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Television Media

TiVo To Support RealNetwork Formats 205

Posted by timothy from the battle-of-the-proprietary-video-formats dept.
rtphokie writes: "The flurry of announcements coming form the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas has started with RealNetworks ' anouncement that it had struck deals to include its technology in an array of microchips and devices, including TiVo PVRs. This is the latest move in an effort to expand from the desktop to consumer devices."
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TiVo To Support RealNetwork Formats More

TiVo To Support RealNetwork Formats

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  • uh oh... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 2Bits ( 167227 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @02:19PM (#2805150)
    is someone going to scream bloody hell too, now that RealNetwork is doing this, just after MS?

    Standards, standards, we only want standards implemented in hardware!

    • Re:uh oh... (Score:5, Troll)

      by jd142 ( 129673 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @03:03PM (#2805440) Homepage
      Yeah, I'll yell. RealNetworks is just plain evil. They make it almost impossible for the average user to find their free player. The last time I looked for someone, it was hidden on 1 line between two great big advertisements for 2 of their non-free players. They make it almost impossible for an average user to stop that *%^# Real Start Center from loading on boot. The warning messages make it sound like the computer won't work if you don't load start center. Plus that start center is the worst piece of software I've ever seen. If I have a user call in whose computer suddenly won't boot, odds are they just upgraded real player.

      Now I'm not against proprietary software and companies making money. But jeez, these people are as bad as the X10 ads.

      Their software is slow, resource intensive, buggy and ad ware.

      But let me tell you how I really feel. . . ;)
    • MS will be sure to tie up content to require a passport account and .net. Not using a MS standard will keep you on the sidelines in the future. For examples, check any office for MS formats vs Wordperfect documents. I rest my case...

  • Oh, Heavens No! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by justinstreufert ( 459931 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @02:19PM (#2805154) Homepage
    Please, PLEASE, TiVo, stay with MPEG! The video on my TiVo looks excellent. I challenge ANYONE to show me a Real video that looks even remotely acceptable. I have never seen one. Seriously.

    Justin
    • I wouldn't be too concerned. I bet that the RealMedia formatted stuff will be the stuff that Tivo downloads via the phone line like previews and commercials (like that Lexus commercial).
      • There must be some kickback in it for TiVo. Because, otherwise, why include another video decoder chip on the board when there's a perfectly good CS22 right there?

        I'm having vomitous visions of 56K RealVideo streams playing on a 50" TV. Gross. It'll look like that video phone footage from Afghanistan. *shudder*

        Justin
      • All the internal video TiVo currently displays comes from the "Teleworld Paid Programming" that is played on the discovery channel at 4am on Sundays. This gives TiVo video that is better than you could ever get thru a modem
      • I bet that the RealMedia formatted stuff will be the stuff that Tivo downloads via the phone line like previews and commercials

        In the future, computers will not be programed to help you select the content you want, they will be programed to force you to watch even more comercials. "Don't touch that dial while I play this new Lexus advert. I won't let you anyway."

        Really, I hope not but it looks like the TV is creeping closer to my computer than the other way around.

    • I agree, but then again I've never seen a Real Video encoded at the same bitrate as the MPEG on your TIVO
    • The commercials arent downloaded. They're taped from a cable channel at a predetermined time. I think the Discovery Channel at 4am is the current window. But dont quote me on that one.

      D
    • The video on my TiVo looks excellent. I challenge ANYONE to show me a Real video that looks even remotely acceptable

      While I don't agree that the video on the TiVo looks excellent(there are often MPEG artifacts, even at the highest quality, this seems to have gotten worse with the "smoothing" option in 2.5), I certainly agree that the Real Video codec will certainly look much worse. I have many episodes of the Simpsons that are in .rm format and I can't even stand to watch them. They are encoded about 175-250 kilobytes/s (compared to TiVo's 250-300 k/s for basic quality) and look absolutely terrible. And how are people going to get these clips onto their TiVos? Through the 56k modem? It is possible to hook your TiVo up to a standard network using PPP or TiVoNET (I use the former, so I don't even have a 56k connection, it is only 38,400 bps), but it would still be a hefty download for even one half-hour show. IMHO, the Real codec is one of the worst codecs currently available. I would much rather they implement OpenDivx, Ogg or even [shudder] Windows Media.

    • Re:Oh, Heavens No! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Deven ( 13090 )
      Please, PLEASE, TiVo, stay with MPEG!

      Who said they were dropping MPEG? They've agreed to use RealNetworks technology for music management [quote.com], not to replace the video codec for recording television programs!
  • TiVo and Real media on this side, Microsoft and Comcast on another side.

    Reminds me of that Tolkien battle with all the armies and the Nazgul and everyone.

  • Oh great... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Adversive ( 159469 ) <adversive@@@adversive...net> on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @02:21PM (#2805169)
    Now when you set up your new RealTiVo and you forget to uncheck ALL the boxes, its going to make it your default toaster and blender too.

  • Real, TiVo & Big Brother Databases (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jeremiah Cornelius ( 137 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @02:22PM (#2805175) Homepage Journal
    Is there a possible privacy angle in this deal -- perhaps a move to combine/share Customer Viewing/Buying patterns?

    Am I the only one who remembers when RealNetworks was Progressive Networks, and Rob Glazer was helping to support liberal politicsl causes?

    • Keep in mind that this is the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) and the spin isn't intended so much for the public as within the CE industry.

    • Liberalism is not really progressive (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The regressive, backwards-looking policies of the far left that serve only to increase the power of the rulers certainly are not "progressive". The Real company's association with poorly thought out politics is yet another reason to oppose this company.

      Last time I knew, the progressive.com was taken over to sell car insurance.
    • This seems like as good a place as any to congratulate RealNetworks for winning a Big Brother award [privacyinternational.org].
      • Which is painful irony. [eff.org] I'm sympathetic to Glaser's (nominal) ideals, but he's the poster boy for "do as I say, not as I do." If he had an ounce of self-respect, he'd clean up Real's business practices, open its technology (gee, Macromedia opened up the Flash format and they seem to be doing alright), stop his failed efforts to nickel-and-dime the desktop end-user to death, and work on a real (ha ha) business plan. I guess the silver lining is that if they can make their embedded-viewer business successful, they might start doing some of those very things.
        • I asked Declan McCullaghahalulagh [politechbot.com] about this and it looks like Glaser isn't on the board [eff.org] anymore. He also pointed out that he could've been on it before RealNetworks took this sort of turn. I'm not really sure what they won it for, myself. The awards pages aren't in english, since the show(s) they were awarded at weren't in english either. The only dirt I have on RealNetworks is the tendency of their download program to monitor users and gather information to be sold to marketers. Which is good (bad) enough for me. Although it's probably mentioned in legalese on page 124 of the license agreement.
  • They should go with Divx. Smaller files and higher quality movies
  • This idea has no factual support, but what happens if Tivo adds cable modem support. This would mean you might be able to record video that is Internet only. Granted there isn't much worth seeing on the internet video wise, but could it be in preperation for the day that happens?
    • This idea has no factual support, but what happens if Tivo adds cable modem support.

      That would be my guess - the RePlay 4000 series already has Ethernet support (and the hackers are already figuring out ways to extract the videos from your RePlay to your PC) and in theory has the ability to d/l video via the 'net. I'm not aware of any sites providing video at this moment, however.

      Just wait, in a couple of years the new Pr0n viewers of choice will be DVRs. Pay a couple bucks & d/l "Bigguns #14: Attack of the Clones" overnight for later viewing. I can hardly wait!

  • need new Tivo? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fetta ( 141344 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @02:26PM (#2805201)
    Sounds like those of us who already own a Tivo would have to buy a "second generation box" to take advantage of this deal with RealNetworks.

    For me to shell out more money for a new box, they better be offering some real compelling content. The Tivo already records more stuff than I could possibly find time to watch.
    • would have to buy a "second generation box"

      Why? Just a update to the software (which happens from time to time as is) and a card [9thtee.com] to older boxes and you are set.
      (I'm sure some things can be done without the card, but if you don't otherwise use 56K, you should force your TiVo to.)

    • For me to shell out more money for a new box, they better be offering some real compelling content.

      Or they just stop supporting the old boxes. But such a blow to their established market would be a fatal error, no matter what promise the new technology holds.

      Suppose, though, that cash strapped as they are, they offer you a trade-in/upgrade. What would you do?

      As far as I'm concerned, the choices are getting muddier. Things aren't getting better, they're getting worse because some of these companies are now soley focused on profit. Technology of tomorrow with the quality of VHS, all for a subscription fee. Gee, thanks.

  • Great (Score:5, Funny)

    by British ( 51765 ) <british1500@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @02:26PM (#2805203) Homepage Journal
    Great, now we can watch "BUFFERING" on TV now, and have it solicit your email address for special offers!

  • Maybe TiVo can get their codecs to perform (Score:5, Troll)

    by joshv ( 13017 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @02:27PM (#2805209)
    I dunno, but even on broadband connections I have never viewed an acceptable video stream based on a RealNetworks codec. I keep giving them a chance, downloading the new required viewer every other month, click 'No, cancel, no, exit' every time their viewer loads and prompts me to register. But their codecs suck.

    On the exact same connection I can get near VHS quality streams (BBC online is a great example with their 300 Kbps feed) using windows media. I've tried many different Real feeds that claim the same bandwidth targets, and I've yet to see one that is watchable. I wish Real were better, but it not even in the same ballpark.

    I think Real has done more to give streaming video a band name, than any other company out there.

    Perhaps TiVO can figure out what's wrong.

    -josh
    • i have an AT&T cable connection in Richmond, VA, and i get VHS quality on both real player and media player. in fact, i get less sync errors and less buffering with real player. But i also have a friend that has the same provider as i, and is in the same situation as you. who knows.
    • Wow, that's interesting because I've had the exact opposite experience with Real vis-a-vis Windows Media. Windows Media always misbehaves, gets the sound out of sync with the picture, or just dies. Real Media (and Quicktime for that matter) works well on the same connection.

      Of course I don't watch a ton of long feeds on the net, mostly short things like movie trailers or clips. Maybe thats the difference?

      • Both of you are probably correct; Real is targetted to a lower bandwidth than Windows Media is. So if you're on a high speed connection, Real looks crappy. If you're on a low speed connection, Windows Media skips too much. Available bandwidth is always getting faster though...

  • An opportunity for Tivo (Score:4, Insightful)

    by irregular_hero ( 444800 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @02:27PM (#2805210)
    With Tivo's stock price in the toilet and analysts wondering about Tivo's "business plan and future," it only makes sense that they would try to bring something to the table as far as "on-demand video" goes.

    Tivo is hamstrung in that it has -- for most consumers who don't specifically modify the device -- only a 56K modem to get video into the device. Tivo's got to come up with something else, and darned if RealNetworks doesn't already have ready-made code that can run on Linux. What else would they choose? Microsoft's Media format?

    Seems to me that Tivo needs to take a page from SonicBlue's playbook and start making broadband-capable Tivos ASAP. You might as well forget about asking me to download .rm files and display them on my Sony WEGA TV, blocks and all. Give me something a little better by sticking with MPEG and upping the connection speed. I'd pay for it.

    • Re:An opportunity for Tivo (Score:5, Insightful)

      by uradu ( 10768 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @03:26PM (#2805559)
      > Seems to me that Tivo needs to take a page from SonicBlue's playbook

      How about photocopy the whole damn book? Their whole business model sucks, "giving away" the player and "making money" (obviously not) off the guide fee. It only leads to people getting pissed off for being charged for 3+ guides (TiVo, DirecTV, Digital Cable etc.) They might as well give you the player for free and charge $50/mo for the TiVo logo.

      It seems they could have a much more lucrative business if they built an entire accessory line around the base device. They should take at serious look at the game console market if they want to know how to make more money after selling the basic box. It's all in the expansion, stupid.

      - Put in 1394 ports and sell external expansion hard drives that every moron can install w/o a kernel recompile. Sell a purple TiVo-branded 30GB 1394 HD for $200 or so, and you would actually make money off hardware. Don't limit the number of drives, and you'd be surprised how many drives you'd find in some homes.

      I would bet that just offering external storage expansion alone would seriously improve their bottom line. They could easily co-brand an ADS 1394 enclosure, throw in a cheap 30GB HD--all for $60 to them, while selling it for $200 or $250.

      - Add an Ethernet port and sell PC (and Mac) software that lets you manage the TiVo over the network: provide a more powerful (and quicker) version of the on-screen menus, save shows to PC for possible burning to CD/DVD, watch streaming video on multiple PCs from the TiVo etc. IOW, sell all the stuff hackers are working on anyway, while actually making money off it.

      - Sell a purple TiVo-branded broadband router as a "broadband adapter" or under some other such Joe-Blow-appealing label. Take the opportunity that you're actually providing a killer app for home networking to become a major force in home networking. Become a pioneer in phoneline, powerline and wireless networking appliances.

      - Otherwise expand the digital entertainment management idea that the TiVo introduced.

      Instead, they're resting on their original laurels with nary any innovation since (save the DirecTiVo, if that's innovation). TiVo could have worked hard and become THE digital media company, but they pretty much paused their vision along with live TV. They remind me a lot of Palm.

      -

      • > ). TiVo could have worked hard and become THE digital media company, but they pretty much paused their vision along with live TV. They remind me a lot of Palm.

        LOL. I agree. The inovators or pioneers must continue to set the standard or be rushed under by someone who can take advantage of the core product -- with the features the consumers REALLY want. Case in point: RioVolt MP3 players. I almost bet that the fact that a small group of programmers (and their managers) at iRiver who have constantlly listened to consumers and implemented these requests into multiple firmware updates regularly for their products is the biggest reason that RioVolts (in the us) and Iriver's in the rest of the world -- have literally walked away with everyones dollars, in the wake of dozens of competing models. (I mean if you are already bleading millions of VC into a product -- it does not hurt to spend a bit on little pirks to the consumers -- it will pay back tenfold)
      • They should take at serious look at the game console market if they want to know how to make more money after selling the basic box. It's all in the expansion, stupid

        Actually first party companies don't make money on peripherals. Usually someone like SONY will sell a memory card for say $34 and joe-bob third party will sell one for $20. Well guess which one most people buy (but guess which one sucks). Most console makers lose money on hardware (sega) and make it on software licensing (SONY). The hardware biz sucks. I do agree though they they need someway of transferring data off the device before I'll buy one. I know the critics would scream about piracy, but I want to be able to burn a show onto a DVD or at least store it on my 100 gig drive on my Linux box. Oh well

        psxndc

        • > I know the critics would scream about piracy, but I want to be able to burn a show onto a DVD

          Excactly, that's what the consumer wants, and frankly, it's the most natural extension of the base idea one can think of. I believe sooner or later this moronic phobia of piracy will have to subside one way or another, because it clearly does not serve the consumer. Not being able to do anymore something that we've done for well over a decade (tape shows on TV for later watching or showing to friends)--just because we're moving to a new medium--doesn't make any sense and doesn't sit well with consumers. People expect more choices from new technology, not less. It's the old saying all over again: just because we can (exert more control) doesn't mean we should.

          -
        • >Actually first party companies don't make money on peripherals.

          No, but look at the market they are in. They have stiff competition between several products that all have benefits. They're potential customer may also be very wary of spending a fortune on one of the new fangled PVR's. "Will I even use this thing?"

          What if they follow all of the EXCELLENT advise in the above post...

          By being the company that offers super-easy and flexible upgrade options, it allows Joe Sixpack to buy a low-end model now with the assurance that when he's totally hooked on the Tivo experience, he can easily turn the 30hour unit into a 120hour unit by going down to Circuit City, buying an external hard drive that looks great stacked, going home, and plugging in power and a daisy chain cable to the Tivo.

          He should also be able to replace modules to deal with upgrades and expansion. Would I buy a "next generation" Tivo for ~$400? No, probably not. But I sure would seriously consider buying an upgrade module for my existing unit at ~$100-$150 if it offered some decent options without taking away any of the freedom that I enjoy now.
          • > By being the company that offers super-easy and flexible upgrade options, it allows Joe Sixpack
            > to buy a low-end model now with the assurance that when he's totally hooked on the Tivo
            > experience, he can easily turn the 30hour unit into a 120hour unit...

            Exactly. The thing is, most people probably wouldn't be interested in all the possible options (though most /.ers probably would), and providing it all in one unit would make the price of entry way too expensive. That's the problem with some of these new media boxes cropping up, such as the HP or Compaq (haven't checked out the price of the Moxi yet): at $1000+ they're WAY too expensive as a single-unit purchase. People are much more likely to spend $1000 in increments (upgrading or adding to a device) over several months or years, than to walk into Best Buy and plonk down 1000 smackers without blinking. Besides, from a seller's point of view, there's more money in unbundling than bundling.

            -
      • An EXTERNAL hard drive you could (maybe with some hacking) connect to another TiVo and -- gasp -- SHARE VIDEO?!?!?! Not that it's not an absolutely fabulous (and completely logical) idea. But can you hear the RIAA and Co...? Man oh man... :-)
        • They could easily encrypt the content on the removeable drive with the key of the Tivo that originally recorded the signal.

          Not that I support the Man or anything, but it could be done.
          .
        • > But can you hear the RIAA and Co...?

          That's the major caveat with some of my recommentations at the moment. Yet it is something that I think will eventually be solved one way or another--maybe through a sensible extension of fair-use laws into the 21st century, who knows. Or maybe some large manufacturers banding together against the content owners, such as Philips and others. Or maybe some large conglomerates like Sony that have their fingers both in the electronics and the content pies, being torn between losing potential revenue from one or the other, will come up with some fair use ideas that will compromise between the two camps. I really don't know, but I know that people will get more and more pissed at having all these new unfulfilled possibilities with digital media, all because of artificial restrictions.

          -
    • You're assuming that most consumers have broadband access... they don't. At least not in the US, which is Tivo's target population.

      If you add a NIC, and a modem, and (of course) a wireless NIC when you only need one of them you start getting into real money that drives the initial price of the unit way up. What they need is to offer externally pluggable communications modules. They should build NAT into all of them to facilitate home networking. If you choose the modem module, it should dial the 800 number by default, but allow you to set it up to dial your ISP whenever someone on your home network needs access or it needs to download updates.

      There are so many great things they could do. I bought my Tivo about a year ago and absolutely love it. I chose Tivo because of their willingness to allow folks to mess with the system.

      .
  • Wonderful! Lousy sound quality and choppy video for everyone!

    HT

  • I'm still rooting for RealNetworks (Score:3, Insightful)

    by alewando ( 854 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @02:28PM (#2805217)
    I can't say I much like realmedia formats -- while the compression is decent, the resulting quality is not necessarily the best for the bang. Combine that with RealNetworks's history of installing spyware with realplayer, and I've never been a big fan.

    Nevertheless, I'm still rooting for RealNetworks, inasmuch as they're still giving Microsoft a run for their money. It's not that I especially hate Microsoft, although I do; it's that the last thing this industry is yet another concentration of formats in the control of one corporation. Windows Media is no more or less proprietary than realmedia, but when there are two competing crappy proprietary formats, at least they're more likely to keep each other honest that way.

    And thankfully, this is just another sign that RealNetworks has what it takes to continue leading in this sector. Back in April, RealNetworks negotiated a deal with AOL [pcworld.com] to bundle their software with AOL's, putting them at #1. I'm certainly not a fan of AOL, for what it's worth, but that's probably the second easiest/best way to get one's software on the desktop of millions of ordinary users, next to bundling it with Windows itself.

    Now if only TiVo would stay solvent long enough for all this to make some sort of difference....
    • Well apple looks like its starting to get off its ass and market quicktime. If they can do it well and develop for linux, they could be a real force.


      • I agree that it would be very valuable for Apple to develop quicktime for linux. At the same time, we have to remember that the expense to develop and support quicktime on another non-Apple OS is very expensive. When that market makes up less than 2% of all desktops out there, it doesn't seem too smart at this point to battle to put Quicktime on linux boxes when they could simply more heavily market for windows users. If they get 1% m0re of all the windows users to install quicktime, that's probably more than there are linux desktop users total.


        I hope this announcement means that future Tivo units will have networking built-in so I can remotely control my Tivo without hacking the crap out of it beyond the extra hard drive I've already installed. I hope having RealPlayer on the tivo doesn't mean that it'll be used for playing those commercials TiVo is now downloading periodically at night on my phone line.

    • It's people like you who put Netscape where it is today. While MS was improving IE, you and your ilk were sitting around saying, "Hey, it's okay that Netscape munges tables and needs to reload everything if I *gasp* resize the page -- everyone should support them because they're not Microsoft!" Keep supporting screw-ups just because you hate their enemy and you'll ensure that they always remain screw-ups, because the only thing they need to do to retain that particular business model for a while is to not be bought out by said enemy -- that is, until they finally go out of business because people couldn't take the crappiness anymore.


      Oh, and this is coming from someone who prefers Windows Media Player 8, hates all versions of QuickTime, and is happy enough with Real to be a GoldPass subscriber ('though not a Real One subscriber, although that's the player I use for Real now). And call me crazy, but I let them bill me every month because the service they provide is worth it to me, not because they ain't Microsoft.

  • Real in a nutshell... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Real - a technology seeking a use.

  • Real = terrible (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @02:28PM (#2805219)
    RealNetworks is terrible, so bad that I have stooped to only using MS media player. Problems include:

    it is "spyware"

    it is non-secure: that is, use of it injects data into your system that you don't have the control over to save, copy, or do what you want.

    Unless you are careful, it splatters itself all over your desktop

    If you are a real idiot, you get spammed if you enter your e-mail address during set-up.

    Unless you are careful, it keeps nagging you to upgrade to a version that is less secure and works worse than the previous version.

    • I agree completely. As far as media formats, closed-ness, spaminess, hideous installs and such goes, Real is at the bottom of the pile. Apple comes next, and Microsoft is only slightly better than Apple. If Microsoft can do me the favor of wiping out real, I'd consider forgiving them for some of their other faults.

      The optimum, of course, is free, open formats like MPEG. But no one sends cocaine and hookers to the hotel rooms of content providers and hardware manufacturers to support free and open formats, so it doesn't happen.

      • Quacktime is worse. Quicktime is the only program that has fried machines that I've tried installing it on. Not just once, but three times. Plain old virgin installs of the OS, and the latest version of Quicktime, on three different machines. Crashed during install, and the thing never ran properly. It would always lock the machine up every time it tried to play a Quacktime movie. I finally just deleted the thing to fix the problems.
        • It would always lock the machine up every time it tried to play a Quacktime movie.

          That's your problem right there. Howard the Duck was a horrible movie. The software was just trying to protect you.

  • Wheres the Open Divx codecs?
    Allot of closed codecs with high license models seem to be the only ones competing. I want to see more open hardware and less reliance on costly software.

    BTW, Realplayer is icky. With 200meg quality divx ep's of Star Trek Enterprise, I can fit 3-4 on a CD.
    • Wheres the Open Divx codecs?
      Good question... I've been hunting for ANY codec that I can use on a Sparc platform, without any luck.
      All I see out there is Windows DLL files and Pentium-optimized Linux source.

      Allot of closed codecs with high license models seem to be the only ones competing. I want to see more open hardware and less reliance on costly software.

      I'd pay good money for a hardware MPEG+DiVX encoder/decoder on a PCI card with an open API.

  • Pay only now (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Methuseus ( 468642 )
    This must have something to do with Real charging for new versions of its product. You can still download RealPlayer 8 for free, it just takes about 15 minutes to find the link. I'm waiting for the day that you have to pay to watch streaming content on the web. Maybe I'd be more enthusiastic if I'd ever seen more than 2 acceptable quality Real Media files, and those were encoded at the highest possible quality for the Real Media encoder. Even those were barely of acceptable quality.

    • I'm waiting for the day that you have to pay to watch streaming content on the web.


      Well, you'll either pay for it or watch ads during the content. Did you think all that bandwidth was free? Or that content providers were just going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts for you, because they think you're just such a special guy?

  • Some how I don't think this will help to bring the current version of realplayer to linux...

  • Compatible with RealPlayer? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gpinzone ( 531794 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @02:32PM (#2805250) Homepage Journal
    It doesn't say anywhere in the article that the codec is going to be compatible with RealPlayer. Furthermore, the TiVo implementation may have rights management built into it. If you transfer video from the TiVo to your computer, it may not play on your PC even if it is the same codec.

    On a lighter note, maybe I can now watch flash movies on my TV. Hyakugojuuichi! [cwru.edu]
  • What does this do? give me the ability to pause live mp3?

    I really don't understand why real has deals on the playstation2 and the tivo... last I checked people don't use either of them for listening to badly-encoded audio or video.

  • Ye Gods, this thing will take over your living room. I can envisage a large "Real" hallmark on all your TiVo recordings, the "Real" jingle preceeding all your DRMified CDs.

  • Great... (Score:3, Redundant)

    by ZoneGray ( 168419 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @02:36PM (#2805280) Homepage
    Ah, great... now as soon as you power on your Tivo, Real Player will prompt you to register with your e-mail address, install itself as the startup screen, add itself as a favorite recording, and make itself the default for everything else.
  • Imagine if you could use you digital recorder to rip a few movies into low-res, low bitrate copies and copy them to your iPaq to view on that next plane flight... Wouldn't that be cool?

    Apple better come out with a set top QuickTime digital recorder fast. They're getting left behind again (no offense to you Apple folks out there, kudos on OS X).
    • Don't you already do that???
    • And QT6 should be coming out pretty soon... I'm not sure exactly how they will distinguish quicktime versus other MPEG4 solutions (not that I've heard of any), but the potential for doing great things with quicktime is obviously there. Of course it remains to be seen whether a robust, standards-based architecture can stand up to less-functional proprietary formats with that have negotiated control over content and distribution.

  • TiVo to Support Canada! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Spankophile ( 78098 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @02:47PM (#2805347) Homepage
    What's that you say? Not yet.

    Fuck.
  • This is exactly where the market is heading and exactly why an open source PVR/VOD [personal video recorder / video on demand] machine is needed. You're going to have several different groups enacting their own (proprietary and probably distribution restricted) versions of video formats over the Internet. There needs to be, at least, a single standard that is used that is open and usable among different vendors. (Yes, you say MPEG, but you need to be more specific. Minimum framerate, audio encoding type, resolution, VBR or CBR, etc.)

    While I say, "Hurray!" for content being able to be downloaded over the Internet directly to my television, I already know where this is going. Vendor lock-out. And if you want to broadcast your videos over the Internet to your special interest group, you're going to have to marry a vendor. Ugh.

    Reason #8 we need an open source PVR/VOD box. Convergence is happening in the television space.
  • RealPlayer is one of the lamest products I've ever seen. The image quality is bad, not counting the sound. Also, there's this version nightmare where a stream will NEVER play, no matter what version you have.

    On top of that their windoze product annoys you enough to classify it as nagware, specially with the impertinent 'agent' or whatever that will not leave your system tray alone.

    RealNetworks should just plain die and disappear. They'd be doing a public service.
  • The addition of the RealOne Player software to TiVo's upcoming line of second-generation boxes would let users record music from CDs on the devices, as well as download music from the Internet.

    i can't wait to see Hilary Rosen's comments on this.

    possibly the most interesting and contentious item mentioned in this blurb.

  • PC owners are with me, I'm sure, when I say that as horrible as QuickTime is on a PC, I would rather QuickTime than RealPlayer for streaming any single day of the week. Real's streaming performance, in my years of experience, is IMHO the sludge below the barrel. Someone had to scrape the bottom of the barrel so deeply that they found this on the other side. If this idea makes it, I'm listening to my New-Age roommate and signing off of TV for good! :P

    It's been asked so much that it's pointless, but WHY DO WE NEED proprietary formats?!? What's wrong with MPEG4?

    ***sigh of exasperation***
  • The RealMedia format has become soft of like Netscape 4.x and later; we're supposed to root for their crappy product just because they're up against MS. Of course, we also know how terrible the WM codecs are, but even they have a slight edge over RM, especially when you consider the horrible job Real does writing their official players and plug-ins.

    Now of course everyone's response to this is that TiVO should start using open-source codec x or version of DiVX y, but let's face facts people, huge corporations aren't going to give some little-known format a try in their mass-market products just for kicks. If you really want to see RM and WM go away, you have to look to MPEG-4. I would expect to start seeing the big names involved in the format start rolling out big-name products that use MPEG-4 this summer. Apple just started including MPEG-4 support in their OSS QuickTime Streaming Server [apple.com] and it seems likely that they will start including the codec with the player so everyone can export MPEG-4 streams sometime this year.

    • but let's face facts people, huge corporations aren't going to give some little-known format a try in their mass-market products just for kicks.

      Especially since it offers no "strategic business synergies". Whenever a manu pairs up with a software company like real, Apple or Microsoft, they get more than just a codec, they get a partner. As time has shown us, being partnered with the OSS community doesn't offer the same business advantages, since the OSS community doesn't actually have any, eh, money.

  • Overreacting? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mr_zorg ( 259994 )
    I think (hope) you all are overreacting. Nowhere in the press release did I see anything about TiVo switching to Real format as its internal storage format. Nowhere did I even really see anything about using this for video, though it was mentioned that RealPlayer plays video (on the PC)... What I do read into this is that it will allow me to use my TiVo as, essentially, an MP3 jukebox. Plus the ability to download new tunes from the net or my PC. That sounds pretty cool to me...
  • I been thinking, you can buy a hardware decoder for DVDs. But you have to use software decoding for all of the other digital video formats. If I could get a decoder that did mpg, avi, quicktime, real, windows media, and divx. That would kick ass. I wouldn't have to have 100 different media players either. All I would need is a tiny little program that takes the output from the decoder card and puts it up full screen. It would let me actually use my computer while watching videos too!
  • The TiVo is equipped with only a 50MHz PowerPC chip, IIRC. I remember when running RealPlayer on my PII-266 was like pulling teeth.

    I'm just wondering if the poor little TiVo will be able to cope with all the rest of its housekeeping (like streaming the broadcast data to and from disk) and still have enough left to run Real's codec. Perhaps I underestimate the TiVo's CPU power here, but there are times when it definitely chugs (e.g. in displaying the menus after hitting the TiVo button on the remote--that can take up to 7 or 8 seconds in some cases).
  • ...the consumer market. Wonderful. Of course, we had a foreetaste of this with the DVD market (gratuitously incompatable movies, buggy players, buggy titles), and it will no doubt get worse. Soon, desktop software manufacturers will no longer have to suffer unfavourable comparisons between their buggy, unreliable products because they'll have invaded the market which has reliable ones!
  • I haven't seen a Real Video stream in ages. Sure I used to get some Anime in them, but shoot thats been 6 or 7 months at least and even then they were considered 'lame' and somewhat old fashion.

    Somebody besides Microsoft _REALLY_ needs to develope a good streaming MPEG4 video codec implementation and start licencing it off for cheap.

  • What I want in my next TiVo. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NetJunkie ( 56134 ) <`jason.nash' `at' `gmail.com'> on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @03:00PM (#2805419)
    I love TiVo, I really do. I have two of them and it's hard to watch TV without them..but...

    For my next one I want HDTV support. Right now I have to switch in and out of TiVo to watch HD shows.

    I want broadband support. My monthly service for TiVo is effectively doubled since I have to keep a phoneline around for it. I guess I could hack in TivoNet...but I don't have time right now. I want to totally switch to my cell phone.

    I want the ability to move shows to other recorders..or better yet, have one master box and several slaves on other TVs similar to that new one that was just announced.
    • An hour, tops, if you have any ability to follow directions at all.

      Getting more useful things like TivoWeb set up takes a bit more time, and some Linux experience, but I'd be shocked if anyone who could basically follow a sheet of paper with directions couldn't install TivoNet without any problems at all.
  • As may have been pointed out, the quality of the RM stream and such has much more to do with how the source material is handled than other factors.

    I encode a fair amount of content using they're free realproducer frequently. The difference between something as simple as s-video sources rather than composite video or coax.

    Also, the bitrate and how it is allocated makes a big difference, I don't mean just throwing the highest quality samplerate at it and letting it go. I've seen to many people encode something at 200kbps+ and leave the audio at "Voice Only" which sounds like absolute crap

  • I wouldn't be surprised to see (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mrroot ( 543673 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @03:01PM (#2805430)
    a little consolidation in the home media market in the near future... Maybe Sony buying Tivo, incorporating it's technology into a future version of the Playstation, along with the ability to play Real Media files. You know XBox will have this capability with Windows Media files in the future. Then you also have companies such as AOL/TW who could become a player. I'm sure there are others too.
  • TiVo has been experimenting with various forms of advertising. In the past, they've sent adverts through the TiVo's message system, normally used to notify you of channel changes. Then, they made the same adverts pop up as the default screen when you power on the TV. The most obnoxious new advertising attempt put a Lexus sweepstakes entry funtion right at the bottom of the main TiVo menu.

    People's TiVos also went and recorded a Lexus commercial which many claimed interfered with another program they had expected the TiVo to record. People were up in arms about this, and for a time, the online TiVo forums were swamped with requests for information on how to opt out of this nonsense. (To opt out, call TiVo. They'll gladly kill future adverts for you. I did, and haven't had any more junk.)

    Presumably what TiVo wants to do now is to have video downloaded during the nightly call, so they can do future video advertisements without interfering with program schedules and, more importantly, avoid paying broadcasters to display the commercial/video they want recorded.

    As an aside - how many of you bought your TiVo to avoid watching commercials, not to have new ones added?

    • And yeah - my previous comment is pure speculation. I read the article, regarding claims about music recording and similar. Thing is - the TiVo already has real-time audio encoding and decoding, and a CPU with more than enough horsepower to use any of a number of free, better audio CODECs. Why would another CODEC be neededed for the functionality they list?

      Video downloading is the only thing that makes even a little sense. Low bandwidth, computationally inexpensive video is the only place Real has an edge compared to the free alternatives.

  • Great! (Score:5, Funny)

    by asdfasdfasdfasdf ( 211581 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @04:22PM (#2806035)
    I can finally watch streaming video on TV!

    err. wait. That's what tv is.

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