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Television Media Hardware

Lunch with TiVo's E. Stephen Mack 24

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the but-did-you-order-it-from-your-couch dept.
Thomas Hawk writes "On Monday I had lunch with one of TiVo's earliest employees, Director of Service Operations, E. Stephen Mack. We talked about where TiVo is going, where they are today and where they have been -- CableCARD, HME, why TiVo is not interested in being bought out, their deal with Netflix and more."
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Lunch with TiVo's E. Stephen Mack More

Lunch with TiVo's E. Stephen Mack

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  • Release your product in Australia! Or at the very least, in Europe, so that there is a native PAL version that we can grey import...

    FYI, there is a small community of Tivo users here already. http://minnie.tuhs.org/twiki/bin/view [tuhs.org]

  • Tivo, I'll miss you when you're gone (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PaulModz ( 942002 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2006 @07:01AM (#14723247)
    I loved my old Tivo more than any audio-video component I've ever owned. That said, I just don't see Tivo turning into the brains at the center of your home theater. I kinda tried for a while, but decided it would be easier and cheaper (in the long run, plus time == money) to just use a PC.

    M$ and Sony are trying to replace Tivo from one side (the new XBox and PlayStation are both stealthy attempts to put a CPU in the center of your home theater). On the other side, DVRs are becoming a ubiquitous commodity on set-tops boxes, and it doesn't seem like Tivo can really offer them anything besides the name Tivo, which is probably the most valuable thing Tivo owns (witness the on-again off-again nature of their deal with Comcast).

    Imagine if the VCR as we know it had been invented by one company back in the late 70's. Now imagine how long that company would have survived if the only product it ever sold was a VCR with a monthly service fee (while other companies were giving away VCRs, to boot).

    My current thinking is that people who care will buy something that better suits their needs, and people who don't will take the free stuff offered by Cable and Satellite providers.
    • On the other side, DVRs are becoming a ubiquitous commodity on set-tops boxes, and it doesn't seem like Tivo can really offer them anything besides the name Tivo, which is probably the most valuable thing Tivo owns (witness the on-again off-again nature of their deal with Comcast).

      Have you ever used a STB DVR? Their interface redefines the word "sucks".

      I have a DCT-6412 Phase II from Comcast (Dual Tuner HDTV DVR) and a Series 1 Tivo. The DVR portion of the STB goes mostly unused - I pick up a few shows each
  • I personally went with the DVR from Comcast. IMHO it was a better offering than tivo (pains me to say Comcast offered a better deal). No upfront fee for the box, cheaper per month, can record hi-def, complete integration with my cable box. So Comcast offered me something that was A)cheaper (upfront and per month), B)able to do things Tivo can't (hi-def and integration) It wasn't a hard choice for me on which to go with.

    • I personally went with the DVR from Comcast. IMHO it was a better offering than tivo (pains me to say Comcast offered a better deal).

      I don't trust Tivo as a company anymore and went with a smaller company with a less restricted product when I decided on a PVR. That said, it is not fair to compare Tivo to Comcast on price. Comcast just raises everyone's subscription fees to cover the difference (seeing as they have a monopoly in most areas they are available). Ditto on integration with a Cable box. The tr

  • You don't see ME writing a fracking article about it.

    -Eric

  • I remember TiVo once announcing a partnership with Real Networks to get net content onto TiVos.

    Apparently the results of that deal are still being held up by buffering.

  • The Tivo got mentioned a few times in relation to DRM during the launch of the GPLv3 drafting process, and during the post-launch press.

    Here's a transcript of the opening presentation of the GPLv3 [www.ifso.ie], where Richard mentions Tivo:

    For instance, the Tivo is designed so that if you modify the program and install it, it won't run. We have written provisions designed to forbid that use of our software. We can't forbid people from making such devices, nasty as it is, but we can, we believe, forbid them to use GP

  • Mr. Mack,

    I love TiVo. It rocks. I can never go back to non-TiVo tv.

    But one thing that gets on my nerves is the long, long, long time it takes to rearrange the priority order in the Season Passes. Firstly, anything that runs this long can and should be done in the background. Secondly, the job is not that hard - a decent algorithm should be able to re-plan the to-do list in very little time, certainly a few seconds or less. My old DirecTV Tivo took a long time to do it, and my new DirecTV HD DVR with TiV

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