TiVo Moves to Bypass Cable 286
Thomas Hawk writes "TiVo is throwing in the towel on cable. According to CEO Mike Ramsay, 'offering service through one of the primary cable platforms is not the best way to grow our business at this time, because the economics are not very attractive, instead, we have decided to embrace the PC as our friend.'
This may add to the complexity of an already convoluted message that TiVo has been criticized for being unable to articulate to the masses. In the same article TiVo says it plans to introduce a new line of recorders that will accept CableCards. The company has declined to say when new machines will be introduced or how much they will cost. Most significantly, there is still no elaboration as to whether this new standalone box will be able to record cable or satellite HDTV."
Re:Inevitable... (Score:1, Informative)
No registration link... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:huh (Score:5, Informative)
Re:huh (Score:1, Informative)
It allows you to decode digital cable channels (including HDTV) without a "box". Encrypted or not, the major point is decoding the digital QAM from the cable network.
The downside is that it is only one-way. There is no ability to interact back with the cable company hence no Video on Demand OR Impulse PPV (all Pay-per-views will require a call to customer service).
Other than that they are pretty cool. I am eagerly awaiting a PCI based cablecard device for the computer. *drool*
dpjax
I think Tivo is going to die soon... (Score:5, Informative)
Tivo showed a demo of a CableCard 1.0 demo at CES today. They plan to offer a CC HD Tivo in 2006. They needed to get this cable card Tivo out in APRIL 2005, not 2006!!! CableCard is an open standard anyone can implement, Tivo or anyone else doesnt need permission from the cable companies.
There is only one caveat with their 2006 annoucement - there are a few limitations that Tivo might be waiting for CC 2.0 to come about for. The first big thing is that now CableCard 1.0 is unidirectional (from the cable co to your box). CC 1.0 is also limited to one tuner (analog or digital channel) per physical cable card. CableCard 2.0 is bidirection (so the Tivo box can talk to the cable company, allows PPV-on-demand, interactive guide data, etc), and CC2.0 provides up to 5 tuners per physical cable card.
I would bet that if Tivo is waiting until 2006 to release their CableCard HiDef-capable Tivo, it damn well better be CableCard 2.0. Tivo can provide splitters inside the box to allow for anywhere from 2, 3, up to 5 tuners. I doubt most people have a practical need for 5 tuners UNLESS... (this is my wish) Tivo enhances their Home Media Option to allow smart scheduling, so that you can have one SuperTivo and several client Tivos (pass through tuner, no Hard disk) that just stream content from the SuperTivo over a home network.
They are supporting cable. (Score:4, Informative)
CableCard is the open standard for digital cable. It allows a TV to work with a cable system without needing a seperate cable box. The CableCard is a PCMCIA card that works with the cable security system to allow viewing of premium channels, PPV, etc. CableCard support is currently available in several high end HDTVs (it's only in the high end units now, because it requires a built-in HD tuner).
The new Tivo will have dual tuners, and will support QAM256, for full HDTV viewing/recording. It will be very similar in functionality to the HD DirecTivo (dual tuners - record two programs while watching a third).
There are some pictures of it here [avsforum.com].
RIGHT HEADLINE - WRONG CONCLUSION (Score:5, Informative)
Here is an article that better describes what TiVo is doing: http://olympics.reuters.com/audi/newsArticle.jhtm
More information and analysis will most likely be available at my source for TiVo information http://www.tivoblog.com/ [tivoblog.com] tomorrow.
Cablecard deployment (Score:4, Informative)
Re:First Post! (Score:5, Informative)
Folks seem a bit confused here. Tivo aren't talking about dropping support for recording programs off cable.
Find someone who has digital cable *and* Tivo. The only way to decode digital cable is through the cable company's crappy set-top box. This means you are also stuck with their crappy program guide, poor MPEG decoding, and sub-par signal quality. To make things even more fun, the Tivo must resort to things like IR blasters to change the channel. When you tell Tivo to change the channel, it has to send fake button presses to the digital cable set-top box to change channels.
Go find someone with this setup. Try it. It sucks.
When Tivo talk about breaking their dependence on the cable company, what they mean is to break this dependence on cable company set-top boxes to decode digital cable. The way to do this is with CableCard, which provides all of the decryption needed to decrypt and decode digital cable signals. This *includes* pay channels as well. In other words, you'd be able to use the Tivo *as* your digital cable box, in addition to getting the nice Tivo program guide and DVR capabilities.
It's definitely a very good thing.
Oh yeah, and I got a chuckle out of all those posts saying that the free PC linux/windows DVR programs are going to take over the market. Yeah, I can't wait to see my dad install linux on a PC, install a PVR card and appropriate drivers, and get it all working. In fact, I bet he's thrilled about the idea of having a PC on all the time in the living room. Geez, he can barely find the play button to get a DVD going, folks. If you don't sell my dad and tens of millions like him, you don't get the market.
- Chris
The goods to succeed (Score:2, Informative)
PC: Allready existing, you're on /. so that's a good assumption
TV Tuner / remote: http://www.dvcentury.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Scr een=PROD&Product_Code=96-989-7134&Category_Code=ET T [dvcentury.com]
Cost - $36.00
TV Output: Almost all recent video cards have S-Video out, even the cheap ones.
Software: http://store.snapstream.com/btv-3-both.html
Cost - $69.00
Hard drive for video:http://www.liquidationetc.com/31/15840.htm?4 21 [liquidationetc.com]: $48.00
The rest is relevant to how spiffy you want your setup in wiring but in this example assuming your TV is within 50 feet of the PC (for apartment dwellers like myself::
$153 dollars plus the price of connection cables.
Tivo...is a way of life! (Score:3, Informative)
1. Signal from satellite comes in digital format and is saved that way to tivo's internal hard drive. Try doing that with your home-grown video capture; going from digital to analog to digital defeats the purpose of getting satellite in the first place!
2. With directTV tivo you can tape TWO channels at the same time while watching something else that was "taped" before.
3. You can pause live tv, go answer the phone, door, microwave your dinner, etc. and then resume play from where you paused it.
4. Wife or girlfirned rudely interrupted you? (while you were watching the game winning goal/shot/touchdown?) NO problem! don't get mad, just rewind - Tivo always keeps 30 mins of the channel(s) you are watching in a buffer.
5. Tivo units run Linux and are very hackable, software and hardware-wise. You can add or replace its hard drive to increase capacity, add network card to use broadband to pull down guide data snf updates via the Internet (instead of telephone call) Many people have modded their Tivo boxes to display weather, run webserver so you can connect from work and schedule stuff and view other stats...like what your kids are watching right now
6. With that network card installed on series 1 and wireless 802.11 usb adapter on series 2 tivo you can pull down shows to your desktop, laptop or xbox (with minor changes to os on tivo)
7. You can skip all those annoying commercials - you will save about 15 minutes per 1 hour show. Once you get used to this feature (takes about 5 minutes) you will not understand why your inlaws' tv cannot do this...
8. Ecellent search capability - want to see a movie with Angelina Jolie or Harrison Ford? Type it in and let tivo search up to two weeks of programming guide data. Found it but it's playing at 3am on Friday? No problem, with a click of a button you can add it to be taped for you.
9. Small form factor and lower power consumption. Sure, you can probably get most of these features by taking a small pc and adding two tuner cards, sound card or mobo with optical out jack for sound, another dedicated hard drive, rd receiver and remote control but you will still need another box to get the satellite singal. Less hardware, especially the ugly pc kind is a plus.
Finally, the money you'll save by using a low power device vs 300W pc will probably be enough to offset the $5 Tivo fee that DirectTV charges their customers. (A LOT of people bitch and moan about five bucks but ignore how much power and $ their home grown pc/tivo-clone will waste. Building something that will look attrative in your living room will cost quiet a bit as well.
P.S. Person who designed Sony SAT-T60's remote control is a genius!
Re:Satellite? (Score:3, Informative)
Myth can be used to control analog capture devices and (I think) some European MPEG2 systems. Currently, you've only got 3 options for digital capture of digital signals in North America: hacked Dish, hacked DirecTiVo (SD or HD) or spoofed HD.
What are you thinking Myth will let you do? Are you really thinking about capturing an analog signal instead of the raw satellite feed?
Registration Free Link (Score:3, Informative)
Unannounced new TiVo features (Score:5, Informative)
Among the goodies folks are finding is an undocumented one: A built in web server. [tivocommunity.com]
No, apparently not Apache but something else, what counts is it's there, it works, and it allows download of XML files containing show listings and the shows themselves. To get to it follow these steps:
- Sign up [tivo.com] for an early download of TiVo 7.1. Must have a Series 2, no DVD burner built-in (player is ok), DirecTV models aren't handled by TiVo. Basically TiVo Service Numbers beginning with 110, 130, 140, 230, 240, 264, 540, & 590.
- While on TiVo's web site note your password and the "Media Access Key [tivo.com]" (MAK) for your TiVo. You'll need these later.
- Wait for 7.1 to be downloaded and installed on your machine. Continually forcing reconnects will not hurry this, indeed the cumulative server load by that sort of thing will only delay the rollout.
- Once you've got 7.1 (it's downloaded, installed, you've rebooted) point a web browser at https://your.tivo's.ip.address/nowplaying/index.h
t ml . For user supply tivo and the password is your "MAK [tivo.com]".
- Go wild.
What, big deal? OK, how about pulling your video off your TiVo, the much-feared video extraction [tivocommunity.com] ?Turns out you need to have TiVo's DirectShow decryption filter installed, and that only comes with their TiVo Desktop v.2 [tivo.com] which is, for now, Windows 2K/XP only. You also need a decent mpeg2 codec, which MS doesn't include in Windows. TiVo recommends [tivo.com] a couple of commercial ones but there are also free ones out there too. Or, you might have one that came with DVD software.
However, contrary to TiVo's marketing, once a .tivo file is pulled through this it can be edited, saved, even burned to DVD, with nothing more special needed. That's right, no waiting for Sonic's soon-to-be-shipped [tivo.com] software, no magic mojo involved, trusty ole TMPGEnc [tmpgenc.net] and Nero [nero.com] and all the rest are perfectly fine. Indeed once passed through the magic DirectShow filter (and your password supplied) the .tivo files are free to be rendered into a more normal mpeg2 files.
Sure the $50 "custom" software will probably do more with automation, labeling, and such, but I'm betting nothing that can't be whipped up in a few days by TiVo's customers, likely beating the Sonic software to the punch.
Pretty Kewl, eh?
Re:First Post! (Score:2, Informative)
The FCC mandated that HDTV as a compatable protocol. Currently "digital content" is mpeg2 streams encoded with propriatory codes that force customers to buy or rent a specific brand of set top boxes to decode it.
FCC doesn't like that. It's like if you have Qwest as a telephone provider you'd be forced to buy a Qwest telephone in addition to the costs of installation and service fees.
So HDTV is designed so that everybody is forced to provide compatable content.
Cable companies wanted to encrypt the data still to prevent cable piracy. FCC relented and said they can encrypt HOWEVER they are required by law to offer cable cards to all their customers so that customers are not forced into buying extra hardware beyond their TV set.
And then they dictated that beyond a certain point (I think july of last year) that all HDTV-capable TV sets that cost over 3000 dollars have to have a cable card slot so that customers can use the cable cards.
The actual cable card is a PCMCIA formfactor card that just contains the hardware needed to decrypt the cable company's signals.
Cable companies right now are trying to convince people still to buy set top boxes siting extra TiVO-like features like on-demand viewing and the ability to subscribe to Pay-per-view, which cable cards do not need to provide functionality to communicate back thru the cable line to unlock those services. They are just needed to view encrypted HDTV broadcasting.
So that way if somebody released a Linux compatable HDTV card that had a Cable card slot (using firmware to protect the FCC flag rules like Wifi cards use firmware to protect illegal frequency boosting or manipulation) then stuff like MythTV can be used to record HDTV shows and get all 200+ channels that currently is only aviable thru propriatory cable-boxes.
Microsoft probably hopes nobody will do this so that he can sell propriatory software to work with MCE in cahoots with the cable companies to lock out competitors.
Re:huh (Score:3, Informative)
http://engadget.com/entry/5180876097686388/ [engadget.com] http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/specsformats/
http://broadcastengineering.com/news/broadcasting
Re:huh (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Lost (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Unannounced new TiVo features (Score:3, Informative)
But the short answer is no, DirectShow is an MS-proprietary architecture and nobody is making noises about reverse-engineering TiVo's decryption filter. It's likely TiVo will make a QuickTime part for their Mac base but that, though not as closed, still isn't Linux-amenable.
On the other hand, and as I tried to make it clear, once a .tivo has been decrypted you're free to use it as you would any other mpeg2 file. So code yourself a front end that'll run on Win2K/XP and deliver the goods via a web interface and you're set. Or wait a week for someone else to.
Further discussion would probably be best on the appropriate threads over on the TiVo BBS.