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Television Media

TiVo Home Media Rollout 275

Posted by CmdrTaco from the step-in-the-right-direction dept.
ncstockguy writes "TiVo rolls out its new Home Media option next week. Subscribers with a Series2 DVR box can get some impressive new functions to their TiVos. They'll be able to screen digital photos on their TVs, listen to music stored on their computer hard drives on their home entertainment units, schedule to tape a show "remotely" through the Internet, and watch a recorded show in different rooms on different TVs. Some of the functions will require two or more computers connected either by WiFi or ethernet."
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TiVo Home Media Rollout More

TiVo Home Media Rollout

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  • DIRECTV users left out in cold (Score:5, Informative)

    by tbdean ( 163865 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @01:55PM (#5680415) Homepage
    If you are a DIRECTivo user - a DIRECTV user with a TiVo2 box you do not get these features. TiVo has offered them to DIRECTV, but DIRECTV doesn't seem to want them. I'll keep my TiVo1 series box until DTV gets on the ball. When I can get these new features I'll buy two TiVo2 boxes!

    • Re:DIRECTV users left out in cold (Score:5, Informative)

      by anthonyclark ( 17109 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:07PM (#5680505)


      Complain!


      Corporate types wait for a certain number of complaints before doing anything. If enough people complain (and promise to buy the Home Media Option if DirecTV make it available) then DirecTV will do something about it


      Go here [directv.com] and tell them how disappointed you are and how you you want to buy this. Mention that you'll complain to J D Power Consumer Satisfaction Survey [jdpower.com] which should make them take notice; DirecTV really values their high customer satisfaction rating and use it as a selling point.

      • Re:DIRECTV users left out in cold (Score:5, Insightful)

        by karmawarrior ( 311177 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:40PM (#5681189) Journal
        One of the major problems with most large organizations - be they telecommunication/entertainment powerhouses like DirecTV or consumable food & recreational drug giants like Altria (formerly Philip Morris) - is that there's a natural disconnect between them and the customers they serve. As layers of management increase, giant corporations find it more difficult to sense the needs and wishes of their customers. Usually this ends up being solved through countless customer surveys and marketing, but such research rarely has much affect in at least one major way - it doesn't tell corporations what questions are being asked, what is being expected of them: this type of research merely tells a company whether it is successful at what it believes itself to be successful at.

        Getting feedback to companies like DirecTV is a tricky situation as it's rarely easy to determine who the information should go to. As if this isn't enough, for the most part any large company has little chance of telling apart sincere customer requests from background noise. If many customers suddenly demand a product be released, or another dropped, what's to say that this isn't because of a mention on talk radio, or because of the behaviour of a competitor?

        This quagmire of companies being unable to ask all the questions they need, and of customers being unable to provide the kind of feedback giant corporations need to continue to provide quality goods and services at affordable prices will not disappear by itself. Unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.

        You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman [house.gov] or senator [senate.gov]. Tell them that choice, quality services, and economical pricing is important to you, and that you worry that many businesses are crippled by being unable to understand what it is that their customers want. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done to promote loops of feedback, through clearly marked feedback email addresses and constant customer surveys but that if corporations continue to be unable to supply you with what you want and need because of a lack of awareness, you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how poor communications, bad feedback loops, and talk radio harms all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on their ability to make giant, unaccountable, corporations provide the goods and services that make this country great.

        You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.

    • Re:DIRECTV users left out in cold (Score:5, Informative)

      by neonzebra ( 33639 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:24PM (#5680625)
      Yeah this really pissed me off. I bought a DirecTiVo Series 2 box in anticipation of the new HMO features. Now my roommate is going to have a better TiVo than me! (Damn him!)

      I can't really blame TiVo, though, it was DirecTV's decision not [tivocommunity.com] to offer the feature. TiVo gave complete control of the DirecTiVo featureset to DirecTV some time back.

      If you're in the same boat as me, there's an online petition here [petitiononline.com]. From the tone of the DirecTV VP that made the announcement, it looks like if there's enough demand, they might change thier minds and release it anyway. So please do us all a favor and slashdot the petition!

    • Re:DIRECTV users left out in cold (Score:5, Informative)

      by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) <scott@alfter.us> on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:41PM (#5680778) Homepage Journal
      I'll keep my TiVo1 series box until DTV gets on the ball. When I can get these new features I'll buy two TiVo2 boxes!

      Even then, I'm not so sure that HMO makes the upgrade to Series 2 worthwhile. I have a standalone Series 1 TiVo, and I don't plan on upgrading. My TiVo is connected to my network, and I've been ripping/archiving shows from it for nearly two years now. The software to enable this keeps getting better all the time...TyStudio [sourceforge.net] is especially slick. Once it's set up, a few clicks are all it takes to extract an MPEG stream that you can burn directly to DVD or transcode to a lower bitrate for SVCD. (Info on transcoding/editing TiVo video is available here [alfter.us], but it's not yet been updated for TyStudio.) Remote scheduling is handled through TivoWeb [lightn.org], so that's covered...that's really the only HMO feature I'd find useful, as I have only one TiVo (making "multi-room viewing," as they've defined it, useless) and my DVD player plays MP3 CDs.

      Maybe HMO is a bit easier to set up for the drooling masses, but you can still do more with a Series 1 TiVo...and it doesn't cost you anything (other than the cost of a NIC for your TiVo, and even that [9thtee.com] is cheaper than HMO).

    • Re:DIRECTV users left out in cold (Score:5, Informative)

      by Caduceus1 ( 178942 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:14PM (#5681001) Homepage
      Just to inform people.

      The home Media Option is only available to owners of the TiVo Series 2 DVR. There is no such thing as a "Series 2" DirecTiVo. There is the Hughes HDVR2 (and some other brands soon), which is call the "DirecTV DVR powered by TiVo", and is based on the same platform as the Series 2 (faster processor, graphics, etc.), but it has never officially been dubbed a Series 2.

      That said, the HDVR2 and others of its ilk could support it (it has the power), but DirecTV is now responsible for the support, not TiVo, and has too look at all software and hardware updates closely. Also, all fees for the service are paid directly to DirecTV, so somehow DirecTV would have to pay TiVo for the added service.

      If you want them to support HMO, tell DirecTV. They are the ones who decided, and they do so based on customer demand. Complaining to Customer Satisfaction surveys about not supporting features that have never been announced won't be as productive.

  • Is it just me... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jonboy X ( 319895 ) <jonathan,oexner&alum,wpi,edu> on Monday April 07, 2003 @01:57PM (#5680429) Journal
    ...or is anyone else creeped out by that TiVo icon [akamai.net]?

  • Computers (Score:5, Funny)

    by MCMLXXVI ( 601095 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @01:58PM (#5680442)
    "Some of the functions will require two or more computers connected either by WiFi or ethernet"
    What self respecting Tivo owner has less than two computers?
    I am willing to bet some /.ers have more computers than dates in the past 6 months.

  • Life before the PVR (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dtolton ( 162216 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @01:59PM (#5680444) Homepage
    It's a little suprising how much your view of Television in general changes when you get a PVR. When I originally bought mine I thought it would be a nifty little gadget, now it's painful to go to someone's home that doesn't have one. I'd forgotten how obnoxious commercial's can be.

    I hope they have some solid security built in with the Web Server, I would be devastated if someone hacked my Tivo and deleted all my scheduled recordings.

    What do you mean Dragon Ball Z didn't record?!?!

  • cool (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:00PM (#5680446) Homepage
    Now if only TiVo was still in the UK. We have Sky+ which can "Pause Live TV". Of course things like MP3 playing/Viewing photos can be done on any modern DVD player but it would be so nice to have an all in one solutions

    Rus
    • Exactly. I don't want Sky+ and can't put a Sky dish on my current place anyway. I would pay good money for a TiVo and it would _really_ get used. And then praised from the rooftops to everyone I met, pretty much.

      Please, please, start selling them in the UK again. Dropping them was a silly idea.
  • I think my heart just blew up from the thought of how great those features are. Now I'm simply staying alive on willpower so that I can live to enjoy them. Man I love tivo.
  • A year ago, I was pretty gung-ho about Tivo--their service makes it extremely easy to find shows that my friends want to watch, and record them. But with Sonicblue selling [zdnet.co.uk] ReplayTV, Tivo essentially has a monopoly. Add this to the suit that the studios previously filed [epic.org] against ReplayTV asking them to reengineer their product and ask for personal information, and it gets scarier.

    IMO, Tivo now offers two services: the ability to find and record shows easily, and the ability to stream information stored on

    • but TiVo has said that video streaming will NOT be a part of the current feature set. SonicBlue was sued primarily because they had a very "open" video sharing system on their boxes.

      TiVo seems pretty gung-ho about not getting sued so they are watching their backs and keeping features down for now, at least.
    • There are many alternatives coming onboard this and next year, watch for Tivo to have an extremely uphill battle and the marketplace getting very hot. XBOX2 and PS3 will *certainly* have PVR features built in, Microsoft to tie it into messenger/passport, etc, and Sony to do who knows what. The cable companies are looking into integrating this into all set-top boxes period.
      • I hope XBox 2 doesn't have PVR functions. I don't want to have to worry about degraded game performance when it decides to record a TV show, or fubared recordings because I'm playing a game. There are times when discrete units are the best route to go.

    • Beware the Google monopoly, too (Score:5, Insightful)

      by anonymous loser ( 58627 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:20PM (#5680577)
      Why don't you stop using Google, too? They have a "monopoly" in the search engine market. I don't know anyone who uses another search engine anymore, except as a last resort.

      The reason Tivo and Google have a "monopoly" as you put it is because they sell a good product, and others have yet to introduce another product that can compete with it effectively.

      Nobody is locked out of the PVR market at this point in time, especially since this is a brand new market, and anything can happen. Several big players (e.g. Microsoft, with UltimateTV) have already gone up against Tivo, and failed. It could be in near the future that the perfect PVR will appear that completely destroys Tivo's current dominance, but telling people not to use a product because there are no decent competitors is just wrong. It's still a free market, not a monopoly.

      • There is merit to your point, but I think you are misconstruing the intent of the original parent post.

        ...telling people not to use a product because there are no decent competitors is just wrong.

        I understood his point to be that people should consider not using TiVo, because there ARE decent competitor products. The only issue is that all of the current good rival products are computer-based and less user friendly.

        Your post reminds me of many arguments for why people use Windows.
      • Remember when Apex came out (intentionally or not) with the DVD player that let you turn off Macrovision? Now Apex is a decent company (they make a tv with a built-in DVD player that has a pretty good picture; saw one running as a demo/kiosk at Home Depot, of all places) but before that device, no one knew who they were. As much as I love (my) Tivo, I'm willing to bet (and hoping!) that some little company who doesn't care about hollywood's feelings/DRM/etc will come out with some little box that does every

  • Beta (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:04PM (#5680479)
    I've been beta testing the service for a while now...

    The Apple Music and photo sharing is awesome, total use of Rendesvous and your iBook, Powermac, etc. shows up immediately in your TiVo categorized down to a "T"

    Another feature that a lot of people probably wouldn't expect is to try this: Make a playlist with some internet radio stations and share it out to your TiVo. Access the playlist on your TiVo and you can listen to Internet radio stations on your TV! It's very, very cool and works great!

  • WOW ;- (Score:4, Informative)

    by Y2K is bogus ( 7647 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:04PM (#5680480)
    So Tivo users will have the same functionality as Replay 4000+ users do? It's a damn shame that SonicBlue is in the toilet. With the exception of playing music, my 4580 does all the things Tivo just announced. What's even better is that the line protocol has already been hacked and I can watch recorded programs from any computer in the house with mplayer. Also, I can share with my buddy across the country if he ever gets a 4k series.

    Truely a damn shame about Replay. Heck, I've been TCPdumping all comms with it since I heard so that I can disect how to emulate the replay server if it comes to it.

  • Not such a great deal. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by brocktune ( 512373 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:05PM (#5680487) Homepage
    It costs $99 just to unlock the software. You still have to buy a USB ethernet adaptor. And for the old-timers like me, you have to get a series 2 TiVo. (And pay for a new lifetime subscription)

    All I wanted was to dump the crappy built-in modem that has died twice in 3 years and use my internet link to get the guide information.

    Stuff like this makes me want a roll-your-own PVR. (Gratuitous MythTV [mythtv.org] link)
    • Tivo had a deal to upgrade Series 1 units to series 2 units while keeping lifetime subscriptions. Also, a USB ethernet adaptor is dirt cheap. I bought a couple of 3C460B adaptors for about $7 a piece as soon as I heard that 3.2 (and 3.0?) un-SUPPORTed them.

    • Re:Not such a great deal. (Score:5, Informative)

      by uberdood ( 154108 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:22PM (#5680604) Homepage
      All I wanted was to dump the crappy built-in modem that has died twice in 3 years and use my internet link to get the guide information.
      You mean this [9thtee.com], this [9thtee.com] or even this [9thtee.com]? Ethernet-based guide data has been available for the Series 1 TiVo for well over a year now (probably more like two years by now). Sure, these options cost you $70, but they do give you that functionality you crave so strongly.

      Now if you're strapped for cash, there's a free way to get guide data without buying an ethernet card (you still must have a subscription of course). It's called ppp over serial - all Series 1 have a serial port and came with a serial port adapter (9pin to your PC). The procedure is well documented here [tivocommunity.com].

    • I love my Tivo and don't think any PC-based solution can touch it for ease of use or "home entertainment" integration (formfactor, UI, etc).

      However, this Home Media option is a total ripoff. I can play MP3s now. I can look at JPGs now. Remote scheduling? Not important. Multi-room viewing would be cool, but not cool enough to spend another $500 on another Tivo and another subscription.

      Why haven't they fixed some of the obvious needs, like batch-save-to-vcr? Bring back "Teach Tivo" so I don't get just
    • Yes, I wasn't impressed either. That's $99 per Tivo. You really need to have 2 to make it worthwhile. If you just have one, then all the $99 buys you is the ability to display pictures and play MP3's off your computer. As you point out, you have to buy the USB adapters, as well. So, $200-$300 on top of buying 2 series 2 Tivos, for a feature that I'm guessing most owners think should have been included in the first place. Note that you can't play movies stored on your PC. Note that the Tivos have to b
      • ...if the the cable cos can pull their heads out of their asses long enough.

        AOL-TWs SA PVR, while not a Tivo, offers "good enough" performance for most people and rents from AOL-TW in my area for $5.95 per month. I have to keep my Series2 w/lifetime for like 5 years to make that work.

        Cable Cos are already making you have a box if you want certain channels, they'll be all digital soon enough requiring EVERYONE to have a box. If PVR is part of it, WTF would anyone spend nearly $800 on a Tivo?

        I love the w
      • It's $99 for the first Tivo, $50 for all subsequent. It doesn't really change your argument, but still...
        • Thanks for correcting me. You're right, I saw that it was a $99 option, and that you needed 1 per Tivo. This link clarifies it, and the pricing is as you say:

          http://www.tivo.com/4.9.1.asp#3 [tivo.com]

          I'm glad to see that it's a little better than I thought... but I still think it's a bit much that they want to charge for the hardware AND the service AND new features that I think belong there in the first place... Sure, they can charge for whatever they like, I'm just saying it makes them a lot less attractive wh
  • Dang, and I thought I was ahead of the curve with my homebrew PVR. The main use of it right now isn't actually for television viewing, but for music. We have put our entire CD collection onto it and actually listen to the music much more than we did before hand. We might make more use of the video recording functions if there was more to watch. As things stand now, there are about 10 hours of television that I'm interested in (if nothing is in re-runs) each week. It is great fun to put the whole CD col
    • I use my DVD player to play MP3 cd's myself. Since I never watch TV, I was never really interested in getting a Tivo. And since I have a portable MP3 player that plays CD's, I can use the CD's on the road too.

  • Unforutunately.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by hawkstone ( 233083 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:06PM (#5680492)
    1. Viewing files from your home computer (photos, music) requires Windows or a Mac. Their "TiVo Desktop" software is not (yet) available for linux as far as I can tell.

    2. The ability to share your recorded shows requires you to buy another Series 2 TiVo and buy (yes, it costs money) the Home Media upgrade for it as well. You cannot "share" the file with anyone else's Series 2 either, only ones registered under the same household account at TiVo HQ. You can't "share" with your computer either, BTW, only another TiVo.

    Maybe some of these will be improved over time, either by TiVo or someone else.
    • You cannot "share" the file with anyone else's Series 2 either, only ones registered under the same household account at TiVo HQ


      And on the same subnet! So you can't (easily) share between your home and your cabin, even if you own both devices.

    • no, but tivo is using open technologies and will most likely have some type of developer kit

    • 1. Viewing files from your home computer (photos, music) requires Windows or a Mac. Their "TiVo Desktop" software is not (yet) available for linux as far as I can tell.

      Maybe not the Tivo Desktop, but they have released developer resources on writing a Music and Photos Server including a reference Apache module with instructions on how to use it (go here [tivo.com]). The protocol is spelled out very well and undoubtedly there will be many easy to use apps out in the next few weeks for people who don't know how to/

    • Actually, you are wrong. Check out this post [slashdot.org] below. Tivo has already released an apache module! Very cool thing of them to do, and answers your question. As far as sharing goes, see Reply's various lawsuits. Tivo seems to want to cooperate w/ the networks, not piss them off.

  • recording remotely from internet (Score:5, Funny)

    by sixdotoh ( 584811 ) <sixdotohNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:06PM (#5680500) Homepage
    so does this mean hackers will be able to fill your TiVo with hours of Telletubbies?
  • Dear TiVo-

    I would gladly buy your service if you included Ogg Vorbis [vorbis.com] support. Any hardware that is capable of decoding video can easily decode Vorbis as well. I am not about to re-encode my CD collection to an inferior proprietary format for this feature.

    P.S. FLAC [sourceforge.net] support would be great too, while you're at it.

    • > Any hardware that is capable of decoding video can easily decode Vorbis as well

      This is definitely NOT true... TiVo does its MPEG2 encoding and decoding with SPECIFIC hardware that will only encode/decode MPEG. While they could be using it to decode MP3s as well (since MP3 is MPEG1 layer 3 audio) Vorbis is a totally different (and more CPU intensive) audio codec...

      Still, this doesn't necessarily mean that the CPU on the TiVo would not be able to handle Vorbis decoding, just that it has nothing to do

      • Any hardware that is capable of decoding video can easily decode Vorbis as well

        This is definitely NOT true... TiVo does its MPEG2 encoding and decoding with SPECIFIC hardware that will only encode/decode MPEG. While they could be using it to decode MP3s as well (since MP3 is MPEG1 layer 3 audio)

        Maybe not even MP3, since the audio format (on a standalone Series 1 TiVo, at least) is 32-kHz stereo audio stored as 192-kbps Layer 2 (not Layer 3). If the MPEG decoder happens to support Layer 3, MP3 playb

    • Re:Dear TiVo.. (Vorbis) (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:29PM (#5680662)
      "Dear TiVo-

      I would gladly buy your service if you included Ogg Vorbis [vorbis.com] support. Any hardware that is capable of decoding video can easily decode Vorbis as well. I am not about to re-encode my CD collection to an inferior proprietary format for this feature."

      Dear TiVo,

      I'll buy your product if you support Ogg Vorbis. I know you won't meet this demand because a.) it's frivolous and b.) because not enough people are using it, but I intend to rack up a good deal of karma whether you support it or not.

      • "I'll buy your product if you support Ogg Vorbis..."

        My question is, why would he buy a set top box to do that if his collection's already encoded? Doesn't he have a computer already to play these on?

        "...I intend to rack up a good deal of karma whether you support it or not."

        I agree, it smells like karma whoring to me.

    • Re:Dear TiVo.. (Vorbis) (Score:5, Funny)

      by schnell ( 163007 ) <.ten.llenhcs. .ta. .em.> on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:54PM (#5680859) Homepage

      No offense intended to anyone ... I just see these Ogg letters all the time and I think they're hilarious. ;-)

      Dear TiVo -

      I would gladly offer to buy your service if you included Ogg Vorbis [vorbis.com] support. (As you know, Ogg Vorbis is currently used by upwards of several people, many of whom are doing so on an operating system you don't support with your software right now. So I think you can see your economic imperative here.)

      Notice that I did not say that I would actually buy your service if you spent the time to include Ogg Vorbis support. Much like the letters I keep sending to Apple about the iPod, if you did support Ogg then send you a letter saying I would gladly buy your service if you made your software open-source. Assuming you somehow did that, my next letter would assure you that I would buy it if it used open hardware. This series of letters would continue until finally I offered to gladly buy your service if you gave it to me for free and sent a supermodel to my house to deliver it.

      My fellow technologists who don't like to pay for anything are eagerly awaiting your efforts to satisfy our statistically insignificant needs. So please don't ignore this potentially incredibly unlucrative market and give us Ogg support today!

    • All you have to do is write it. Check out This post below [slashdot.org]. Tivo has released their protocol, and if you read it, as long as Tivo receives the stream as MP3, it will play it. You can therefore write a server which will convert your OGG file to MP3 on-the-fly and it will play it. Might not be ideal, but it will work if you have 200GB of OGG files. Remeber, Tivo's CPU is not much more than a 200MHz CPU, if that, and htat handles ALL operation. Tivo has a dedicated MPG hardware encoder/decoder.
  • to blow all the feeble open source attempts out of the water.

    Honestly, I'm just as gung-ho about wanting to setup a Linux box with all the trappings to duplicate the Tivo service... but a $99.00 one time fee? Dont think I will be typing "lsmod" anytime soon to see if the drivers for that video capture card's working.

    Certain posts have occured on slashdot recently that shows that we need to pull up our socks in terms of making things "Just Work" in the Open Source world.

  • When I looked at this page [tivo.com], the music player requires the Tivo desktop software, which you can only use on a PC or Mac. It might work with wine, but the interface [akamai.net] doesn't look very intuitive. I will wait till the reviews come out before forking over $99 for functionality I thought was going to be included for free at a later date with my series 2 purchase and lifetime subscription.
  • For multiroom viewing, you need two tivos, both with active service AND home media option. That's a LOT of money for something that doesn't even seem all that well integrated: the "other" TiVo shows up as a single entry in the "now showing list". It would have been better if the lists of both units were consolidated. I don't really care which unit a show is stored on. What I would like is to be able to simply add another tivo, and have all of them work as a single multi-tuner unit. Now *that* would be nice.

  • Not ready for prime time (Score:5, Informative)

    by MediaBoy77 ( 469933 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:14PM (#5680541)
    I was a beta tester for 'HMO', as it's known at TiVo. I've been living with it for the last month--and I'm not going to shell out the $99 to purchase it. Why?

    1. Lack of format support. TiVo plays MP3s. That's it. No OGG, no WMA. My collection is mostly in WMA. If I were to start again, it would be into OGG, not MP3.

    2. No playlist control. You can create M3U playlists on your computer and play those, but if you don't create playlists ahead of time, you're stuck playing individual songs or folders (which in my case are sorted by artist). You can't switch songs without stopping the current song from playing. That makes it pretty much useless for parties where you'd like live control over what will play next.

    3. No photos simultaneously with music. The feature is named "Music & Photos". But it's actually "Music OR Photos". So if you want to play music during your party, your guests get to see a box with song info onscreen, and that's it. If you want to put a slide show up on your TV, your music has to come from somewhere else. Similarly, there are no other visualization toys to play with.

    As for the other features, I "only" have one TiVo, so multi-room viewing isn't useful to me.

    And in the month I've been using it so far, I've never had the need to schedule programs for my TiVo remotely.

    Even if I had, the conflict-resolution options are minimal: record this program if nothing conflicts, or or record it regardless. You don't get to see what may be conflicting, because TiVo connects to the mother ship every 15 minutes or so to check for new orders.

    In short, it's a 1.0 feature set, competing against computers in a 3.0 world. If I want music & photos on my TV, I'll just plug my laptop into my AV system and be happy. So sad.
  • From the article:

    *You can turn Multi-Room Viewing off on any DVR. You decide which DVRs can share programming. Television programming is not under TiVo's control. Programming providers may restrict or limit the transfer of particular programs. TiVo does not guarantee access to or transfer of any particular program.

    Does this mean they have DRM biult in or does it just mean that the rights issues are your own problem?
    • For multiroom viewing, there is some DRM, it's called TiVoGuard. It basically encrypts the transfer. To decrypt to it:

      1. The TiVos must be under the same user account; and

      2. The TiVos must be located on the same subnet.

      There have been talks about defeating requirement #2 by using a VPN, however, that still wouldn't get around requirement #1.

  • Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by b.foster ( 543648 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:17PM (#5680563)
    At the bottom of this page [tivo.com]:

    You can turn Multi-Room Viewing off on any DVR. You decide which DVRs can share programming. Television programming is not under TiVo's control. Programming providers may restrict or limit the transfer of particular programs. TiVo does not guarantee access to or transfer of any particular program.

    They're asking us to pay $100 per unit to let the content providers decide what shows we can transfer? I like how they blame "programming providers" for crippling their software.

    My TiVo is a great toy, but it's looking like it's time for this company to die. First they fire RB, and now they snuggle up to the content industry? Screw them, it's time to cancel my subscription and start hacking my box. They had a chance to earn their subscription fee from me, but they blew it when they decided that they were going to give Hollywood control over my own equipment.

    • Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NerdSlayer ( 300907 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:32PM (#5680692) Homepage
      My TiVo is a great toy, but it's looking like it's time for this company to die. First they fire RB, and now they snuggle up to the content industry?

      Yes, lord knows that telling content providers to fuck off and die worked well for Napster. I'm sure it will work just as well for Tivo.
    • My TiVo is a great toy, but it's looking like it's time for this company to die. First they fire RB, and now they snuggle up to the content industry?

      Geez, give them a break for chrissakes. They have to do that to cover their ass. Would you want the networks & the MPAA breathing down your neck? What do you expect them to do? Not put in the security stuff? Why dont they just do that and call it "instant lawsuit?"

      But in all seriousness, I have a buddy who works for one of the major PVR companies (i

  • Hackers (Score:3, Funny)

    by DarkHelmet ( 120004 ) <<ten.elcychtneves> <ta> <kram>> on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:19PM (#5680571) Homepage
    No! No TiVo for me! I don't want any hackers breaking into my machine, and program which shows to record.

    Knowing them, they'll probably make the TiVo think I'm a gay, pregnant male.

  • Develop Your Own TiVoServer (Score:4, Informative)

    by CraigEagle ( 305832 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:22PM (#5680601) Homepage
    Tivo has released Developer Resources [tivo.com] including an API for creating your own TiVoServer as well as an Apache module to get you started. For a company that is frequently trashed in this forum, they seem to be throwing the /. crowd a rather large peace pipe. - Craig

  • New (going out of) Business Model (Score:3, Funny)

    by YetAnotherName ( 168064 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:26PM (#5680644) Homepage
    1. Piss of the MPAA with movie/TV viewing capability
    2. Piss of the RIAA with new music playing capability
    3. Fend off huge hordes of lawyers
    4. ???
    5. Death!

  • TV Watches You (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Michael_Burton ( 608237 ) <michaelburton@brainrow.com> on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:30PM (#5680669) Homepage

    Time once again for my obligatory alarmism about TiVo's anti-privacy potential. Unless you opt out, your TiVo can send info about every button you've pushed on your remote back to the mother ship.

    Because it can do this, I don't trust it not to do this, even if I have opted-out. And under the Civil Liberties Nullification Act, if TiVo can get this data, the gummint can get it, too.

    I was young and impressionable when I read 1984, and I still don't like the idea of my TV watching me.

  • What's to stop everyone from registering under the same household address? Then we can all share our shows. All Tivo has to do is overlook the fact that a few thousand people with Series 2 Tivos live at my house. Seriously though, how are they controling which Tivos can share their digital media?
  • I can't wait for somebody to come up with a hack that will trick the TiVo into streaming video to computers instead of other TiVo's using this. That would probably prompt me to buy a TiVo Series 2.

    I'm still thinking about putting one of these [9thtee.com] into my TiVo and trying to stream video via samba or whatnot. I really want to be able to watch shows that I've recorded over WiFi via my laptop and burn VCD's for archive purposes.

  • chilling (Score:5, Informative)

    by pz ( 113803 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:35PM (#5680723) Journal
    As anyone who is familiar with the MythTV project [mythtv.org] will attest, the feature list trumpeted by TiVo is precisely what is available for MythTV, an open source, volunteer effort (although MythTV supports more, and more diverse features). Isn't competition grand!

  • Oh great, just great.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DjMd ( 541962 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:41PM (#5680779) Journal
    So this option lets you listen to MP3s? Not that bad, but unless you do creative wiring I imagine that means that your TV has to be on. And there are other ways of doing that.

    You can share between two TiVo Series2 DVRs? Well that would be nice, except...
    Multi-Room Viewing is available exclusively on TiVo Series2 DVRs. To transfer recordings between two DVRs, each must have active TiVo service under the same account name, and must be on the same home network. Home Media Option must be purchased seperately for each DVR.

    So to do this you need:

    -2 Series2 TiVos

    -2 active accounts (for 2 that 25/month or 598 lifetime)

    -and 2 Home media options (99 each!)

    I can't believe that they require both Tivos to have both the active accounts and the media options. Does SonicBlue's ReplayTV require that double charging??

  • A question (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MousePotato ( 124958 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @02:55PM (#5680865) Homepage Journal
    Pardon the ignorance here but can any explain why these devices aren't being used as consumer video edit decks? With all the digital camcorders and the like out there seems like an obvious feature for such a device. Perhaps its in there. I don't see any info on it :(

  • I've got a TiVo, upgraded the disk drives and love it.

    This weekend, though, I was looking at various HDTV options and was informed that PVRs are generally not yet ready to record high definition shows.

    Does anyone know what kinds of offerings when will permit me to record HDTV (say 1080i) on my PVR?

    TIA

  • I've had SOME of this already... and more! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RevRagnarok ( 583910 ) on Monday April 07, 2003 @03:54PM (#5681315) Homepage Journal
    I got an ethernet card from 9thtee a while back, it is great! I then got a program called "tivoweb" which lets me remotely record, and even search future listings with a REAL keyboard (I like to compare it to my NetFlix list every now and then and queue up movies on the TiVo that I don't care about all those DVD goodies).

    Then there is my e-mail on my TiVo with the shameless plug of tivo_mail [freshmeat.net] that I found a while back and people seem to like it. ;)

    - RR

  • Bug DirecTV! (Score:4, Informative)

    by EvilStein ( 414640 ) <spamNO@SPAMpbp.net> on Monday April 07, 2003 @04:37PM (#5681575)
    Found this link [tivocommunity.com] on another posting that didn't get modded up yet. Seriously, folks - bug the hell out of DirecTV and let them know that you want this (if you actually do)

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