TiVo Basic

Keith Russell writes "TiVo has announced a new TiVo Basic service. ( Press release here, CNet story here) The Basic service only offers a 3-day program grid, and doesn't include title searches, season passes, or wish lists. There's no subscription fees for Basic, however, and it can be upgraded to a full-on Series 2 unit by the usual payment options ($12.95/mo. or $299 lifetime). The first product to include it is a Toshiba DVD player with an 80 GB hard drive and progressive-scan output of both DVD and Tivo content."

The Toshiba Box: RD-X2

[MBCook]

Near as I can tell, here [toshiba.com] is the Toshiba box that the story talks about. The URL is also below:

http://www.toshiba.com/tacp/dvd/current/RDX2.htm l

Re:Could someone please...

[thoth]

Basically, the TiVo service comes in two forms:

1) Monthly payment of $12.95, or
2) Lifetime fee of $249.00.

Note: the lifetime fee applies to the unit, not the owner.

Subscribing to TiVo service lets you get the guide data, which is programming info up to two weeks out. This is what lets you do wishlists, season passes, etc.

New with series 2 is the "home media option", which is a upgrade available for $99.00

Re:Itsn't it a moot point?

[localghost]

I recently switched to Dish Network from digital cable. Aside from the much better picture quality and customer service, one big advantage is that there's a PVR built into some of the boxes. Previously, I had a Tivo with a lifetime subscription. That's now on the second TV with the first one having the built-in one. I could easily see this becoming standard in both cable and satellite boxes. If the cable companies and satellite companies are supporting it, I don't see it being made illegal any time soon. However, I do foresee the end for Tivo, with PVR functionality becoming standard in set-top boxes.

Re:The Toshiba Box: RD-X2

[Babbster]

While revisions to that unit might indeed have the Tivo Basic functionality (according to your own link, it's not in the current list of features), it is NOT the device referenced in the press release or CNet article.

The model number of the device in the story's links is the SD-H400 which is a DVD player (not a recorder) combined with the 80GB hard drive and Tivo service (basic included, upgrade to full Tivo possible via extra money). This device is not currently listed in the Toshiba lineup (possibly because it hasn't been released yet?)

Personally, I consider $748 (the suggested price of the Toshiba device plus $299 for service upgrade) WAY too much money to spend on a progressive scan DVD player and a Tivo, one box or not.

MythTV...

[Yebyen]

Someone really needs to start building Mini-ITX machines with Debian and MythTV preloaded en masse. I've been using my desktop as a MythTV machine since the early days, and it's just about surpassed Tivo anyway. Not to mention, no subscription fee.

A stripped down Tivo without season passes removes almost all of the usefulness of the device. MythTV has the same functionality, but it doesn't cost you anything but the hardware. I can't speak for the quality of the software versus Tivo, as I've never used a tivo, but I do find myself spouting the same "Changed the way I think about TV" rhetoric as every tivo user.

Either way, one thing I know MythTV has which Tivo does not have is automatic commercial detection. That's right. Download 0.8, play with it.

Re:No need to pay anything....

[blixel]

My cable company here in Central Florida will be offering free Tivo-like service for digital cable subscribers starting in June.

I guess I should have provided this link [mybrighthouse.com] to any other Central Floridians who might be interested in getting this service when it's available.

Re:Itsn't it a moot point?

[ePhil_One]

By the time the cable companies/dish folks get into the game, along with the pending legalities, will Tivo even survive?

Licensing

DirecTV licenses Tivo to power their DirecTV boxes, together they make a killer app limited mostly by the need for Dishes. DirecTV is all Digital, which plays VERY well with Tivo.

I suspect its only a matter of time before the cable companies give up on their central office based PVR systems. I tried one last weekend on Comcast, it was awful compared to the reponsiveness and control that Tivo gives. Forced comercials, limited content.

I also suspect the manufacturing cost of Tivo's will continue to drop, Hard drives keep getting cheaper (CompUSA is selling 80GB for $100), the various boards and chips can't cost all that much. They might have sold for a loss once upon a time, but I doubt thats still the case. There's a cost associated with providing this basic service, but they sell the viewing data they collect, which might more than pay for the limited service. (Heck, this might be a trick to get consumers to let their Tivo's stay more in touch, I ususally only let mine call home once every two weeks)

Re:A good idea

[thoth]

There is no subscription requirement. You can program the TiVo like a VCR (i.e. you specify what channel, what time, what duration to record for). You don't need the guide data or any of that stuff for it to work.

I'm currently not subscribing to the TiVo service, as explained in a previous [slashdot.org] TiVo posting ;)

Forget everything you know about TiVo

[mblase]

This isn't a "TiVo box" as we usually know it, without all the subscription features. What it is, is a DVD-VCR. Without any subscription fees (a cause for hesitation among average consumers), it allows you to record shows and movies to the hard disk, then burn them at your leisure to a recordable DVD. Voila, all the functionality of a VCR with the advantages of digital media and commercial-free archiving.

It seems to me that TiVo's strategy is to make this a must-have device for those features alone -- which are all Toshiba's hard work, not theirs -- while including the TiVo subscription features as a kind of upgrade, which no doubt is advertised prominently at the bottom of the 3-day guide every time you use it.

It's a good strategy, and I think it will pay off -- not in the sense of 90% of all purchasers becoming subscribers, but in the sense of maybe 20% of all people who wouldn't buy a TiVo because of the subscription now buy it for the DVD-recording features. Like another poster suggested, I'm sure TiVo will offer AOL-like 30-day trial subscriptions for free somewhere along the line, once enough of these TiVo-capable recorders are out there being used. Because like broadband internet, once you learn to love it, there's no going back.

Re:ReplayTV

[Anonymous Coward]

Weren't there websites which had compared TiVo and ReplayTV when they first came out? This was one of the first website [egotron.com] which did the comparison.

Here is a feature comparison [pvrcompare.com] matrix webpage.

Re:Canada

[ePhil_One]

Considering that TiVo hasn't advertised at all in three years, and seems to be living hand-to-mouth at the moment, the addition of another country might have to wait until there's a viable bottom line.

Well, their stock is up, so the markets thinking positive things about them. And while they haven't paid for the standard 30 second spots, NBC has done several placements in their TV series (Friends, Scrubs, Will & Grace). Not sure if they're paying for it or NBC's throwing it in as part of their investment.

Besides, the word of mouth advertising they get is pretty strong, and is a damned site better than lame TV spots.

Funny thing is, Tivo is hugely popular with the whole entertainment industry, outside of everyones favorite mad dog, Jack Valenti.

Re:will have to be carful

[Keith Russell]

The press release mentions that recurring time-and-channel recording is available, just like your VCR.

Re:lifetime ?

[ePhil_One]

$299 lifetime

Whose lifetime mine or their's. I don't imagine their's to be more than a couple of years ... pretty steep anual fee.

The leftime of the electronics. If it dies in 1 year, you're screwed (unless you have an extended warranty, they honor them) I don't think the lifetime plan is a great deal myself, proved right for me when DirecTV took over mine and dropped the price to $5/month (ie 5years!)

That said, I love the idea of progressive scan output, this is definately something I'm looking for on my next DirecTiVo, along with HD (DirecTV and OTA)

Re:But can it play MP3s

[Keith Russell]

According to the press release, if you upgrade it from Basic to full Series 2, you can add Home Media Option for the usual price: $99, one-time fee. That plays MP3s over your wireless network!

Re:A good idea

[wurp]

Why would I pay for a program guide and title searching when i have this inlcuded in my satellite/digicable service already.

Uh, so you can just tell the Tivo what programs you like and then forget about when they come on, essentially ending up with a video on demand?

Re:A good idea

[outlier]

They do allow timed "VCR style" recordings.

Is that without any subscription, and without ever hooking up to a phoneline?

Yep. If you buy the box and never hook it up to a phone line and never sign up for any service, you can still use it to record channel X from time 1 to time 2, and fill your hard drive that way. It also still lets you do cool stuff to live TV (you can fast forward, or with the backdoor code you can turn on 30 second commercial skip).

I don't think there's too much to worry about re: rooting your system. You could always create a CD image of the hard drive, and if the system is ever compromised, you can format the drive and recreate the virgin Tivo conditions.

Re:Itsn't it a moot point?

[localghost]

It's great. Theirs is just as good as Tivo is. In fact, I like theirs better. It seems more responsive, plus it's got 80GB. The only issue is that the hard drive grinds a bit more than the Tivo did, but I don't sleep in the same room as it, and it's not that loud anyway. My experience with Dish Network has been great so far. Very different from my Comcast experience. I just switched to DSL because of two major screwups by Comcast in the first week of being on their network. The switched to Dish was just because digital cable sucks.

Re:A good idea

[Wordplay]

That's only for the initially released models, because the original license agreement didn't say that you had to subscribe. They grandfathered VCR-like capabilities for those so as not to screw their customers. Anything from later batches of Series 1 or all of the Series 2 (i.e. the ones sold with the updated license agreement) requires a subscription, otherwise it stops working in any useful manner after an introductory period of time.

Re:Marketing mantra

[Sivar]

A no-fee basic system does sound nice (and will probably entice people to get the full service), but $12.95 seems like quite a rip-off when the DirecTV DVR service (another name for Tivo service) is $4.99/mo. Of course, that only works with DirecTV Tivos, but they are better anyway (no re-compressing of video, dual tuners, "purchase and record" pay-per-views, etc.)

Re:Sky Plus?

[cehf2]

Sky Plus is completly different from the UK version of Tivo. Sky Plus is created by Sky and embedded into its set-top-boxes, allowing it to only record programs from Sky.

Thompson made a Series 1 Tivo for the UK, but have recently stopped production, it has much better functionlity, plus it can be hacked to add a network card, and extra capacity.

For a comparison between Sky Plus and Tivo, see http://www.garysargent.co.uk/tivo/TIVOvsSKY.htm [garysargent.co.uk].

Re:A good idea

[radish]

I'm sorry, but I think you are being unjustifiably paranoid. With my Tivo online I can check status, schedule new recordings and view listings etc from anywhere in the world. The box sits behind a NAT router (which allows outgoing connections only) and an Apache proxy (for incoming web connections). Sure if someone rooted my NAT box they could get to the Tivo, but my network is owned at that point anyway so who cares. There are no direct incoming connections allowed. Whats more, most people only use the phone line to hookup the tivo. In that instance, it dials out to a local POP, and connects from there to a Tivo server to get updates. It's online for maybe 5 minutes. You'd have to do some pretty funky subversion of routing or something to do a man in the middle attack, and even then you'd struggle to (say) get it to accept a malicious software update.

Sure it's a risk, but then so is getting out of bed in the morning. Both have benefits, and I believe those benefits far outweigh the risks.

Re:Cable company competition

[imadork]

Have you looked at a TiVo and a Time Warner PVR side by side?

I have, and the Time Warner PVR simply sucks by comparison. Then again, I never was a fan of whatever crappy interface Time Warner uses for their regular program guide, and the PVR uses the same interface.

However, I have been steering people toward the TWPVR if they ask about my TiVo but bet turned off by the subscription fee. I am well aware of the fact that a TiVo subscription is a luxury that most can't afford. Maybe this basic service would encourage people to try it out! After all, the new basic service is more or less what you get in the TWPVR, with a better interface and (now) no monthly fee!

Re:Marketing mantra

[hymie3]

In theory, part of the DirecTiVo monthly fee is paid for by your DirecTV subscription. DirecTV already gives you TV listings for all of the channels. TiVo just extends that service (for an additional $4.95)

Re:Itsn't it a moot point?

[Andy Dodd]

" The nice thing however, is that when you're receiving a signal through the dish network PVR (or Bell ExpressVu in Canada), the PVR is recording the raw MPEG stream directly - there's no recompression as in TIVO, so you're seeing exactly the same quality picture as if you were watching it live."

It's the same case for DirecTiVo

Either way, no satellite for me. $1200+ in tree removal in the way. And two of the trees in question are not on my property. :(

Re:MythTV...

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's minor compared to the fact that my box doesn't record programs that advertisers think I want to see.

Funny. Neither does my Tivo.

I suggest you investigate what the box actually does before trashing it's feature set.

progressive output...

[The Lynxpro]

Progressive scan output will only benefit DVD presentation on a compatible television set. Because just as TiVo notes (when comparing the existing Series2 units to Replay), progressive output to a television won't benefit watching anything off the TiVo unit since analog cable boxes do not output a progressive signal. The only benefit would be leaving the S-Video and/or the compositve video jacks on the television available for other devices. While this would not benefit me as an existing Series2 owner, TiVo really needs to equip their units with MPEG4 decoder chips because they could get so many more recordable hours onto the same size hard drives they currently use. You'd be surprised how many more people will buy the units if magically you can get 80 hour recording at the existing price of the 30/40 hour units. Equipping the units with quieter fans and moving towards Serial ATA hard drives will both solve heat and noise issues currently effecting Series2 units in future releases...

Re:Season Pass anomolies

[Zathrus]

To my knowledge information on what season is what is not available from Tribune, which is who TiVo gets their guide data from.

Heck, TiVo has to make guesses on whether or not it's even a rerun, since not all shows have even that information (it bases it off of first air date, and occasionally gets it wrong because of this).

It's not a bad suggestion though - when www.tivocommunity.com is back up next week I'd recommend suggesting it in the Suggestions forum. TiVo does read them, and has implemented ideas on occasion.

Re:I'm scared now

[aligas]

TiVo has what they call a "dead man switch" ready for if the company ever goes out of business. Its not anything new - its existed since day one.

The main idea is if something happens they throw this switch, the boxes update, and they avoid becoming totally useless boat anchors.