bad but after using a TiVo for so many years, the Comcast box just barely works enough for me to keep using it. If you've never had a DVR before, it'll probably be a great new device. If you've got a HDTV and haven't tried hi def content before, this is a great option.

Thanks to the proprietary nature of business, if you want to record non-over the air HD, at the moment you have to go through a cable or satellite company. Hopefully someday, the cable companies will open up their spec so that software packages like Windows Media Center and hardware like a HD TiVo can record this stuff. TiVo has been saying for a while that in 2006 they'll be launching a TiVo/Comcast box and I'm counting the days until that happens. Given the great HD channels plus a TiVo interface, I think that would be the ultimate package and get me excited about TiVo again.

November 2, 2005 in Product Reviews | Permalink | Comments (308) | TrackBack

Take the PVRblog survey, win a Harmony 688 remote

To better know my readers, I'm launching a PVRblog reader survey today and will run it for one week, closing it up on Nov. 8th. Taking the survey will help me find advertisers that fit well with the content here and the audience. If you've ever been annoyed with off-topic ads that have nothing to do with video recorders, TV, or TiVo, taking the survey will help tailor their messages so they're actually useful.

To sweeten the deal, I'm going to give away a Harmony 688 remote to a random survey responder after it's been up for the week. This remote is designed for DVRs and offers many of the same features found in my earlier review of the 880 remote. You can set it up to talk to all your devices and keep activities like watching a DVD or seeing what's on your TiVo be just one button click away, instead of ten clicks from five remotes.

Thanks in advance for taking the survey!

Update: looks like the advertising company I'm working with closed the survey up a few days early after getting almost a thousand responses (which apparently was plenty and they decided to end it). Sorry if anyone found this post too late, the winner of the remote has been picked and contacted and will be announced soon here.

November 1, 2005 in News | Permalink | Comments (24)

Apex Digital, David Ji, Chinese law

While not directly related to PVRs, I submit this news as I believe it to be of note.

Some of the longtime readers of PVRblog may remember news about the $30 DVD player or the ApeXtreme, a combination PVR and game system, both which were released by Apex Digital.  I was amazed at the growth of Apex Digital and wrote on this site back in March 2004,

It is incredible to think of a company less than 5 years old, with about 100 employees, selling over $1 billion, being second in marketshare to Sony (at least within the category of DVD players.) Apex seems to have converged at a point between the globalization of manufacturing and labor, the distribution of big-box retailers in America, and this "bargain culture," by providing product cheaper than any other competitor.

Well, it turns out it was too good to be true. 

The New York Times has a fascinating front-page article about David Ji, a naturalized Chinese-American electronics entrepreneur and co-founder of Apex Digital, who is currently being held in China in legal limbo and against his will.  Apex Digital did business with Sichuan Changhong Electric, a publically-traded entity that is majority owned by the city of Sichuan.  Changhong claims that Apex owes it $470 million whereas Apex claims that it owes Changhong less than $150. All of this is moot because Apex is close to bankruptcy.

China has attracted hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign investment and has become the world's third largest trading power. But its legal system, even when handling nonpolitical business cases, has progressed far more haltingly and still rarely backs investors or ordinary citizens against the state.
 
Difficulty enforcing contracts, rampant violations of copyrights and trademarks and protection of domestic industry champions have heightened trade tensions at a time when China is struggling to convince the outside world that its growing economic might poses no threat. Beijing is under heavy pressure to embrace global legal norms with the same fervor with which it has pursued foreign trade.
 
Courts and arbitration panels do resolve many business conflicts that arise from China's thriving market-oriented economy, and they can rule professionally and impartially. But when the fate of powerful companies like Changhong, which has 36,000 employees, lies in the balance, the judicial system does not act independently and offers no recourse for outsiders like Mr. Ji.
 
Ultimately, some legal scholars argue, China's legal system may not improve markedly until central and local government officials relinquish some control and stop putting short-term political goals, like protecting influential companies and suppressing dissent, above the law.

This reads like a primer on how not to do business in China, which is all the more interesting because the founders of Apex Digital are both natualized Chinese-Americans. 

Dispute Leaves U.S. Executive in Chinese Legal Netherworld - New York Times

November 1, 2005 in News | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBack