Series 3 TiVo down to $406 at Amazon

Thanks to a price slash and a $200 rebate, it looks like the Series 3 HD TiVo is finally in that coveted $300-500 range at Amazon, who is selling it for $406.95. If you've been waiting for a price break, this sounds like the best deal possible, given the news that they're working on a cheaper model with less features. [thanks Lance!]

TiVo updates from their quarterly call

Dave Zatz has a great roundup of new information about TiVo from their recent quarterly report call. There are three big things:

1. The CEO admitted 9 months after the Series 3 TiVo launched that it was too expensive. For something in development for 2-3 years before release, I can't possibly see how this could be a surprise. If you polled any typical TiVo user (not bleeding-edge home theater nuts who will buy anything at any price) previous to the S3 launch, I'm sure everyone would have said the $799 price was the biggest sticking point. That was the overwhelming feedback on launch day and continues to this day. Everyone was expecting a $499 box and hoping for something in the $300-500 range.
   
   It sounds like they want to release a "S3 lite" in that price range, but I don't know what features they'll be removing. Dual tuners is a must, but I could live without OTA recording (if it was just a cable HD device) and I suppose it didn't have to have the aluminum case and fancy OLED display.
   
2. TiVo units from Comcast won't be making the Spring 2007 release they were rumored to, and instead it looks like they'll start in a few select markets near the end of summer. The promise of these units is definitely cannibalizing S3 sales as half my friends balked at the $799 price and said they'd wait for the Comcast offering instead. It'll be interesting to see what features are dropped in order to still differentiate it from a S3 or S3 lite TiVo (though one thing's for sure: it'll have On Demand stuff that S3 TiVo boxes won't have)
   
3. TiVo is coming to Australia. This is great news for fans down under that go to great lengths to rig up a TiVo, though it sounds like TiVo will be tweaking/removing features in order to please  broadcasters. It's unfortunate when a technology company has to cripple or disable features they already release in other markets, and especially so when it's something as core to the device as fast-forwarding.

YouTube Coming to Apple TV

Wow, big announcement from Apple: YouTube Coming to Apple TV, New 160Gb model for $399.

I've loved my AppleTV since I got it, especially since I upgraded the hard drive to 160Gb with a weaknees kit, but one thing that is missing is being able to access YouTube content on my TV. Currently about the only easy way is to use a Wii running Opera, but that's far from convenient. It looks like Apple's struck a deal with Google to provide an easy interface to YouTube. Hopefully they allow stuff like logging into the service, so I can easily fetch playlists and my favorites to watch on my TV.

It's great to see them offering a 160Gb drive (though it'll certainly kill the upgrade drive market). The original 40Gb drive was simply too small for anything more than a few movies and half my music library. With the 160Gb drive, it's enough to cover all my music, all my movies, and every photograph I've taken for the past 5 years (and I have about 30Gb free to spare).

American Idol and TiVo

The LA Times picked up on this week's finale show, which ran about 6-8 minutes long: TiVo users 'Idol's' big loser.

During the season, the show never went long but for the final episode, they were several minutes off, to the point at which when my TiVo was finished playing the show, they hadn't even gotten to the drumroll and final verdict yet. Luckily, I was only about 15 minutes behind the present time, and I could shift over to the Live TV buffer and see the ending.

In the future, always remember to pad your live recordings by at least ten minutes (big sports games, I add one hour, oscars I add 2 hours extra).

How To Run TivoToGo 2.4 on Windows Vista

Reader Shane wrote in with detailed instructions on how to get the newest TiVo Desktop running in Windows Vista (which is unsupported at this time):

As you know, 2.4 came out the other day without *official* support of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 (both of which I had 2.3a installed). Well, using Orca and a simple tweak of a setting in the TivoToGo 2.4 .MSI installer, I've got it running on Vista.

Here's how I went about it on Vista

Download and install Orca - http://www.pek.com/projects/msi/orca.zip

Download TivoToGo 2.4 - http://www.tivo.com/4.9.4.1-2_win.asp

Run the TivoToGo installer with administrator privileges

When the installer gets to the point where it says it can't continue due to an invalid operating system, DO NOT click ok.

Point Windows explorer at C:\Users\<YOURUSERID>\AppData\Local\Temp

Sort the view by date so that the latest files appear at the top

Find the file with a .MSI extension with a random name consisting of alphanumerics with the time and date near when you launched the installer.

Right click on the file, copy.

Paste to your Desktop and rename to TivoToGo24.msi

Click OK on the Tivo installer.

Launch Orca.

Open TivoToGo24.msi with Orca.

Left click to select the LaunchCondition row in the left window pane.

Remove all entries from the right window pane.

Save the file, exit Orca.

Launch TivoToGo24.msi, install and enjoy.

Series 3 TiVo External Drive Upgrade FAQ

Engadget and the TiVoCommunity recently broke news that it was possible to use the eSATA slot on Series 3 TiVos, letting you easily upgrade to more storage space. The TiVoCommunity has a great, detailed FAQ on the process that highlights everything you'd ever want to know about the process.

If anyone has tried the eSATA upgrade, let us know how it worked for you, and any drawbacks?

SlingPlayer for Mac v1.0

The long awaited SlingPlayer for Mac 1.0 version finally came out a few days back. It's the first slingplayer that feels like a real mac app, with a much nicer and easier to use interface than previous versions. I used a few of the late betas for the past month or so without any problems, so if you've got a mac and a slingbox be sure to download the update.