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Television Media

ReplayTV Quits Hardware Biz, Licenses Technology 141

Posted by Hemos from the forced-out-by-the-tivenator dept.
crazyj writes: "According to this article, Digital Video Recorder maker ReplayTV is calling it quits in the hardware business. Instead, they plan to cut staff and license their technology. Apparently, the competition from TiVo was too much."
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ReplayTV Quits Hardware Biz, Licenses Technology More

ReplayTV Quits Hardware Biz, Licenses Technology

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  • Actually, in October, the $300.00 14-hour Philips TiVo had a $100 Philips Rebate, and a $100 TiVo rebate, making it only $100. Not to mention that they had a TiVo-a-day (or was it 10 or 30 a day?) giveaway all October (is it still going on??). So there isn't much to complain about as far as price is concerned... You just have to find the deals.


    --
  • There is another big feature Replay has that TiVo doesn't. On a Replay you can setup a keyword search to record shows based on title, description, actor (and director I think). If I remember correctly, the TiVo will let you do searches, but only to pick shows out that you can mark to record. It won't setup a regular search that records stuff it finds that matches. Personally I love this feature- it's very useful for finding stuff that is on rarely and erratically, and for categories of stuff (like I have it set to record gymnastics meets whenever it finds them).
  • I also won one on the essay contest. I had my TiVo within a week of winning. I was TOTALLY amazed!
    And my life, too, has totally changed since I got a TiVo. I can't imagine a life of feeling I had to be home at 8pm on mondays to watch Ally! And before this, I *never* got to watch the Simpsons, Futurama, or Family Guy. Of course Family Guy seems to have gone off the air.. grrrr..

  • Re:TiVo isn't the reason... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't know, I got a sneak peak at the first UltimateTV box (soon to be released) and the overall impression is: it's so slllloooooooowwwww.

    The UI was so slow to respond that I constantly found myself in the wrong place and backing out my choices. It took about 5 seconds for guides to show up, for example, enough to make you wonder if it actually registered your choice and try again. It was even slower while it recorded. Very frustrating.
  • Hope you don't have cable TV with a cable box, or a satellite dish, then. They have even more ability to track your viewing habits.
  • What the digital tv recorders really need is a storage medium to archive programs

    Not gonna happen. If you can record the show to an archive (read: removable) media then you can schlepp it to your PC and email it to your buddy. If you thought Napster pissed off the suits, just wait for this....

    Be interesting to see someone hack their TiVo for a removable hard drive tho. Haven't yet got a TiVo 'cuz I don't like them collecting info on my viewing habits; but if I were to hack one I'd be sorely tempted to try a removable hard drive, or an IDE-USB-HDD setup. Now that I'm thinking it through it would probably just confuse the software, it's expecting Simpsons and Battlebots but in reality Jerry Springer and Oprah are in those files.

  • This was added to the v2.0 TiVo software, plus a lot more.
  • The 30-second skip is a MAJOR feature, and almost 100% of the reason I bought a Replay. It should not be underestimated, because it gives you
    a resource more valuable than gold: TIME.

    When I watch programs on Replay and a commercial comes on, I just hit the skip button 5 times (occaisionally 7 times), and whammo - I'm at the show again. No overshooting, no FF or RW, you're just there - bingo. Now I can easily watch an hour-long show in 40 minutes without ever futzing around with FF and overshoots.

    It's no accident that Tivo will never have this capability - they're too much in bed with the "force you to watch commercials and sell all your private data while charging you for the priviledge" crowd.

    Hmm, let's see...

    Tivo: No 30-second skip, commercials are still a PITA.
    Tivo: seeling your private data to marketers
    Tivo: Making you pay for the priviledge, a *minimum* of $200

    Replay: 3-second skips saves scads of timeand frustration
    Replay: Doesn't (yet) sell individually-identifiable data to 3rd parties
    Replay: NO extra fees, ever.

    To me it's a no-brainer.
  • My largest difficulty with these pieces of equipment is that they are unable to control the channel of a digital box... they can access the 'lower' (ie, normal) channels in my cable area, but the high channels (all premiums, and many of the better channels like Discovery, Noggin, etc) are digital only, and cannot be accessed unless the cable-co provided Digital Box is on that station.

    This means that two of the major benefits of these systems... the ability to automatically record stuff you want to see, and the ability to record one thing while you watch another... are simply not possible.

    However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Charter (my local cableco, owned by one of the bigwig Microsoft rats that fled the sinking ship) is building and testing integrated Digital/TiVo Boxes that perform the dual task of acting as a complete TiVo system along with being a digital decoding box. The TiVo service fees may even be non-existent, as the TiVo data may be fed directly over the digital cable instead of accessed via dialup. Test systems are expected Spring 2001, with full rollout by Summer. So I wait.

    I hate waiting.

    Raven


    And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
  • anyone know what happent to RCA's TiVo?
    nmarshall

    The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
  • The problem with this technology, is that the TV market is overlapping the Computer market.

    This portion between computer and TV has been a battlefield for quite a few years. I think that this battle has already be won by IT companies like Microsoft or AOL.

    No wonder that RealPlayTV is quiting the hardware business because it hadn't enough technology backup to be competitive, while others were doing interactivity stuff for ages.
  • TiVo is a great name. It's a melding of TV and I/O. Ti(nput)Vo(utput)
    --
  • I have a UK tivo and it's excellent.
    The 30 skip feature would be nice but after a couple of weeks my reactions have been trained enough that I can hit fast forward three times, wait the right number of seconds and hit play again to within a second or two of the start of the next program without even thinking about it.
  • A while back, Echostar joined forces with ReplayTV shortly after the MS WebTV DishPlayer was released. This may just be a sign that things are going well enough for ReplayTV on a new sat recorder, and they don't need the consumer side on the table anymore. I love my 40GB DishPlayer (Upgraded with no hacks, just swapped the drive), and would love to see an even more stable Replay based Dish system.

    And Tivo's don't have a 30 second skip? Wow, After using that on my DishPlayer for the past year, it would take a while to get used to another way of commercial skipping.
  • That's why you have to experiment and chose the right IR code, not the first code that works. And, surely your
    Satellite reveiver had a serial port??? Most do; no need to use an IR blaster at all.

    I experimented, the technician on the phone experimented. They finally admitted that TiVo just doesn't have good support for Echostar boxen. My 5000 didn't have a serial port. But I traded it in for the DishPlayer, of course, I use the 5000 as a second receiver in another room now.

    That's a pretty lame excuse. Just check your "To Do" list to make sure a show will be recorded. It's very easy.

    First off, I have to criticize the UI design; how it's rather a pain in the ass to get to the To Do list from the Now Showing screen. It was two clicks to get to the list of options that To Do was on, and To Do was near the bottom, so you had to scroll down. For DishPlayer, the recorded programs, and recording schedule are on the same page. Second of all, I'm talking about the AI, where you three thumbs up something, but the machine chooses not to record it for some reason, so you have to go in, track it down, and schedule it yourself. Well, I just didn't appreciate the fuzzy logic. It was neeto for about a week, then it got tiresome. But there were also occasions where it would NOT record something that I scheduled - I believe these were instances of IR Blaster failure. Finally, there was an extremely annoying "bug" that cut off a recording at a maximum of 2 hours. I was trying to coax my wife into watching Yojimbo, black and white, subtitled, not very appealing to non-cinema affictionadoes. I recorded it on TiVo, but with commercials, it exceeded 2 hours. So we started watching it, she was very skeptical at first, then actually started to enjoy it, and got into it, and TiVo had cut off the last 15 minutes of the movie. Should I now go run out and rent it? Buy a DVD copy? BULLSHIT! I paid $400 for the box, $200 for lifetime "service", and I had to watch the commercials I ff-ed through, then I have to pay to rent the material again? That was the last straw.
  • Actually, I don't--broadcast TV only, and not much of that. Most of TV is complete and utter crap and not worth the investment of time. If I watched more of it, though, I sure wouldn't use any technology that reported back what I was watching.
  • The point wasn't whether I thought TiVo would sell the data, use the data, or whatever. The statement was made that they would not be able to. That statement was not correct. There is a world of difference between can not and will not. I would only be comfortable with the "can not" type system, and don't trust any entity whose sole motivation is to "maximize shareholder value" to have the integrity not to change their minds later. Mind you, nothing specific about TiVo--I wouldn't place my trust in any corporation.
  • Wow, thanks a crapload for that link... I had no idea they gave so many away. I just won a TiVo from the contest, this really makes my day. Thanks!
  • I hope that this means that TiVo is doing well.

    Doesn't look like it. Their financials [yahoo.com] are not looking pretty. I think it is too expensive, they cannot get critical mass because of this. We will see.
  • Haven't yet got a TiVo 'cuz I don't like them collecting info on my viewing habits

    They only do this to a limited extent (i.e. no one can personally identify you from the data), and only to give you personalized features, namely having them guess what kind of shows you'd like. You can always turn this feature off, or even just leave the unit unconnected to the phone line.
    --

  • Did they quit the .biz?
  • If I can record onto SuperVHS, what's the problem with recording to disk from a digital source?

    Once it's digital, it can be transferred over the internet. Apparently the concept that a video capture card could do the same thing to the NTSC output (presumably macrovisioned, but that's disableable) doesn't seem to have entered the MPAA's collective semi-consciousness yet.

  • Upgrades? (Score:3)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @07:29AM (#596166) Homepage Journal
    So if they're no longer going to be in the hardware business, does that mean that they will let consumers upgrade their own units by adding new drives?
  • ...the technology with the worse name wins.
  • Is the 2.0 release not out yet? We have a TiVo at home too (my husband uses it) and I just looked and I still only see the search for shows that are already in the channel guide. I can't find a way to enter a keyword and tell it to record anything with that in the name like I can on the Replay.
  • I gotta say, there is something about hardware that is a GREAT deal cheaper, even if there is a monthly charge involved. This is where Replay is failing ... the hardware is too expensive. I honestly think TiVo found the sweetspot in terms of cost versus service fees.

    Consumers would rather pay $400 and $10 a month than pay $600-700 all at once. I can do the math, and I KNOW I'm paying more, but the convenience of not paying all at once is VERY nice. Plus, if TiVo were to go under in the next year, I'm not out the entire amount. And if I like the service, I don't mind paying an extra $10 a month to make sure I don't lose it.

    Also, TiVo reportedly has a better UI. Take that for what it's worth.

    On a side note, this Sony DirecTV with TiVo unit is pretty damn slick. It records the satellite feed, so you get the same quality as the feed all the time. No additional compression. I haven't played with it too much yet, but I gotta tell ya, it's pretty awesome.


  • This seems to be another classic case of the marketing for a product determining it's destiny rather than technical specs. ReplayTV had that 30 second skip button that they weren't advertising properly, and as a result it seems Tivo's catchy campaigns have done the damage.

    Does anyone know what the health of Tivo is in comparison? Does this failure speak at all of the health of this type of product? I'd like to get a Tivo but would be pissed if I got stranded.
  • Who cares about the 30 second skip? I've become extremely adept at fast forwarding. The TiVo provides a cool feature where if you forward at 2 or 3 speed, then when you stop it backs up a certain number of seconds based on the speed you were fast forwarding.

    I've gotten to the point now where I can react perfectly to seeing the show come back on and have the tivo start at the beginning. No overshooting or undershooting.

    I think this works great, although it can be annoying when you want to fast forward through boring parts of the show.
  • No linux version yet, but the bits and pieces for a linux recorder are already there-- there are linux drivers for the very common BT848 video-capture chipset and software for encoding, as well as nifty scheduling tools like cron. If somebody wrapped it up in a nice GUI, we'd already be done!

    Don't forget the most important pieces, namely the IR interface, and the show listings. The IR interface is the easiest part, since it already exists with linux support.

    I've said it before, though, that the best deal would probably be to make some sort of deal with TV Guide to get listings in something simpler than the HTML Tables, perhaps by showing a TV Guide logo on your application whenever someone is in the guide.

  • If you only look at the upfront price, yes, they are quite expensive. However, at least TiVo has been pushing their product (and still are) with all sorts of deals and rebates. I got mine from Circuit City in August: a 14h unit (upgraded since to 52h) for $299, which came with 2 rebates: a $100 rebate from CC, plus a $100 rebate from TiVo. So my final price was $99 - now, that's in VCR range. Of course, there was also the $100 I paid later for the HD I used to upgrade, but that's a different story.
  • I thought there were other problems, as far as licensing issues for the movies, similar to the MIAA and Napster, etc. Studio types freeking out all over the place.

    or was that someone else who got slimed by the hollywood scumbags?

  • Well, you could get the 14 Hour model for $99, plus $10/month (or $200 for lifetime). Adding another disk was pretty easy and relatively cheap, since I found a 60GB drive at Staples for ~$160.

    The real reason I got my TiVo was that I found myself wanting to vege at the end of the day, and there'd be nothing but crap on cable. I'd waste an hour or two channel surfing trying to find stuff I wanted to watch.

    Now with the tivo I come home and can decide to watch an hour or two of the practice, or some Simpsons, or part of the BattleBot marathon that it picked up while we were gone over Thanksgiving.
  • how do you convert the buffering to recording? mine doesn't do this?????
  • For those of you who want something similar, but have TV cards in your computer, check out Snapstream PVS. Its a great product: http://www.snapstream.com no, I dont work for them.
  • Products like the integrated DirecTV/Tivo, which can record DirecTV at full-resolution, without the extraneous decode/encode cycle that occurs with a seperate unit

    One thing to be aware of regarding the DirecTivo unit is that you can only record the programs that come in through your satellite receiver. It will not record shows that you receive through your antenna. There's no cable where I'm living, so I view the local channels through the antenna on my roof, and a bunch of other channels through the dish. However, this means that I am not eligible to receive the network channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox) through the DirecTV service.

    Since a lot of the shows that I want to watch are on the networks, the DirecTivo system wouldn't be able to record them. Instead, I bought a standard Tivo system, and I have both the antenna and the satellite receiver plugged into it. I got all Sony equipment, hoping everything would interoperate well, and it certainly does.

    The Tivo unit controls the satellite receiver through a serial port connection, and it also tunes in the over-the-air broadcasts. When changing channels with the Tivo, I wouldn't even know if each channel was from the satellite or the antenna, if it weren't for the quality of the reception.

  • the comparison chart listed it as available in version 2.0....

    this [avsforum.com] thread on the TiVo forums discuss the dates as to when 2.0 will be out. appears i mis-posted that this was an available feature, but it does appear that it is on the horizon.

    my apologies for the confusion.

  • Re:Same scenario as with Linux (Score:3)

    by TWR ( 16835 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @01:49PM (#596180)
    Socialist scenario: If I were a gardner I would clean your yard for free - if you would help install a new vid card in my PC (whatever).

    We both get what we want.

    No, this has nothing to do with socialism; what you are describing is a barter system. There's a quid pro quo in barter, which doesn't exist in a Communist (not socialist, as you wrongly stated) system. For Communism, it's from each according to their means to each according to their needs. You would just go yard to yard, fixing up people's gardens if they needed it. I, on the other hand, would go from house to house, installing video cards as desired. If you happened to fix my garden and I your PC, it's just a happy coincidence as we were both self-motivated to do this because we are good Communist folk. Needless to say, trying to find 2 people to do things out of the goodness of their hearts is hard; getting an entire country (much less an entire planet) to do so is impossible. So, Communist countries have tended to resort to force to make those selfish individuals do what's best for everyone, which somehow misses the original point, but it keeps the ruling class happy.

    Socialism, as it is usually implemented, has a third party redistributing goods and services. So if enough people thought they deserved nice gardens, the government would decide what a "nice" garden is, hires a bunch of people to work as gardeners as per the spec, and then taxes other people to fund it.

    The difference between barter and capitalism is that we both agree to price our goods (your gardening skills, my pc installation knowledge) against a third standard. We call that third standard money. The motivation is the same (greed, improving your personal situation) in barter as in capitalism, just the medium for trade is better, as I am able to get gardening done even if I cannot provide any good or service to the gardener; I give him money.

    The bosses control the means to production, we do all the work, and they get rich.

    If you want to control the means of production, form your own company. In the US, the vast majority of people are employed by companies with fewer than 25 employees. Relative to most other places on the planet, it's easy to start a company and join the rich ruling class. Of course, your company could suck, and you could end up broke. The greater the risks you take, the greater the rewards and penalites. If you don't like it, stay a peon. But don't bitch about it, because no one is forcing you to be one. If your country's implementation of capitalism sucks, don't blame the US and don't blame capitalism.

    So, now that you know something about econ, maybe you can make an intelligent argument. But I doubt you will.

    -jon

  • The DirecTiVo has 2.0. It's not out for the normal units yet.
  • Another possibility may be what I used for my VCRs. I'm using a Universal remote with macro capability, and I just made a macro that FF a number of times before hitting play again. I get about a 30 second or so skip this way. . .

  • The ReplayTV unit is $200 cheaper than an equivalent TiVo unit, but includes a "lifetime" subscription to the service.

    TiVo charges $200 for a lifetime subscription.

    Neither unit is useful without a subscription.

  • Getting the television listings in a usable format is the "holy grail" of a good, free PVR package.

    There are two, maybe three companies that are the only sources for full listing information for upcoming shows. All others (Replay, TiVo, etc) just license the information from these sources.

    One of the biggest attractions of the TiVo is that while they license the same Tribune Media Services data as everybody else, they make a novel use of the information in the Thumbs Up/Down preferences and automatic "Suggestions" of similar shows to what you already watch.

  • seems like customers are wising up... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    they've learned : Macrovision == shoddy product.
    maybe there's hope they can wise up about video and music formats too

  • Comparison (Score:3)

    by bdavenport ( 78697 ) <spam@sellthekids.com> on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @07:57AM (#596186) Homepage
    Here [compuserve.com] is a comparison between the two. i have a TiVO and have been going over the details of the unit with interested people at work. IMHO, the TiVo has several features which make it a much better unit than the Replay, such as:
    1. Converting the buffering to recording (Replay doesn't support this.)
    2. Browse all channels by time (Replay has a truly crappy channel interface compared with TiVo.)
    3. Setting a "Season Pass" for a show on any timeslot (Replay doesn't support this.)

    there are a bunch more. ReplayTV is failing b/c it's business model was flawed (hmmm - anyone remember the Macintosh from the 80s...yeah, don't license the hardware) and b/c it lacks some great features that TiVo has...30 second skip button be damned.
  • It's been said to be on hold until Tivo finishes up the lawsuit they are involved in with Gemstar.

    ---
  • I've owned my Tivo for almost 2 months now. The reason I chose it instead of a replay tv thingy is simply the hack-a-bility. Though I didn't hack my Tivo for more capacity it was/is very comforting to know that I could if I wanted to. I also came to realize that if my Tivo is made obselete, or if the service is dissolved, it will always function as a glorified VCR. I hope at the very least that ReplayTV ppl can say the same.
    "Me Ted"
  • At this point, isn't TiVO quickly winning the mindshare war?

    Why license ReplayTV instead of TiVO?

  • What digital tv recording really needs (Score:3)

    by Gondola ( 189182 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @07:59AM (#596190)
    What the digital tv recorders really need is a storage medium to archive programs. Personally, there are some times I'd like to record something "forever." Like a friend of mine appears in a commercial or an interview on a show. Or whatever; you get the point.

    What would be great is a CD-RW drive built in that allows you to "archive to disk." If I can record onto SuperVHS, what's the problem with recording to disk from a digital source? The difference is not that large.

    Sure, you can say I can just upgrade my hard drives and keep it forever. That doesn't really work long-term because over the course of 5 years I may want to store dozens of recordings, which means my usable space becomes smaller and smaller.

    For legal reasons, there is some buzz that because it's a digital recording, the quality is higher than VHS and thus would be more problematic for the broadcasters who would like to limit the recording and re-recording of their material. I say that's crap. Like I mentioned above, SuperVHS exists (and I personally have a SuperVHS VCR) and it records in a quality superior to VHS. They're legal. Why not make a digital VCR with removable media legal? Same difference. It's going to happen, it's just a matter of who's going to do it first. Imagine burning a VCD of the latest Simpson's Halloween special with your TiVo2 and taking it over a friend's house to pop into their DVD player. Mmmmm.

  • Re:why buy a TiVO? (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @08:00AM (#596191)
    What's the difference between a Tivo and some script that captures MPegs from the TV tuner card of my computer?

    The differences are

    • my Tivo fits into my entertainment center
    • I don't have to stop using it when my daughter wants to print out her term paper
    • with rebates it cost about $300 w/lifetime service, vs. $1000-$2000 for your computer
    • I don't have to write any scripts/programs
    • remote controlled
    • blah blah blah
    You just can't hit the features vs. price point on your own.
  • I'm just waiting for the local cable companies or whomever "releases" the content to companies such as TiVo to permit you to construct your own "digital video storage thingie" sorry I just woke up and got to work so my brain is kind of munged. Seriously though, if the software was GPLed and with a little electronics hacking building your own TiVo rather than hacking an existing one shouldn't be too very hard. Besides people would still have to pay for the service for incoming transmissions. :D
    .--bagel--.---------------.
    | aim: | bagel is back |
    | icq: | 158450 |
  • ReplayTV was offering their service for free, and was building the ReplayTV boxes, so they didn't have a continuous revenue stream like TiVo did. So they licensed the hardware design to other companies to build, and are leeching off of the companies' revenues. Hey, it's better than sucking dry the wallets and coffers of the consumers.

    As far as which is better, keep in mind that TiVo is currently succumbing to the arrogance of power. Sony chose TiVo for its box; that alone should imply something. TiVo is now advertising in sports events. All the signs of a bloated company about to explode from its own, self-inflicted infestation. The "TiVo runs Linux" issue seems to be the only beneficial aspect of TiVo; the rest reeks of the capitalist status quo.

  • Both TiVo and Replay handle duplicate episodes exactly the same. Most people feel that TiVo's handling of scheduling conflicts is better than Replay's.

    Have you looked at DirecTivo?

    The 2.0 software (standard on DirecTivo, coming next year as a free upgrade to all other TiVo's) has the best handling of recurring shows and scheduling conflicts.

  • Random thoughts. . .

    (OT)Personal TV rocks. I absolutely hate the menus' look and feel with TiVo *AND* especially directTV. For me, E* is cheaper for more channels I watch (29.99 for 100+ channels) and it's menu system is big, clear, and easy to navigate. My in-laws have DirectTV and I can't stand it.

    30 second skips make commercials wiz by. I find myself pausing all the time (trip to fridge, crapper etc.) just so I'm watching delayed so I can skip commercials. 'cept maybe the superbowl...I usually like some of those commercials.

    My picture quality is better than what I've seen from TiVo, although I've never seen DirecTiVo to see it's digital-to-digital quality. I record anything I watch on payperview and the picture and sound quality is as good as when I watch it the first time.

    I never thought I would enjoy the personal TV stuff and had originally planned to remove the 17.7gb drive in my recvr and stick in an old 3gb crap drive. After using it for a while though, I don't wanna give it up. Why would I want TiVo to record shows I *may* watch when personalTV records ONLY what I want? I'll stick with picking my own entertainment thanks.
  • I'd be happier with TiVo if it ran a more robust operating system, perhaps something like QNX instead of their own specialized realtime extensions and filesystem grafted onto a stripped down Linux kernel.
  • Read the "Legal Notices [tvguide.com]" section on the TV Guide web site, or the equivalent section of every other online show listings source- including TiVo and ReplayTV.

    You cannot legally extract the guide information and use it to populate listing information on your home-brew PVR.

  • I've got a Dishplayer with replay, but I think this still applies. . .

    hmm....my favorite difference. . .Surround sound! Even on PPV movies with 5.1 channel audio. And not through my PC, but through my shiny new home theater system.

    My TV tuner is a cheapo ($35 WinTV Go) and It's just not the same. I like to watch TV whilst I surf sometimes, but it doesn't come close to the quality. The only real use I've found for my card is taking my VHS anime and converting to VCD.

  • Dish has the same thing. It rocks. Long live DSS!!!

  • I don't have to stop using it when my daughter wants to print out her term paper.
    That's odd. I've never had to quit watching TV on my PC to print out anything. As a matter of fact, I often let my TV app stay under my text editor while I type and just listen. If it sounds like something cool is happening, I just change windows. What could be more cool than watching TV, surfing the net, and typing a report on the same screen?

    Your "TV App" is most likely just feeding a video signal directly to the video card from a tuner, not actively reading and writing live MPEG to and from a hard drive and MPEG codec.

    Watching live TV in a window using a hardware tuner is like listening to a CD in your CD-ROM drive directly attached to a sound card. You can crash MS-Windows, and it just keeps playing.

    What TiVo does is more akin to playing one 192Kbps MP3 stream from disk speakers while you encode another stream to the same hard drive, in realtime. Considerably more system intensive.

    TiVo is a PPC at 50Mhz, with EIDE and dedicated MPEG audio+video encoder and decoder, it only manages to function with such minimal hardware because that is the _only_ task that gets "foreground" priority on the CPU.

  • Re:Marketing vs. Technology. (Score:5)

    by mosch ( 204 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @08:05AM (#596201) Homepage
    Interesting idea, but as an owner of both a ReplayTV and a TiVo, let me give my assessment.

    Tivo Good Stuff
    • Records programs that it thinks you might like based on previously expressed preference.
    • More intuitive interface (though both are really easy)
    • Products like the integrated DirecTV/Tivo, which can record DirecTV at full-resolution, without the extraneous decode/encode cycle that occurs with a seperate unit
    • Excellent quality on recordings
    • Friendly towards capacity hacks
    Tivo Bad Stuff
    • Only pause live TV for 30 minutes, unless you're actually recording that channel.
    ReplayTV Good Stuff
    • Pause live TV for up to 7 hours
    • 30-second skip
    ReplayTV Bad Stuff
    • Lousy encoding. Bright reds, such as those often found in the simpsons, sometimes get encoded as green (apparently a bit overflow?)... looks terrible when it happens.
    • Seems less reliable than Tivo. Both have crashed for me, but Tivo has crashed about 6 times in a year or so, whereas ReplayTV has crashed that many times in about 3 or 4 months.
    • Ads displayed when you hit pause, some of which contain colour patterns which can cause burn-in.
    All in all, they're both ludicrously cool products, but I know of no reason why ReplayTV is technically superior to TiVo in any significant manner.

    What did you think made ReplayTV technically superior to TiVo?

    --
    "Don't trolls get tired?"
  • I admitted it.

    I was recently in the market to buy a personal recorder. I reviewed both replaytv and tivo. I liked TIVO a lot and it wasn't just because it got such /. attention.

    I had only one concern when I was buying. which company, replaytv or tivo, had staying power. I looked at both and thought...heck, if TIVO goes down, there'll be a large underground hack community...

    So I bought a TIVO just two weeks ago...

    I win!
    :D

  • Re:As Always... (Score:3)

    by dillon_rinker ( 17944 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @08:07AM (#596203) Homepage
    TV=TeleVision
    I/O=Input/Output
    TiVo=Tele-input-Vision-output
  • TiVo has truely changed the way i watch TV. i used to miss the dual daily simpsons' episodes b/c i was never home from work...now i TiVo a whole week and watch them at my leisure.

    TiVo also has done a great job of recording some wonderful shows that i would have never seen and would have never know about, such as Scandalize My Name [imdb.com]

    i fully recommend picking one of these units up...it is well worth it if you are like me and watch little TV b/c it conflicts with your daily schedule.

  • Re:price point (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    1. They're not 3 times as expensive. The Tivo price doesn't include $10/mo or $200/lifetime for guide service. They're priced very similarly when you take that into account.
    2. I just bought a friend a Sony Tivo the other day, it's grey, like a Wega.
  • Ah, I had this problem with both TiVo and ReplayTV, since I get my signal by DirecTV, and didn't really want to buy multiple receivers for every tv.

    --
    "Don't trolls get tired?"

  • A while back, Echostar joined forces with ReplayTV shortly after the MS WebTV DishPlayer was released. This may just be a sign that things are going well enough for ReplayTV on a new sat recorder, and they don't need the consumer side on the table anymore.

    Hard to say. It's now possible to get a DirecTV system with integrated TiVo, so it's a market everyone's getting into. Personally, I think it's just that they're getting clobbered by the overhead of hardware manufacturing. The article says they will continue their partnership with Panasonic, and I would assume Echostar as well, since they're said to be hoping to license to cable and satellite providers.

  • There have been several posts asking "why can't I do this on my PC?", so I thought it best to put this out here. There is a software-based Tivo-like program called ShowShifter at www.showshifter.com [showshifter.com] that is in beta. No linux version yet, but the bits and pieces for a linux recorder are already there-- there are linux drivers for the very common BT848 video-capture chipset and software for encoding, as well as nifty scheduling tools like cron. If somebody wrapped it up in a nice GUI, we'd already be done!
  • I think the biggest obstacle for digital video recorders to become mainstream is the price point.

    What value do you put on your time? Once you've got TiVo setup for the shows you like, you're done. If the network moves it, TiVo moves too. Also, forget time spent rewinding.

    Then, of course, there's the ability to pause live TV.

    I think it's a mistake to simply compare TiVo to a VCR. It does more/different things. You still need a VCR if you want to watch VHS tapes or save a show for good.

    --
  • Go to a store and compare the ReplayTV and the TiVo side by side. Use the interface..mess with the remotes. I think you'll see why TiVo is winning. Sure, there is a service fee but if you get the lifetime the TiVo box costs the same or less than the ReplayTV.

    The only feature the TiVo is missing over ReplayTV is 30 second skip... but after using the fast forward on TiVo a few times you know when to stop and hit play...it even adjusts back a little for your reaction time. The reason TiVo didn't want the 30 second skip is that they are working deals with advertisers and they didn't want to make them mad. On some commercials you will get a small TiVo icon (called a TiVomatic) where you can hit one button to tell the TiVo to record the show currently being advertised.

    Whenver one of these stories comes up, a number of people always say you can build a PC to do it just as well. Try it. The great thing about the TiVo is the integration in to the audio/video setup. I can't imagine watching TV without one now. Sure, a PC can record shows in to mpeg...but they don't record things I might like (which get overwritten by things I want recorded when out of space). The PC doesn't have the great interface... It doesn't have a lot of things, and the TiVo costs less than a new high speed video card.
  • Of course, you (and I) are stuck here. The only way we're getting to watch multiple things at the same time is with multiple converters.

    I just cram everything I watch through TiVo and accept the delay. What are the commercial things of which people speak ;) Nice watching a 1 hour show in ~45 minutes.

    --

  • Re:Tivo & Replay...too expensive (Score:3)

    by LetterJ ( 3524 ) <j@wynia.org> on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @08:45AM (#596213) Homepage
    There's the third option that I hadn't heard of until I was in the store a week ago. The DishPlayer. I went in to buy a Dishnetwork satellite system intending to get the $199 - $199 rebate = $0 dish system with free installation etc. As I was standing and looking at the choices, I noticed a bullet item on a $199 dish that said "17GB hard drive". I picked up the display unit and looked through the top grill. Sure enough, there's the hard drive. I asked around, since the Replay's and Tivo's on the end of the same shelf were $299-$399 and they doublechecked the price.

    It uses WebTV's "Personal TV" service at $10/month. So, I basically got a satellite system and digital recorder for free. How's that for a price point?

    It is missing some features that Tivo has that I'd like. (I had been planning to get a dish and then a Tivo. I may still get a Tivo.) For instance, it doesn't have the learning AI or a great "season ticket" type feature (basically will record same time/channel weekly), but the recording is integrated into the dish's channel browsing and searches. I'd also like to be able to do more multiplexing (ie, watching something different than I'm recording). It directly streams the MPEG-2 video from the dish to the disk, so recorded programs look virtually identical to the live version. Also, pausing live TV is only limited by disk space, unlike what I've heard about Tivo (30 min). There is a site (can't find URL right now) indicating basic hacks of this thing, basically replacing the 17GB with a larger disk. I may try an 80GB which would boost the recording time from 12hrs to 56hrs or so.

    If I was so inclined, the Dishplayer also does WebTV access and there is an IR keyboard for that or searching the TV listings.

    Overall, I think the integration of these things with dishes works well since the dishes are so closely tied to the service model and contracts. To me and others getting the dish, the cost of Personal TV is about the same as one of the movie packages on my bill.

    LetterJ

  • I also came to realize that if my Tivo is made obselete, or if the service is dissolved, it will always function as a glorified VCR. I hope at the very least that ReplayTV ppl can say the same.

    The last software update from ReplayTV added a manual record option, although I haven't tried using it yet.

    What I want is a feature that will compensate for schedule shifts caused by football games or other sporting events. That might be tough to do.

  • (i.e. no one can personally identify you from the data)


    Boldface is mine. This should say will--since each TiVo has a unique identifier, and you have to register to get a subscription, you rely on TiVo's integrity to preserve your privacy. Note that even if you can verify that the TiVo ID isn't transmitted in the data stream, there is ANI available which identifies your telephone number used to dial TiVo, which also makes a pretty good identifier.

    While I have no reason to doubt their integrity, it's not quite correct to say that no one can personally identify you from the data.

  • I love terms that only a directv pirate would use. So what software are you running? :-)

    --
    "Don't trolls get tired?"
  • Yeah, you're right, this isn't the technology for people who need their cable/antenna feeds. I get my major locals via DirecTV, so the only thing's I lose are UPN, and WB. No loss as far as I'm concerned.

    I used to use cable as a backup, but the cable went out more than directv, and the picture quality was horrid. i'll take mpeg artifacts over massive static, any day.

    --
    "Don't trolls get tired?"
  • Here is another case of a company who tried to do the "better" thing and provide the user with the best service for the price losing out to the malicious money grubbing company.

    This link [compuserve.com] comparing the two companies illustrates many of the differences such as price, Duplicate episode recording, and schedule conflicts.

    You can also see some ReplayTV Notes [averstar.com] that show what exactly the company was into.

    Overall I am dissapointed that such a good service was run out of business prematurely by a great marketing job by a competitor.

  • I agree, the Tivo is great. One item to add to the bad stuff list however.
    • No signal pass-through. You need to cable around the box to watch a different channel while it is recording.
  • Don't need it. I got mine a week and a half ago and have already mastered 3x ff (which is actually around 60x speed). The jumpback feature lets you hit play when you see the show and it jumps back a bit, and you see the start. Its not hard.
  • You have a reference? I'd love to change that, but a glance around the message boards didn't give me a lead on that particular hack, and I'd love to do it.

    --
    "Don't trolls get tired?"
  • its already been figured out how to upgrade the ReplayTV's primary drive (i.e. replacing it w/ a bigger one). no word yet on changing a secondary drive to a different size. check out These [avsforum.com] msg boards for more specifics.
  • They're obviously afraid of competing against Microsoft. They should be given credit for realizing UltimateTV is going to take over the market.

    --

  • I got my TiVo yesterday, and immediately added a second 30Gb drive (thanks to the Hack Tivo FAQ). Worked great. I got to watch Star Trek Voyager this morning for the first time since they moved it to midnight. Now if only I can keep my step daughter from filling the damn thing with General Hospital and Real World.

    I love this technology, and I'm especially glad that the market leader is using Linux and turning a blind eye to people making their own hardware upgrades. However, I'm sticking to the monthly subscription until I know it isn't going to be eclipsed by tomorrow's technology.

  • Re:Same scenario as with Linux (Score:3)

    by TWR ( 16835 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @08:24AM (#596249)
    The "TiVo runs Linux" issue seems to be the only beneficial aspect of TiVo; the rest reeks of the capitalist status quo.

    You don't like capitalism? You don't like people doing things to make money? I'm having a hell of a time finding a gardener who isn't in it for the money. How about coming over and cleaning up my yard for free?

    -jon

  • The 14 hour model by itself is pretty useless if you want to store anything at all, since it's only like 8 hours at watchable quality. And when I think of price, the long-term subscription cost has to be taken into account.

    And while it's certainly viable for tech-savvy folks to upgrade a cheap Tivo into something useful, how many normal folks are even going to know that it's possible? And of those, how many are going to feel comfortable on the Linux command-line?

    I'm not bashing it at all - personally I think my Tivo really is 'revolutionary' in that you watch what you want when you want in the lowest-maintenance way possible. I just know a lot of folks that are put off by the price tag.

  • Oh no. You are sending money to WebTV aka M$ boxtop. Look out for the /. flames!

  • I saw a program in the UK recently about Data-VHS machines that use MPEG2 compression on to D-VHS tapes - which I understand are more expensive than standard tapes. Trouble is the machine was 1200ukp ~$1800
  • Its like $0.25 for an hour of video tape
    and $4.00 for a hour of compressed disk TV (gigabyte). The ratio has always been around 10-20x. Five years from now, move the decimal place left again for both.

    So the price has to be based on other factors such as functionality and convenience. I think there are enough of these to keep Replay/TiVo promising.
  • It's in the TiVo hack FAQ at http://www.tivofaq.com/hack/faq.html. Look for the LIVE_CACHE_SIZE variable.

    FP
  • Hardware is a brutal business, as American TV, VCR, IBM clone, and now Computer VCR makers have found out. Sell the software and content to manage the hardware. In some cases you may want to be in the hardware end for a year or two (MicroSoft plan?) to jumpstart the software.

  • Showstopper debacle (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @07:37AM (#596262)
    Maybe they shouldn't have stood by while Panasonic released a defective version of their product -- the Showstopper -- with Macrovision detection -- highly succeptable to false positives -- on the inputs.

    Now that they've acquired a reputation for delivering a shoddy product, there isn't much left for them to do but license out the technology. Perhaps others can avoid the Showstopper mistake.
  • I think the biggest obstacle for digital video recorders to become mainstream is the price point. Until they can get knocked down to VCR territory in that respect, they will just be geek toys for the most part. Whether or not that can happen, though, is the question, since they are already losing money on the hardware (which is why Replay is getting out of that side of the business).
  • TiVo and ReplayTV aren't that different. The only comparison I can think is that TiVo has the intelligent program that records programs it thinks you'd enjoy. I'm pretty sure this feature isn't available on the ReplayTV. I just think that people tried TiVo before ReplayTV and that is what killed it. As far as I know, TiVo is fairing quite well.


    --
  • ... I'm glad I didn't pay up-front for a lifetime subscription. Besides, customers don't really think that way. "A" customer might, but customers en-masse are stupid and flighty, and only care about what the price is right now. Why do you think that the old $99.99 custom is still around. Because it feels cheaper. As individuals, we know to mentally round up, but as a group, it works it's magic.

    My point is, the TiVo folks went the right route, and Replay botched it. The results are rather plain to see.

  • I guess I'd want to re-arrange about a weeks worth of TV viewing for watching at geek-convenient times, i.e. about 20 hours. There are
    occasions when I'd get interested in a TV series mid-season and wished to have access to earlier episodes.

  • Hey now, no need to get defensive :-) I actually do have an H-card, which is reprogrammed, but I don't use it to steal. I have the platinum subscription with all the extras I want anyway (neccessary since the card only lasts a few weeks at a time). I use it to get extra local channels, so I can get more Simpson's episodes. I guess that's illegal, but I certainly don't feel any guilt about that.

    As for your point, I totally agree with you. My old Hughes receiver has a much easier to use interface than my Sony and especially more than my RCA. To this day I can't figure out how to make the RCA purchase a PPV program in advance.

    I don't have one of the older ReplayTVs though... Do you have any idea what model I should look for to try to find one with firewire? I'd love to crack one open, and try to figure out what was meant to be possible, and if it still is somehow possible, with some work.

    --
    "Don't trolls get tired?"
  • Not only that, there are useful cases where you might want to see what is going on during the commecials - for example, sometimes for "preview" commercials used to indicate up-coming episodes or new shows, an icon will appear during the commercial, allowing you to press SELECT and have Tivo automatically add that program to your TODO list. Even skipping at full speed you can usually see the icon and press SELECT, or at least go back and see what the deal was. You wouldn't even be aware of this feature if you simply skipped blindly ahead 30 seconds.

    And as the previous poster points out, it's actually better to skip the Tivo way, because you have control over when you jump back to real time.
  • The red encoded as green is actually a known issue, so I'm surprised you haven't run into it. I'm assuming that it must be something signal specific (maybe my signal is a tad hot or something?). Whatever it is, it's a publicly admitted problem, and one that a Tivo plugged into the same spot doesn't experience

    I've crashed them just by using them. I have some weird knack for finding ways to break software that nobody else notices. Just yesterday I got a Tivo into a mode where while displaying guide data, the first two lines of guide data would be blank... <shrug> it happens. no big deal, just a minor annoyance.

    As for Replay's ability to record by preference, it doesn't touch Tivo. Tivo, after using a unit for a few weeks, will record almost nothing that you don't like, and it only does this with extra space anyway, so if you fill to capacity, it just won't do that. I, however, record very little with my main Tivo... one or two shows a day, basically. This means that the auto-disk-fill feature is pretty kickass for me.

    I didn't know about this new mode, I'll have to check it out when I go home, see what I haven't been paying attention to.

    One bad thing about both, that I forgot.... No HDTV recording.... maybe in a few years, I guess.

    --
    "Don't trolls get tired?"
  • I *love* my DishPlayer. I haven't upgraded my 12-hour model - I didn't know there was a way. REALLY? You just swap it with a hard drive? formatted or what?

    I had a TiVo, and I bought lifetime, and it wasn't working well, the IR Blaster didn't correctly or reliably change channels with my DishNetwork receiver. So I returned it, got all my money back, spent less than 1/4 the money to upgrade to the DishPlayer.

    I can say that I miss the "Season Pass" and the AI - a little bit. But the third time you think it's going to record something for you, and it doesn't, you get really pissed off. I find that I value the 30-second skip of the DishPlayer unit FAR more. Also, the UI for recording is much simpler. You do tend to run into situations where complex recording scenarios arise with no solution (like recording a program that's on every day, and one day a week, you have a conflict with another channel) - also the DishPlayers seem to be buggy as all hell.

    I had to RMA the first unit because it was just not recording shows (recording would say 1 minute duration, and screen was black). The second unit had something different wrong, it would tune channels in and out, and drop them. The THIRD unit has spontaneously dropped all of my recording programming, twice, and I've had to set it all up again. And, I saw it crash - but it rebooted on it's own with no problem - unfortunately, it interrupted the recording of a show, and only saved the last ten minutes - so I'm about to call Dish and ask for another RMA number. The techs seem to know that there's an endemic problem with the 7200. (they groan when I tell them what model it is) - and they don't seem to have a clue about what I seem to have discovered; most of these problems seem to be heat/ventilation related.

    The pervasive "WebTV" advertising throught the UI screens is a total pain in the ass, and I wish I could just say that I'm not interested, and switch it the fuck off.

    But still, overall, the DishPlayer has been more reliable, and easier to use than the TiVo was. That 30-second skip is really useful. The TiVo - fast-forward hack was still flaky, and stress-inducing. (not to mention, you still have to see the commercials in fast-motion - with DishPlayer, they could be advertising naked Natalie Portman statues, and I'd have no clue).
  • You don't like capitalism? You don't like people doing things to make money

    I dont like it - I also dont like smug yanks who think that capitalism somehow provides 'choice, freedom, and democracy - and a blowjob'.

    TiVo's business plan seems to tie customers wallets to their accounts receivables in an unfair manner... just provide the product and screw your 'service' crap... it is the status quo of the corporate $WHORES$ to try and extort their customers instead of operating in a fair and honest way with responsibility to the community. TiVo is _FAR_ better than most it seems (on the surface) they could have gone the way of the iOpener...

    Socialist scenario:
    If I were a gardner I would clean your yard for free - if you would help install a new vid card in my PC (whatever).
    We both get what we want.

    Capitalist scenario:
    We both call BigService Corp, pay them $100 per hour to send someone over to do the work (who gets paid $10 per hour). BigService Corp gets filthy rich, you and I have to work like dogs @ $10 per hour for some other BigService Corp.

    The bosses control the means to production, we do all the work, and they get rich. Yeah, you'd have to be an idiot to want anything except capitalism. Puhleeze.

  • Service-oriented vs. technology-oriented (Score:5)

    by Dr.Evil ( 47264 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @07:39AM (#596282) Homepage

    I think ReplayTV is seeing the difference between a service-based business model vs. a hardware-based business model. TiVo has never sold their own hardware - they license the design to Philips-Magnavox and Sony. TiVo then collects a monthly/yearly/lifetime fee for service, without which the box is pretty much a live TV-only device. ReplayTV has always included their service as part of the purchase price, which they've had to reduce to compete with TiVo on the shelf. TiVo's been eating their lunch.

    Panasonic's OEM version of the ReplayTV has been selling much better than ReplayTV's own model (ah, the benefits of brand recognition). So it makes a lot of sense to get rid of the overhead, find one or two more manufacturers to sign to licensing deals, and maybe change the service to a TiVo-style pay-for-play service (grandfathering existing customers, of course ;) ).

  • Hey HackTivo types - what would it take to create a "30 Sec Skip" feature on Tivo, since that was the only really good feature on Replay (and it was also what the broadcasters squawked most loudly about)? I have no idea but I bet one of y'all might...
  • I got my TiVo about two weeks ago. It's absolutely fantastic. I hope that this means that TiVo is doing well. If you'd like to get a TiVo for free, they've got an essay contest going on right now, just write 250 words at this site [tivo.com], they give away at least 10 per day. I know four people who have won.

    If you're interested, you can also read my review of my TiVo [editthispage.com]. I'm seriously thinking about putting in a bigger drive, my weenie 14 hour model simply isn't big enough to cover me being gone for 4 days at a time. Everyone who I've let play with my TiVo said "This is cool, I have to get one". It's one of those devices that is hard to explain in 30 seconds to a non-technical user, but let them play with it for a bit, and they realize the possibilities.
    ---

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