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Television Media

Tivo Testing Internet Download Service 169

Posted by CmdrTaco from the let-me-download-the-job-please dept.
knarfling writes "Yahoo News writes that customers will soon be able to download TV shows to their set-top boxes via the Internet. There is even speculation about being able to download an entire season at a time. Right now there are only three shows from the Independent Film Channel available on Aug 19, but it is a start. Will other companies follow this lead, or will this die down after the hype is over?"
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Tivo Testing Internet Download Service More

Tivo Testing Internet Download Service

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  • This is the next logic step (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GreatBunzinni ( 642500 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @07:52PM (#13308888)
    iTunes for television shows? This is the next logic step. And, because of this, the viewer isn't forced-fed the shows the networks choose. Maybe this means that excellent shows like futurama will not get canceled just because the network doesn't want to pay for them.
    • There's a movie service that has allowed you to download movies for quite awhile. The only downsides to MovieLink [movielink.com] are that a) It requires IE/Windows and b) It's only rentals.

      Still, I was able to watch Dr. Strangelove that way. Which is more than I can say for the blank stares at Blockbuster:

      Me: "Do you have Dr. Strangelove?"
      Guy Rep: "Dr. Wha?"
      Me: "Dr. Strangelove, or How I learned to love the bomb."
      Guy Rep: "Say what?"
      Lady Rep: "It's an old movie." [checks computer] "Nope, sorry."
      (Blockbuster guy continues
      • I had pretty much the same experience at a local Blockbuster. I wanted to show my girlfriend Dr. Strangelove, as it's my favorite movie. Ended up downloading it, then later buying the DVD. Couldn't find Das Boot either.
        • Um, is Blockbuster the only video store you have in town? They have always been short on old classics. Traditionally, there is another store in your area that does that niche of the market. But I believe that brick-an-mortar for digital content is an idea whose time will inevitably expire fairly soon. Or should, if they lawyers don't somehow ruin it.
      • I like the Movielink Rental design and think it perfectly suited for tv shows.

        The primary reason I would want to download a TV show is because I missed it. Most shows I only want to view once. The autodelete means that the price of the show is less than purchasing a copy of the show.

        Quite a few shows are now selling DVDs. So there is the option of purchasing a DVD if you need Buffy the Vampire Slayer in your collection or karate chopping babes.

        The biggest problem I have with Movielink for movies is
        • "...and think it perfectly suited for tv shows."

          Yeah, that's a good start, as most "one hour" TV shows are only about 40-45 minutes long sans commercials...

          • Hey Rhapsody already has music videos as part of the service. Maybe Rhapsody should do a TV service now with a monster database of every show ever existed.

      • There's a movie service that has allowed you to download movies for quite awhile. The only downsides to MovieLink are that a) It requires IE/Windows and b) It's only rentals.

        Oh yeah, this is a great site...not! After reading your post I decided to give it a try. First it does absolutely require IE which I loath, but then when signing up I got the message "By registering you agree that you may receive free offers and free software updates". SHeesh! SPAM/Spyware/Popups anyone? THEN, after signing up anyway

    • Re:This is the next logic step (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 ) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Friday August 12, 2005 @09:06PM (#13309205) Journal
      Yes, it is the next logical step, but not because it's iTunes-ish. It's the next logical step because I've been able to do this for about two years now with BitTorrent.

  • Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Agret ( 752467 )
    It's certainly an interesting concept but i'd like to see what savings are passed on as a result. I've seen too many services like this charge more or the same for something you could buy on DVD.

    and if it's free there'd have to be ads. I suppose it would be nice to get an entire season of a show I want to watch rather than have to wait weeks. But then the producers would have to increase the release schedule's.

    I just don't see it working.

    • Re:Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)

      by FireFlie ( 850716 ) *
      Well, all I know is that I pay like 40.00 a month for cable television. I wouldn't mind paying the same amount to watch what I want, when I want to watch it. I don't know how feesable such a system would be in that form.

      Hell, I wouldn't mind still having to see commercials. Plus (as I believe it was said earlier) not only would that make schedule conflicts with favorite television shows a thing of the past, but networks would know exactly what people really wanted to see. With such a flat rate system i

  • If it's easy, I'm probably buying (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 1155 ( 538047 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @07:54PM (#13308903) Homepage
    bt takes searching for a bit for a tracker with a quality rip, and means you have to deal with resource hogging apps.

    Mythtv means I have to build my own, which is fine, but also has a bit of a complicated setup, along with maintenance.

    Tivo on the other hand looks low maintenance. Being able to add drives and transfer to my linux/mac/windows boxes and burn to dvd is my biggest concern with Tivo currently. If they give me shows before they air, then I'd be thrilled and more than willing to purchase a boxtop from the company. Being able to watch stargate before the air date (friday is night out night) and house on some other night would be great.
    • Heck even if it airs at the same time, and you can pick it up the next day would be useful. I was away from a TV for two and missed the first two episodes of SG-1 and atlantis. I had to find them on limewire and download them, a slow painful procedure.

      Just to get caught back up. Soon I will be moving and other than sci-fi, history and the news I don't watch tv much anymore. Having a up to date legal alternative to paying for cable would be wonderful
      • The alternative is purchasing the dvds. At 50 bucks usd for a season, it's getting too expensive. I'm going to build a myth box just to reduce my costs, and in the end if tivo had this now I would just buy that.
    • You might want to just get a Mac mini and one of these. EvolutionTV

      DVR, watch on the computer, hardware rip to MP4, and ties into TitanTV so there's no monthly Tivo fee.

    • You can currently transfer to a PC (well, you can technically transfer to anything, as the transfer to PC is just via http). I don't know that the codecs are available for mac/linux (they very well could be, I just use pc and it works).
  • I read the Tivo community site [tivocommunity.com] from time to time. It's a comminuty which Tivo allows some employees to participate in. There were some rumblings from an employee of a super secret beta test a few weeks ago... and he was looking for beta testers. Perhaps this was it.

  • Every computer is a Tivo (Score:4, Informative)

    by AnonDotOrg ( 902320 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @07:57PM (#13308917)
    PCWorld [pcworld.com] did an article on how to do it... But there's also free software out there if you look. I use media hopper [mediahopper.com] for spanish... There's OHUK [overheardintheuk.com] you wanna learn british

  • It's about time. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by millennial ( 830897 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @07:57PM (#13308920) Journal
    I've always been surprised by the fact that most TV networks never allowed consumers to download content. I was especially confused when the cable modem became prominent. We're already watching your shows over cable; why not let us keep them on our computers?

    • Because you can share it... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by KingSkippus ( 799657 ) * on Friday August 12, 2005 @08:49PM (#13309131) Homepage Journal

      Because if they let you keep it on your computer, you can share it from your computer. You can also edit out commercials and otherwise modify it.

      The production studios don't want that. They want to have complete control over when, where, and how you watch everything. They don't believe in "fair use;" they want every penny they can scrape away from you for even thinking about their show. That's why technologies such as filesharing are so scary--it takes the control away from the studios and gives it to the consumers (albeit mostly illegally, thanks to big-time corporate avarice leading to the systematic undermining of consumers' legal rights).

      I wish that someone would come up with the idea of "open source television," where programming is produced for free consumption and distribution, and financed by donations or additional fee-based services. You know, art for art's sake and all? Universities should do something like that.

      • Re:Because you can share it... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jfengel ( 409917 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @08:57PM (#13309166) Homepage Journal
        Strictly speaking, it's not so much that they don't believe in fair use as that they're concerned about things that aren't fair use, e.g. sharing it with your friends. They're not so crazy about many of your fair use rights, either, like time shifting, but they don't have nearly as much a leg to stand on there; Betamax is pretty clear on that.

        Come up with a technology that allows your fair use rights but forbids (or at least heavily discourages) non-fair use, and you'll have an easier time forcing the networks to accept it. (That's what Apple has done with iTunes).

        Meantime, since file downloaders seem willing to use every means at their disposal to view the content, legal and illegal, you're going to have to expect them to push as much into the "illegal" category as possible, to have a hope of retaining their rights.

        (Just for reference, the traditional response to this line of reasoning is "I don't give a damn about their rights," and they feel the same way, so there we are, right where we are.)

        • Crap, this post is going to be buried, and I actually think it's one of my more insightful ones of the night. :-)

          Well, the problem as I see it is that nobody has come up with a technology yet that allows people to enjoy their fair use rights and prevents them from doing something illegal. So far, it seems to be an all-or-nothing prospect to production companies and/or the **AA. They figure, either we allow people fair use and risk people violating copyright, or we deny people fair use and keep people fr

          • Because of their stupidity, we've ended up with a bastard hybrid of denying people fair use and still allowing people to violate copyright.

            Ain't it always the way?

            Whenever somebody is stupid, it's usually an opportunity for somebody else. I've been hanging out with a musician lately and she's just thrilled about P2P (though not entirely comfortable with the fact that a lot of people would be copying her music even if she weren't happy about it).

            As long as the RIAA keeps cranking out music which is simultan
      • So build a proprietary video format that only plays in one software player. Make it so that there's a DRM scheme with some really-really-hard-to-crack encryption, where the keys are generated from random bytes of information from the player's binary itself. I don't know.

        It seems to me that companies that don't provide online content, in an era in which the internet is as powerful a medium as it is, are either too lazy to do so or incapable. It's not implausible to make money off of something like this - j
        • Make it so that there's a DRM scheme with some really-really-hard-to-crack encryption, where the keys are generated from random bytes of information from the player's binary itself. I don't know.

          No, evidently you don't, as that doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. Anyone who understands cyptography knows that DRM can never be a valid encryption scheme, as the client must be allowed to decrypt it. DRM is like copy protection; it's only useful to deter casual copying.

  • tivo's not the first... nor is it necessary. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ghee22 ( 781277 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @07:58PM (#13308926)
    with xbox media center [xboxmediacenter.com] on your modded xbox, install this script ooba [xbmcscripts.com] and then you get access to Comedy Central. Some other media (from the readme) you get access to is:

    BBC streams, Comics (comics.com and ctrl+alt+del), , TVTome episode guides, Adult media (movies and images from 5 porn sites), Danish radio and TV (DR news, DR boogie, DR radio), RAI Click TV (italian TV streams), SVT TV open archive (Swedish), YLE24 Mediasaali (Finnish radio and TV), XBMC Forums reader (simple reader), History Channel, Movies @ archive.org (lots of movies in high quality), Online music labels (monotonik/mono211), Dave's trailer page

    also google video [google.com] gives you access to some fox newscasts.

    my point is that you don't tivo for this.

    ps: because of my xbox, i basically have The Daily Show with Jon Stewart tivo'd through the internet

    • 1. with xbox media center on your 2. modded xbox, install this script ooba and then 3. you get access to Comedy Central [and other things].

      OK, but you do realize this is a completely irrelevant "counterargument", as TiVo's service will be 1. not require an installation well beyond the average person's capability, 2. run on legal, off-the-shelf hardware, and 3. access content legally?

      I mean, come on, the fact that you can buy Roluxes in a back alley in Hong Kong hardly proves that Rolex's business model is f
      • 2. run on legal, off-the-shelf hardware

        How is XBMC illegal?
        • The source code to XBMC is presumably not illegal. There's currently no way to legally compile it, however, without paying a license fee to Microsoft. Therefore, almost any binary of XBMC is probably illegal.

          Of course, you quoted someone who was talking about legal hardware. At this point in time, I don't know if modding your XBox is illegal, but I can't see how it can be.
          • Modding your XBox is not intrinsically illegal; you can take out the innards and put it into a new case and nobody can stop you.

            When people talk about "modding the XBox" though, they're talking about specific modifications that, among other things, bypass the copyright controls contained in the XBox. This is a violation of the DMCA in the US, quite clear-cut.

            While I believe that such controls being on the XBox in the first place is immoral, my personal opinion has little bearing on the legal status, which i
            • Is it really so clear cut? A modchip itself does not allow you to circumvent copyprotection. It does allow you to run unsigned code--it lets you run whatever you want. If you use a hacked bios, it allows for bypassing copy protection. If you use a "legal" bios (Cromwell, for example) it allows you to run unsigned code, but not copied XBox games. I definitely think it's not as clear-cut as you indicate, but maybe my understanding of the DMCA is not as good.
              • Sadly, the DMCA cares less about what you do than what you might do. Any action that you take that "circumvents a copy protection", which can be reasonably translated into "increasing the set of copy protected things that can be 'played' on the system", is illegal, whether or not you ever actually violate copyright.

                Running the XBox Media Center to download Comedy Central shows is a copyright violation. It is a copyright violation not possible with a stock XBox. Therefore, any mod chip that will allow you to
                • Sure, but a modchip itself is useless without a hacked BIOS. Just using a modchip and Cromwell, all you can run is Linux (and now FreeBSD, I guess). With a stock BIOS on the modchip, you can run whatever the XBox itself runs. It's only the modchip+modified bios combination that even allows for copyright infringement. To suggest that adding a single component which /can/ increase copyright violation is asinine, and there are too many examples in the real world which exhibit this behavior yet are complete
    • "my point is that you don't tivo for this."

      That's sort of like saying "I moved across the street from where I work, therefore nobody actually needs to own a car."

      There are a LOT of things not on that list of yours that a lot of people are quite happily watching on their TiVo's right now. It's a pity you can't edit your post to say "Here's an alternative to TiVo, it's up to you if it's good enough."
  • If you can choose what show you watch, won't that just mean that there will be fewer and fewer shows? Because people will stop ever having to watch "whatever's on" -- they'll just watch the shows they already know they like. So the super popular shows will be watched even MORE frequently.

    I recently read a New York Times article that I thought spoke to this theme. It was an op-ed by David Brooks called "All Cultures Are Not The Same." I don't agree with everything he says (i feel it's too simplistic) but I d
    • That seems unlikely. By moving to a download-model, you eliminate the scarcity of schedule, which means you can 'broadcast' as many shows every week as you want. You want to make lots of shows to get lots of people's money. If you only have three or four shows, that limits the money you can get, because people will only buy three or four shows.

      If, however, you make 100 little shows, each person may be able to find ten that they like, which means most of the shows have small bugets, but the production com
      • So they're spending 100 times as much money to make 100 little shows, and taking in 2 to 3 times as much revenue?

        Even if a "little" show costs 1/10 as much, they're still losing money like crazy.

        TV shows are expensive. Renting a studio space will run tens of thousands a month, and that's before you rent cameras, buy costumes, and pay actors, writers, electricians, set dressers, makeup artists, and a small army of other people. And if you want to do a show like Battlestar Galactica, with special effects an
        • You can make shows very cheap. Think "Bob goes fishing," and the like, which you can sell to a niche audience.

          Think of it this way, take 10% off the money as profit for the production company. Whatever is left goes to budget to produce the show. You won't see many million dollar shows, but it still makes sense for the production company to field as many shows as possible, in order to increase the total take.

          A small currentl issues political debate show can be made by a staff of ten without any problems.
        • It would be like the current MPAA/RIAA models: lots of little shows that barely pay for themselves (if they even take in enough for that) with the big hits coming in to bring in the big bucks.
    • I'll take that risk. Sure, some shows might miss out on some viewers, but others would explode. I would have watched every single Enterprise episode if I could have, commercials and all. I just didn't have the the time always be at home watching TV on a certain day each week, nor did I have the desire to sit through re-runs. Sure, I could tape it, but it isn't worth the effort for me to get a shitty quality VHS tape or burn a DvD that I am only going to use once. These days I simply wait for shows that

  • Internet Download Service? (Score:4, Funny)

    by ctr2sprt ( 574731 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @08:03PM (#13308943)
    I've been reading too much Best of the Web [opinionjournal.com], I think, because I initially read the headline and thought "Do you download the entire Internet, or just part of it?"

  • Will other companies follow this lead ... (Score:4, Informative)

    by DA-MAN ( 17442 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @08:09PM (#13308964) Homepage
    Yes!

    http://www.akimbo.com/ [akimbo.com]

  • Article presents the wrong perspective (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Blitzenn ( 554788 ) * on Friday August 12, 2005 @08:13PM (#13308983) Homepage Journal
    The article suggests that the service will not survive if it cannot present a better financial prospect to the big dogs in the game who are earning more money with the current commercial driven market. History in capitalism denotes a different reality however. The success of the service will depend on whether the big dogs are threatened by delivery of services by companies who are willing to accept a lesser profit. This is how capitalism is supposed to work. Introducing a better technology that people want for less money. They use ESPN as an example as to why it would fail unless they can generate more dollars to attract players like ESPN. When a sports delivery service, that cannot reach the audience they they want, is willing to earn a smaller profit signs on with this and people get the information they want from the smaller service, ESPN will start to feel some real pain as their market share dwindles. They would then be the ones to be forced to adopt the new delivery service, despite the lower profits, to survive themselves. The only power ESPN has in this case is to try to keep people paying the higher fees by intimidation and doom casting at Tivo and the likes. In the long run ESPN wand their buddies may very well be forced to play the cheaper game we as consumers actually want. ESPN and other large commercial driven providers are not goig to buy in. We as consumers have to send the message that 'homey don't play that no more'
    • That's the ideal, sure. I hope it will work out that way, but remember during the bubble when we thought the Internet was going to overturn all the big players?

      If the upheaval were going to happen, I think it would already have happened in music. The public learned about music downloading years ago through napster, there are no technical hurdles because the files aren't very big... yet the Old Boys of the music biz are still dictating the terms to online music companies like iTunes.

      Here's an interesti

  • I've got 20 bucks... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SoulMaster ( 717007 ) * on Friday August 12, 2005 @08:21PM (#13309018)
    ... that says this never happens, or, at least not from Tivo.

    I love Tivo, and have two of them myself, but I really think they need to release some of ther other "this is being tested" stuff first. Case in point, HDTivo(promised 2002 or 2003, I can't even remember.) Networking on the DirecTivo, promised for years...

    Tivo still makes the best DVR, but they never release anything new, fully featured. They even caved on the home media vision, buckling to the MPAA. This may eventually be released, but it wont be from Tivo and it won't be as good as it could be.

      Tivo rules, i just wish they really would for a change.

    • Re:I've got 20 bucks... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Burdell ( 228580 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @08:28PM (#13309047)
      HD TiVo has been out for a while now (from DirecTV). It didn't make sense to do a stand-alone until CableCard took hold (although CableCard is only available from one of the local cable companies). DirecTV controls the feature set on the DirecTiVo; TiVo would love to upgrade them all with networking but DirecTV doesn't want that.
      • DirectTV is dropping Tivo in favor of PVR's built by NDS which is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, which also owns a big stake in DirectTV and Fox. You can apparently still buy Tivo's from DirectTV but you have to ask for them, they are going to pitch NDS boxes instead by default.

        DirectTV is relying on its recent deal with Comcast for its future since the majority of its new subscribers come from DirectTV at the moment.
        • DirectTV is relying on its recent deal with Comcast for its future since the majority of its new subscribers come from DirectTV at the moment.

          It is Tivo that has the Comcast deal, not DirecTV.

    • Usually, I'd agree with you. Tivo likes to announce things long before they're viable. However, this time, Tivo users are being invited to beta test it, which indicates that it's nearly complete. You can see for yourself here [tivo.com]. Now, to participate, you have to agree to a NDA, and to some other terms. Other than that, however, it's relatively easy for people to participate in.
  • Who cares about downloading their TV crap-o-rama? I want to upload my own reality show crap-o-rama! SHAZAM!
  • Now I can (almost) do what I've been doing for a few years -- watch (almost) any TV show by downloading it from the Internet and then watching it (almost) any time I want, (almost) as many times as I want, and then I can (almost) share it with (almost) any one else that I (sort of) want to!

    I already pay for my ISP connection; I pay an electric bill; phone bills; taxes; I already am forced to watch millions of advertisments every day, almost evey waking moment.... You know what? I don't want to pay anymore

  • I would rather do this than wait for my show (Score:4, Insightful)

    by varmittang ( 849469 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @08:41PM (#13309101)
    I would rather pay for a service, to get a TV show when I want it, rather than waiting for a certain time for my TIVO to record it so I can watch it later. Let the downloading begin.
  • It would be nice if they put some of their resources into fixing problems with Tivo2Go that make it almost useless instead of new features:
    http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.ph p?t=228168&page=2&pp=30 [tivocommunity.com]

  • I hate to say it, but Tivo ain't gonna do it right (Score:3, Informative)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @08:55PM (#13309161) Journal
    I really *tried* to be a big Tivo fan. And heck, the concept is darn good overall. But I went back to my home-brew MythTV box for a while.

    For starters, my Series 2 stand-alone Tivo suddenly died on me. It was fine one night, and the next day I turned on my TV to see a black screen with a line of text at the top that simply said "Unexpected CPU Detected!". (Huh? What CPU *were* you expecting anyway??) A couple reboots didn't fix a thing. Just got the intial couple splash screens followed by the black screen and odd message. I can only assume the CPU went bad in it?

    Being out of warranty, I have to pay Tivo $79 to swap it for another unit. (Irritating, too, because plenty of people would sell me a used/working Series 2 Tivo for much less - but then my lifetime channel subscription would be lost, since they tie those to the *box*.)

    But beyond all that ... Tivo has far too slow of a network connection for such things as downloading live programming from the net! I couldn't ever get it to find my wi-fi 802.11g USB interfaces. Had to settle for an old Linksys wireless b interface, and it takes almost 45-50 minutes to download a single movie from it to my PC using "Tivo2Go". The same xfer would take only 5-6 minutes between 2 PCs on my LAN over my 100mbit ethernet connection. Why in the world didn't these boxes come with wired 10/100 ethernet RJ-45 ports on them? At least in their later revisions....
    • For an out of warranty consumer item that you may have paid $500 (box+lifetime sub) for, you were able to get a replacement from the company for just $80?!?

      Sounds like a good deal. I would KILL for that kind of replacement policy on anything else.

      Tom

  • Tivo as it stands is a flawed model (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Conspire ( 102879 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @09:05PM (#13309202) Homepage
    I have been telling all my friends to short Tivo stock for some time now. There are several reasons:

    1. Direct TV will drop Tivo eventually (they announced last week), Tivo loses majority of its subscriber base.

    2. There are new competing products, with more functionality, cheaper pricing, and innovative download and subscription services coming out on the market very soon. Will make Tivo look like a silly and overpriced product.

    3. Integration and convergence of devices. Look at Xbox 360, PS3, etc. And just wait until your brand new LCD or Plasma TV has built in digital video recorder, and allows you to download or stream movies, music, and alternative content from your PC AND direct from the internet.

    4. Tivo won't get mainstream content. The studios hate them! The entire internet delivered audio / video services will change very rapidly over the next 2 years, don't expect Tivo to be a part of it! It just threatens the Tivo business model, and they are not invited.

    5. iPod for the living room is coming, including video.

    the list goes on and on and on............
    • "1. Direct TV will drop Tivo eventually (they announced last week), Tivo loses majority of its subscriber base."

      Except you are leaving out the fact Tivo signed a deal with Comcast that could make up for losing DirectTV, assuming it works out.
    • Well, TiVo won't be "losing the majority of its subscriber base" as a result of DirecTV ditching TiVo. It might lose the majority of its subscriber base GROWTH, but the thousands of DirecTiVo boxes out there aren't going to suddenly go dark. DirecTV will still be supporting the existing TiVo-based DVR models (similar to how they currently support--but don't sell--the old Ultimate TV boxes).

      Nathan
    • 1. DirectTV accounts for very very little of their subscriber base. Comcast will be using their machines in the near future.

      2. There are no products available right now that even come close to what the Tivo offers. The highly touted MOXI box has fallen fla with broken season passes and terrible analogue recording, and the other built-it yourself kits use the absolute worst TV Guide data i've ever seen. Sure, eventually someone might make a product as good, but for right now, it's like the iPod. It does one

  • The approximate release date for this... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Manchot ( 847225 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @09:09PM (#13309213)
    I am a Tivo subscriber, and I also receive the "Tivo Newsletter." In the most recent edition, which was sent last week, the following information was included:

    But again, as I so boldly teased at the start of this Q&A, that's just the beginning! This fall, we'll be introducing a host of fun, creative, useful and just plain clever broadband features, including:

            * Getting select TV shows and programming via broadband to your TiVo® box (Begging
                does not become you... I will tell you more when I can!)
            * Games, streaming radio, podcasting, and more.

    Thus, it appears that they're slating to release it sometime this fall.
  • TV shows--yes OMG even complete series!!!!--have been available over the net for years:

    http://www.thepiratebay.com/ [thepiratebay.com]
    • And here was I thinking the actual news in this article was that the Tivo service would be legal - a concept obviously not understood by many posters here - and that it would be geared towards the mass market rather than those who know how to use Bittorrent and connect a computer to their TV, etc.
    • This is seriously disturbing. The difference between the Tivo content and the one posted above is the Tivo content will be LEGIT. Who the hell wants to pay seven grand when the RIAA/MPAA come knocking on your door because you wanted to see the latest episode of CSI that you missed? I dont.
  • This is just asking for more DRM and content protection from Hollywood and/or program resellers until we have totally decripled machines everywhere.

    I think, it's much safer to just let it be some cheap subscription model and let people watch it on-demand instead of downloading the entire content and have some key to watch it.

    The idea is nice, but I know where this is going, and I don't like it. I think, we should do whatever to discourage Hollywood/resellers from growing brain from already tiny head.

  • This is duable (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gyorg_Lavode ( 520114 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @09:38PM (#13309312)
    Tivo could easily start buying up cheap movies and old series for cheap and start offering them. By doing that and buying discontinued tv series they could start to build an on-demand catalogue that would justify non-cable people shelling out for a cheap tivo. I think once they had a sustainable group doing that they could start getting more current content.
    • "Tivo could easily start buying up cheap movies and old series for cheap and start offering them. By doing that and buying discontinued tv series they could start to build an on-demand catalogue that would justify non-cable people shelling out for a cheap tivo. I think once they had a sustainable group doing that they could start getting more current content."

      When I lived in Portland, I got a chance to use Comcast's On-Demand service. That kicked ass. They had entire seasons of TV shows ready to watch. O

  • TiVo to go using Orb software (Score:3, Informative)

    by Randar the Lava Liza ( 562063 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @10:24PM (#13309461) Homepage
    You can also use TiVo to Go with the Orb [orb.com] free streaming system. Just go to this site [netscape.com] to download an add-on to Orb that lets you stream out your TiVo files anywhere you can access http://my.org.com./ [my.org.com] You can stream as Windows Media, Real Video or 3G if you're feeling like streaming TiVo to your cell phones. Kinda like a slingbox, but free.
  • As a subscriber to what was once considered normal cable I have to ask "how much?" I have a tv card/PVR for recording shows when I'm not home and when I may want to watch them again. I think that makes it legal under fair use because I did the recording myself. There claims that it's slightly less than legal if you're not physically(external drive/DVD-R) obtaining(borrowing) the episodes from someone you know. All the 'on demand' extras have been more expensive than I want to pay and have never bothered to

  • Start? (Score:2)

    by fm6 ( 162816 )

    Right now there are only three shows from the Independent Film Channel available on Aug 19, but it is a start.

    No it isn't. As long as the big media companies refuse to play, online media will be marginal stuff. And big media companies never will play -- hoarding content is the name of the game for them.

    Tivo's just thrashing around, trying to find a way to survive. Their original product is cool as hell, but doesn't have sustainable economics. Now they've decided they can enter the online media market w

  • Why do the high-tech companies always seem so far behind?

    From the article:
    No one yet has found a way to overcome the considerable technological hurdles, such as finding a speedy way to pump two-hour movies through broadband,

    That's interesting, because it seems like a whole lot of companies have spent a lot of money to make exactly that happen. What are VP7, VC-1, and H.264 but speedy ways to pump two-hour movies through broadband?

    Tivo is basically stuck with MPEG-2, and though you can get significantly bet
  • ReplayTV [planetreplay.com] with the p2p Poopli [poopli.com] has, for years, let you browse, request, and download TV shows from other ReplayTV owners on the internet. It rules. WHy is Tivo always several years behind?

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