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Television Media Entertainment Hardware

TiVo Will Stream Content From The Web 208

Posted by timothy from the because-not-enough-content-was-under-the-rug dept.
Patik writes "According to an article at the NY Times, 'new TiVo technology... will allow users to download movies and music from the Internet to the hard drive on their video recorder.' This is TiVo's next big push for subscribers after being dumped by DirecTV Tuesday. Blockbuster, Netflix, and Real are also looking into distributing feature-length movies over the web."
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TiVo Will Stream Content From The Web More

TiVo Will Stream Content From The Web

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  • TOS? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by shadowkoder ( 707230 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:51AM (#9375548)
    What will the terms of service be? Same rules as using this over satellite, or is the **AA going to have a fit over this (though I think we may already know that answer)?

  • I can do all this now (Score:5, Interesting)

    by barcodez ( 580516 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:51AM (#9375549)
    Seriously I can do all this stuff now. These companies are so far behind the curve technologically one would be forgiven for thinking they don't deserve to make any money out of this. I'm struggling to see where they are adding value to the consumer.

    • Re:I can do all this now (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Azghoul ( 25786 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:58AM (#9375592) Homepage
      Well, let's see. You and a few of your friends can "do all this now".

      MILLIONS of paying subscribers can't, without the help of friendly set-top boxes.

      MILLIONS of paying subscribers aren't even aware that you COULD do this kind of thing.

      Do the math.

  • Bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by radionotme ( 742163 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:53AM (#9375561)
    Are they really prepared for this? Assuming that the movies are compressed down to 600-700MB, what happens when the 'latest blockbuster' is released an everyone tries to download it at once. Few companies can cope with bombardments of this nature, and Tivo would have to have an awful lot of capital ready for an investment of this size.

    • Re:Bandwidth? (Score:5, Funny)

      by tuomasr ( 721846 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:59AM (#9375594)

      Are they really prepared for this? Assuming that the movies are compressed down to 600-700MB, what happens when the 'latest blockbuster' is released an everyone tries to download it at once.

      Good point, and with the mention of RealNetworks in the article, I have a disturbing mental image right now of a TV showing a text that reads "Buffering".

      • Re:Bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mjh ( 57755 ) <(moc.nalcnroh) (ta) (kram)> on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @10:16AM (#9376671) Homepage Journal

        I have a disturbing mental image right now of a TV showing a text that reads "Buffering".

        I know that your comment is modded as "Funny" but I doubt that's the way it will work. The TiVo model for watching TV is to record it now, and watch it later. Why wouldn't they do exactly the same thing for content over the internet? Users set up a request to get a show, the TiVo downloads it in the background - this could be over a period of days - and then the person watches whenever they want to as soon as it's done.


        Basically, they're turning the internet into another TV channel. And just like every other TV channel, the instant that you decide to record something doesn't mean that you get to watch it(*). You have to wait for it to actually show up in your "Now Playing" list. Then you can watch it, rewind it, FF through commercials, etc.


        (*) Yes, yes, you can record and watch Live TV while you're watching it. But when that happens you're limited in what you can do. And watching enough Live TV causes most TiVo-ers to simply wait until the entire thing is recorded, or they've got enough buffered so that they can do all of the trick play stuff. Nothing changes if instead of getting the stream from a TV channel, the stream comes from the internet. Watching it live imposes certain consequences. So don't watch it live.

        • For typical commercial television, recording an hour show and starting to watch it 15 minutes after it started is sufficient to have all essential trick play features available for the duration of the program (unless you watch 60 Minutes only to see Andy Rooney).

          But if you look at the HMO feature, which allows Series2 TiVos to download (pull) shows from each other, it too will let you start watching a show immediately over Ethernet throttled to USB 1.1 speed. If recorded at Basic Quality, viewing is possi

    • Distributed, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <ieshan@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @08:03AM (#9375619) Homepage Journal
      It would be a very interesting business model to employ something similar to Bit-Torrent for their distribution system. I immediately thought of the same problem, until I realized the incredible transfer rates you'd achieve with thousands of customers using an automated distributed content system.

      A caveat would be that they'd have to have a large number of servers to handle the load of "esoteric" titles - that is, movies that only a very few people will download at any given time. Also, the distribution would be much faster for popular movies - Bit-Torrent relies on swarming and things.

      But it'd be really interesting to see this kind of an implementation, even if they did rewrite the original.
      • Its really pretty simple -- Set up a few 100mbit 'master seeds' (not trackers). These new 'Master Seeds' only kick in when then peer/seed ratio falls below a certain number, so while everyone can download The Matrix off of eachother Waking Life would probably be sent mostly over the master seeds.

      • Re:Distributed, etc. - BitTorrent (Score:5, Insightful)

        by RoundSparrow ( 341175 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @09:30AM (#9376204)

        Then promptly watch ISP's shut down these early adopters for actually using their broadband connection at full capacity...
      • There is a proposal for http based seeding. I think the author of the original shadow client fromed it and implemented it.
        So quite a few clients derivated from it should support it.

        It basically has you install a php script in the same place as the full original file is. If there are no seeds available the tracker reveals this http seed to fast uploading clients. These seeds request the chunks which are not available in the torrent network using parameters to the php script and resume normal bittorrent oper
      • Popular titled could be broadcasted over cable channels at night, the same way they send the short teasers.

        There are mechanisms for the multicast of on-demand video shows (Digital Fountain had a technology for this, but it wasn't their main product). Generally you need more than 5-10 people watching for it to be more efficient than unicasting, because it uses multiple multicast addresses. If the routers at cable head-ends effectively prune unused multicast routes, you would only need about 2-3 times the

    • Re:Bandwidth? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by xiando ( 770382 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @08:06AM (#9375634) Homepage Journal
      Bandwidth doesn't need to be a problem. In my country the major TV channels make deals with local IPs to mirror their shows, when you download the latest episode of some show you get it directly from your ISPs mirror. This would require alot more deals to be made in big countries like the US, but it's quite possible. I still don't use this service, though, because these services are for WMP only and I'm not switching to windows to be able to pay for content I can get form other sources anyway. My ISP also have a "rental service" for movies that uses a java applet player that doesn't work very well in Linux (and doesn't let you save the file to your harddrive)
    • Akamai or something like freecache.org

    • Re:Bandwidth? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @09:03AM (#9375976) Journal
      what happens when the 'latest blockbuster' is released an everyone tries to download it at once.

      That's quite simple. If you had read the story, you'd know that they aren't STREAMING anything, despite the /. headline... They are allowing you to download it to your hard drive, and then you can watch it later. It would be quite easy for them to make due with only enough bandwidth to serve 5% of their user-base at any one time, by queuing up the rest for download later, in the even that the servers are maxed-out.

      Now, with that said, I would like to deal with the real issue. People are convinced that bandwidth is extremely limited, and expensive, because all services they have experienced have been free services. There, a few cents of bandwidth for each user can really add-up, unless they click on 30 ads every hour to hedge the cost. With a subscription service, you would be paying them perhaps $20/month to download these 700mb files, which would be more than enough to make-up for the bandwidth and server costs.

      Consider Netflix... They probably spend about 60 cents just to ship every DVD to/from you. That does not include the cost of replacing all the DVDs that get worn-out/broken quite often. Now, if you are a high-volume download service (as would be the case), your expenses for sending 700MBs over the internet is certainly going to be less than 50 cents. Despite that, they probably won't charge Netflix rates anyhow, they'll probably charge $40+/month, or perhaps significantly more.

      • FYI (Score:2)

        by kikta ( 200092 )
        That does not include the cost of replacing all the DVDs that get worn-out/broken quite often.

        Don't know about Netflix, but DVDBarn (a similar service) is starting to send out copies of the originals. They have the originals in a vault and maintain a 1:1 ratio, so they're well within fair use rights. That drives the replacement cost much lower, because now the replacement cost is only that of whatever DVD-R is in bulk and a few minutes of employee time.
      • Since they are controlling the content, they could introduce real commercials into the video, or do a bordered set of ads. I bet there would be big money in bordered ads that are displayed for the entire movie : The Matrix, brought to you by gatorade! at the bottom of the screen (Like NFL scores)

        • they could introduce real commercials into the video, or do a bordered set of ads.

          That would piss me off to no end. I'm no longer watching most of the channels that introduce ads during programs.

          I bet there would be big money in bordered ads that are displayed for the entire movie

          There's where you are wrong. Ads aren't worth much at all, that's why they have 40% of a program as standard commercials, then commercials during the show, then squeeze the credits and intro so they have more time for ads, et


    • what happens when the 'latest blockbuster' is released an everyone tries to download it at once.

      It will suddenly create an awareness and a demand for even better broadband connections for the last mile.

      The telcos that overbuild 4 years ago might finally see some advantage to all that infrastructure.

  • Woohoo (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Realistic_Dragon ( 655151 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:53AM (#9375562) Homepage
    Now I get to pay $x for a tivo subscription and $y for a broadband connection when rental is $x, which happens to be a lot less than $x or $y.

    Still, I can see it working. There are a lot of people (hello, #divx on irchighway) who probably would pay for movies if they could download them easily and at high quality because of the unreasonable exertion that walking to the shops causes and the long queues for new releases on the fservs. These people probably all have fat pipes anyway, so it's not an extra cost.

    My only problem is that I would have to buy a TV card as the A/V set up on my computer is far better than that on my TV. Bigger screen, much much better resolution and nicer speakers. Makes renting/borrowing DVDs nicer than a video-output-only device.

    • Now I get to pay $x for a tivo subscription and $y for a broadband connection when rental is $x, which happens to be a lot less than $x or $y.
      Ya know, there are more than two letters in the alphabet to choose from.

  • DirecTV (Score:5, Informative)

    by The Only Druid ( 587299 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:54AM (#9375566)
    Actually, Tivo wasn't 'dumped' by DirecTV. It was their stock in Tivo that they dropped (they had held 3.4 million shares).

    This quote from the ArsTechnica article should elaborate:

    "Though confirming the recent sale of TiVo stock for $24 million, DirecTV spokesman Bob Marsocci denied it indicates a change in the companies' relationship. "It's consistent with what we have done earlier this year in liquidating some of our portfolio of investments,'' Marsocci said. DirecTV sold its entire stake in XM Satellite Radio earlier this year."

    As Ars mentions, this is certainly a bit of bad news for Tivo (and people like me, who love the extra features in DirecTivo units as compared to normal Tivos, and thus fear a full seperation...) but not as much of a 'drop' as this post implies.
    • I was considering getting a DirecTivo, and I admit I don't know enough about DVRs at this point (not having the real urge to watch a ton of TV, considering it's summer). What are the extra features?

      (sorry this is off-topic, but whatever... :))

      • Re:DirecTV (Score:5, Informative)

        by The Only Druid ( 587299 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @08:05AM (#9375631)
        There are basically two extra features:

        1) DirecTivo units have two seperate tuners, so they can record two seperate shows simultaneously, while watching a third previously recorded show. Standalone Tivos have one tuner, so they can only record one show while watching a prerecorded show.
        2) DirecTV broadcasts their content in an Mpeg2 stream (although not a completely standdard mpeg2, since they implemented their format before the mpeg2 standard was complete). The DirecTivo records this stream without recompression, whereas Standalone units re-compress whatever signal they receive. This means that the DirecTivo unit introduces zero loss of quality, so watching a recorded DirecTV show is the same thing as watching it live.
        • My thanks, you are a gentleman and a scholar. :-p

        • Two more extra features... (Score:5, Informative)

          by CausticPuppy ( 82139 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @08:52AM (#9375891)
          3) DirecTivo units record and playback Dolby Digital 5.1 content (though this relates to #2 that you mentioned-- because Tivo doesn't modify the original stream). DirecTivo units have optical digital output, standalones do not.

          4) DirecTivo units are available that support HDTV. They are expensive, and they have 250GB drives, but there are no standalone high-definition Tivo units yet. Also, the HD DirecTivo units have FOUR tuners... two satellite, and two antenna inputs for local HD channels. I'm not sure if it's capable of recording on all 4 simultaneously-- that's a lot of hard drive bandwidth!

          • Re:Two more extra features... (Score:4, Interesting)

            by gathas ( 588371 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @09:10AM (#9376025)
            I would also add a "hidden" feature, better integration. If you have digital cable and TiVo you are going to have two set top boxes and more remotes, etc. The TiVo box is your DTV box. This may sound like a small issue to the slashdot crowd, but made a huge difference in getting my Mother-in-law set up and comfortable with this idea.
            • "I would also add a "hidden" feature, better integration. If you have digital cable and TiVo you are going to have two set top boxes and more remotes, etc. The TiVo box is your DTV box. This may sound like a small issue to the slashdot crowd, but made a huge difference in getting my Mother-in-law set up and comfortable with this idea."

              True. It does cause a wiring issue as well as occupying more plugs on the surge suppressor. However, the one drawback to integration is if something goes wrong with one par
            • q[I would also add a "hidden" feature, better integration. If you have digital cable and TiVo you are going to have two set top boxes and more remotes, etc.]q

              Er... by and large it's not that big of an issue. What do you ever need the set top box remote for? The TiVo does all of the channel changing, has its own OSD/Guide, etc. The remote for the other set top box can be stuck in a drawer somewhere.

              Yes, the IR blasters suck, and there's the remote possibility of the set top box not being on when needed, bu
          • I'm not sure if it's capable of recording on all 4 simultaneously--

            No. You can use any two tuners simultaneously: two satellite, or 2 terrestrial, or one satellite and one terrestrial.
          • I would also like to add that my local cable company (Insight) is now offering many options simalar to DirecTivo. They are using a Magnavox unit with only one tuner, but the unit handles HDTV, and records Dolby Digital 5.1, and has an optical digital output.

            If they would just stick another tuner in the box it would be everything DirecTivo is, but also have the advantage of On Demand content. Plus all of the HD channels including local are provided so you don't need an antenna.

            Very cool, too bad I am movin

    • Re:DirecTV (Score:2, Informative)

      by jgan123 ( 514504 )
      You say that DirecTV is not getting rid of Tivo, but you have to check out this article [msn.com].
      "Do we think that TiVo is dead? Not necessarily, but sometime in 2005, anyone who had a DirecTV/TiVo box may get a letter from News Corp. saying that they can continue paying for TiVo or get the NDS box for free,"

      • Re:DirecTV (Score:5, Informative)

        by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @08:54AM (#9375908) Homepage
        Your quote comes from NDS, not from News Corp. NDS is a competitor to TiVo, so it's unsurprising that they would make such a statement. It also means that it has no relevance in reality.

        The DirecTV/TiVo partnership extends until at least 2007. What happens after that is anybody's guess. But, yes, NDS could wind up being the solution after that time -- their largest shareholder is News Corp, the Sky+ boxes used by News Corp in the UK are based off NDS's XTV technology, and they're willing to license for less than TiVo (or so it appears at least; who knows what will happen by 2007 though).

        I love TiVo (have two), but they've never managed to get their foot in the door when it comes to content distribution companies. DirecTV was the only one they succeeded with, and it's been their savior. If DirecTV dropped them, I question that TiVo would be able to continue independantly. The vast majority of their subscriber growth has been from DirecTV (which is good for DTV as well, since churn on DirecTiVo subscribers is 1/3 that of non-DirecTiVo subscribers)

    • Re:DirecTV (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lildogie ( 54998 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @10:18AM (#9376708)
      > Actually, Tivo wasn't 'dumped' by DirecTV.

      DirecTV can't dump their Tivo stock and then disconnect DirecTivo. That would be trading based on inside information, and is illegal. They have to wait at least long enough so it looks like they got the disconnect idea after they got the idea to sell Tivo stock.

      Just ask Martha Stewart.
    • "As Ars mentions, this is certainly a bit of bad news for Tivo (and people like me, who love the extra features in DirecTivo units as compared to normal Tivos, and thus fear a full seperation...) but not as much of a 'drop' as this post implies."

      How is this any worse than companies like Comcast and Time Warner who own TiVo stock but won't distribute set-top boxes with TiVo built in to their cable subscribers? DirecTV with TiVo is a selling feature because a lot of the public is now familiar with the brand

  • is the product going to be worth it? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've never seen a digital video - either a downloaded DVD rip or something more official - which can compare to the quality of rips I do myself. There's no discussion over choice of codecs, nor what kinds of resolution to expect (and does anyone have the patience or room for HDTV-resolution movies?)
    • Indeed, as Netflix practically begs you to make copies of your "rentals". I live about 10 miles away from a distribution center, so even USPS first class is next day for me. With their 5-disc $30 plan, I get about 20 new movies a month. And while such ripping violates the CDMA, it is an unenforcable aspect of copyright law. Back in the VHS days, rental stores assumed that most tapes were dubbed, and the MPAA did too, but there was nothing that could be done there, and little than can be here.
    • Where does one get HDTV-resolution movies? They're certainly not ripped from standard DVDs as the best they ever do is 480p.

  • Replay has been doing this for a couple years (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ProfBooty ( 172603 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:56AM (#9375579)
    Replay allows users to share programs they've already recorded with others via the "Send Show" feature. This transmits up to 15 digital copies of shows over the Internet to other ReplayTV owner.

    This also allows people who have not paid for premium channels to watch premium content for free.
  • the head of the MPAA was quoted as saying, "Make the bad men stop!!!"
  • And iiinnn the red corner is Tivo a small but deeeaaaadly black box, iiinnn the BLUEE corner, is the huuuulking eiight huuundddreeedd poound gorillla motionpictureassociation OF AMERICAAAAAAAA!

  • Why not bypass Broadcast TV altogether (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Hangtime ( 19526 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @08:01AM (#9375611) Homepage
    Tivo should become a cable company...bare with me for a moment. Big hard drive and good compression, fat pipe into the house, customers trained to watch things at odd ball times and not necessairly at the time of broadcast. Get a couple of networks together and will send the favorites to your Tivo box and you can watch them at some other point. Delivered shows without having to have a satelite or cable package! Send my wife House Hunters from HDTV, send me some History channel and I don't have to go spend 50 bucks for cable because I get it sent directly to me.

    • Re:Why not bypass Broadcast TV altogether (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) * on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @08:52AM (#9375899)
      The Cable Network does not want to sell you their programs a la carte sans branding. It is terrifying, especially to a lesser network, that one or more of their sleeper hits (say, "Queer Eye" on Bravo) will take on a life of its own without carrying along the mother network's name for the ride. When you watch that "one show" on Bravo or Home & Garden or E! or whatever that's broken away from the pack, you can be sure that the network is using every available promo slot to better itself in highly thought-out ways. (Not to mention, of course, the loss of the ad revenue in the national avails.) If delivery-by-Tivo were to exist as a supplement to the regular cable and dish delivery, and the latter subscriber numbers continue to rise, that's one thing, but if Tivo-only distribution were to cannibalize the "traditional" delivery, network execs would be throwing themselves from windows.
      • "but if Tivo-only distribution were to cannibalize the "traditional" delivery, network execs would be throwing themselves from windows."

        Good! I nominate Jordan Levin of the WB Network to be the first out the window for cancelling *Angel* after its 100th episode, the whole season's improved ratings above the prior season, and in the face of the strong fan support.

        And for anyone who really wants "a la carte," I would suggest you support Senator John McCain's efforts at forcing this issue at the Federal lev
    • "bare with me for a moment"

      Do I have to? It's "bear".
    • "Send my wife House Hunters from HDTV, send me some History channel and I don't have to go spend 50 bucks for cable because I get it sent directly to me."

      Amen. No more having to add an extra $6 to my cable bill just so I can get (G4)TechTV. But oh yeah, they throw in BET Jazz with it. Joy! Pffff....

  • lol @ internet video (Score:5, Funny)

    by sinner0423 ( 687266 ) <sinner0423@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @08:04AM (#9375627)
    Yeah, Tivo users will be able to download such internet classics as:

    Fat Kid imitating Darth Maul

    Drunk guy lighting fart on fire

    Black guy talking about Whistle Tips on Car Muffler

    Boy, You Tivo users sure are missing out on the latest in internet based video.
  • I was about | | far from ordering a "directivo" as they called it from Directv. (yes i know they are RIAA evil and sue anyone). There just isn't an competition in my market. Charter runs the cable company and they can't keep the cable up without an outage for longer than 24 hours. That left me with a choice between Directv and Dish Network.
    Where is Directv going with this? I don't see anything in the article about a directv PVR replacement for the Tivo partnership.

    Speaking of partnerships are we now allowi

  • Good -- Bad -- Ugly (Score:5, Interesting)

    by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @08:07AM (#9375641) Homepage Journal
    On the surface this sounds great! I imagine this will be a ligit subscription service with parties lined up to play content provider in order to avoid them being the next Napster.

    But how feasible is this?
    Licensing media for internet is a complete pyrhia as far as the MPAA/RIAA is concerned -- though they have seemed to be a little less rabid towards those who try to play along and pay up as of late.

    Also -- what quality can we be expecting.
    People like me are all about HD content and with new services like Voom [voom.com] who focus on HD and are providing their own integerated tuner/DVR hardware (not yet released should be out within the next 2-3 months, how many devices are we expected to purchase?

    Sure, if net-ready TiVo comes out, I'll be one of the first to buy -- but what's to keep the others from bullying them out? If DirecTV does kick TiVo to the curb, what's to prevent them from cross-licensing to the content providers themselves? I mean if BlockBuster or others start streaming, why would they limit themselves to TiVo owners only when any DSL/Cable/Satelite carrier can offer up a clone of the hardware/firmware and offer it to their hundreds of thousands of subscribers?

    So while this sounds like a great move for TiVo in the short run, I'm not too optimistic about them not getting swallowed up/beaten to death by the big hitters who'll wait to see how it does in the market and then swoop down for hardball when/if it takes off.

  • Already Doing This (Score:2, Interesting)

    by shimbee ( 444430 )
    I got the wireless network adapter for my TiVo last week and it already streams music from a folder called TiVo Online in the trial subscription of the "home media option." It has about 10 songs from "In Da Club" to "Stupid Girl."
    • Assuming they haven't fixed it yet: the Windows version of the TiVo Desktop software has a hard limit of around 400 songs that it can handle. And every once in a while, I run across an MP3 that causes the TiVo to reboot. (Re-ripping the song fixes the problem.)

  • 5 Mb/s for DVD quality - WRONG!!! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Danathar ( 267989 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @08:23AM (#9375716) Journal
    The article states that you need over 5 Mb/s to stream DVD quality video to consumers. Sure...if you are using Mpeg-2...

    I've used the VideoLan player to stream a 3 Mb/s Xvid + 5.1 Surround AC3 stream with little or no buffering directly to my cable modem.

    It works, and it's as good as DVD. Most cable modems are capable of at least 2.5 Mb/s. The only problem is network conjestion.

    • Well that's great but the TiVo is a fairly low powered machine (The Series2 has a 200Mhz MIPS CPU). It relies on hardware for its MPEG decoding. For any other video format it would have to do it in software, and there's just no way that's happening real time.

    • Re:5 Mb/s for DVD quality - WRONG!!! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @09:37AM (#9376277) Journal
      I've used the VideoLan player to stream a 3 Mb/s Xvid + 5.1 Surround AC3 stream with little or no buffering directly to my cable modem.

      That's good, and it could be shrunk even further than that. However, a Tivo is not a computer running VideoLan, MPlayer, Xine, etc. It's general-purpose processor is incredibly low-powered (that's why your multimedia cabinet hasn't caught-on fire, if you know what I mean), and it is only able to handle MPEG2 video because of the fact that it has a hardware MPEG-2 encoder/decoder. Since no Tivos have MPEG-4 or AC3 hardware, there's no way they could even handle playback.

      It works, and it's as good as DVD.

      Although it is true that MPEG-4 can be extremely close to DVD-quality, you really don't get that kind of quality out of any existing codecs, even the famed Xvid. The fact that you can't see the difference is good for you, but not for anybody that has a large HDTV display, or the like.

      Most cable modems are capable of at least 2.5 Mb/s. The only problem is network conjestion.

      Maybe theoretically, but I'd say less than 1/10th of 1% of cable-modem owners are getting that kind of bandwidth from their ISPs. Not because of congestion, but because they limit the bandwidth as much as possible, so they can charge more for better speeds. That's why Docsis has been so damn popular lately.

      Also, even with unmetered cable modems, don't expect something like this to work. For one thing because once a large number of users are maxing-out their connection, no one of them is getting those massive speeds anymore, and the ISP is going to have to either raise rates, or limit individuals' speeds to cover bandwidth costs.
    • It can't be as good as a DVD. The encoding process for DVDs is very sophisticated and the codecs are tweaked for the movie in question and often for specific scenes within a movie to obtain the proximate 5Mb/s throughput. Think hand-tuned, multi-pass encoding.

      I find many DVD titles viewed via component connectors to be of superior image quality to many of the high def channels I have on my 42" Sony Grand Wega.

      I've also got a Panasonic DMR-E80 DVD recorder, and even the highest quality recording (XP, ~10

  • Got a solution as a Tivo owner. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by El Camino SS ( 264212 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @08:36AM (#9375786)

    My solution would be this:

    Look, people say that they want television on demand... but as a Tivo owner of less than a year, I will tell you straight that they don't know what they want, but as a Tivo owner, I do. They just want to watch their shows when they sit down. When the shows get there? Not an issue.

    They should make channels to take the programs and run them at something like ten to twelve times as fast as normal, or put them in file format and stream them exceedingly fast similar to a network.

    In a few minutes you could have it. More importantly, this solves the whole commercial skip issue. You could have custom commercials dropped in based on the person you were marketing to. Imagine they know I am a computer geek by my Tivo, and they can hit me with a custom Half-Life 2 commercial. Would I watch it? HELL YES I WOULD.

    It is not like I don't want to see ads. I scan the Sunday ads for bargains. I look at the local bargain newspapers. The problem with ads is that I am seeing ads that aren't my thing. I don't care about pantyhose. I am a man. If you give me a new barbecue sauce ad, I'll watch it. If you give me ads for a new processor, YES, I'll watch it. Gimme a movie trailer. I'll watch it.

    Yes, I know it is not truly "video on demand," but the network needs would be exponentially increased for a true video on demand system... it would get worse until there was packet gridlock. If you ran four channels at ten times speed, you would have the content of forty channels for four band slots. Think about all of the channels this way. Would the public care if it said please wait five minutes for delivery? Only if the TV had no way to hold programs and search for them, lying in wait. Or would they like to delete a whole slew of programs and have the Tivo pick out another ten of them for them while they were browsing? You could repeat content through the day, have a fast delvery, and still not have to drop a huge network on top of a cable system.

    My issue is that I think that video on demand is overrated. I think with a hard drive on my end I don't care when I get it... I am not enough of a brat to need it "NOW! Mommy! NOW!" If you speed up television delivery, and as the hard drive TVs have already shown, that video on demand WON'T MATTER AT ALL when your system knows what you like and gives it to you in anticipation. If you think that I want to press a button and get a crystal clear movie instantly, you're wrong. I want to browse. But whether I browse on a network or in my box is irrelevant... because currently my Tivo gives me a slew of choices. There is just not that much content.

    Imagine the network architecture issues when people start "browsing" video on demand, because in essence, their slapping around giant files like people slap through channels.

    Sure, video on demand can be done. It just looks so cost prohibitive right now that it is insane. The only real benefit of video on demand would be for news. Then I can custom my newscast. Lose the biased reporters. As a newsman, I admit, that would rock.

    • Re:Got a solution as a Tivo owner. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @08:58AM (#9375940) Journal
      Yeah, but when your wife sits down and she starts getting all of you pr0n ads, she's gonna get suspicious that your not really spending all of your time on the computer reading slashdot.

      (BTW - I agree, for the most part. Our hacked 135hr TiVo does a pretty good job of finding new stuff for the SO to watch, and keeps my Alton Brown safe and sound for me until I can find a few hours to watch 'em all. If TiVo got a multiple user function, we'd be in heaven - no wading through Haunted Houses of Eastern Mongolia and Bear in the Big Blue House to find my New Yankee Workshop)

    • Sure, video on demand can be done. It just looks so cost prohibitive right now that it is insane.

      Bandwidth is very cheap. The only limitation to video-on-demand is that the public didn't have fast-enough pipes, and nobody ever set-up a subscription service... Free serivces can't afford on-demand, but even inexpensive services could more than cover the costs.

      I'd bet it would be quite popular too, since the internet lends itself to ala cart channels, and there could be an infinite number of channels avail

    • If you ran four channels at ten times speed, you would have the content of forty channels for four band slots.

      Um....not quite. If you run a channel at ten times speed, you will take up ten times the bandwidth, unless you start dropping frames, in which case you can't slow it back down again.

  • In other news... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by seven5 ( 596044 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @08:38AM (#9375795)
    It should be mentioned that DirectTV did not "DUMP" Tivo, they instead dumped the shares of tivo that they owned. They will still be using tivo technology in thier receivers.

    Also. the home media option is now available to every Tivo2 owner for free. No more $99. YAYYYY. Also, they have dropped the rates of seperate Tivos. While the first Tivo is still $12.95 per month, each extra Tivo in your house is only $6.95
    • Hmm, I might just activate my third series1 standalone now.

      I paid for my HMO, but I can easily think of the $99 charge now being for the privilege of transfering my lifetime subscriptions from my other two Series1 TiVos to two Series2 TiVos. (And it made sense because the Series2 units require subscriptions whereas the old Philips units I have are subscription optional. Better to be able to cancel on the Philipses and save money if needed.)

      And hey! according to their FAQ [tivo.com] on this, my monthly units are ge
  • ... now that TiVo has made the Home Media Option features available for free, what will they do to those folks who ponied up the $99 (or $59 during the 'special promotion period') for it originally?

    Sure, that's the price early adopters pay, but TiVo should do more for them beyond mailing out a few dozen cute stuffed TiVo characters to those folks.

    • "... now that TiVo has made the Home Media Option features available for free, what will they do to those folks who ponied up the $99 (or $59 during the 'special promotion period') for it originally?"

      Believe me, as one of the Beta Testers of the Home Media Option, they better.

  • ... I really do.

    Windows XP Media Center

    breaking into market or crushing market. either way it's here or nearly here. as usual, everyone has to go nuts. it does the tivo thing, it does the windows thing, and it also does the crushing competition thing. did they miss anything?
  • OK, I know that we geeks love the best of the best of the best..with honors...but do we really need high-definition or DVD-quality recordings? Sure, these kinds of recordings definitely look the best, but at what cost? I'll gladly admit that the company with the best quality for the lowest price will probably come out ahead, but why not leverage slightly worse picture quality to provide better bandwidth usage and greater choice? Current Cable and Satellite TV certainly aren't typically "DVD-quality".

    Case a

  • Oh, great!! Now my cable modem speed is .. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by the_rajah ( 749499 ) * on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @09:55AM (#9376468) Homepage
    going to tank cause of all the folks on my node d/l-ing movies! Thanks a lot! It's bad enough with the Linux distros and pr0n d/l-er's. What happens when the broadband ISPs start limiting everyone to X Gigs of d/l per month? Go rent the friggin DVD. It's a lot quicker.

    "Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
    • The Norwegian ISP Telenor [telenor.no] tried to limit the bandwidth on their ADSL costumers. They initially had a limit of a whole 1 GB pr. month. Imagine, they allowed people to download half a Linux distribution a month! You could still read your mail at ISDN speed if you exceeded your limit, though. They later increased this limit to an incredible 30 GB/mo.

      Telenor soon realized even 30 GB/mo wasn't generous enough, they were loosing their marked share to the large number of ISPs with a lower price pr. month and no
    • What happens when the broadband ISPs start limiting everyone to X Gigs of d/l per month?

      This has been happening in Canada for a long time now. Almost every provider claims a 10 GB/month cap, with some ridiculous charge (like $8/gig) after that. It's important to note that most people here are on 5mbit (cable) or 3mbit/1.5mbit (DSL) lines, and practically everybody shares their internet with someone, so 10GB is really not a lot.

      What are the results? I don't know of any ISP that actually enforce this li

  • let's hear from the broadband ISP admins here (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zogger ( 617870 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @10:34AM (#9376864) Homepage Journal
    What % (roughly, back of napkin rules apply) of your customers subscribing to these various TV on demand schemes would it take before you would start to lose money on bandwith increases over what you are facing right now?
  • Frankly, I'll believe it when I see it. As much as I love my tivo -- and I've got both an SA and a DTivo -- it rankles me hear about this stuff and know that it's probably still six, eight, ten months away.

    Just once, I'd like these places to make the announcment and then immediately have the functionality. I mean, didn't tivo three months ago announce something about XM radio and the ability to burn programs to DVD?

    Where is it? Where's my XM radio on the tivo? Where's the software I can download to burn s
  • Might work if not for the MPAA/RIAA they will screw it up some how.

    I look for them to start redoing the comercials of the 80's that were done for polution. hmmm "A MPAA guy (older man looking haggard) looking over a of poor hollywood types that are starving and turns to the camera with a tear down running down his cheek" Sigh...

  • Just watch. TiVo's founder is also on NetFlix's board of directors. Now if both companies would combine the viewer ratings. That would be so money. Although the US Postal Service will be screaming "uncle" over it.

  • Tivo trying harder (Score:2, Interesting)

    by speedbump ( 11624 )
    Like others have already said, Tivo announced that they are considering offering on-demand-style programming separate from live broadcast network fare. This is no different from normal on-demand material, except that it is a Linux box smartly going out over your net connection to retrieve the content.

    Tivo is struggling, now, to keep their customer base and to get others. They know that any geek with a Linux box and a tuner can pull together a new product that could displace them, so they are trying to ke
  • Make the Play bar disappear faster so you can read text on the screen.

    This code take the format of "Select Play Select Something Select". These do not require backdoors to be enabled for them to work. The best way to do this type of code is to start playing a recorded program and do them while the recorded program is playing. They can be done from LiveTV as well, but people generally have a hard time getting them to work when trying to do that.

    Select-Pause-Select-Pause-Select - Toggles the fast disappear

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