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Microsoft Media Television

TiVo, MS, and the War for the Living Room 204

Posted by simoniker from the ready-fight dept.
r-blo writes "Hot off his in-depth comparison of TiVo vs. Microsoft Media Center, Engadget has Thomas Hawk following up with ten things each that TiVo and Microsoft need to do to win the War for the Living Room. It won't be easy (like TiVo offering their OS as software for the PC. Not going to happen.) but I've got a feeling they might be better off listening up. Especially TiVo, since we're all rooting for them anyway."
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TiVo, MS, and the War for the Living Room More

TiVo, MS, and the War for the Living Room

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  • Radio and MP3 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mike deVice ( 769602 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:26AM (#9945215)
    Create a "My Radio" option and a "My Radio" guide. If I would like to listen to KFOG's "Live at the Archives" on Wednesday morning at 3 a.m., so be it. If I would like to get a season pass to Howard Stern, great. These files should be saved to MP3 and be portable.

    Will never, ever happen. Not in an non-DRM format like MP3, anyway. The RIAA would be alllll over that.

    • Re:Radio and MP3 (Score:3, Informative)

      by dyefade ( 735994 )
      BBC do something like this already. Their "Listen Again" service lets you listen to any BBC Radio show broadcast in the last week. You can't (easily) save the content, but anyone who just wants to catch a show they missed the previous day or whatever (which I do all the time), can do.
      I guess you could find a work-around to save the content, even if it's just to run an audio recorder... Audacity is OSS and popular I here.

    • Re:Radio and MP3 (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Has already happened, to an extent: (UK, big chunks of far east, europe, australia). Use a VCR-like DAB radio to save mp2 onto an SDCard (pure digital's theBug is the only one at the moment I think). Quality is pretty good, no DRM. Getting fancy TiVo-like functionality is "just a matter of software".

    • Re:Radio and MP3 (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dspyder ( 563303 )
      And ironically, Howard would probably be against it to.... he's been pretty adamant against Internet radio because he can't get paid for it. That's somewhat true, and being able to timeshift his program won't make him any happier.

      Of course, most of us would agree that taping a radio show and playing it back later is WELL within fair use.

      --D
  • 6. Create a "My Radio" option and a "My Radio" guide. If I would like to listen to KFOG's "Live at the Archives" on Wednesday morning at 3 a.m., so be it. If I would like to get a season pass to Howard Stern, great. These files should be saved to MP3 and be portable.

    Amen to that. I want an MP3 player that syncs to this puppy, so I can listen to Car Talk during drive time.

  • So basicly he want a mythtv box. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Robert The Coward ( 21406 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:26AM (#9945220)
    Almost everything he talked about is in someform of completion on the http://www.mythtv.org/ [mythtv.org].
    • Almost everything he talked about is in someform of completion on the http://www.mythtv.org/.

      "Some form of completion" isn't good enough. When the features are fully complete and ready for the consumer market, let me know.

  • Decent lists, but both wrong at the top. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SpookyFish ( 195418 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:27AM (#9945221)
    Number one for both is easy - establish partnerships with cable / satellite companies.

    TiVo is ahead here thanks to DirecTV but that is looking sketchy since DirecTV's NDS subsid. has DVR technology of their own. POD, cablecard, and other open standards aren't even off the ground yet.

    Within two years both TiVo and (especially) MS will be trailing in marketshare to cable-delivered boxes (Digeo's Moxi, Motorola 620x, SA Explorer 8k) with built-in conditional access.

    Think no upfront investment, no change in service, and ten bucks a month.

    Pity for TiVo - thanks to the brand recognition, people will be recording their shows with box XYZ and still saying "haven't watched it yet, but TiVo'ed it so don't tell me."
    • Pity for TiVo - thanks to the brand recognition, people will be recording their shows with box XYZ and still saying "haven't watched it yet, but TiVo'ed it so don't tell me."

      When I had an Ultimate TV box, I had to say Tivo for people to know what I am talking about. Now I feel dirty and have a Tivo since lightening took out the UTV system. It is a pitty, and as much as I hate to say it, the Microsoft UTV system being 1st generation and over two years old was much better than my brand new Tivo in features
    • If I were TiVo I would try to partner with Comcast, perhaps the largest cable TV provider in the USA. That way, Comcast users get the benefits of TiVo (including dual-tuner operation), and Comcast could allocate one of its cable channels to send TiVo programming and software update data in the middle of the night at near-broadband speeds, which means updates only need a few minutes to complete. =)
      • They tried. Apparently they have the same problem lots of Slashdotters complain about: nobody values software anymore. The big cable companies didn't want to bother paying licensing fees for Tivo software, figuring they could get their own salaried programmers or offshore shops to write the code and hack the hardware for the budget cable boxes their partners (Scientific Atlanta, Motorola, etc.) make. Tivo's only real hope was using their patents as a heavy stick and beating people over the head with the
        • FYI, A DirecTivo unit goes for $79. A plain sat receiver is $49, so the tivo part is only $30 more and has dual inputs. DirecTV only charges $4.99 for tivo service which is the same as the mirroring fee if you have 2 normal sat receiver boxes. Now hack your tivo so you can UL/DL video, MP3's, add in GAIM, etc. and it becomes QUITE a nice system. Base Tivo is nice, but as you say, it could do a lot more. I just wish the processor was faster and that it had more ram (this is a problem with MOST DVR's)

          It woul

          • Base Tivo is nice, but as you say, it could do a lot more. I just wish the processor was faster and that it had more ram

            What more does it need? MPEG encoding and decoding is done with dedicated hardware. Everything else is just displaying menus and whatnot, and that doesn't take much at all. Sure, Series 1 TiVos have less processing power than an old Power Macintosh 6100, but how often are you stuck waiting on it? The only operation I know of that can take an inordinate amount of time is changing th

            • Oh, boy. I get FREQUENT very slow operations of all sorts. Go into the todo list and delete some individual shows. Painful. Just hitting record can be a very slow operation taking over 30 seconds before it's all set.

              On my S1 DTivo, I installed a cachecard with 512M and that has helped a lot for season pass / recording management, but some operations are still very pokey. Many of the hacks that improve the usability of the tivo (tivoweb, etc.) take even more of that precious ram.

              Real ram would be a lot mor

              • Oh, boy. I get FREQUENT very slow operations of all sorts. Go into the todo list and delete some individual shows. Painful. Just hitting record can be a very slow operation taking over 30 seconds before it's all set.

                Maybe DirecTV is doing something weird with its TiVos...additional background processes or something else like that. Mine's a standalone (a Philips HDR112, upgraded with a bigger HD, more memory, and a network interface) and it doesn't behave like that. Some have suggested the number of ac

  • Pretty good, but not perfect (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aligas ( 167845 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:27AM (#9945223)

    Overall I thought the article was pretty good, but I feel it was off on a few points. I'll admit I own a TiVo, so I am going to focus more on them since I am familiar with the device/service.

    Microsoft

    Point 2: The article suggests 4 tuners, but how many should be recordable at one time? The HDTV TiVo unit can only record from any two tuners at a time. Does anyone know if current hard disks could handle two HD streams and two analog streams? I think this is the reason why TiVo only allows recording on two of the 4 tuners in their HD model at any given time.

    TiVo

    Point 2: TiVo has already announced "TiVoToGo" which will implement what the article is requesting. It is scheduled for release this fall. The reason the ports are disabled on the Hughes model is because of DirecTV - not TiVo. TiVo has stated many times that if they had things their way, the DirecTV models would have all the features the standalone models do.

    Point 3: I'm not really sold on needing a DVD burner in every unit if you can download the files to a PC to burn them to DVD like the author wants in the second point. If I have a DVD burner in my PC, I would rather not have to pay for another in my TiVo. I think the units should be available, but I don't think they should all be forced to have them.

    Point 4: The HDTV unit from TiVo will almost surely have the Home Media Features and TiVoToGo. Again, the only reason the DirecTV HDTV unit does not is because DirecTV wants it that way for whatever reason.

    Point 7: It might be a great idea to offer an external USB 2.0 add-on that you could use for simply holding media that has been already recorded. Meaning the TiVo still records to the internal hard disk, and manages everything like it always has, but you can copy a show to the external disk to free space on the internal disks. This saves TiVo from some tough questions (are the USB 2.0 ports fast enough for direct recording, how to handle if someone yanks the drive in the middle of a recording, which shows get stored where, etc), but still allows folks to get the additional space they need.

    Point 9: I think TiVo's acquisition of Strangeberry will help implement features like these. Business 2.0 has an article right now that talks about what the Strangeberry purchase is bringing to the table for TiVo. Link to cut/paste of article [tivocommunity.com] (Business 2.0 is non-free/registration).

    • Point 2: The article suggests 4 tuners, but how many should be recordable at one time? The HDTV TiVo unit can only record from any two tuners at a time.

      Not to mention that if your source for your programming is digital cable, you still need a set-top box. For me to use two tuners on my TiVo, I'd still need two boxes from my cable company. I could see that as being reasonable, but come on, you've got TiVo, so it's not like you need to schedule your viewing to accomodate a program schedule, and anything w
      • Disclaimer: I did not read the article.

        However, wouldn't it be cool if TiVos were cable-card compatible? That's effectively what the DirecTiVos are. Believe it or not, the cable companies would rather charge you $2.00 per month for your cable card than $4.50 per month for a basic (PPV and HBO-like channels) set-top box. Think about how much capital they have invested in set-top boxes. Need a software upgrade? Mail out a new cable card.

        --Mike
        • I think all of us would love to see the cable card spec actually implemented. DirecTivo is fabulous, but many of us live in places where we don't have the exposure to get a satellite link (an apartment with the wrong directional facing, for instance). Ultimately, I think Tivo needs cablecard to be adopted to succeed as a company, to make sales and installation as painless as possible. And even better, perhaps with cablecard in place, they could finally get some partnerships going with the otherwise obstr
    • For point 7, my USB 2 hard drive takes about 1 minute to transfer 700 MB. USB 2 can transfer at 480 Mbps.

  • Windows MCE (Score:5, Informative)

    by Universal Indicator ( 626874 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:28AM (#9945224)
    I have been using Windows Media Center for several months now and have been very pleased with it. Its great having your recorded shows available on your home network to watch on any computer in the house whenever you want, not to mention being a huge digital jukebox -- just throw in as many hard drives as you can and you've got true media "center" capabilities, you can't say that for a TiVo.

    The biggest advantage the Media Center has is that you can play any AVI files you want as long as you have the codec installed. And the remote control works with every proprietary IR device (ie cable boxes) that I throw at it.

    I tried MythTV, and while its a great project, XP MCE has it beat at this point in time by far, but I think that may be mostly due to most hardware drives being written for Windows only.

    Although I'm looking forward very much to MCE 2005, in all fairness I haven't tried a TiVO, and the TivO's dual-tuner functionality is something that the MCE misses. However, when you're using a digital cable box, having a second tuner doesn't matter anyway.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Time Warner's DVR is highly unstable. After a couple of months, they start spontaneously rebooting. I gave up after the first one did it, but I have a friend who's on his fifth.

        There are other issues besides that:
        • If you want to record a show, you can manually select each show from the one week program guide; or, you can opt to record every instance of the show. -- If the show is on four times a day, that's too bad. You can delete the extras once they're recorded, but you cannot delete one episode from t

    • Re:Windows MCE (Score:2, Informative)

      by spronk ( 712662 )
      If you had done your homework you'd know that MCE is one of the worst HTPC suites out there. Even when compared against other Windows apps. What you list as MCEs biggest advantage is a feature in almost every HTPC software package out there. It terms of features and functionality many packages are better than MCE, MythTV by FAR outpaces it.

    • Re:Windows MCE (Score:3, Informative)

      by spronk ( 712662 )
      Even if you only comapre Windows based solutions MCE comes out pretty close to the bottom. MythTV by FAR exceeds MCE's features and functionality.

      Stop by HTPC News [htpcnews.com] sometime and do a little research. They're pretty Windows-centric but they're coming around.

  • IMHO (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ArcherB ( 796902 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:29AM (#9945232) Journal
    Good article. It's amazing what happens when you actually read it!

    However, the article makes it seem as if there is only TiVo and MS Media Center. I rent a box from my cable company that records two high def channels at once. However, I wish it had more features listed in the article.

    It would be nice to be able to burn TV shows to DVD, for example. My wife keeps recording shows that she is never going to watch and keeps them on the HDD forever (You've Got mail, Down With Love, etc). I'd like some way of backing these up to free up the drive space.

    I will not purchase a TiVo because you have to pay for the unit and then pay for the service (right?). That's bogus in my opinion. If I'm going to pay a monthly fee, then I should have the box provided. Also, I'd want the DVD burning ability that TiVo will not provide me.

    I won't buy TiVo nor Media Center because I don't know if they are 100% with my digital cable. Will I be able to record two shows at once or record oneand watch another? Not if it has to change the channel on my existing cable box. Will it be able to change the channel on the cable box? Can I throw my cable box out and just use the TiVo unit or Media Center CPU in it's place? I can't find answers to these questions and won't spend the money on either of these units until I know for sure that they will be an improvement over my existing PVR unit.

    Finally, the radio idea sounded great. I could record the radio stuff I miss because I do stupid things like work and watch TV.

    • Re:IMHO (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Universal Indicator ( 626874 )
      The MCE is lacking dual-tuner support in its current version (hopefully next version will have it), but there is a VERY good chance that it will work with your digital cable box. I have BrightHouse (TimeWarner) digital cable, and I have tried three different digital cable boxes (one of them a brand new SA8k dvr box) and they all worked with no problems.

      The MCE comes with an "IR-Blaster" that transmits the signal it needs to your cable box to change channels, etc.

      The main advantage of MCE is to be able to

    • Re:IMHO (Score:5, Funny)

      by seanadams.com ( 463190 ) * on Thursday August 12, 2004 @02:07AM (#9945414) Homepage
      My wife keeps recording shows that she is never going to watch and keeps them on the HDD forever (You've Got mail, Down With Love, etc). I'd like some way of backing these up to free up the drive space.

      Newlywed, eh?

      Just tell her you did it. Problem solved.
    • Will I be able to record two shows at once or record oneand watch another? Not if it has to change the channel on my existing cable box.

      I don't know about Tivo but I do have a ReplayTV that I use with Dish Network. In your case you have to have two (cable) tuners to record two shows at once. Those could be in the same box, but more likely you would need two separate cable boxes, and probably two Tivos.

      Recording one show while watching another is not usually a problem because what you'll find is that y

    • Re:IMHO (Score:4, Informative)

      by nachoboy ( 107025 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @03:27AM (#9945635)
      Your digital cable probably comes to your TV via a leased (cable company-owned) set-top box. The point of the box is to decrypt the premium channels, and there's nothing that Media Center can do about it. Here's how a MCE box normally works. You feed coax cable from the wall to the set-top box. The box decrypts the feed, and you connect another coax cable from the set-top box to a tuner card installed in the MCE PC. At this point the MCE PC is functioning as your TV. You would then use a MCE remote pointed at a small USB receiver to control the MCE interface and change channels. To enable the MCE PC to change channels on the cable box, you connect a small IR emitter from the aforementioned USB IR receiver to your set-top box's front panel, directly in front of its remote sensor. The MCE PC will then "relay" commands to the set-top box as needed.

      Tivo is a subscription service, you'll have to pay to use their guide data either monthly or a large lifetime fee. MCE PC's get guide data for free.

      MCE 2004 (currently only available purchased with a new machine from the likes of Dell or HP) allows you to watch DVD's, display pictures and slideshows, play and visualize music, listen to radio, and watch and record TV (1 tuner maximum).

      MCE 2005 (available later this year from large OEM's and local 'white box' dealers alike) does all of the above, and adds support for dual (that's two ONLY) tuners. You can reportedly watch HDTV but only if your signal is over-the-air. Also, you'll be able to do all your media tasks on other TV's around the house by purchasing MCE extender devices.

      I'm not sure about the integrated DVD-burning capabilities of MCE, but perhaps someone else can comment on that. I doubt I'd use it myself; I would use real video editing software to strip commercials and then pack as much content as possible on each DVD.

  • The man wants his fair use, damn it! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thewldisntenuff ( 778302 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:29AM (#9945240) Homepage
    If anyone RTFA (I know it's early in the discussion), the man is insane! He wants both companies to pretty much allow copying and sharing of files....I bet Jack Valenti and Hillary Rosen both shit a brick after hearing this guy.
    Examples -

    "Create a "My Radio" option and a "My Radio" guide....These files should be saved to MP3 and be portable. "

    Heh..."should be saved to mp3 and portable"...Might as well give a big middle finger to the RIAA.

    "Provide Ethernet connectivity to their HDTV unit and include the ability to share recorded files with a Windows-based PC. "

    While this doesn't run entirely afoul (see previous TiVo sharing articles of yore on /.) of DRM, he doesn't mention it anywhere in TFA. Sharing/fair use seems to be encouraged...

    Two more -

    "Provide a DVD burner with all units. Copying should be as simple as selecting a program and pressing "Burn to disc" on a menu."

    and

    "Provide the ability to connect external hard drives."

    The RIAA/MPAA/AAA would be up in arms over this....It will never happen - They'd rather eat their own sh!t than allow for fair use and sharing to actually occur...The man has valid (and good) points, but none of them will ever happen in corporate-controlled America.......

    But a geek's wet dream if you ask me :)
    • Heh..."should be saved to mp3 and portable"...Might as well give a big middle finger to the RIAA.

      Personally I think a heavy boot in the rear end is what the RIAA deserves. :-)
    • Yea, clearly, all *consumers* want the features this guy lists, but key among them are the ability to *gasp* actually have fair use rights, and be able to do with digital content what we can now do with analog content, i.e. permanently store it on whatever format we choose.

      For HD, this means going against the FCC's decision on the broadcast flag, not to mention getting sued by the RIAA, MPAA, etc. I doubt even M$ wants *that* lawsuit, and until your average 'merkin voter wakes up and takes back their congr

  • Missing option... (Score:4, Informative)

    by turk182x2001 ( 529188 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:29AM (#9945241)
    Replay TV
  • Most people who have media center pc's only have them because it looked cool at Circuit City when they were checkign out the latest HP's.... I mean, they are useful, but having a full desktop PC as my home media center is just ... not viable...Even when connected to a television. Tivo is only for recording television... correct? Pause, rewind, record live tv... i've never owned a tivo, but that's all I know they do. Sure, wifi on there to share my recordings/play my video and music collection on the main t

  • They really stretched making 10, (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JVert ( 578547 ) <corganbillyNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:30AM (#9945249) Journal
    The suggestions really start to get redundant, I would have stopped at 5.
    Hot off the "Tivo vs poor customer support at Best Buy" article... Kinda funny they use the 1st generation screenshot for media center.
    Regardless I have a Tivo in the living room and a Media Center in the bedroom. I just like the media center better so i'll respond with my own biased opinion.
    But i'd love someone to actually bundle a remote and IR blaster to plug into their computer to work with one of the free linux PVR's.

    Offer support for recording high-definition TV as soon as possible, including an immediate announcement of an anticipated delivery date.
    Offer quad (four) tuners - two for regular broadcasts and two for HDTV. There should never be recording conflicts.

    Its in the next beta. But microsoft isn't as sharing with details on the beta, or maybe nobody seems to know how to ask.

    Provide easy support for 16:9 widescreen video display, including the development of a generic display driver that will display the Media Center software correctly on almost any 16:9 display. Forcing a plasmato display in 4:3 format for extended periods of time creates screen burn.

    Maybe you should fire up that windows update, 16:9 support is great in MCE 2004


    Develop simple drag-and-drop archiving of shows to DVD. Words like codecs and drivers and DivX and Sonic DVD and memory buffer error should not be a part of the process.

    Agreed, Although the third party support in Media Center is beyond anything Tivo has. Tivo hacks be damned nobody has written a plugin that you can use on tivo while watching TV.

    Media Center should handle large media libraries better. In the "instant on" world of today, media libraries (especially music) must be indexed and optimized to create instant entertainment. At present Media Center does not handle large digital media libraries well.
    Create a "My Radio" option and a "My Radio" guide. If I would like to listen to KFOG's "Live at the Archives" on Wednesday morning at 3 a.m., so be it. If I would like to get a season pass to Howard Stern, great. These files should be saved to MP3 and be portable.
    The radio feature is very crippled, but I think this is based on the fact that online radio stations will be the smarter choice for future development.
    As for large media, media center handles large lists of recorded tv a WHOLE lot better then my Tivo. Especially when making multiple recordings. And their interface for music is... really good?


    Improve stability. Media Center should be as stable and error-free as TiVo's Linux-based system.

    Damn true, but the only errors I have is download guide data, I dont know if its Media Center's database or they just keep getting corrupt data from their guide source. But it happens alot. Others dont seem to have this problem. But its running windows so it must be unstable, right?


    Provide ratings and preferences in the user profile rather than in the files or players. They must also create some kind of suggestions feature similar to Tivo for television and music. One huge step that Microsoft took in the right direction was creating a music ratings feature. At present these ratings must be the same for all users of a computer. If I like Nirvana and my wife prefers Alan Jackson then we are out of luck.

    Microsoft telling you what you want to watch? Nobody is falling for that one. Music is strongly tied for all users. But an interesting feature is the My Videos collection can by global, or per user, music and recorded tv will be there very soon.


    Provide ratings and simple filtering capabilities for digital photos. If I want to show pictures of John and Alan and Pete and Bob while they are over for dinner then the filter tool in "my pictures" should allows for me to do this.     Put them in a folder, your not going to type in "john and alan" with a remote. This idea wouldn't make it on a

  • It's not all TiVo's fault (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Powerdog ( 106510 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:30AM (#9945250)

    TiVo had shown a reference HDTV unit [pbase.com] back at the CES show in January 2003. However, no manufacturers were interested in building it. The DVR market is still small, and HDTV is an even smaller piece of that.

    As far as limitations on the HR10-250 unit, you can probably blame DIRECTV. Their Series2-derived DVRs have USB ports that can be used for HMO (Home Media Option) but DTV has chosen not to do so. If you can find 4.0, you can install it on your HDVR2 and enable HMO [dealdatabase.com]. So the missing HMO functionality is not a technology issue.

    Putting a DVD burner in each unit would be handy, but would also increase the cost. DVRs still aren't in widespread use and keeping the price point high won't help.

    Finally, TiVo did announce TiVoToGo [tivo.com], which will allow you to play content on your PC.

    • The DVR market is still small, and HDTV is an even smaller piece of that.

      True, but I would bet that the DVR market IN the HDTV market is quite large. I think it's more the expense than anything. The DirectHDTivo is kind of spendy but not too bad really ($299). It's heavily subsidized by DirectTV since you pay extra for the HDTV programming. They are betting that if you buy and HDTV PVR that you will subscribe to a significant portion of HDTV services. That would be a good bet.

      A SA HDTV unit would be a LO

  • huge gap. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bagel2ooo ( 106312 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:30AM (#9945255)
    When I go over to parents/grandparents and see them checking their e-mail on AOL and having their VCR/DVD player (lesser so DVD Player) flashing midnight, I realize just how much abstraction needs to be done for all of that to be a smooth process. The article does talk a lot about practical features and de-jargonizing the whole thing. I know they were most likely targetting the early adopters with this, but to get the highest amount of saturation they will have to make a lot of changes, some sensible, some quite radical.

  • Missing list item: Trust (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Wee ( 17189 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:31AM (#9945256)
    The "The top 10 things Microsoft must do to win the living room" list was missing item number zero (out of an 11 item list):

    0. Earn consumers' trust.

    I personally don't trust MS very much. In addition, they've had a history of choosing convenience over security, and they're business model leaves a lot to be desired. Their products seem to be built on a methodology of expedience rather than robustness. MS also has a habit of trying to think for the consumer, and deal harshly with anyone who tries to move beyonds the bounds of the expected customer experience. Their EULAs are oppressive.

    My gaming PC I can handle updating all the time and not using very much. My TV and DVR are "appliance-grade" items, and I expect them to work without fail, all the time. I don't see MS delivering there.

    And even if they did, I wouldn't trust them with something as innocuous as knowing my family's TV viewing habits.

    -B

    • You and how many other people?

      Sorry, but we're the minority in this issue. That's not going to be much of a problem for Microsoft.
      • It's a small problem at this point, but it IS a growing one. I wouldn't write the trust issue off too quickly. We are talking about future, not yesterday and today.

        I've known several die-hard windows fans that have converted over the past couple years for multiple reasons - security, cost, flexability, and reliability. It's not that they are converting specifically to Linux or Mac - it's that they are converting AWAY from windows and Linux and mac just happen to be the most viable options.

  • Snapstream (Score:3, Informative)

    by AIX-Hood ( 682681 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:31AM (#9945260)
    Let's not forget about Snapstream [snapstream.com] with it's web and 10-foot based administration. I've been using it for a long time and it has a larger feature set than both Tivo and Media Center if you include the up and coming Beyond Media. It even does dual tuners now like Myth TV [mythtv.org].

    • Re:Snapstream (Score:2, Informative)

      by spronk ( 712662 )
      It even does dual tuners now like Myth TV

      Myth does unlimited tuners. Myth even allows machines with mutliple tuners in them to be linked all recording under the auhority of a single macter machine.

    • Amen! I know a lot of the OSS crowd will comment about the greatness of MythTV (and yes, i've used it on Gentoo), but Snapstream is just way easy and does everything I want. The beta of 3.5 has some questionable decisions (the change in the web interface is questionable because it adds quite a few clicks to managing things), but that's why it's beta, and they're taking feedback.

      I've also beta tested BeyondMedia and that is another really slick program. Not having used Media Center, I shouldn't comment t

  • A missing thing... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mayfoev ( 603309 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:32AM (#9945269)
    Tivo should consider making business and selling their machines in Europe, Asia^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H the rest of the world too. The War in the Living Room is not only in North America. Is it?

    Anyway, in Europe, AFAIK, it's too late. It has been a long wait for such Tivo-like products, but from now on the market exists here for 2 years.
  • Damn!! Why must you tease us by posting a story and then updating the database, disabling comments ?!?! I wrote an articulate response and even RTFA. Now all I've got is this . . . FP?
  • "Provide a host of additional remote services including email, voicemail, caller ID, vehicle tracking, home automation (lights, home alarm security, window shades, thermostat), and "My RSS" feeds. "My Art" should also be included. Wasn't Bill Gates running around buying up all the digital rights to fine art a while back?"

    I thought these were PVRs, Personal Video Recorders ... not a devive to control my home ...

  • We are??? (Score:3, Funny)

    by DiSKiLLeR ( 17651 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:35AM (#9945288) Homepage Journal
    Especially TiVo, since we're all rooting for them anyway.

    We are???

    I don't know about YOU, but i certainly don't wanna have sex with my TiVo.....
  • I must say I like th #10 suggestion for Tivo: Merge with Netflix. There's a lot to be said for this combination of video on demand.
    • Or blockbuster, which just announced a cheaper version of netflix.

      WHat I wouldn't mind seeing is a service from DirecTV that is like netflix. They have lots of spare sat capacity now, and they could offer a service where you could pick a movie and it would schedule it to be broadcast sometime in the next week. DirecTivo would record it. How cool would that be? Kind of a better version of pay per view.

  • Radio Recording? (Score:3, Funny)

    by riptide_dot ( 759229 ) * on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:38AM (#9945305)
    - Create a "My Radio" option and a "My Radio" guide. If I would like to listen to KFOG's "Live at the Archives" on Wednesday morning at 3 a.m., so be it. If I would like to get a season pass to Howard Stern, great. These files should be saved to MP3 and be portable.

    What, are these people CRAZY?!? There's no way a device that has the capability of RECORDING RADIO (or anything) is EVER going to be kosher with the DMCA!!! And the capability to save them in MP3 format? Whoever thought that must have lost their mind. Isn't anyone paying attention to what the RIAA has been telling us lately? Recording stuff is BAD. Paying for stuff every time you play it on another device is GOOD. Sheesh - it's like these people don't remember how those whole "cassette player" and "CD player" fads RUINED music and radio and made it so no one could make money because no one would buy any cassettes or CDs anymore...

    wait...
    hold on...

    THEY DIDN'T.

  • M$ vs TiVo (Score:3, Insightful)

    by p0rnking ( 255997 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:41AM (#9945314) Homepage
    "Offer a software package for sale that will run on any Windows-based PC. TiVo should leverage their name brand recognition and become a powerful software player."

    If TiVo were to offer their software separately, why would I buy it, when I can go and get something like MythTV for free?

    I know this is kind of a bad comparison, but that's like buying a Mac vs. buying a Linux based system ... you buy a Mac for the whole system, software AND hardware ... you buy a linux based system 'cause you're too cheap to buy anything else, or you hate M$, AND want to build your own system ... besides those who come to /., I doubt there's a large % of people who can go out and get the TiVo software, and build their own system for it.

  • what TiVo needs to do... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by macshune ( 628296 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:49AM (#9945358) Journal
    Although the article mentions TiVo merging up with a "cash-flow positive company," I think the answer is simpler in that TiVo can just license its highly visible brand to a major cable company and sell branded set-top boxes. TiVo dropped the ball once, but I'm sure it's still up for grabs. TiVo is much more recognizable (e.g. a brand) than General Whatever's generic DCT-XXXX, et al and would help protect against TiVo's waning marketshare in the time-shifted set-top box world.

    Props to the writer of the article, also, for mentioning all those wonderful technical possibilites. If only half of those were to come true (and only if I actually watched TV:)!!!
  • Like every other consumer product, the American companies will have some cool innovations but eventually they will lose track of their product with sloppiness and misunderstanding of the consumer because they are driven by short term profits and sources of high growth at the expense of slow-but-sure day-to-day quality. Then the Japanese electronics companies will make an easy to use, cute, reliable product and walk away with the market.
  • The article is not quite right.
    HDTV is possible in Media Center using the VBox DTA-111 card.
    Just install the BGA drivers you can record and view HDTV in all its glory on a MCE.

    Multi-tuner support is available in the next version of MCE (codename Symphony) which will be released by the end of this month.
    Along with a host of features including caller ID
  • What about Explorer 8000 from Scientific Atlanta? I love it and hate it. I have a little blog about it here [blogspot.com].

  • "Not going to happen." (Score:3, Interesting)

    by timothy ( 36799 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:55AM (#9945376) Journal
    Re: TiVo offering its software for PCs.

    OK, r-blo is (probably definitely) right that TiVo isn't about to do this, but just think if they did. There are all kinds of caveats that throw this from mere hypothetical to deep pipedream, *but* ...

    - if it was boldy and straightforwardly limited to a certain subset of hardware, "guaranteed to work only with the following video cards and the listed capture devices" etc, and

    - if it had just a few amenities *not* offered in the dedicated set-top box (say a TiVo-branded version of Firefox, including Chatzilla and some useful extensions and plug-ins for, say, bittorrent)

    - it could deal well with removable storage - adding disks via USB2 or Firewire or SATA or whatever is the smartest fast, external bus

    Then I think there'd be an small but real market for it. Most people would probably want the conventional, stereo-component TiVo, but I might pay for TiVo's software if it made easier the process of creating a Linux-based, good-quality, well Q-A'd PVR.

    timothy

  • Cultural insensitivity (Score:5, Funny)

    by lewko ( 195646 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:56AM (#9945377) Homepage
    I've got a feeling they might be better off listening up. Especially TiVo, since we're all rooting for them anyway."

    Listen up: In Australia, "rooting" is a slang verb which means "to have sex with".

    This is why it is rare (though not unheard of) to hear of a devoted Australian cheerleader rooting for her whole team.

    Perhaps this explains why we don't have Tivo in Australia?

    • See, this is what happens when stories get posted in what for all reasonable people would be the middle of the night.
    • How about considering that the article was written by an American and posted on an American site, catering largely to (hi TiVo), Americans ?
      ( Americans being US citizens and all that, in this case )

      Lest you suppose that every time an American reads an Australian writing on an Australian website for an Australian audience about putting "shrimp on the barbie", that said American will ponder what lewd acts of bestiality the people down under perform on their children's toy dolls.

      If you want some real 'cultur
      • If you want some real 'cultural insensitivity'

        The Nazis weren't exactly known for their cultural sensitivity...

      • If you want some real 'cultural insensitivity', consider the swastika : Nazi symbol, or Hindu symbol ?

        That depends on which way it's pointing. Same goes for the pentagram; if it's right side up, it's a Wiccan symbol. Upside-down, it's a Satanic symbol. Of course, most morons don't know the difference and don't know where these symbols originally came from.
        • Have you read the wiki entry at all ?
          Or even looked this up ?

          It can point either which way for both - though the Nazi's preferred the 'clockwise'-pointing variant.

          So, no.. I don't think it does depend on which way it's pointing.
    • Listen up: In Australia, "rooting" is a slang verb which means "to have sex with".

      Neat...gives a whole new meaning to the shirt that says "Got Root?".

      Oh, and a hearty thanks to all the cap'ers out there that bittorrent shows I've missed.

      Still looking for the 2hr season finale of Enterprise. Ah, well.

  • Ultimate TV anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jelwell ( 2152 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @01:58AM (#9945390)
    "The digital video recorder revolution is on, with two players, Microsoft and Tivo, having emerged as the most likely candidates to dominate "

    Yeah, and let's not forget Ultimate TV flopped miserably. However it should be noted that Microsoft usually gets things right on the third revision. So maybe after the media pc flops the next thing they come out with will soar.

    Some comments about the article:
    "2. Offer quad (four) tuners - two for regular broadcasts and two for HDTV. There should never be recording conflicts."
    If 1 doesn't work, where do you come up with 4? Can you never have any conflicts with 2 tuners, 3, no apparently 4 is the magic number to defeat conflicts. What if I want to record 3 things at the same time! Holy cow, let's go to 6, or 8, or a ba-jillion.

    "10. Provide a host of additional remote services including email, voicemail, caller ID, vehicle tracking, home automation (lights, home alarm security, window shades, thermostat), and "My RSS" feeds. "My Art" should also be included. Wasn't Bill Gates running around buying up all the digital rights to fine art a while back? "
    This guy is obviously confusing his devices. You start integrating too many features and your device looks less like a simple and straight forward toaster and more like an jerry-rigged explosive device.

    Things tivo apparently needs to do:
    "2. Provide Ethernet connectivity to their HDTV unit and include the ability to share recorded files with a Windows-based PC. "
    This has already been announced, it's called TiVo2Go.

    "3. Provide a DVD burner with all units. Copying should be as simple as selecting a program and pressing "Burn to disc" on a menu."
    This is a complaint? There exists TiVo's with DVD Burners and this guy is saying that people can't afford the addition of a DVD Burner shouldn't be able to buy a TiVo? Will you start paying out for these people? Part of what makes IBM compatible computers so attractive is you can get what you need without having to buy the top of the line hardware/features - like you can save a bundle by skipping the DVD burner option at dell.com.

    "4. Create a "My Pictures" and "My Music" option for their HDTV units that can access a music and picture library via an Ethernet connection. The current HDTV unit does not allow the TiVo Home Media option."
    This guy is missing a clue stick. The HDTV unit is licensed to DirectTV - so this issue is their problem, not TiVo's; remember the guy's initial comment, "like TiVo making a version of their software for PCs? Not going to happen." Ummm, what the @#$#? What makes you think this? TiVo has already licensed their software to manufacturers. What makes you think they wouldn't port it to a PC if there was a market for it? Furthermore, if they did port it to the PC and your PC didn't have a DVD burner would this guy blame TiVo for Dell selling you a computer without a DVD Burner?

    "6. Create WiFi-enabled devices to access TiVo media from any television in the house. I would also mention this as a must for Microsoft as well, were it not for the fact that they have already announced that this technology is on it's way in the form of "extender" units due out by the end of this year."
    You can buy a second Series 2 TiVo and whammo, you get this feature. Who said the "extender" unit is cheaper/better than just buying a second TiVo?

    "7. Provide the ability to connect external hard drives. The robust 250GB drive on my Hughes HR10-250 will be a dinosaur in a few years, and you shouldn't have to hack into your TiVo box to upgrade storage."
    While agree with the thought here his reason for it is absurd. Just because the drive will be old doesn't mean it will store less shows! In a few years you'll still be able to store just as many shows. TV is not like your PC. If the TV stream gets larger then in a few years your TiVo simply won't be able to record the larger stream (without down-converting to an older analogue/digital format) whether you have a bigger drive or

  • Missing point (Score:3, Funny)

    by hcdejong ( 561314 ) <`hobbes' `at' `xmsnet.nl'> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @02:12AM (#9945425)
    TiVo, MS and other PVR manufacturers should work to create an open standard for publishing programming guide information, and they should try to get all broadcasters to adopt this standard. No more US-only products!
    • (re: +1 Funny mod) Yeah, no selfrespecting monopoly will ever do this.
      But the lack of EPG data (due to no standardization) is what's keeping PVRs from becoming popular in Europe.

  • We already know what has to be done to win. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheLoneCabbage ( 323135 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @02:33AM (#9945499) Homepage
    It was the same done with PCs.

    It is why Apple now holds less market share than Linux.

    Allow 3rd party integration. Publish the freaking SDK! Let thousands of companies, and millions of hobbiests scratch that itch, and make your product that much better.

    In a world where USB and WiFi are ubiquitous, making upgrades and add-ons should be consumer friendly. Now we just have to make it corporate friendly (so they will make the silly products!)

    To not, is just a failure of imagination.

  • Me in 2004: "TiVO wins! Microsoft Media Center is a piece of crap!"
    Me in 1995: "Netscape wins! Microsoft Internet Explorer is a piece of crap!"

    (The sad part is, the second half of the 2nd statement remains true...)

  • What if TiVo merged... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @02:35AM (#9945505)
    with Apple? Imagine being able to sync your TV shows with a video iPod or your PowerBook!

  • ReplayTV is doing something right. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by karmatic ( 776420 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @03:18AM (#9945605)
    I've used Windows Media Center, Tivo, and a ReplayTV extensively, and while Tivo has the nicest looking interface, I've settled on the ReplayTV.

    First off, (in medium quality), the ReplayTV records in MPEG-2, at a bitrate and resolution that (usually) follow the DVD spec. Sometimes the bitrate goes a little out of spec, but that's not too hard to do. No DRM, and the files can be streamed over the network. Having an ethernet port come standard was a good idea.

    Automatic Commercial Skip, and Internet sharing are very nice features, trivial to re-enable. Also, adding a second hard drive took less than 5 minutes, only needing a Y power adapter, an IDE cable, and RTVpatch.

    Also, the MyReplayTV site lets me change which shows are recorded while I'm on the road.

    I got the RTV a month ago, and I'd seen people raving on about the Replay for quite some time. Now I can see why. While Tivo and Windows Media Center can record shows, neither offers quite the features the ReplayTV does. Activation sucks, but that's what ebay is for.

    You can pick up a 40gb for $150 (+ $300 activation), and throw in 2 big hard drives. Not bad for something that actually made watching TV worthwile again. Before, I watched TV when I had a continuous block of time, and hoped something decent was on. Now, I watch TV when I have time, and have a choice of which episode I want to watch, of what show I want to watch.
    • DirecTivo, what I have, is the same quality as watching DirecTV live. The Tivo records the digital stream and decodes it when you watch it in the same manner the the DirecTV set-top-box does. No loss. This will be the great advantage of cable-card TiVos...if that ever happens.

      --Mike
    • Yea, you are correct, ReplayTV did do it right, but with a stress on "did".

      DNNA, the new owners of ReplayTV have stated that they will be selling off all current ReplayTV inventory and focusing on a higher end ($2000+) multi-media server system (Do a search on the ReplayTV section of the AVS Forums for details.) While the end result may, in fact, be a killer system, the fact remains that "consumer-level" PVR's are still "TiVo-dominated".

      The upside for ReplayTV owners is that DNNA also said that they are p

  • We're rooting for Tivo -- for now (Score:3, Informative)

    by btempleton ( 149110 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @03:21AM (#9945614) Homepage
    And certainly against Microsoft. Not hard to root for them against MS. I love my Tivo too, but when the time comes, they are doing things to make me jump to another system like MythTV, Freevo or even commercial systems like BeyondTV etc.

    Tivo has:

    a) Followed the wishes of hollywood, and made it hard to get video out of the box even though a PC card would have recorded it plainly to disk.

    b) Only put in 30 second skip as a hidden feature (that goes away every reboot) and not put in more advanced commercial elimination

    c) Put in monitoring technologies that today strip your identity off the data they send up but need not do so forever.

    d) Locked up units version 2 and later to make them very difficult to modify or improve.

    e) Not provided any software improvements for version 1 owners in quite some time.

    f) Designed their new system that does let you move video to a PC to require you to have a dongle! Then it lets you burn it to a DVD where you could read it back, so it's not security, it's just a pain in the ass.

    Tivo does a good job but they are on the path to being a lesser citizen. The cable companies are using their monopolies to control what PVR you have with cable in many locations (though cable card holds hope.) The rest of the world may decide to move to open source pvrs.

  • Why both TiVo and Microsoft will lose ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SimplyCosmic ( 15296 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @03:21AM (#9945615) Homepage
    ... cable and satellite companies.

    Most of the cable companies provide their own PVR hardware to users, with the twin advantage of being a few dollars cheaper and coming from the people who provide you with the service.

    Sure, we here know that their hardware is generally rather simplistic in their features compared to TiVo, but your average person doesn't realize that TiVo is more than just a glorified digital VCR, so the three dollars they save a month seems like a good deal.

    Now that DirecTV has plans to switch to one of TiVo's competitors in the form of NDS Group Plc, I fear we're going to see the same happen in the world of satellite as well.

    So, in the future, TiVo and Microsoft will be competing against products provided by the people who bring them their cable/dish service, who will have the home-field advantage.
  • "The digital video recorder revolution is on, with two players, Microsoft and Tivo, having emerged as the most likely candidates to dominate."

    When they say Microsoft they are speaking of course of the "Ultimate Media Center" [tomshardware.com] : The modded & hacked Xbox with 250gig hard disk and Xbox Media center, right?

    ;)


    ps: Yeah, yeah I know for the recording, don't bother to point that out just to ruin my comment :)

  • OT: More Conderned with War of Streaming (Score:3, Informative)

    by Nishi-no-wan ( 146508 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @03:55AM (#9945722) Homepage Journal
    I'm currently more concerned with the war on streaming, and am getting more and more depressed as alternative streams to MS Media Player are slowly disappearing.

    The latest to go was Comedy Central [comedycentral.com]. I've enjoyed The Daily Show [comedycentral.com] over the Internet for the past few years, but that came to an abrupt end a couple of weeks ago when all of the newer streams were in MS Media Player format only. I asked if this was temporary, and mentioned that the link to "change player preferences" didn't work in FireFox, and their indirect reply was to change the media player pop-up window to no longer give a choice of media formats. It's Microsoft or nothing.

    I've tried VLC (get audio, no video) and MPlayer, but neither work. Unless the /. crowd can somehow campaign for the return of Real streams, especially now that it's been Opened, I'm afraid that it's time to remove Comedy Central from my daily opened tab group.

  • I am suprised that every time an MS vs Tivo article comes out no one mentions anything about the offerings from Dish Network. They have some rather innovative products like the DVR 522. It is a dual tuner DVR, so it can watch two live streams, record two streams, record two + watch two pre-recorded and more. It also (if you hadn't already realized) can output to two TV's. I have it powering my second tv in my office. So you can share your recorded shows across those two tv's. This winter/next spring t

  • TiVo's in transition it seems... (Score:3, Informative)

    by applemasker ( 694059 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @08:25AM (#9946905)
    In the last few weeks, I've noticed some structural changes at TiVo (both as an owner and a consumer) - first, they enabled their Home Media Option for all subscribers, before this, it was $99, and then $79 to activate these features. Personally, I don't use the music or photo sharing (poor interfaces for both) but it's made me consider buying a second TiVo so the two can share recording capacity, especially since they've dropped the prices on Series 2 PVRs to as low as $50 recently. At that price for a 40 hour unit, it's worth it just for the hard drive and to avoid the hassle of upgrading the old one.

    They're also planning a broader media blitz, which is something new for them, evidently to roll out just before or in conjunction with the TivoToGo service. If it's part of a bigger strategy to increase market share, it would go hand-in-glove with the almost-giving-away prices on some boxes.

    That said, TiVo has to walk a fine line between being user-friendly, functional to consumers, while still paying lip-service to its corporate masters and brodcasters. In the past, these compromises have lead to the software and box being locked up and encrypted up the wazoo.

    TiVo must have recognized that if they truly satisfied the geeks, made the box accessable and programming easy to extract, they could be the next MythTV, or worse, the first on the INDUCE Act chopping block.

    Although TiVo has a strained relationship with the broadcasters, media giants, etc., it lacks the market penetration to be a real threat to them. So, while the 30-second skip is an irritant, there is probably an overall negligable impact in terms of actual eyes that no longer see the commercials.

    If TiVo could gain a reasonable market share (not impossible, but with the arena becoming more crowed, certainly more difficult) and did become more of a media gorilla, then it would be a real battle to see if the PVR's time-shifting (a non-infringing use, at least for the moment) would be enough to bootstrap its other functions (burn-to-DVD, stream to other TV, for example) into the "fair use" category.

    TiVoToGo might be the first step in this direction. Big Media may not have any choice but to attempt to stop its deployment, maybe with a temporary injunction, lest the camel's nose get under their tent.

  • The best choices for a TiVo Inc. merger are... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JeffTL ( 667728 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:31AM (#9948336)
    (Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, an accountant, or a suit of any sort. But I play one on Slashdot. Nor do I hold any stock whatsoever. I wrote this last night while the DB was down).

    1. Apple. They're going into A/V right now with the iPods and the various iLife stuff including the music store. Still no DVR offering though, either as part of OS X or as a box. Solution: buy TiVo, including most of the employees. Either manage as a wholly owned subsidiary or even better bring it into the fold and get the fruit on the boxes. People know who Apple is and almost everyone has QuickTime and therefore generally sort of has reason to trust them.

    2. Sony, Pioneer, or Toshiba. All of these have had relationships with TiVo, and I believe some or all may already own part of it. Again, these are brands people know even better than TiVo. Most people have had a positive experience with Sony and/or Toshiba, and Pioneer seems pretty well known.

    3. A high-end audio company, such as Harman/Kardon or Bose. I think these guys are making money and are already in the stuff-you-use-with-your-TV business. Problem is that they don't have much retail distribution, so TiVo boxes would be in few more places beyond where they already are.

    4. A non-Apple computer company, such as Dell or Gateway. Very unlikely, since most of these are more likely to be promoting Windows Media Center. Though Dell sells TiVo boxes on the side so among this crowd they'd be most likely, particularly if Media Center fails.

    5. A media company, such as Viacom or Virgin. This would mean bigtime cuts in the relative user-respect of TiVo -- scratch the DVD burning &c plans.

    6. An electronics company not listed above -- GE might be looking for a new market, to go along with telephones, light bulbs, and everything else known to man.

    7. Microsoft. I'll let this speak for itself.
  • I think that with tivo becoming the de facto name of PVRs by the general public, they already have an advantage over MS. Imagine you are average Joe consumer and you see these 2 boxes sitting side by side. Which one do you pick up first? If they can undercut MS on OEM and box pricing they have a great chance. They can also give the people what they want without losing control of their product.

    Work with hardware manufacturers and sell the tivo brand on their product. Guaranteed to always be compatible and
  • I feel sorry for TIVO because while MS is busy drawing up plans on how to capture the international market, TIVO has hardly begun to expand much outside of the United States.

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