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Television Media

TiVo Series 2 Review 249

Posted by Hemos from the electric-bugallo-for-you dept.
Anonymouse writes "I just saw on Linux.com that NewsForge has reviewed the new Linux-based TiVo Series 2 PVR. TiVo now (unofficially) supports broadband via a USB ethernet adapter as well, so it doesn't tie up a phone line." Yes, NF and LC are both owned by OSDN, as is Slashdot.
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TiVo Series 2 Review More

TiVo Series 2 Review

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  • Before anyone else says it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by qurob ( 543434 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @09:46AM (#3409017) Homepage
    INSERT

    Comment about how this could be made for $76.23 with Pricewatch parts, and it would also play MP3's, Quake III, surf the net, cook toast, and send pictures of the kids to Grandma

    /INSERT
  • how am i meant to watch everything that tivo will record for me, i allready have to much that i want to watch with 4 channles, with hours of recordings backing up behind me it would be a night mare, i'll stick with my attitude of nothing on tv is worth prgramming my video for.

    • All the more reason... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by crow ( 16139 )
      That's all the more reason for getting a PVR. You can save 25% of the time by skipping commercials. With my ReplayTV, I just use the 30-second skip button and I'm past the commercials almost instantly (I use the 8-second instant replay button if I go too far).

      And that doesn't begin to touch how nice it is not having to manage your life around being there to watch your favorite show. Or how you always have something interesting to watch instead of channel surfing. Or how skipping the commercials avoids breaking the tension in a show like 24. Or how watching several episodes of a continuing story back to back can make a TV show feel like a movie. Or how totally pissed off you get when someone spoils the X-Files for you when you're three weeks behind.

  • US-Centric Device (Score:2, Informative)

    by forged ( 206127 )
    From the TiVO FAQ [tivofaq.com]
    • What formats and standards is TiVo compatible with?
      • TiVo is only compatible with a Standard Definition NTSC signal.

    D'oh :(

    Don't get me wrong here, I would love to get one of these. Too bad they don't have a PAL version available.

    • er... what about this [tivo.com] must be pal cos the uk is PAL.
      • Yup, you're absolutely right there appears to be a PAL version on the UK market!
        I didn't know this URL, and it isn't listed prominently on the main tivo.com site either, unless I missed out something obvious ?

        Now what about France, Germany, Belgium etc since I don't live in the UK...

        (yes I have tried www.fr.tivo.com, www.de.tivo.com, etc. :)

        • Re:US-Centric Device (Score:3, Informative)

          by radish ( 98371 )
          There is no version of Tivo specifically for european countries other than the UK. However the device will work anywhere in mainland europe where the applicable standards (PAL/220v/50hz) are the same. I think france is SECAM, but most other places should be OK. Of course, you won't have local listings, but if you happen to use Sky Digital for your TV (I hear that many non-UKers do so) then you can get it to work. There are several members of the UK tivo forum who are in Italy, Holland etc. Check it out here [tivocommunity.com].

          Good luck!
    • * What formats and standards is TiVo compatible with?
      o TiVo is only compatible with a Standard Definition NTSC signal.

      If this is true, that is sad on the part of the developers. You almost can't buy a television encoder that doesn't handle both formats seemlessly. For 300-400 dollars, I would expect that it should be able to handle either mode, maybe with a switch on the back?

    • Re:US-Centric Device (Score:4, Informative)

      by dair ( 210 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @10:09AM (#3409156)
      The TiVO that's available in the UK is a regular PAL device - there's a UK TiVO FAQ [tivoukfaq.com] with more info. If you have a sky/cable box, you just plug it into the back of the TiVO and the TiVO into the back of your TV.

      It's preconfigured to dial a UK freephone number to pick up listings, and works just like the US version. I don't know if they've launched it anywhere else in Europe, so if you're not in the UK you might have to live without the listings feature (which makes it less useful).

      I've had one for about a year now (in the UK), and would never go back...

      -dair
    • I see a marketing void!!! why don't you build a PVR for Europe!!! you will be rich. I mean, Europe is the second most importent trading block in the world for god sakes.

    • Um. Its trivial to make it work with PAL... (Score:4, Informative)

      by tgd ( 2822 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @10:55AM (#3409460)
      A ten second Google search would have told you that.

      Its one of the first hacks that were available for the Tivo. In fact, an awful lot of the Tivo hacking is done by folks in Australia (including the guy who wrote Samba), and they all run them PAL.

      Tip: try searching "tivo PAL hack" on Google.
      • I was worried about the same thing and found the hack you refer to. However, what I didn't find, and it's a show-stopper for me, it's a way to pipe your own schedules into TiVo. I would be glad to pay TiVo money for the service, but I want to use it in a country they don't cover, so I'd have to hack my own. Is it doable? I am guessing so, from your Australia comment, but how?
        • As I recall (a friend of mine who worked at Linuxcare with Andrew Tridgell has a couple of hacked TiVos) Tridge and co reverse engineered the TiVo's guide data format and generate their own data for Australia by screen-scraping various tv guides hosted on the web. I think the guide data (you can find some on the tivo.samba.org ftp site IIRC) is then rsynced onto the TiVo via an ethernet connection. I think they have intentionally not published the guide data format because they don't want to endanger TiVo's revenue model.

          But it is doable, I've seen it.
    • Tivos have been working with PAL and available in the UK for a while. I've had one for about six months. Dixons do the only model available - a Thompson box.

      Cheers,
      Ian

  • To be able to actually *use* one of these things; to have the time to sit through a 12 hour marathon of Farscape or B5 without having the kids crawling all over you... I'd really like a Tivo-type thingy, but I have no idea when I'd be able to actually use it. I barely get to use the dvd player we got for Christmas...

    -----
    Is Darwin an evolutionary OS? [cafepress.com]
    • Yes but this is one of the key benefits. When the kids start crawling, you use the magic Pause button on the Tivo! :)
    • ...to have the time to sit through a 12 hour marathon of Farscape or B5 without having the kids crawling all over you.

      First off, I realise your post wasn't intended very seriously. Purely for the purpose of this reply however, I've decided to have a sense-of-humour bypass.

      I'm a geek who finds, much to his surprise, that without seeming to do anything very much he's ended up with a fiancee [eruvia.org], a baby daughter [eruvia.org] and a Tivo.

      This is a good combination.

      Without the Tivo, nothing would get watched in a comprehensible fashion. My daughter Sarah would see to that. As anyone who's been in my position knows, babies require an awful lot of both comfort and attention. Even when they're asleep, typically they're asleep on you, thus stranding you on the sofa in the sure and certain knowledge that if you try to move they'll wake up and start screaming at you.

      So...

      The Tivo is great. It allows me to watch programmes that otherwise would be interrupted, and it also builds up a store of things for me to watch during those sofa-as-desert-island moments.

      Just make sure you leave the remote somewhere to hand...

      Cheers,
      Ian

  • Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)

    by indole ( 177514 ) <fluxistNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday April 25, 2002 @09:51AM (#3409049) Homepage

    Pong marathon here I come...

  • HDTV Tivo (Score:5, Interesting)

    by keep_it_simple_stupi ( 562690 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @09:51AM (#3409055) Homepage
    I love my series one TiVo, I really do. But now it's keeping me from buying an HDTV. Honestly, I go to the local big-chain electronics store and drool over the big widescreen HDTV's like everyone else, but then I think back to the days before TiVo. I would actually have to keep track of when TV shows are on TV again. Forget it.

    And I know I could still use the TiVo with the High Def set, but really, why? The only reason then for high def then is DVDs, and that's maybe 10% of my viewing.

    So while this new model has some great features, I'm waiting for the High Def model. This will be the killer app.

    Just my $.02

    • Re:HDTV Tivo (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      To keep this on-topic, check out the interview with TiVolutionary that is done at the end of the review that was posted. Very interesting. He talks about the new capabilities of their Series|2 platform, and that they've demo'd an HDTiVo, and a partner could easily make one with the Series|2 platform.

      I bought an HDTV after my TiVo, and it was a no-brainer.

      Once you get used to the quality of the regular analog (and TiVo) programs on the big TV, it's great. (The neat stretching my Toshiba 50H80 does to fill 16:9 with 4:3 is PERFECT!)

      I find that most of the HD content I watch is stuff that I would not put on TiVo, for the most part. Sporting events in HD (I usually like watching sports live for some reason). Content on HBO like their HD movies or HD TV shows (Sopranos). There are no commercials on HBO, so TiVo'ing it is not as crucial. The PBS channel has a lot of HD content, and very few commercials.

      There are only a couple regular shows that I normally record in TiVo that have HD available (such as CSI).

      By the time most shows I watch are really done in HD, I'm sure there is going to be an affordable HD TiVo available, so I don't sweat it.

      And then there is DVD, which is fucking awesome on HDTV's.
      • The neat stretching my Toshiba 50H80 does to fill 16:9 with 4:3 is PERFECT!

        Doesn't it bother you that everything is too wide? I hate when the aspect ratio is incorrect. I'd rather there were horizontal black bars down the sides of the screen...
        • IIRC, the Toshiba stretches the edges of the picture but leaves the center (which is normally the focus of the frame) in the correct aspect ratio. I've yet to see this done in person, but the couple of people I know that use the capability say that it works great with almost no noticeable difference in picture quality.
    • Ditto. With the amount of programming available now in HD, its more important than ever to be able to timeshift HD content. I WANT HD, but can't imagine having to be there at 8 when the movie starts.

      I know, hipix for ota, but no direct hd tivo, yet. Lets but make an HD tivo and add a hipix card and voila, a direct tivo that can grab ota broadcasts as well. Where do I send my money?

    • Re:HDTV Tivo (Score:3, Informative)

      by afidel ( 530433 )
      Doesn't everyone remember that the MPAA et all are activly lobying congress to make sure that even if there is a HDTivo that it will be worthless because they are adding a "no record" bit to the HDTV spec so that personal timeshifting will be impossible for anything of value. Yeah you can have a HDTivo but the only programming it can legally record is infomercials =(
    • but you wont get it until there is a lot of HD programming... and the channels have to actually start transmitting HD, oh and wait another 5 years for Cable TV to even carry HD. Then you will see a HD Tivo.... if it is legal to own one, the Tivo might be branded as a contraband device only useful for violating the rights of the poor Motion picture studios and Tv stations... and therefore punishable by death.

      It sounds far-fetched... but it will happen.

    • Re:HDTV Tivo (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @11:05AM (#3409524) Homepage
      Sadly, you'll have to keep dreaming here.

      A TiVo-like device for HDTV is years off, if ever. First, there's a distinct lack of interface standardization between set-top box makers. Sure, there's been standards agreed to, even for the cable industry. They've been summarily ignored, and the FCC is too balless to actually step in and impose a standard that they've been asking for since 1998 .

      On top of that, Hollywood stepped in a few years ago and started the standard whining on how evil it is for peons, er, I mean, consumers to be able to record shows and then do something as absurd as watch them when they want instead of when the broadcast studio wants. Ridiculous concept. So part of the agreement includes requirements so that shows can be flagged for record, record-once (e.g. - no copies), or no-record. This has been agreed to by everyone involved - the studios, the broadcasters, and the equipment manufacturers.

      Think we're done yet? Nope. Because while Hollywood whined until they got the above, they then decided about a year later that this was utterly insufficient. Why? Because they still didn't have the control they wanted. No, they set about to make a standard that not only allowed them to control what you recorded, but also how long you recorded it for and how many times you could watch it! That's right, they wanted equipment manufacturers to build into their systems the ability for an outside source to delete recordings after an arbitrary amount of time, or make it so you could only watch something once (gee, hope everyone in the household was around to watch it).

      Both the cable industry and the studios were all for this. The equipment manufacturers collectively told them to stick it up their ass.

      But, all told, the hope for a digital VCR or PVR that will do direct digital recording is slim right now. There's no way to stop someone from building a TiVo-like device that re-encodes the stream, but you have the inherent problems of quality degradation and increased silicon requirements.

      • Re:HDTV Tivo (Score:3, Informative)

        by Quikah ( 14419 )
        A TiVo-like device for HDTV is years off, if ever.

        Not really. There are three products to do this with a computer: All allow hard disk recording, however I have no idea how well any of them work. Looking around the various hometheater groups the HiPix seems to be the most popular. These only work for OTA HD, so you won't be able to record DirecTV/Dish HD stuff.
      • Hollywood stepped in a few years ago and started the standard whining on how evil it is for peons, er, I mean, consumers to be able to record shows and then do something as absurd as watch them when they want instead of when the broadcast studio wants.

        That's the basic problem, broadcasters want to tightly control when people can watch, both by time and geography. Viewers want to be able to watch to suit their timetable.
    • I hadn't really thought about it that way, but lack of easy recordability is my biggest reason for not getting digital cable or an HDTV. My series 1 tivo is fantastic. I watch more shows I like but spend less total time doing it (TV is around 1/3 commercials, and I no longer watch "filler" shows between shows I like).

      Without a Tivo-like device, I won't move to HDTV.

      Since the early-adopter market is the same type folks who have Tivos, I wonder how this is hurting HDTV adoption? I suspect more than a few early tivo purchasers who would otherwise have gone on to become early HDTV purchasers are now too happy with their tivos to give up their power just yet.
  • Not flaming/trolling.
    That out of the way, I can see why this review for a very cool toy/gadget is here. But it kinda bugs me that the description includes "Linux-based". Now, I know Slashdot is Linuxcentric (no, really?), but still I think that was kinda irrelevant to the review. Does it make the device cheaper or more stable? Then say it is cheaper or more stable.
    It's like that story about Best Buy having a customer arrested, where in the first paragraph it was mentioned that he was an American Indian. Some people took exception to that, and I see the point.
    Now, I can just see the moderation: -1, Antilinux. Oh, well, it's just Karma :S

    • Re:Is Linux relevant here? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SurfTheWorld ( 162247 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @10:22AM (#3409228) Homepage Journal
      Regardless of if /. is Linux-Centric - I think this review is here because there is really a lot of exciting work being done on the "Hacking TiVo" front. There are a lot of really *really* nifty (and promising) projects that're being actively worked on: tivo-web (tcl), ExtractStream, etc...

      Beyond the exciting projects, the hacking of the TiVo itself is really a great experience. The folks at TiVo have been really positive (relatively speaking) in response to the hacking efforts. There is a rule that the hacking community has agreed to follow: don't fsck with the service code. There are no projects trying to steal service. Because of that, the TiVo folks have been really forthcoming with leaked information regarding system upgrades of the software (hints as to what devices will be supported and what-not) as well as some tools for manipulating the TiVo once it's r00t3|).

      And from a purely hacking standpoint - the DTiVo was the most illuminating hack I've done. They really have some security built into that thing to prevent the casual passer by from hooking up the disk to a PC and typing "mount". Hats off to all the TiVo Community for all the tremendous efforts they've put into hacking that box...

    • Re:Is Linux relevant here? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Erasmus Darwin ( 183180 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @10:28AM (#3409270)
      "But it kinda bugs me that the description includes "Linux-based". Now, I know Slashdot is Linuxcentric (no, really?), but still I think that was kinda irrelevant to the review."

      It's relevant in a couple ways: The review is intended for an audience that's interested in the commercial viability of Linux. The Linux-based nature of Tivos has helped people who have hacked their machines (in a good way). Also, there's an entire interview in the article which has a substational discussion of Tivo's involvement with Linux.

      "It's like that story about Best Buy having a customer arrested, where in the first paragraph it was mentioned that he was an American Indian."

      Actually, he was an Indian American (implying someone whose ancestors were originally from the country of India), not an American Indian (implying someone whose ancestors lived in North America before the arrival of the Mayflower). And it was relevant in that there were allegations further on in the article that the incident may have been racially motivated.

      "Now, I can just see the moderation: -1, Antilinux."

      How about "(-1, Fails to read entire article)" and "(-1, Shamelessly tries to be a moderation martyr)"?

    • Re:Is Linux relevant here? (Score:2, Informative)

      by rrs ( 113451 )
      >Does it make the device cheaper or more stable?

      Possibly. It definately makes it more hackable. Using a linux-based bootable CD tool I was able to add a 120G second hard drive to my AT&T branded series 2 TiVo.

      All kinds of info on hacking at theTiVo Forums [tivocommunity.com].

      ryan

  • Tie up Phone Line (Score:5, Informative)

    by billnapier ( 33763 ) <napier&pobox,com> on Thursday April 25, 2002 @09:59AM (#3409105) Homepage
    The new Tivo's also support getting channel information in-band from the Television Signal (played on the Discovery Channel late night) so you can keep your phone line open for important things, like ordering pizzas.

    For those of you techincally minded folks, they have encrypted and encoded the guide data into the video stream, which you Tivo will record and decode. It will then call up (still need the phone line, just not as long) and (After confirming your account status) download the encryption key.

    • Re:Tie up Phone Line (Score:2, Informative)

      by joldc ( 217258 )
      As will Series 1 Tivo's once they are upgraded to v3.0, slowly rolling out now. And it still needs the phone (or a net connection) to download local-specific channel information.
  • I own two DTiVo's and 1 standalone TiVo. Both r00t3|) with ethernet. Hacking the DTiVo is a couple of order of magnitudes more difficult than hacking the standalone...

  • One of the main obstacles that is preventing me from getting a TiVo thus far is the inability to save shows externally through a network. With a VCR I can record a show, movie, concert etc. for an unlimited amount of time - why can't TiVo do this? With the much more expensive ReplayTV you can download shows off the machine through a network connection. I find this feature extremely valuable as it would essentially extend the storage capacity to an unlimited amount.

    Sure you could buy two 120GB drives for a TiVo, but then a growing amount of that space will be filled with shows stored for the long term. So unfortunately until I can download shows off a TiVo I'm gonna be sitting on the sidelines, or I'll eventually break down and go for the ReplayTV regardless if it's inferior to TiVo in other ways.
    • You can do this... Search on www.dealdatabase.com for ExtractStream. Definitely possible, although very difficult under the DTiVo's
    • I'm mildly interested in Replay or TiVO, but have held off because I don't want to risk investing in the product as long as good use of it depends on an external company that may or may not be around long-term. It's the same reason I never got a network/internet digital picture frame.

      So, being ignorant of any Tivo details, I've assumed you can always run the output of the Tivo into a standard VCR and archive any recorded shows that way. Is that an incorrect assumption?

      I realize you lose picture quality that way, but it's still possible, right?

      And, why is Replay any different in this regard?

      Steve
      • Yes, you can archive shows to VCR without any trouble. It even has a little timer and instructions to make it easier.

        As for people wanting a way to network and send shows, anybody who does this is asking for a smacking from the DMCA. I think ReplayTV is gutsy for doing this, but I think they stand a good chance of losing. Either way its going to cost them lots of money, and small companies like Tivo shouldn't be wasting their money on lawsuits until they're better established. It maybe a noble cause, but frankly I want my Tivo to continue to work for years to come, and not become obselete because Tivo went bankrupt attempting to fight the TV studios.
    • It's not ideal, but here's what I do:

      I have a DirecTiVo unit. I record shows on it, and save them until I delete. At night, I offload the shows that I want to keep onto my DV camera via the TiVo's analog RCA outs. Then I dump the DV onto my G4 and burn a DVD. Like I said, it's not an ideal solution (i.e., analog, too many steps, real time recording, etc.), but it works really well. Since DirecTV does most of the compression, the signal looks plenty good. Do you really need digital quality for backing up World Rally Championship broadcasts?
    • First of all:

      "With a VCR I can record a show, movie, concert etc. for an unlimited amount of time - why can't TiVo do this?"

      I'm not sure what you mean. I have a Sony DirecTiVo. A few months ago, a friend archived a 6-hour concert onto the TiVo just by hitting "Record" while it was on. It records until your available space is used up, just like a VCR.

      I've also set up my TiVo to (legally) archive shows to my computer. How? I have an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 with video capture tools. I hooked up the S-video input on my video card to the S-video out on my TiVo, and I use ATI's TV software to archive shows. I've archived to DivX, VCD, and WMV with varying results. Sure, it's not as cool as "extracting" all of the shows off the TiVo would be, but it's incredibly easy and there is no question of the legality (as long as you're not distributing the movies, it's the same thing as backing up to a VCR would be.)

      By the time this season of Six Feet Under is over, I will have every episode safely archived on my computer. The best part is that I can then take any of this with me on a plane with my laptop without the hassle of carrying around a DVD player.

      Before I bought the AIW Radeon, I wasn't sure if archiving to the computer would work, but I can assure you it does. The results (a nice movie/TV episode library) are well worth it, too.

      So, if this is the reason you're not buying a TiVo, go to tivo.com and buy one! I love it. I even set up a TiVo for my computer-illiterate parents. The interface is so simple that they picked it up in a couple of days and now they can't live without it. It will change the way you look at TV.
      • A few months ago, a friend archived a 6-hour concert onto the TiVo just by hitting "Record" while it was on. It records until your available space is used up, just like a VCR.

        No, it does not. It records the program that's on in the block you hit "record." You recorded all of a 6 hour concert because it was scheduled to be on for 6 hours, not because TiVo kept going. TiVo will stop recording at the time the program is scheduled to end. If you want to, say, record a news channel all day long until you run out of space, you can't do it. TiVo records programs, not time periods, with the exception of an explicitly set up manual recording.

    • I'm sure if they tried to let you do this, someone with a lot of extra money and lawyers would complain and quickly put that to a stop.

      So is anyone aware of a way to hack a tivo/directivo to get the video stream?

  • I just bought one of these last week. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @10:07AM (#3409144) Homepage Journal
    And it rocks. I got it figuring my wife could get good use out of it (we have a child coming in a couple of months, and she'll be staying home with him), and so far it's been well worth it. It's already making TV easier for both of us, and grabbing all her favorites. I'll switch it over to use Ethernet as soon as I get 3.0 updated (from what I'm reading, it should update itself within a month or so), and I may add a second hard drive as well so we can do more long-term archiving.

    Do I have a few quibbles with it so far? Yes. But not too many. Dual tuners would be ideal, so we could avoid recording conflicts (She wants Friends, I want Smackdown - she wins!), and S-Video out would be cool, too. It's too bad only DirecTiVo offers dual tuners. It's also prone to artifacting in any mode lower-quality than Best, and even then sometimes it'll do it. I also wish I could set Season Pass Manager to automatically grab the episode that's rebroadcast at the odd hour - Food TV shows (like Iron Chef) are the best example of this. When there's an episode being shown at 10 PM and then being rebroadcast at 2 AM, I wish it'd default to grabbing the 2AM show. Things like that would minimize conflicts.

    The only other thing that I dislike about it is that I had to give money to Best Buy to get it - between their copy-protection support and the way they've mishandled the GeForce 4 pricing issue I really hate them.

    But the ultimate purpose in buying this was to make my wife's life a little easier when she's home with the baby, and it's definitely going to do that. This way, she can watch all the things she wants to, and do it when the baby gives her some free time.
    • Dude, I was in just your situation a few months ago and that (@*#@(%* thing worked so well that I finally had to get rid of it.

      I even wrote a little blurb about it. [gurno.com] - Beware, it's heroin-ware, baby!

    • Use your Season Pass Manager to lower the priority of that Food Show. TiVo will pick up the other show at 10 PM and automagically get the Food Show at 2 AM.

      If you got a Series 2, they came with the 2.0 software which didn't do a lot of the neat stuff in this area we've taken for granted since 2.5. When you get 3.0 you'll be very pleased with the control (in fact, I did exactly what you described for Witchblade last year with 2.5. It conflicted during it's 8 PM run so I got the 2 am repeat. Worked great).

  • OSDN? Who cares? (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by s.d. ( 33767 )
    Out of curiosity, why does anyone care that the site that did a TiVo Series 2 review is owned by the same company that owns Slashdot? Are the /. guys feeling guilty about posting this story? If so, why? It's no more or less relevant than most of the other stories posted here.

    • Full Disclosure (Score:3, Informative)

      by FooBarney ( 253298 )
      It's called full disclosure, and it's a bedrock principle of responsible journalism. A reporter or news outlet is responsible to acknowledge any financial interest in the subjects on which they report.

      Read a few issues of any AOL Time/Warner magazine (Time, Entertainment Weekly) and you'll find one. They have their fingers in EVERYTHING. :)
  • I love my Tivo, and the review was very good, but I'm having a problem with one feature that the reviewer really liked. I find that when I'm fast forwarding over commercials and then stop I end up seeing most of the commercial before the show returns. I've been using my Tivo for a couple of years, so I may have just gotten too fast. I wish they would add the slider that Richard referred to in the interview. Then I could tune it to my speed.
  • I mean we need a VCR replacement some time.
    I think a TIVO/DVD combo would be the ideal television accessory.
    • What will RCA tell consumers when they ask why they can't record DVD to the hard drive even though they're in the same box?

      What will they tell the DVD cartel when some Norwegian hacker enables DVD->TiVo copying and posts the code online?

      Anyone who tried to market such a device would get screwed over by both consumers and the MPAA.
      • well then don't allow communication between the 2 devices. simple as that.

        take a TIVO, throw a DVD-ROM with on board IO chip in there and run it to an IO replicating board on the back.

        you can do it, it is not that hard.

  • explaining TiVo... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by klund ( 53347 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @10:26AM (#3409253)
    Many people, when trying to explain TiVo, end up calling it a "digital VCR" or a "VCR on steroids." After using TiVo for a month, it is clear that these methods of explaining TiVo's function are unfair...

    TiVo's biggest problem is that there is no good way to explain it... Have you ever tried explaining it to your friends, geek or non-geek? All you get is blank stares. But if you *show* it to them, they seem to understand. And if they acutally get one, they quickly become converts.

    When people ask me if I like it, I tell them that I would rather give up color than TiVo. I would rather watch TiVo on a B&W set than to have the nicest color HDTV set available.

    And the funny thing is, people think I'm kidding...
    • We used to have horses and carriages -- now we have cars and airplanes and moon rockets.

      We used to have VCRs -- now we have TiVo.

      Well, at least *y'all* have TiVo. I can't afford it. But maybe they'll send me one for plugging it. God, I wish it was 1999 again and/or I was Harry Knowles...
    • What is TiVo?

      Since I don't own one, I'll probably make a grievous error, but my ego compells me to try to see if I understand what a TiVo is.

      A TiVo disconnects you from any time dependency in your viewing habits.

      As such, the closest analogy would be a CD player or mp3 player -> FM radio, assuming you owned all the CDs or MP3s the radio ever broadcast.

      Another analogy might be a hand delivered newspaper at your doorstep, as opposed to going to get one yourself, and as opposed to waiting for a 7 o'clock or 11 o'clock broadcast, excepting that print medium is actually a couple days delayed for the convenience of 'read on demand' as opposed to 'read on broadcast'

      A better analogy would be CNN.com -> CNN on broadcast, in that rather than being forced to wait through meaningless news you hear/see meaningful news, you can pick and choose, search, and read on demand, as opposed to view on broadcast. It breaks, of course, in the fact that CNN.com doesn't 'cache' locally, unlike TiVo.

      Do any of those work?
  • I *Really* want one of these -
    (but can't justify buying one because I detest television...)

    Cheers,
    Jim

  • Linux Irony (Score:3, Informative)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @11:22AM (#3409637) Homepage Journal
    I find it kind of ironic that Tivo fans keep touting the Linux connection. And sad. Linux's main claim to fame is stability. Yeah, it's free, but the cost of Windows wouldn't be nearly so irritating if it bought you a little reliability.

    It's ironic, because Tivo seems to be doing its very best to destroy Linux's reputation as a stable platform. More and more people are getting bit by the broken upgrade bug [zdnet.co.uk]. This problem will continue to grow, as long as Tivo refuses to admit that bug exists and blames the problem on "hardware glitches" and "weak video signals".

    Now, if you get bitten by this bug (and if Tivo remains in denial, you will get bitten eventually), you will spend a fair amount of time talking to Tivo tech support. And eventually they will say, "Look, all computers crash occasionally. Doesn't your home computer crash?" When I was fed that line, I laughed out loud. See, I work on a cross-platform Windows/Linux product, so I have two machines on my desk, one for each platform. The Linux box goes months without a crash or a problem that can only be fixed by a reboot. The Windows box has never lasted more than a couple weeks, and often needs to be rebooted several times a day, depending on what stresses I'm placing on it. I mentioned it to the call-center drone. He didn't have a response. Obviously not on the flowchart.

    Right now I'm manually rebooting my Tivo at least once a day. I have "record suggestions" disabled and I record everything at basic quality. That keeps the machine working most of the time. I should probably call them again and bully them into doing a fresh install.

    But even if they fix this problem, I've had it with their "our shit doesn't smell" attitude. I don't care how slick their products get. I don't care if they figure out a way to filter out the clichés from JAG, or record the lost episodes of Brimstone. I will never, ever, consider buying another Tivo product.

  • Dishnetwork is my only source for programming, raw data format storage aside, will the tivo control and get programming information for this? Or am I better off waiting for the DishPVR701?
    • One of the more brilliant features of Tivo is the ability to nearly seamlessly use any (or almost any) cable box or satelite receiver almost as if it was an internal tuner. It does this by transmitting ir remote control to the cable box you are using through a small IR LED attached to the cable box and connected to the back of the Tivo. I have used my Tivo both with a Motorola cable box and my Dish Network system. As for the programming information, the nightly schedule downloads are just as complete for Dish as they are for local cable.

      The upside of a DishPVR is the cost (DishPVR is significantly cheaper than Tivo), and that you're recording the digital video stream directly as opposed to recording the analog signal, but I've found that the Tivo's suggestion and other features far outweigh the minute quality difference you get from a direct stream (Tivo comes with very high quality A/V cables). I have several friends who went with DishPVR who now say that they would rather have a Tivo.

      Just the opinion of a satisfied customer.

      - Stealth Dave
  • If I want it to record the show "60 Minutes" and a football game goes into overtime, will it record it when 60 minutes starts, or at the scheduled 19:00 time?

    If I want it to record Jeremiah on Showtime and they are two minutes behind (it happens), will it cut off the last two minutes of the show on the far end?

    • Re:Is it smart enough to know about schedule chang (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      TiVo does a daily call to get the schedule. Regular season football games are scheduled for 3 hours, which means if there is a game on at 4:00 PM and 60 Minutes is on at 7:00 PM, your TiVo will ask you to change the channel a few minutes before 7:00 PM. If you aren't home or don't respond, it will change the channel at 7:00 PM to record 60 Minutes. At this point, there is no way that TiVo could know when a football game goes into overtime.

      The solution to this problem is 'padding'. This means that when you schedule your recording, you can tell TiVo to start or stop the recording a certain amount of time early or late.

      For example, when you record a single game, or have a Season Pass (all NFL football games) or Wishlist, (all NFL Football games with a keyword like '49ers') you can tell TiVo to stop recording from a few minutes to at least an hour late. (Don't remember the exact number).

      So let's say you told TiVo you wanted to record the 49ers game on Sunday at 4:00 PM, which is scheduled for three hours. However, you don't want to miss the end, so you tell TiVo to stop recording 30 minutes late. You already have 60 Minutes scheduled for Sunday at 7:00 PM. TiVo will immediately tell you that there is a recording conflict, and at that point you can decide which show you want to see more. TiVo will not record a partial program (e.g. half of '60 Minutes').

      By the same token, if Showtime schedules a show to start two minutes early, you can tell TiVo to start your recording two minutes early so that you make sure you get the beginning of the show. Again, if there is a conflict with an already scheduled program, TiVo will tell you.

      Hope that answers your question.

  • Currently, I have two VCRs and I use them to record every show I watch. Of course, I do this because I can avoid commercials, and because I can watch what-I-want-when-I-want :).

    Each VCR has the standard 8 program-slots. So, between the two, I can record 16 programs (or, slightly more than that, as some programs can record two shows if they happen to air consecutively).

    I've read the TiVO reviews, and they sure do look nice. But, to be honest, my primary reason for getting one would be for the ability to record more than 16 programs per week.

    Having said that, though, TiVOs are kinda expensive (especially if I were to get one of the pre-upgraded ones [weaknees.com]). So, I may just buy myself a third VCR. Though this may be off-topic, can anyone recommend a highly-programmable VCR? That is, I'm sick of having only 8 programs -- surely someone makes a VCR that can store 16 or <wishful thinking>256</wishful thinking> programs, right?

  • Wanna watch me pull a rabbit out of a hat?

  • We do have to spend some engineering dollars keeping slightly ahead of the hacker community, or our partners begin to wonder if our technology isn't going to cost them lots of money. Digital Media copyright is certainly a hotbed right now. Many of our partners are trying to draw a line in the sand, and in that light we have to be a bit more strict with what kinds of hacks we allow, and which we make very difficult.

    Who specifically do they really mean when they say "partners" in this context? Are the partners the channels that are advertised under "Showcases"? Or is it the manufacturers (Sony, Philips, as mentioned elsewhere in the article)? Someone else?

    • Who specifically do they really mean when they say "partners" in this context? Are the partners the channels that are advertised under "Showcases"? Or is it the manufacturers (Sony, Philips, as mentioned elsewhere in the article)? Someone else?

      Well, NBC owns more than 10% of TiVo. Something about "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em"...

      -pmb

  • Server side PVR built using VOD technology is another option that is emerging in the UK. We are already doing a limited form of this with our iDTV system. I'm aware that at least two others are also developing this technology.

    Server side offers a number of cost & QOS advantages. Since each piece of contents needs to be stored only once, when server side the total hardware cost is reduced, even when considering high level of redundancy. Server side also has advantage of eliminating the requirement for in-field or return-to-base repairs. The cost advantage to the SP, and consequently the consumer is considerable. The unit cost of this system is currently around £60 (~100USD/EURO) and this tend towards zero as the customer base increases.

    The issue with server side is licencing (as ever:) though we have found the BBC very cooperative, indeed enthusiastic; about this technology. Hopefuly this will force commercial content providers to be more flexible.
  • I bought a series 2 a couple of months ago, and by gollly is it the dogs bollocks or what? Thanks to that fastforward, I can now watch a 1 hour program in 40 minutes without the ads, which actually makes previously mediocre stuff watchable.

    That said, I have had a problem - every now and then, at the beginning of a program the picture freezes, and control is lost. The only way is to switch to standby, and turn it back on. Its a pain, but there's no way back to non-tivo world.

    Also, how bad is the indemnity clause in the series 1? This one borders on threatening death if you modify it.

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