TiVo to Aim for PC Desktop

Dave writes "Ars Technica has reported on TiVo's fourth quarter earnings call, and I was interested to see that the company is looking at providing some kind of desktop service for computers." The details are pretty sparse, so it'll be intriguing to see what they've got planned.

Why would you?

[Manip]

Tivo costs £10 per month to get guide information... Or you could buy Microsoft Media Centre edition, costs you £89 up front but you get the guide information for free forever plus you can hack it (using any x86 tools).

Re:Why would you?

[FredThompson]

Or...you could use free applications and not buy Microsoft Media Center. Duh!

TiVo's load balancing, season passes, key phrase searches, etc. kick the snot out of anything else. Quite a bit of what makes it so nice is patented.

If you haven't used one, you don't have the experience to know you don't know what you don't know.

It already exists!

[TanRanger]

Long time TiVo competitor, ReplayTV, has had a PC interface for some time now by means of an open source JAVA program called DVArchive. With it, user's of LAN enabled ReplayTV's can stream recorded shows onto their PC's. DVArchive can even act as a virtual ReplayTV, serving up shows for all the real ones in the house. If this is what TiVo has planned, it sounds like they are playing catch-up.

Re:Why would you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of patents, posted today:

EchoStar shares fall on TiVo suit ruling [businessweek.com]

a federal court denied motions by the nation's second-largest satellite television provider to dismiss patent infringement claims by digital video recording company TiVo Inc. [...]

TiVo has alleged that EchoStar and certain units are violating a key TiVo patent issued in May 2001, known as the "time warp" patent.

I wonder if DirecTV's and Microsoft's partnership with TiVo protects them.

It's gonna be tough!

[Billy the Mountain]

So Tivo wants to start competing with KnoppMyth [mysettopbox.tv]? Trouble is, KnoppMyth is free! Also, I don't know about Tivo, but Myth also allows you to record two shows at once if you have multiple tuner cards in your computer.

BTM

Re:Dr Dobbs

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dr. Dobb's article didn't seem to do it justice. If you want to learn more about HME, go to the HME Sourceforge homepage and try it out. You can also check out most of the early apps at pvrblog.

http://tivohme.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

http://hme.pvrblog.com/applications [pvrblog.com]

already there

[Anonymous Coward]

The service for transferring shows from the Tivo Series 2 to PC already exists. I have it. You can transfer & watch Tivo recordings on your PC as long as you have the password/code for your Tivo.

Re:Probably

[prockcore]

why is this modded insightful? TiVo already lets you do everything you just mentioned.

In the future, TiVo will let you pause live tv!

Re:3 Words

[wo1verin3]

You already can, they offer Tivo series 2 users a 15 day trial of Sonic MyDVD. If you want to keep burning the programs to DVD however you do have to buy the program from Sonic.

Re:Why would you?

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"If you haven't used one, you don't have the experience to know you don't know what you don't know."

I've used TiVo for over four years now, both standalone and the combo DirecTV/TiVo units.

I can assure you that Microsoft MCE is every bit as good as TiVo. To-do-list, recording history, season passes (with first-run-only options, the same 31-day rule, automatic adjustment to changing schedules, etc.), and most of the other TiVo featureset is present.

The only things I can think of that TiVo has over MCE is:

- WishLists. MCE kind of has them with keyword searching, but TiVo does a much better job.

- Suggestions. I never used them, but only TiVo has them.

But:

- MCE has better conflict resolution. The interface is clearer. The to-do-list shows, at a glance, which shows "lose out" in a conflict.

- MCE is faster. Even the Series 2 units are far too slow. Particularly when you upgrade the disk space. My 300GB MCE box is still quite nippy.

- MCE has a better skip back / skip forward feature. It's far faster, which actually makes it useful - unlike the :30 hack on TiVo.

- MCE handles failure better. If a show is interrupted during recording, MCE will automatically schedule a later showing if it's available and doesn't cause a conflict. This happens even if the recording was one-shot.

- MCE softpads automatically, and unlike TiVo's padding, softpadding doesn't create conflicts.

- MCE's interface is better. You can see the current program in most of the menus, and there is a clearly defined "back" button with unlimited history.

Try MCE out before you go crapping all over it. You may be surprised.

Re:3 Words

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but analog capture quality from poor cable? It's not even worth the price of the DVD-R it's going to be getting burned onto. Even with a good capture card and all, the picture is WAY sub-par. Analog capturing was cool stuff 5 years ago.

Re:Don't think PC, think media PC!

[FredThompson]

"I'd really like to see TiVo go more in the direction of the media pc that everyone wants...the one that hooks into ethernet and plays mp3 and videos off a shared network drive."

Done, months ago.

http://javahmo.sourceforge.net

Also available, from the hacking community, multi-room viewing, video extraction, DVD creation, RSS readers, video overlay for stocks, sports, news, weather, etc., on-screen caller ID, the list goes on...

Re:Removing drm

[FredThompson]

You wish came true weeks ago.

Re:It already exists!

[FredThompson]

The timeshifting personal use provisions of the law don't include networked distribution of content to other people. ReplayTV actively encouraged and provided a means to obtain and distribute content illegaly.

Re:Why?

[dreamt]

crippled like the TiVo, i.e. I can still fast forward through the comercials.

Huh? Who ever said you can't fast forward through commercials with anythign from Tivo? I can easily fast forward (rewind, or whatever) using Tivo, and TivoToGo.

Re:It's gonna be tough!

[larryj]

"The new HD DirecTiVo actually has four tuners -- two HD DirecTV and two OTA HD. It can even record two shows while watching a third show live."

I think you meant to say that it can record two shows while watching a third pre-recorded show (from the Now Playing list). You can't watch a third show live while two others are recording.

That's all my HD DirecTiVo is capable of at least. ;)

Re:Why would you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh dear, you've obviously a big fan of TiVo, but you really should have read the original more closely. The previous poster was just explaining some features of MCE they preferred over TiVo, they didn't really attempt to criticise the TiVo but you reply by attempting to rip them apart. To my mind though you really did not listen to the points being made:

"The to-do-list shows, at a glance, which shows "lose out" in a conflict."

You complain there's only so much information that fits on a screen. How do you know, have you ever tried this. What's the point in complaining? He preferred this interface, that's his opinion, you've not even seen it but try to argue the point... pointless discussion.

"- MCE has a better skip back / skip forward feature"

Your reply to this is that it's faster IF you extract your recording to your PC... well d'uh! But what if you don't want the hassle of moving it to your PC. Incidentally your previous complaint of Apples & Oranges applies nicely here :). If MCE's quicker to skip back & forward with the remote, just accept it, no need to be so defensive, TiVo has other benefits.

"- MCE handles failure better."

You take the whole thing out of context, and completely miss the point. He wasn't saying it's more stable than Linux, he said that if it fails to record a program, it will automatically try to catch it again. TiVo can record a series, but will it try to re-record the one show from that series that got interrupted?

"- MCE softpads automatically,"

There was no mention of recording more than one channel at a time, just that the MCE's softpadding won't clash with itself. I haven't used this myself but assume this means that if one show ends at 9pm and another starts at 9pm, the MCE won't pad those shows to prevent the clash, whereas TiVo's padding would have caused a clash. Your argument is irrelevant and just argumentative for it's own sake.

"- MCE's interface is better. You can see the current program in most of the menus,"

You say the feature's been available for the TiVo for more than a year. Great for advanced users who want to hack it, but that's not the point. I'm sure your TiVo setup is superb, but there are a lot of us who really don't want the hassle, and if it looks better out of the box, great. Why try to rip this apart? Just accept that's his viewpoint.

Sorry for the rant, I'm not a fan of either TiVo or MCE, I just hate to see a badly thought out argument.

Ross