TiVo, PVRs Not Making A Splash 494
Sudderth writes "Too expensive? Too complicated? Lack of support from the TV industry (which depends on the commercials that TiVo users fast-forward through)? Newsweek has an excellent article on why personal video recorders like TiVo and ReplayTV, which have been embraced by tech-heads, are being ignored by almost everyone else."
Straight from the article: (Score:5, Insightful)
If the question was "why do geeks like these while Joe Sixpack isn't buying them" then it seems pretty clear (and intuitive.) The average shmo is just fine with a 15" monitor, a cassette-tape player for the car (or a cheap CD), AOL for internet connection, and a $60 VCR from Wal-Mart for recording "Friends." Why would they pay seven or eight times as much for a device that essentially replicates their VCR, albeit at a higher quality (which they don't even care about), plus, it requires a smug 15-year-old to set it up?
Seems to me like the question answers itself.
Gee whiz... (Score:5, Insightful)
TiVo is one of those convergent technologies that most people just don't understand. DVDs have an easy analogy...'they're just like a VCR, except you don't have to rewind, and the picture's even better!' DVR's a pretty tough concept to those that aren't techoliterate. If you think that all Tivo does is "essentially replicates their VCR", you don't really get it either. Most really new innovations are misunderstood like this--after all, VCRs took, what, fifteen years to really penetrate the consumer market? (JoeSix's first impression of VCR: 'Why the hell do I need a VCR when I can just watch it on TV or go to the theater?')
The answer: go door to door? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The answer: go door to door? (Score:4, Funny)
The problem right now may be that the main potential users of DVRs are those people who would use them to fast forward through commercials. Unfortunately they're the same people who hit the "mute" button when the adverts come on and so don't hear all the adverts for DVRs!
Re:The answer: go door to door? (Score:3, Interesting)
Think about this: if there were an episode of say, Friends, that had Monica and Chandler getting one and they start fighting over who gets to put the season passes in (or something), and they actually show the Friends cast being excited about it, I think that would do a lot to make people see what it does and how cool it is.
After all, isn't NBC one of Tivo's investors?
I don't believe for one second that this is going to happen, though.
Re:Straight from the article: (Score:5, Funny)
Baywatch.
Rewind. Play. Pause. Play. Pause. Play. Pause.
Rewind. Play. Pause. Play....
Re:Straight from the article: (Score:4, Interesting)
In addition to this, I would say that general knowledge of the existance of TiVo is rather minimal in the non-geek catagory of TV viewers. We know about it because of articles like this one being posted on the `Net, but as the article pointed out, the networks stopped running commercials for TiVo because they realized its potential threat to kill their advertising revenue. People just don't know it exists in the first place. Before you go home, or tomorrow morning at work, ask your non-geek co-workers if they've ever heard of TiVo. I bet less than half even know what you're talking about.
Also, I know about it, but hear so little news that I quickly forget about it. I've intended to research the Sony TiVo pictured in the article for some time now and keep forgetting. I'll be swinging by Best Buy tonight to get another 'hands on' demo before I head to the house. This is really something we should all be jumping at.
~LoudMusic
Re:Straight from the article: (Score:5, Insightful)
It can be very complicated to set up, if you have enough components to connect at the same time. But, the guy with the TV, VCR, and cable box shouldn't have a problem.
I have a replayTV, and I don't use it like a VCR really. Sure, I record with it, but its much different than that. I oftentimes start watching shows 15 minues in and skip the commercials. I can now tape Iron Chef at 2AM, MacGyver reruns at 4AM, etc. I would never take the effort to set a VCR to do this. The interactive channel guide is great as well. I pause live TV all the time now.
These are not things we have ever done before, so I don't think it hits people why they might like it. It seems like a VCR that costs $400.
Re:Straight from the article: (Score:4, Flamebait)
Given that my TiVo had to hook together with the cable box, my TV, my VCR, DVD player, sound system, and the phone line, I thought it was going to be awful. It was one of the easiest things I've ever set up. They had pretty much idiot-proof instructions and every cord or cable you could need for almost any possible configuration of devices. I think they could legitimately stress ease of setup and use in their ads and win over some Joe SixPacks who fight with their VCRs. (Clear directions! Record a whole season by pushing one button! Never look at a blinking 12:00 again!)
(BTW -- I yanked the VCR out of the mix 2 weeks later and moved it to another TV. Between the TiVo and my DVD player, the VCR was pointless)
Re:Straight from the article: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Straight from the article: (Score:3, Interesting)
I consider myself Joe 12-pack... The reason why I haven't bought Tivo yet is, something else gets in the way, like money. I travel down the aisle in Best Buy, and the only way I could probably buy TiVo is is they were placed in the front. Since I am Joe 12-pack I am easily distracted travelling all the way to the back....
"Ohhhh GTA3, and FFX...."
or maybe
"Yowsa new Brittany Spears...." (See guilty pleasure) [slashdot.org]
or even
"(Homer Sound) GeForce 3 Video card mmmmmm...."
and always my $299 I brought to buy TiVo is somewhat reduced to more than half of that and I wait till next paycheck, and try to make my way to the back of Best Buy again. Maybe I should buy on-line.
Re:Straight from the article: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Straight from the article: (Score:2)
Marketing (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, one of my friends has two ReplayTVs, and is considering getting a third. He's also a Phoenix alumnus, the chief programmer of the Phoenix 4 BIOS. He knows more about computer hardware than almost anybody alive, and he never for a second considered using a computer to do this.
Similarly, many of us are fully capable of writing our own operating systems, or building our own cars. Very few of us have actually done so. Maybe the pre-packaged aspect has a lot of appeal to most people.
Anybody that is smart enough to set up their computer as a TiVo is also smart enough to know that the commercial boxes do a better job with less effort.
Re:Marketing (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure your computer can do a lot of stuff, but when you buy the TiVO you're buying more than a small PC, you're buying software that kicks ass. IMHO it has one of the most intuitive UIs of just about all the software I've ever used.
Re:Marketing (Score:2, Insightful)
#standard_I_am_a_geek_so_I_build_a_PC_to_do_thi
Can you build or make a PC act as a DVR? Sure.
However, no PC-DVR solution comes close to offering the sort of features or ease of use that Replay or Tivo offer - AND with a PC-DVR solution you're going to end up spending *more* money. Seriously.
Tivo + service is $450-500. You can't build a PC-DVR solution for that amount of money that will still inlclude:
* A remote
* Detailed TV schedule data
* Able to record up to 30 hours of programming
* Easy to use UI that is usable on a TV screen
* (and this is a big one) DOES NOT CRASH
I know many folks here pride themselves on being able to hack something together with the illusion of saving money...but don't forget, your *time* is worth something too. I guess if you don't value your time, building an inferior solution from scratch in 4 or 5 hours may be a good solution.
But, I'm not in college in anymore, and personally being able to take something out of the box, and have it ready to use when I turn it on is worth it.
Re:Marketing (Score:2)
What about LIRC [lirc.org]?
* Detailed TV schedule data
XML TV [ic.ac.uk]
* Able to record up to 30 hours of programming
I think thats only limited by the size of the hdd.
* Easy to use UI that is usable on a TV screen
What?? You wouldn't use cron?
* (and this is a big one) DOES NOT CRASH
I don't see how this project is anymore crash-prone than others...
The "cool" factor is there, but that's not why I'd do it.... oh who am I kidding, that's the only reason.
As for the cheap factor, I don't know if it would be, but it sure doesn't seem so. The main things you need are a decent cpu, hard drive, and capture card. And at least you wouldn't be tied to TiVo at the hip for the schedule uptdates.
What about quality of the hardware? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, 300k units doesn't sound like a complete failure to me.
Shabby? (Score:3, Interesting)
I love my own Tivo, but my experience is very consistent with the Newsweek story. I'm a lifelong techie -- I'm the person other people call to deal with the VCRs and computers -- but I still make mistakes programming the thing. It's a classic example of a hacker system (it even looks like an older PC, both inside and out), full of design decisions that are sort of logical, but aren't obvious until they screw you over.
What really gives the Tivo a rep for bad quality is the business of constantly updating the software. This makes sense in a hacker toy, but not in a consumer appliance -- not until the process is a lot more reliable than it is. I suspect that most of the "hardware failures" are actually symptoms of this problem.
In my own case, my system started exhibitng weird little symptoms vaguely suggestive of the hard disk developing a bad spot. (This actually happens from time to time -- which makes it very bad that only the manufacturer, or a warantee-voiding hacker, can do a disk diagnostic.) But trial and error conviced me that it was a software bug, cause by some failure in the last software upgrade.
I could send it in -- but that's a big expensive hassle. Fortunately I found a semi-practical workaround. I do a soft reset every 2 or 3 days. How many people could have figured that out? Non-slashdotters, I mean.
Wow! (Score:5, Informative)
Wow! Combining satellite TV with TiVo like features! That sounds like some kind of a Satellite and TiVo combo! Wouldn't it be great if TiVo made these! And what if they had two tuners so you could record to shows at once!
(for those of you who don't get it: DirecTV with TiVo has been out for over one and a half years, and dual tuners have been working for 4 or 5 months now)
" Indeed, models of TiVo now cost from $299 to $599,"
I paid $200 ($300 with a $100 rebate) for two DirecTV with TiVos, a 2x4 multiswitch, and a dual LNB dish. DirecTivos are selling for as little as $49 (http://directv.tivo.com), as little as $79 for existing DirecTV subscribers.
----
BTW, this article was discussed on the AVS TiVo forum quite a few days ago (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb)
Can't do an elevator talk for TiVo (Score:4, Insightful)
I never understood the "Pause Live TV!" mantra - with TiVo, I almost never watch live TV. I watch the shows I like, when I like. (And TiVo makes it so easy to catch them and zip through the ads!)
I think that the PVR market's best hope is the evangelism of its customers. Certainly, TiVo users have been elevating that to an art for quite a while - do a demo for some friends (and their spouses...) - it's likely they'll be hooked.
I do find it interesting that MS has apparently thrown in the towel so soon - you'd think that if any company could use marketing effectively it was Billy-Bob and company.
Anyway, time to go home and check out what TiVo has waiting for me...
Re:Can't do an elevator talk for TiVo (Score:4, Interesting)
Until, while on vacation with friends (also tivo owners), I had to explain to a five-year-old why this _particular_ television didn't have her favorite shows inside. And that's when it hit me; she's never known anything but tivo; she doesn't understand that shows are on at certain times and not at others. At home she can sit down any time she wants, and Teletubbies (or whatever) is there, waiting. No fuss, she can just sit down and watch whenever she wants...
Add to all that the obvious bonus of not needing to trust a child to keep her oatmeal off of videotapes and dvds; tivo becomes invaluable......
- mark
Re:Can't do an elevator talk for TiVo (Score:2, Funny)
It's like your teenagers who take care of programming your VCR, but don't want to borrow the car.
Is this necessarily a bad thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is this necessarily a bad thing? (Score:2)
Maybe the best thing for them would have been to stay privately-held, so they wouldn't have this pressure. But, thems the breaks.
Who cares about J.Q. Public (Score:2, Flamebait)
It's not like there are groups of brain surgeons sitting around, "You know, brain surgery is great, but until we make it easy enough for Joe Sixpack, we're never going to get anywhere."
Let Ma and Pa keep their 1970's TV with over the air antenna, who cares
Re:Who cares about J.Q. Public (Score:2, Informative)
The force in the universe that will take your TiVo away is called bankruptcy. It's called TiVo not selling enough units to support themselves and continue offering the service. TiVo is a consumer product (unlike your idiotic brain surgery analogy), and as such it needs to appeal to a very wide section of the populace. That means that it needs to be easy to use, affordable, and well marketed.
Who cares? If you like your TiVo, you do.
Re:Who cares about J.Q. Public (Score:2)
Or just some guy who's bigger than him breaking into his house and taking it away.
I mean, come on, no force in the UNIVERSE?
Who cares about I.M.Geek? (Score:2)
Kjella
I Love My Tivo (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I Love My Tivo (Score:5, Insightful)
Word Processor Salesman: You'll love this, it will make your life loads easier!
Potential Buyer: It's a typewriter.
WPS: No, this lets you edit things before putting them on paper! You won't have to worry about retyping a whole page because you made a single typo!
PB: I've got correction tape on my typewriter.
WPS: Yes, but with this you can check your spelling! No more reaching for the dictionary or painstakingly proofreading your documents!
PB: I've been using a typewriter for years, and that's never been a problem. I spell excellently, thank you.
WPS: You can actually move entire blocks of text to different sections of the document! Look!
PB: Why on earth would I want to do that?! Now you're just being silly. This will never catch on.
WPS: You don't understand, it's a whole new way of writing! It will change the world!
PB: Are you high?
--
Join the TiVolution!
TIVO Rocks (Score:5, Interesting)
One big problem I see with it is TIVO's revenue model..... like everybody else out there now they want to sell the box to break even (or a loss) and then make it up with a monthly fee. I have a DirecTIVO - and my program guide information comes directly off the satellite. So basically I'm paying TIVO $10/month to keep the box functioning. Would you be willing to pay $10/month for your VCR after buying it? Nope. It's bound to fail.
(Yes, I know i get TiVOlution magazine and Showcases and crap. I never look at them. Why would i look at showcases for networks that have PAID tivo to push their stuff down my throat.....)
No surf (Score:2)
The ironic thing is that the automatic channel display makes surfing a lot more fun!
Re:TIVO Rocks (Score:2, Informative)
VCRs vs. Tivo (Score:4, Insightful)
A VCR costs about $100 and can play the stack of tapes I have sitting next to my TV. If I want to record something I buy a six hour tape for $2 and I'm good to go.
A Tivo on the other hand costs a couple hundred dollars and can only play back what you personally recorded on it. This means that the Tivo only has utility to people who tape a fair amount of stuff of TV. That makes the big assumption of there being anything on TV worth recording at all. I watch a fair amount of television, but I've only used my VCR twice in the last year. Once was to tape Buffy while I was at a concert, and the other time was to tape some CNN footage on Sept 11.
Just my $.02 on why I'll probably never get a Tivo, no matter how many whiz-bang features get added to it.
stipe42
Re:VCRs vs. Tivo (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:VCRs vs. Tivo (Score:2, Insightful)
Basically you tell it 3 or 4 shows you like, maybe review a few more that sound good but you've never seen before and you watch them.
Like tonight I'll go home, preview what's on this weekend(using my Tivo to do this), set my unit to record a few promising things and then start watching stuff I've record over the last week.
Then over the weekend I'll watch the stuff the Tivo records for me. It'll even record shows it thinks I'll like based on past viewing habits.
I own a VCR. I've never used my VCR to record a show before, ever. I couldn't live without my Tivo.
Re:VCRs vs. Tivo (Score:5, Insightful)
>>people who tape a fair amount of stuff of TV.
Thats where you're wrong.
It may sound patronizing, but until you've really used a Tivo you don't understand it. Having a PVR totally changes how you watch TV. I never taped anything on tv. Either i'd catch it when it was on, or i'd miss it. With Tivo i just give it the list of the shows i care about and it grabs them when they're on and there's always there when i sit down. If the show changes time, day - no problem. Tivo grabs it.
>>I watch a fair amount of television
right. But with a PVR you can watch it whenever you want.
I'm not a moron - I can program a VCR. But you know what? Generally it's more headache than it's worth.... the show changed time, i forgot to turn the VCR off, i forgot to put a tape in, i forgot to rewind the tape, blah blah blah.
Tivo is like your own personal video-on-demand. Sure - you can't order up a show that it doesn't hold, but once you train it with what you want it's inventory is always full.
If they are ever going to take off, PVR's need to stop:
a)trying to sell it at a VCR. It isn't. Not even close.
b)quit trying to sell the 'pause live tv' angle. Sure it can do it, but it's so much more.
Yeah yeah, i know i sound like a salesman. But i can't remember a piece of tech that i've enjoyed more in the last 10 years than my tivo (ok - maybe my portable mp3 player
I got my tivo back in august when i moved apartments. My VCR is STILL in the box and i have no reason to take it out. Anybody want to buy a top of the line Sony VCR - low milage?
Re:VCRs vs. Tivo (Score:2, Informative)
It is not designed to replace a VCR. It is not intended for long term storage like VCR tapes. Its greatest benefit is to free you from having to watch shows when the networks want you to watch them. It lets you decide what shows you are interested in, and then watch them at your convenience. Of course, you could still do this with a VCR, but it is far more convenient to do so with a TiVo.
Also, the complaints that it is difficult to set up are strange. You can hook it up in as simple a setup as you would your VCR. In fact, if you simply plug the power in, and plug the video into your TV, it will show you how to do the rest, and tell you when everything is working correctly.
They also did a great job in packing enough cables (coax, s-video, rca, optical, etc...) to hook up to any configuration
Re:VCRs vs. Tivo (Score:3, Interesting)
I watch a fair amount of television, but I've only used my VCR twice in the last year.
That's exactly why a Tivo makes sense for you. Right now you're watching television shows when they're on. You're scheduling your life around what you want to watch. With a PVR, you start arranging your television viewing around your life.
I suspect the above sounds a bit grandiose. I was suspicious of such descriptions as well. My description matched yours. I watched a fair amount of television, but I didn't tape much. For me, taping was a hassle. Sure, it's cheap, but you can't quickly hunt down a particular show you want to watch, you have to remember to swap out tapes as they fill, you have to manage your tape collection ("I can't reuse this tape because there is one show in the middle I still haven't watched"). So I got a Tivo viewing it as a VCR replacement.
Sure enough, my Tivo did replace my VCR. All of the taping hassle went away, and I'm thankful for that. But my Tivo did so much more. I don't really know when my favorite shows are on, or what channel they're on. I watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it. It changed my viewing habits. Witohut the need to manage a VCR or watch television live, I've been finding all sorts of neat shows that run at inconvient times.
If you watch a fair amount of television, give a Tivo a try. Many places have a "no questions asked, 100% refund" available. I think you'll find it significantly improves your television experience.
(I am not affiliated in any way with Tivo beyond being a satisfied customer.)
Re:VCRs vs. Tivo (Score:3, Interesting)
This just goes to show that Tivo really is doing a poor job of marketing, because:
- You don't get it. You're still thinking in terms of taping vs watching.
- You (or anyone else who watches a serial don't-miss-an-episode show
like Buffy) are Tivo-bait. If you ever make a mistake of giving Tivo a try,
it will ensnare you worse than crack.
Somebody at Tivo needs to read your remarks and figure out a way to clear up your misconceptions, because I think your misconceptions happen to be very widely shared. It really isn't your fault that you're wrong; it's their job if they want your money.Re:VCRs vs. Tivo (Score:4, Interesting)
About the time my fiancee had to go in for some surgery that was going to have her laid up for several weeks, I decided to take one last close look at it to see if there was something that would help her be comfortable during the time she was going to be immobilized. I read some articles in DejaNews (I can't bring myself to say Gooooogle), and stumbled across one that described the experience for a new TiVo user in a way that I could identify with.
The writer was one of those who wrote in a way that indicated (convincingly) that he thought much the way I did, and I felt that I could benefit from his judgment. He had decided to take the risk, spent the money, had a very good experience, and felt good enough about it to write it up and share it with the world.
I decided to buy a TiVo for my fiancee. I expected to spend several hundred dollars. I made several trips and called around to the local stores -- TiVo's were largely sold out, mostly because they'd been "clearanced" last summer. A few more calls revealed that there might be a few available in neighboring towns. On a Saturday morning, I called a WalMart that had two low-end Philips units available for $100 apiece. I drove up and bought them both, figuring that I could use the second one myself at that price. Got one set up at in her room (impressive collection of cables came with it -- everything I could possibly have needed), and it started storing her favorite shows.
Turned out to be the best thing I could have done. While she was bedridden, that thing pulled in West Wing, all manner of Law & Order and enough movies to keep her from going stir-crazy during her down-time. I got the other one set up at my place and it's been grabbing science fiction movies and network programming according to my preferences.
Worked so well that I bought disk drive upgrades to substantially increase the capacity (I won't say how much it cost -- she might read this).
The people who write "it's more than a VCR -- it changes the way you watch TV" are right, but I think I'd say it a little differently.
It improves the whole television *experience* by completely freeing you from the scheduling set up by the networks and/or your cable company. It is easy to underestimate the impact of this -- it's the kind of thing that you only really appreciate after it's done.
Examples (and please substitute your own program names for my preferences -- don't pick on me for my choices):
1. Not missing episodes -- I was out of the house most evenings for a couple of weeks. TiVo stored up Babylon 5, Farscape, Enterprise and various Star Trek shows for me. When I was back and had the time, the TiVo menu gave me the option to watch everything I'd missed at *my* convenience.
2. Relief from schedule anxiety -- I didn't realize how much of a change this was until it hit me that I didn't have to *care* what shows were on at what times & channels. I just tell TiVo what I like and then forget about the schedule. When I have time, I browse the menu. "Oh, look! Five more ST:TNG, two Babylon 5's and three new movies! I think I'll make popcorn while I decide what to watch!"
3. Pause/rewind function -- while this is discounted by many, it really is *very* nice to be able to freeze the show when the phone rings or there's another distraction or something happens that you want to share with someone who's not in the room. Nested example (includes #1 above): when the Klingon on Enterprise was observing an image of Chronos using holodeck technology and he pointed and exclaimed "I can see my house from here!" I laughed out loud! I played it a number of times, and when the madness had been reduced to chuckles, I paused the program, called my fiancee and played the soundbyte for her. She checked her TiVo, found that it had stored the same program (this is a weeks-old episode) and watched just that portion herself. Yes, perhaps we're both nuts, but we got to share a very nice, humorous moment because both TiVos knew we liked that show. I believe the word for this is "Priceless."
Advice:
1. Don't pay full price for a unit from Best Buy without first checking around to see who might have them for a lower price. I saved a lot by calling local stores and checking prices.
2. Relax about the charge for the service. It's $9.95 a month for access to the program scheduling information and automatic software upgrades. Come to grips with that right up front. This whole thing is about having options that you don't have already, and this is the price (along with the up-front cost of the hardware). For *me* (and I guess for lots of others), it has definitely been worth it.
3. Read the manuals and look for tips on the 'net. You don't *have* to, but it can help to gain an understanding of how your preference info is used by your TiVo. It's not rocket science, but it's best to understand it.
For me, at least, this sure beats the TV experience the way it *used* to be.
Re:Missed the point (Score:2)
Re:Missed the point (Score:2, Insightful)
But I think most people aren't really watching "TV" so much as watching shows. Even when you sit and channel surf you're tuning into the types of shows you like, whether's that Star Trek or a Friends re-run.
What a Tivo does is "surf" for you and grab the shows you like, or even shows it thinks you'll like. So when you are feeling lazy and just plop down in front of the TV you can not only channel surf, but you'll also have 20 pre-recorded shows that either you've told it you want or it thought you might like.
My Tivo records Buffy, Smallville, Angel, Southpark, Stargate SG-1, Earth Final Conflict, Andromeda, Futurama and several other shows whenever a new episode comes on. I simply told it to "record any new eposide of Buffy" and it handles all the details, the time slot, the channel and I can watch it whenever I want to plop down in front of the tube.
It don't get any lazier than that.
what's so hard? (Score:5, Funny)
1. Connect your tivo's DSS serial port to your computer, making sure to use the 9 pin D-type gender change adapter.
2. Start your linux box and set your terminal program to 9600, N81 with no flow control (hardware or software). Also make sure the COM port you're using in the terminal program matches the COM port the TiVo is plugged into.
3. Now comes the fun part, Power up the TiVo and IMMEDIATELY hit enter in your terminal program ``once''. The timing on this is a tad tricky. If you're having trouble getting the timing right you can press enter repeatedly, just be careful not to overshoot the prompt.
4. The TiVo will prompt you with a ``Verify: '' prompt. The password is ``factory'' (no quotes). The password was discovered by sorphin. This password seems to work with some units. If your unit doesn't take the factory password see section 4.8 on how to change the password.
5. Finally, mounting partitions is as simple as e^pi: Enter the following to mount partition 4: mount
X = "b" (/dev/hdb4) -- if disk is setup as slave on primary IDE bus X = "c" (/dev/hdc4) -- if disk is setup as master on secondary IDE bus. X = "d" (/dev/hdd4) -- if disk is setup as slave on secondary IDE bus. (Note that X will never be "a", master on the primary IDE bus.) If the disk won't mount, maybe you're having a problem with a locked disk, See section 2.15 for information on how to unlock the disk. Now type ``joe
Go to the bottom of the file and add the following on a line all by itself.
``/bin/bash &
.Save the changes. (CTRL-K CTRL-X)
Wasn't that easy, AND fun? Hey, where did you go? Come back here!
OMG (Score:2)
MOD PARENT UP!
best humor today. seriously. thanks. i can go home now.
TiVo can't be "sold" (Score:2, Insightful)
The trouble with TiVo is that it can't be sold. What I mean is, all the features of the device and the way it changes how you watch TV, cannot be related by some spotty kid in an electronics store.
The best marketing these guys get is word of mouth from us geeks. That, and coming to our homes and seeing the way TiVo et al work in a *real* environment.
Do you have to ask why..? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll Take My PVR Homebrewed Anyday (Score:3, Informative)
My current setup includes an Athlon 1.4 hooked to a digital cable receiver and another Athlon 1.4 system hooked to a DSS satellite receiver.
And why is this so cool? Choice,.. that's why. I can watch these recorded files anywhere. I can choose their final resting format as well. MPEG1, no problem. MPEG2,.. no problem. VCD,.. coming right up. Divx file,.. got that too. All this and the commerials get removed in the process.
The flexibility of the recording format is nearly eclipsed by the ease of use the custom web interface offers. I am free to manage the queue of TV shows from any computer anywhere.
So for those reasons,.. You'll probably never see a Tivo in my house.
--Aaron
Re:I'll Take My PVR Homebrewed Anyday (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'll Take My PVR Homebrewed Anyday (Score:2, Interesting)
Do you have any information about your custom system?
Re:I'll Take My PVR Homebrewed Anyday (Score:3, Informative)
Why I don't want one. (Score:4, Insightful)
Also I UNDERSTAND what these things are. Quite frankly, I don't see the NEED to buy yet another PC (which is pretty much what it is) to do something that my current PC could probabally do, if someone put the time to it.
These things just aren't useful. In order to actually USE it, I would have to have no life. Which, btw, is what it's supposed to let you have.
Re:Why I don't want one. (Score:3, Informative)
I watch more TV now that I did before, because the TiVo has always got something interesting for me to watch. I spend no time channel surfing anymore. None at all. The TiVo does it for me.
Doesn't matter thanks to satellite (Score:3, Interesting)
The Why and Why Not (Score:3, Insightful)
If techies really do embrace TiVo more, I have another theory: we're used to going after technology that makes things work our way. Whether its TV on our schedule, like TiVo, or a desktop set up exactly how WE want it instead of how some faceless corporation wants it (Enlightenment [enlightenment.org]), we're used to manipulating things for our convenience. If it is information (as TV is), then we believe we can and should get it our way, and anything that promotes that, we embrace. The general public will follow along when they're as used to controlling the flow of information as we are.
untimely? (Score:3, Insightful)
TiVo has been around for what? 2-3 years? It's still young, the only technology that grew in that short a time is *maybe* DVD's; *THE* quickest adopted technology ever.
Calm down folks. These things take time...
Positioning is hard (Score:5, Insightful)
The original positioning of pausing live TV was a mistake. It was chosen, I think, because it was a feature that was simple to understand. What the public doesn't get is that real users of the boxes hardly ever pause live TV because they hardly ever watch live TV.
"Hardly ever watch live TV" isn't a great positioning either because it might actually scare people away.
They also tried "skip the stuff you don't want to see" implying commercial skipping, but tread a fine line here at annoying the networks. Since the average household watches some 7 hours of TV per day, including about 2 hours of advertising, "get back 60 hours of your life every month" might be a good positioning but it can't last because there's no free lunch, and commercial skip is a temporary free lunch.
They ended up on "TV, your way" which doesn't say a whole lot.
The answer may simply be the only way these market is word of mouth, and they do market very well by word of mouth. Every buyer is a giant fan who pushes it on his friends. But that's slow, not the huge success story people expect from new high tech.
Re:Positioning is hard (Score:2, Insightful)
Not since I got my TiVo. I can't believe how much less TV I watch now. I used to sit around in front of the TV watching crap waiting for something interesting to come on, and I would spend hours doing that. Not anymore. I watch just a couple hours a day now because I sit down and watch when I want to and only the stuff I wanted to watch.
If I'm busy doing something, or I'm suddenly in the mood to do something (like say wash the dishes), I can do it and not have to care about what's on or about to come on TV. I can take care of things while I've got the energy, instead of trying to catch my show and then afterward trying to re-find the energy to do whatever it was I wanted to do.
It really is hard to get across to people just how much it changes your TV viewing. My family and friends used to say "I don't watch enough TV to get one." But they've all got one now because I kept going on and on about how great it is. A couple of live demonstrations helped too. And now that they have it, they'd never give it up!
The only way I used to be able to know which day of the week it was was by what shows were on that night. Now with TiVo I have no idea which day of the week it is. Everyday is Saturday. Seriously.
A TiVo really shouldn't be compared to a VCR. It's not like it at all. It's like being the owner of your own TV station. The TiVo is just a buffer for the downlink from the master source.
Re:Positioning is hard (Score:2)
One answer might be to offer a free month trial, with a guy who comes to your house and installs it. This would work well, as after you have it you won't give it up -- but the margins on the boxes are not high enough to pay for something like this.
As for how much TV you watch, I found that after I got the Tivo I started watching more (which is bad) but that over time it settled out. The problem is movies, there are all these good movies that the box picks up no matter what time of day they are on.
simple... (Score:2)
Of course at 150-200$ without hard drive, it would be really interresting, but that would be for geeks, because most people don't want the hassle to stick disk drive in the machine.
Then again I wonder how well it would have done with "swappable bays" with cheap 40giggers, you could carry them around, they don't generate that much heat so you could pad the drive container a bit, plus I'm sure it would be a used feature, heck add a "bay" thing that connects to your IDE port on your tower and you're set, you could swap from tv to computer to friends without hassles.
The idea is to have the most features and bypass the long workaround for a good price. Right now we can go from tv to computer and computer to tv with a bit of messing around, a device that would simplify all that would be a nice addition but it won't happen without hacking, since everybody seems to be going to content protection and instead of giving features and helping for the workarounds, they are doing the exact opposite, putting content scrambling and balbabla, of course this WON'T sell. At all.
One thing is look at all the TiVo hacking since a year, LAN? why LAN? because you want the video accessible on your computer, bigger drive? why hacking for bigger drive and not ordering a unit that has the drive already? Because there are still some people are not dumb enough to pay 2x the price of a storage device when they can stick it themselves.
Anyone that will come out with such a device will be a winner. There is a demand for a lan/swappablebay/noprotection/etc tivo out of the box for a good price, but... no one wants to do such a monster out of the box, even if its pretty simple, simply because they cannot afford gazzilion of $ for fighting MPAA lawyers.
Why I don't already own a Tivo (Score:2)
Because people think it is a VCR replacement... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is that it changes how people watch tv, and until you have lived with a PVR you cannot understand the fundamental difference.
How many slashdotters have broadband? Is it just for speed, or is it because it is always on, and it changes the way that you use the internet?
But, it is very difficult to explain to people the benefit of always on internet access, and how it changes the relationship you have with internet resources. And broadband has done just about as well as PVR.
Having a PVR, means, you watch TV when you want, and you watch WHAT you want, when you want to.
It means not having to live with commercials, and that you only have to spend 22 minutes watching a 30 minute show.
But more importantly, you can ask the question, what did they say? Did you see that? Having been a PVR customer now for about a year, and being comfortable with the PVR lifestyle, I find it very irritating to watch TV any other way. Oddly, I have found that when I am in other passive viewing environments (like movies or sporting events), that I will have a similar reaction (what did they say? What was that), and have a strong desire for wanting to resee the last 10 seconds over again.
Just as AOL has access to the Internet, and it is hard to explain the difference between always on and dial-up, and VCR's provide time shifting and movies, it is hard to explain convincingly the benefits of a PVR beyond a VCR.
But I will not give mine up, either my DSL, or my PVR, because they are fundamental now to my interaction with the Internet, and my interaction with TV content.
Why I won't buy a TIVO (Score:2, Interesting)
What happened to the days when a company produced a product and just SOLD IT, instead of trying to profit off every single thing they possibly could? I don't see wal-mart trying to track what I buy, and they're doing great. I don't have to fill out a form to buy a Sony monitor. I don't have to plug my Nintendo into a phone line to get it to let me play games, why should I have to in order to watch TV?
It's all big frustrating mess, and I refuse to support companies that value me not for the money I spend on their products, but rather for the money they make off selling my information to 100 other companies, who in turn sell it to another 100 companies each.
Re:Why I won't buy a TIVO (Score:3, Informative)
They don't record every last thing I do. They don't know where I sit on my couch, or if my kittens like to curl up next to me or on the back of the sofa. It doesn't record what I eat when I watch TV, how many lights I have on, or if my hair is pulled back or loose.
It keeps track of what I watch, sure...But I opted out of them actually acquiring the data from my box. The packet sniffer I ran during a daily call actually told me that it wasn't sending them my viewing habits once I opted out. Although, it was kind of nice for them to know that I liked MST3K and Babylon 5...And hopefully they would have used it to have Scifi keep them on the air.
So...I'm wondering what you're complaining about.
Re:Why I won't buy a TIVO (Score:2)
I suppose they could beam mind-reading rays alongside the satellite signal, you know, on a sideband or something. Then they could find out what I like without me having to even press a button. But I'm sure your aluminum foil hat would protect against that sort of thing.
What happened to the days when a company produced a product and just SOLD IT, instead of trying to profit off every single thing they possibly could?
Oh yeah, TiVo is rolling in profits. Look, the service is: you tell it what you like, it remembers your choices and finds similar things on the schedule that you might otherwise overlook, and records them for you. That's what the fucking service IS. You may as well complain about your computer needing a phone line to browse websites.
I don't see wal-mart trying to track what I buy, and they're doing great.
That's because they are much better at tracking you than Safeway.
I don't have to plug my Nintendo into a phone line to get it to let me play games, why should I have to in order to watch TV?
You don't. The phone line is optional. You only need it if you want the guide, and the proactive record-what-you-like features.
I don't understand why PVRs aren't more popular. (Score:2)
Ease of use? I can't say for sure about Tivo, but the Dish 501 -- You can't get easier. Assuming your dish is already installed, you plug the 501 in and it sets its own time. Press "Guide" and you get a program guide. Move the cursor around and pick a program. Press "Record" and it will be recorded. Press the PVR button to see a list of your previously recorded programs, by name.
I'd be surprised if Tivo was much different. Of course, the Tivo has a lot more features for finding things you "might" be interested in.
Maybe the $10/month charge is enough of an annoyance to turn people off -- there isn't any charge (other than your regular satellite subscription) for Dish's PVR501.
I still have the VCR for rented tapes, but the PVR completely changes the way I watch TV. Rather than look for something I'm interested in, and maybe ending up watching something I don't care much for just because it's the least offensive thing on at the moment, I have the last 30 hour or so of stuff that looked interesting enough that I clicked "Sure, record this" in the program guide.
I almost never watch "off the air" any more - And I don't see many commercials any more, not even in fast forward, by use of the "forward 30sec" and "back 10sec" buttons.
Even when watching off the air, you can use the "back 10 sec" button for instant replays, or pause the show. This is a feature you get used to real quick.
Maybe "the masses" just don't understand how useful these features are. I bet Tivo could get a lot of customers by renting the boxes, and making the first two months free. Once you get used to having these features, you won't want to give 'em up!
Re:I don't understand why PVRs aren't more popular (Score:2)
there are a lot of things my wife and I enjoy, but we don't want are little ones watching them and this feature would be very nice.
cool (Score:2)
cause, really we kind of need commercials.
Unless product placement revenue could replace it.
I can see friends now:
Rachel "I need to freshen up"
Chandler: "You going to use a feminin hygene product?" haha
Rachel "why yes I am, I'm going to use Massegel, fresh women its number one on the market" holds box up.
...Yikes!
It's good. (Score:2, Interesting)
Probably what we'll end up with is combination of all of the above. Advertising works better when the consumer is unaware that they are being infected with the meme (IE when the defenses are down due to invovlement in a racey scene in sex in the city)..
I can just see the Trojan Man showing up in the middle of my favorite PPV.
ReplayTV 4000 Show sharing site / hub (Score:2)
There's a decent place Ive been using to find and share shows with other users. Its not a bad site, over 90 users and 900 shows.... great if you missed that last episode of Alias or Buffy.
Planet Replay [planetreplay.com]
For the same reason Divx failed. (Score:2)
- Who has a phone jack in their living room, besides the one already taken up by a phone?
- Preceived disadvantage of interupting the phone because of the DVR.
- Psychological seperation between entertainment center and phone service.
Additionally, I think that subscription requirement adds to the preceived sticker shock ("Not only to I have to shell out $500 for this, I gotta also fork over how much per month?" The reason it's been as successful as it has been is the incredible convience it offers. Of course, I don't have one simply because my entertainment center is all full of other components.-sk
Wah (Score:3, Informative)
Oh well...maybe we'll get it 5 years or so
Why TiVo's don't sell (Score:4, Insightful)
Broadcasters because people skip past the ads that bring in the bucks. Remember, from their point of view, programming is just filling to make sure you watch the ads they're broadcasting.
The VCR/DVD manufacturers hate it because TiVo doesn't just threaten sales of their players head to head, but also confuses the market - give Joe too many choices and he's more likely to take a wait-and-see approach, and will buy nothing rather than risk buying the wrong thing.
Without either the backing of major software providers (the broadcasters) or hardware manufacturers (the VCR/DVD crowd), TiVo is starved of publicity dollars, and that means...
2. Not many consumers know about TiVo.
I'd bet that our Joe Average is barely aware of TiVo's existence, let alone is aware of its features and benefits. And if Joe Average hasn't heard about it, he's not going to be buying it.
(Remember, Joe gets up in the morning, has breakfast, perhaps reads a paper, goes to work, comes home, has dinner and watches some TV before eventually going to bed. He doesn't read Slashdot, any IT or gadget-related magazines and he doesn't drool over the next big thing in quite the way we do.)
Besides, Joe Average doesn't shell out for hardware every day and he's just getting comfortable with his wide-screen TV and his other brand new appliance. Which merits a mention of its own...
3. DVDs are the hot item of the moment.
No technology has ever achieved such rapid market penetration as DVD. Or put another way, Joe Average and his brother either has a DVD player or is planning to get one.
And, having shelled out some serious money to buy his brand new box, Joe Average is darn well going to make good use of it.
And if he's buying the DVD back catalogue of his favourite TV show or he's creating a library of the latest blockbuster movies, he's got two fewer reasons to buy a TiVo box. Firstly, he's watching less TV (he's watching his DVDs instead) and, secondly, he doesn't need a box that will record every M.A.S.H. re-run, because he just bought a couple of series worth to play in his nice shiny new machine.
Of course, the broadcasters and studios (who in many cases are largely owned by the hardware manufacturers) love this guy. He might not be watching their ads or putting his bum on a movie seat but he's going one better - he's buying their product again but this time it's a product for which they recouped their initial investment some time ago.
Mind you, Joe doesn't mind. Now he's got his DVDs he can play them over and over again, and it won't cost him a penny. Which is more than can be said for TiVo, because...
4. TiVo is a subscription service. That means a monthly bill.
As far as Joe's concerned, he already pays enough for cable, satellite or whatever. Why does he need to spend even more on his monthly TV bill for a souped-up VCR?
In these economically uncertain times, Joe would rather have the money in the bank, thank you very much.
(Yes, I know some of you out there will have abandoned your subscriptions and will be using your TiVos without a monthly bill but if Joe gets a new box down at the store then he's committing himself for some time.)
There are, of course, many other reasons why Joe might have a TiVo but, frankly, these are reasons enough.
No one wants him to buy a TiVo, no one wants to tell him about TiVo, everyone wants to tell him about DVD and he doesn't feel comfortable about spending the money right now anyhow.
Pretty straightforward if you ask me.
One word: subscription (Score:3, Insightful)
I know that's what scares me off from the TiVo, and yes I know that you can buy it without it. But it's expensive without it, and they don't go out of their way to advertise that you can get it without the subscription.
PVR makers: READ MY LIPS I DON'T WANT A FREAKING SUBSCRIPTION. Shoot your marketing "genuises" who think that lock-in is the way to big $$$$ and just give me a basic unit.
Re:One word: subscription (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, you don't buy a tivo "with" or "without" it. You buy a TiVo. Then you get it home and you either use it like a regular VCR with a huge amount of space (without subscription), or you fork over a measily $10 a month to have the program guide info downloaded daily, which is what really enables TiVo to do all kinds of cool stuff.
But it's expensive without it
No, TiVo's are the same price whether you activate your service or not.
and they don't go out of their way to advertise that you can get it without the subscription.
So you're scared to buy something because they don't advertise it a certain way?
PVR makers: READ MY LIPS I DON'T WANT A FREAKING SUBSCRIPTION. Shoot your marketing "genuises" who think that lock-in is the way to big $$$$ and just give me a basic unit.
It's not "lock-in," it's called a SERVICE. For $10 a month, you are paying TiVo to provide all the correct channel guide info for your cable system, and to allow you to download it from their servers. They also have a lifetime subscription, which is like $200 something dollars.
TiVo has to make money. They aren't making it on the machines. With your way of thinking, they should just charge $200 more for the machine, and not have any per-month fees. What's the difference? Just buy a TiVo and buy the lifetime service.
And for those that are going to chime-in and say, my [non-TiVo] PVR doesn't charge a subscription fee! Well guess what -- they are going to make money in "other ways." I'll leave that to your imagination, but trust me, they aren't making much off the boxes... so what do you think they're going to do? Hmmmm...
I'll pay $10 a month for my TiVo, thanks.
Tivo is too 'high concept' (Score:2)
Most folks aren't that way, though, so they never get a real understanding of why Tivo is more than an expensive VCR. Almost every person I have shown Tivo to or described all of the great stuff you can do with it (season passes, wishlists, etc.) is bowled over by it. But the things that sell are those with a clear, simple purpose that can be sold in 30 seconds (like the iMac 'home movie' stuff). Tivo has tried to sell itself that way (with the 'tv your way' ads), but it just isn't clear enough. In the end, Tivo may end up being a victim of its own high concept.
my complaints about TiVo (Score:2, Insightful)
First, we have digital cable. That means that we can't watch many of the channels without the help of the tuner box. We'd have to dedicate one to the Tivo, in order to be able to watch one show while
recording another, which would be our major use.
Secondly, the lack of portability. If we tape a show, we can watch it in the living room if we want, or take it to the TV in the bedroom if it's something the kids shouldn't be watching. Even if we bought two Tivos, we couldn't do that -- you have to watch it in the same room it was recorded, or move the whole box around. I guess Replay 4000s could solve that problem, and more, but that's a lot of money. A second VCR is just $100 these days.
As for building my own from a PC, if I could find a TV-in board that had a digital cable tuner, I would love to build my own. But as far as I can tell, such a thing does not exist. If anyone knows differently, please e-mail me.
Commercials? Moot point. (Score:2, Interesting)
While tapes aren't expensive, if I am taping something special, I sure as heck don't record the commercials, too. (You do realize that 4 CD-Rs are less expensive than good quality VHS tape, don't you?)
Networks are simply mad because they are behind the power curve with commercial time revenue. It's been heading this way since the first VCR hit the street, and it isn't getting any better.
Funny commercials are widely treated as "short" entertainment (RIP, Ad Critic). Stupid commecials are ignored. After all, we all have to go to the bathroom or grab a coke sometime.
That, combined with a smarter comsumer who researches impending purchases using the web instead of relying on TV commercials to gather "facts," unlike 40 years ago when TV was king.
It's the same thing newspapers went through as sales dropped in response to television news, and that television news is experiencing now in response to the Web's instant new potential. (This is, BTW, the reason for the new generation of "entertaining" and tabloid-style newscasters).
Broadcast is dying a slow, painful death. The broadcasters have a ton of money tied up in old, outdated technology and don't want to lose it all. Hell, they're even killing Saturday morning cartoons because of low revenue (Thanks, Congress. Stupid gits. I never minded watch lucky charms commercials.) RF is dead! Long live digital video.
So, life marches on. Keep watching for an asteroid coming soon to a planet near you!
Very Simple Answer, Actually (Score:2, Insightful)
This just goes to show you that people really +are+ smart... they know when their rights are being stripped from them, and they vote with their wallets to let the corps know just how much they don't like it. Microsoft will find this out Real Soon Now (TM)
Why it took me two years to buy my first Tivo... (Score:3, Interesting)
After first reading about Tivo I resolved to try to do the same thing with my current computer and capture card. So I spent the next two years researching and playing around with my computer.
First I started with capturing straight to MPEG-1 with WinVCR. Worked well enough but it became problematic (audio sync) when capturing very long video segments. I also noticed that I couldn't get the video quality to as good as where I wanted. Also, scheduling multiple shows tended to hang the machine up in the middle of recording. Could've kept working on my setup but I finally gave up on it.
I then tried using PowerVCR and it was fine for a while but the quality still left a little more to be desired.
In search of better capture quality I finally took the hard way out and started using AVI_IO and capture the scheduled video to MJPEG AVI files. This allows me to convert the files to either DivX or MPEG or even Real Media and the quality of the final product is as good as I want it to be.
After two years of refining my video capture approach I ended up needing to schedule more than the 10 events that I can set my satellite receiver to schedule. I considered getting an IR transceiver for my computer so that I can program it to change the channels of my satellite receiver but it dawned upon me that this is starting to get too complicated (I hit my complexity threshold here). I finally bit the bullet and got my first DirecTivo just so that I can schedule all the events I wanted.
The Tivo ended up working even better that I've ever imagined. I still capture to AVI on my computer for the shows that I want to have a long-term archive (Babylon 5 rules!) but use my Tivo to schedule this and record other shows. My Dad and brother saw it in action and were green with envy. To prevent family discord I got another one for the family room's TV. Of course, it also helped that you can start getting 35 hour DirecTivo systems for as low as $90.
My other brother ended up getting one for Christmas and I managed to talk a friend into making sure that he had PVR capability with his satellite subscription.
In short, I had to try to do it by myself for two years because of the challenge of getting it to work. After I got the first one everything just works so well that I had to buy another.
Why I bought a TiVo (Score:2)
http://www.9thtee.com/tivonet.htm [9thtee.com]
Buy them for your non-techie family (Score:3, Interesting)
A larger issue: John Q. just doesn't record much. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying that Tivo and UltimateTV aren't awesome, because they are. It's just that there are more people like my parents (they only record the olympics) than myself. Maybe the interest just isn't there.
Duh, removable media! (Score:3, Interesting)
1. It's hard to understand the advantages over a VCR. This doesn't mean there aren't any or that their impossible for normal people to use, it's just a hard sell. Nearly everyone already has multiple VCRs.
2. THE BIG ONE -- The absence of a removable media (like tape on a VCR) is a BIG minus. VCR's are essentially used for 3 things, time-shifting shows, "copying" shows/movies (i.e. recording them to keep for a while or to transport), and for playing rented tapes. Tivo does the first but due to the lack of a removable media it can't do the other two. A Tivo owner can't record something and then take the recording to his friend's house and watch it. It's locked in the Tivo.
If Tivo would simply be brave enough to also include a CDR/W drive that would make this thing a 100% feature-for-feature VCR replacement, wide adoption would be much less painful. A combo Tivo/DVD player is what is needed to actually *replace* a VCR in full functionality, but they don't sell these.
Re:I'm the one at fault, blame me! (Score:3, Interesting)
lack of High Def support is why I don't have one (Score:2)
Re:Not me (Score:5, Funny)
Note that, for the Super Bowl, one uses TiVo to skip the football and watch the commercials.
Re:No offense to humans... (Score:4, Informative)
You don't need to know how to set a clock, rewind a video tape, or choose SP, LP, or ELP... all you need to use a PVR is have adequate competency at operating a remote control.
As long as you know the first letter or two of shows that you want to record, showtimes be damned (and you don't even really need that, it just makes searching the list a bit quicker). The only real problem with TiVo UI is that there isn't (or at least wasn't, in early models) a button on the unit to locate the remote.
Re:No offense to humans... (Score:5, Informative)
After that, you simply tell Tivo the name of the show you want to watch. Then you tell Tivo to record it. That's it. That's really all it takes. You don't need to know what day or time the show is on. Hell, I don't even know what time any of my shows are on anymore because I don't care. All I know is that each week, a new episode shows up, and I'll watch it when I want to.
The biggest difficulty is getting people to understand that Tivo is like a VCR - you have to either leave your TV on channel 3/4, or use an auxillary video input. However, if they've used a VCR or DVD player to watch movies, using Tivo isn't much of a jump.
As for why aren't they more popular, I'd have to say price is a major factor. Tivo costs $2-300 and requires a subscription fee, or a one time fee of $250. ReplayTV starts at $700. These things aren't going to be considered "cheap" to the average consumer.
Re:No offense to humans... (Score:3, Funny)
Well, certianly not the clock. It uses Network Time Protocol [udel.edu]
PVR: cool, or a harbringer of the horrors ahead? (Score:4, Funny)
And so the sundering between the Morlocks and the Eloi began. At first they had fairly decent parity in technology. Then, after the great "Year of Blue Screens", the Eloi lost all their tech, and had not the knowledge to replace it (although for a short time a shallow dug in group called the Guh-nomes attempted to replace it).
Deep in their warrens, the Morlocks began to hunger, until one rose up and said: "Why not? They're only users, anyway! We'll spare the ones that can read Perl!".
And the raids began...
--
Evan
Re:Lack of quality TV? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, and if you want to watch the Superbowl and Fear factor with the Playmates, you can get a couple VCRs or have one of these things. ;)
Re:Irony... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:They don't know what they're missing (Score:2)
It truly changes the way you watch TV. I don't rush home to view West Wing or Friends anymore. If I'm at work or out with some friends, I just catch the shows when I get home.
Only problem? Tuesday nights, 8pm. 24 on Fox, and NYPD Blue on ABC. So I watch 24 live and catch Blue time-shifted. It would be pretty tight to have a dual-cable tuner PVR.
Re:What percent of people record anymore? (Score:2)
Other than the people that record their daily soaps while at work (Though I guess there are plenty of those). Most people probably don't really care enough about TV to go through the expense and effort to use a PVR (Let alone their VCR vith it's PLUS codes).
Re:subscription (Score:3, Informative)
If you're not paying the subscription fee, all you can do is pause live tv, or watch stuff that has been previously recorded. You CANNOT record anything new.
Trust me --- my Tivo subscription got screwed up last week so I experienced it first hand.
Re:Can somebody explain why... (Score:3, Informative)
Finally, you often are required to subscribe to the satellite service for a year for the better deals on DirectTiVo's.
Re:Use in a Family? (Score:4, Informative)
Basically, TiVo looks at how you rate certain shows, from a score of -4 to 4. Based on what types of shows you rate highest it will record similar shows it "thinks" you would like. So if you watch Space Ghost and South Park and *rate* them high, it would probably go out and record some more adultish cartoons like some stuff on cartoon network, simpsons, and the family guy. Not all perhaps, but I listed a couple to give you a general idea. Note, that I emphasize rate. The smart feature is based upon the ratings you give not the shows you choose to record.
I do not think that it correlates the different categories you rate highly. So if you watch Space Ghost, and your brother watches "I Love Lucy" and you both rate them highly, it would probably just go out and record some more shows of both categories, not necessarily trying to find some Space Ghost/I Love Lucy hybrid (scary thought). Hope this helps.