PVR Wire

1. I think there should be a way to check a box in the discription of each show for each person who has watched it. My wife and I have a number of shows we both watch but not at the same time and some of them stay on the box forever because we don't want to delete it if the other hasn't watched it.

Posted at 3:08AM on Nov 4th 2006 by Scott

2. Love the idea of TiVo Lite. After all, if I had a VCR I would just take the tape upstairs and watch it there. Now I have to play the show downsstairs to record it to VCR and then take the tape upstairs

The 30 second skip is something I will never understand. My VCR has one, my DVD recorder has one, why to TV companies think that we do not sue them, isn't that why we use VCR's and PVR's? It's to watch a 60 minute program in 40 (once you skip all the commercials, titles and recaps).

My other gripe is being able to play iTunes music on the TiVo. I don't see how it's removing the DRM since it has to be on the same network as the computer. I would even "authorize" it as one of my 5 allowable machines.

For TiVo online, how about being able to set up a wish list on line? Better still, be able to check my existing wishlists on line for upcoming programs so that I could set them from any computer.

Posted at 9:32AM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Geoff

3. Its not Tivo World Desktop but Grandma can add my yahoo name to her Tivo and view my photos. Example: music, photos, products, & more > Yahoo! photos > find shared albums > this is where they'd enter your yahoo user id

Posted at 10:21AM on Nov 3rd 2006 by rudiger

4. I would love to see Tivo and Apple get the DRM working. I have more iTunes purchased music than not (take your loose change to a Coinstar machine). Or even Front Row integration to the Tivo storage. Ok.. I'll just settle for REAL Tivo desktop software that works on a Mac.

I'd love to be able to see my machines Season passes and manage it from the web. Just scheduling is ok, but I'm forgetful about what season passes I have and when they are showing.

Tivoserver would be nice. Or a better way for it to see SMB shares so I can view shows I've stored offline. (nothing like watching Battlestar marathon without commercials).

Or even.. gasp... 2 Tivos that talk to each other that are NOT on the same account, but in the same house! Like they advertise!

Posted at 10:34AM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Steve

5. I don't use 30 second skip personally, in fact I turned it on once and didn't like it and ended up rebooting the TiVo to make it go away. My parents don't use it either.

Personally I like to scan over the commercials while I am fast forwarding, there are occasions where an interesting commercial comes on and I actually back up to watch it, also it's frequently helpful for learning about upcoming shows or specials that I might not otherwise know about.

FInally, it's irrelavent, if TiVo turned on the 30 second skip function by default they would be instantly sued by the content producers and the best case outcome there would be that it (30 second skip) was removed altogether from TiVo units, with the worst case scenario being TiVo going out of business ala ReplayTV. At least know it's available for those people who want to use it.

On the "TiVo Camouflage" issue, I remember this subject from a while back that's actually not that difficult (though somewhat time consuming) to do now:
1. Record show
2. Transfer to PC (TiVo ToGo)
3. Delete original file on TiVo
4. Rename on PC
5. Transfer renamed show back to TiVo

Even though I know he's joking, it wouldn't work having an add-on service for stealth tactics like this, your wife would just get suspicious when she saw the TiVo camouflage bill.

Posted at 11:17AM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Robert Aitchison

6. Scott: Agreed. This happens to us frequently, though we usually clear it up by just deleting it and retrieving from recently deleted folder if the other person hasn't watched it yet.

Robert: How does Microsoft have the 30 second skip turned on in Media Center right out of the box? I've never heard of a lawsuit against them regarding this issue.

Posted at 11:36AM on Nov 3rd 2006 by JJ

7. I liked almost all of your ideas. The camo thing didn't do much for me because I don't give a damn what my wife thinks about me watching Cathouse or any other skin flick. If I did, however, I would turn on the parental controls and keep the PIN to myself.

I have been saying a lot of these things for years, especially the ability to put the software on a HTPC. I can't find one that I like. However like the streaming suggestion, this would undercut TiVo's bottom line by cutting out the need to buy their hardware -- which is lucrative at $800 for a HD box that I could create for less than $500 with more storage.

The 30-second skip is not for everyone and the code is as easy as getting 30 lives in Contra. I don't mind doing it. I also like being able to send shows to others on different networks. Often times, my Pops misses a show and I have to burn it to DVD for him. This way I could just send it over to his TiVo and blammo. It's not perfect but I still have not found a suitable replacement for my TiVo. I don't mind the $13/mo charges but I hate the hardware costs especially when I only get 40 hours of HD space. Screw that noise, Jack.

Posted at 12:27PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by TylerDurden0

8. I have a very simple one. Give us the ability to delete shows from the Tivo Desktop software and/or the Tivo website.

We can schedule stuff remotely via the website, we can transfer stuff via the software, but the only way to delete shows already on the TV? IS directly at the Tivo itself.

Come on how could they miss this?

Posted at 12:50PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Darien

9. The market penetration of MCE, and thus it's potential "threat" to the studios is much less than TiVo.

Plus Microsoft is a ginormous company, big enough that the studios could not reasonably expect to be able to sue them out of existence, that wouldn't be too difficult for a small company like TiVo.

BTW W00t for my 100th PVR Wire comment!!

Posted at 1:36PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Robert Aitchison

10. Yeah! Tivo Lite™!!! I keep trying to come up with a way to use a tivo to go scenario and an old PC to pull off the lite concept - but a Tivo sanctioned mini box would be something I'd buy for sure.

Posted at 4:36PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Henry

11. I discovered the easy way to camouflage the name of your recorded shows by accident about 2 years ago. The setup is a Series 2 and IR blast to a Comcast (evil) Cable box. I was rushing out the door and quickly set the Tivo to record the rest of the game I was watching and as the fates would have it, I hit the Comcast remote and changed the channel on the cable box. Since the relationship between the Tivo and cable box is one way, the Tivo didn’t know it was now recording some other crap.

So I get home and after cursing the football god’s for missing the game I saw the upside. The Tivo records and lists what’s feed to it but if you independently change the source, it’ none the wiser.

So for awhile I would change the Tivo to whatever was on the Spike Channel and change the cable box to the late night fluff on HBO and Viola, the Tivo says The Man Show but when you press play, I’m watching Shannon Tweed.

That worked great for about a year until my wife discovered movies on demand from Comcast. So try it out, buy a movie and I brilliantly decide I’d rather Tivo it so I don’t have to use the crappy built in Comcast controls. Of course, this means our movie is being recorded as Law & Order on the Tivo. So my not born yesterday wife now knows that the Law & Order listing is really The Island. Now, I’ve noticed that she checks out everything on the Tivo to see if it’s something else.

Well, just because I screwed up the perfect camouflage technique by letting my wife look behind the wizards curtain doesn’t mean it can’t work wonders for you. Just make sure that after you change the channel on the cable box that you go back to the recording on Tivo and make sure it records for the correct length.

If you have an input switch it’s really simple to just change the source to the DVD player or a second cable box. If you don’t have one, you could unplug the out from cable box end of the input cable and switch it to the DVD player and record your private DVD’s as the Hallmark Movie of the Week. Sure, you’re going to loose some of the functionality of the DVD’s and some image quality but then you don’t have to worry that you left the Girls Gone Wild DVD in the DVD player when your nieces come over and want to pop in SpongeBob SquarePants.

Posted at 4:58PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Husband Of The Year

12. The ability to pause a show and save a bookmark that would get you right back to that point in the show would be great. Also show tagging. What I mean is a feature that would let you tag comments onto a show.

Those together would be amazing. Imagine you've seen the most hilarious commercial and you want to save it and show it to someone later. You can rewind to the start of the commercial, save a book mark and tag that show with a note about it. Otherwise you could save an episode of whatever and later on wonder why in the world you saved it.

ALSO!! I'd love the ability to back up my settings to my computer. I recently bought a new tivo and it was a huge pain re-entering all my Season passes. Also all my thumbs up/down data was gone.

I think those two feature would be easy to implement, even in current tivos.

Also the blogger mentioned a qwerty remote. I say no. Tivo's have USB ports, why not just enable us to plug a keyboard into the back of the tivo?

Posted at 6:28PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Mike

13. In reference to not being able to play DRM music on the TiVo. The simplest way to remove Apple's DRM is to buy some CR-Ws, burn your DRM songs on them and then import the songs from the CD back into iTunes and the DRM is removed. Then delete all those nasty DRM music files and use your music freely!

Posted at 6:36PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by marvin

14. Tivo Series 3, has manual buttons on the unit itself (Like you were requesting) but then again you already established that you are to cheap to go get one...too bad, its f'n killer.

Posted at 6:43PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Plebeian

15. I have a Dlink device that allows me to play video from a media server to my tv. Kinda like a reverse slingbox. Well it competes for real estate with my two tivos. I would like to see the tivo box to be a upnp media server or client.

Either stream media to my dlink so I can what it in another room (tivo-lite) or recieve a stream for my PC and play in real-time. This would prevent other devices from competeing with tivo.

Posted at 6:52PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by George W. Bush

16. I love the idea of having a "Tivo" network, so if you missed a show you can download it from someone on your buddy list. I know that's what Tivo is all about, recording your favorite shows by itself, but it can't read my mind if I decided I don't like a show anymore and want to watch something else.
How about a button on the Tivo box that will make the remote beep if you lose it, my cordless phone has one. Most of all I don't think we should have to continue to pay the same price if we have multiple boxes. I have two and would like to get a third but it is just getting too expensive to watch "free" network TV.

Posted at 10:22AM on Nov 4th 2006 by Zeus

17. As one of the many customers whose Tivos have been crippled by the latest update, I want the option to accept an update or revert back. Both my Tivos have been rendered completely unusable (really SUPER SLOW RESPONSE TIME) by the idiotic Tivo KidZone update!! I just want my Tivo to work like it used to!!!!!!!

Posted at 7:03PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Mark

18. A simple solution for all those people who lose their remote controls (and I'll bet there are many) is for the manufacturers to insert a call button like you find on wireless home phones. Lose the remote? Just press the button and the remote starts to beep. Perhaps Tivo could do manage this on their next system.

Posted at 8:04PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Tim

19. As someone who has a lot of Season Passes, I would love to be able to type in the first couple of letters of a show and then be able to select and go directly to the Season Pass I want. I usually have to go through the list 2 or 3 times before I find the show I want. Unless its at the top or the bottom, I just don't see it right away.

Posted at 7:41PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by Bea

20. I have a few RFEs myself: http://www.tivolovers.com/TiVo-RFEs.html

As for your suggestions:

30SS:
I think TiVo is walking the tightrope here. Content providers aren't happy about 30 second skip, but customers want it. By keeping it a 'backdoor' it helps balance the two sides. I'd like to see them make it a published feature. I don't know that I'd turn it on by default, but put the code in the manual and make it official.

Not everyone likes 30SS. I love it myself, but I know people who tried it and prefer FF instead. If you look at discussions threads about it there is nearly always someone who, after turning it on, posts "HOW DO IT TURN THIS OFF?!?!" because they want to go back to the default behavior of the button.

Keep in mind that anyone reading this blog is likely to be somewhat technical and familiar with backdoor codes, etc. While, regularly, new readers pop up around the net who are learning that there is a 30 second skip for the first time. So I'd bet most TiVo owners don't even know it can do it.

Tivo to SlinGo:
Transfer speeds will vary depend on the model of TiVo and the network adapter. The S2DT is the fastest, followed by the older 2xx model boxes. The 5xx model units are the slowest.

I can get better than realtime transfers of Best level recordings from my S2DT (wired Ethernet) to my Pioneer DVR-810H (2xx, using the TiVo 11g adapter), or vice-versa. Since the TiVo adapter offloads the network processing from the TiVo CPU, it can greatly speed things up. Some users have reported a 60% speed increase in transfers.

And, of course, the lower the quality level of the recording, the faster it transfers. The bitrate is the same, but there are fewer bits per unit of time for the program.

The thing is, the TiVo hardware cannot do what Sling, LocationFree, etc, do. TiVo would have to add expensive components to their boxes, and most people aren't going to use it. So it makes more sense for them to not do it and those who want to do it can buy a Slingbox.

Look at it this way - the Slingbox has a dedicated encoder that has to be able to encode the input on the fly with a sliding compression scale. Sling adjusts the resolution and bitrate of the encoding on the fly, depending on the client device and the network connection. I believe they use VC-1/WMV9 for the encoding. To do the same thing TiVo would need to add another encoder to their boxes, which would have to either transcode the recordings, or take the output of the MPEG2 decoder and reencode like the Slingbox.

That also means new software for all those features - either they have to develop it, or buy/license it from someone like Slingbox. Same for the client software for the different devices.

Now, I think it would be excellent if Sling and TiVo could partner and integrate their products more closely. How about being able to connect a Slingbox to the USB port of the TiVo and get direct access to the MPEG2 data to transcode it without an analog step? And control the TiVo directly over that connection without IR blasters. Sell bundles. I think it'd be win-win.

But I do not want to see TiVo investing too much of their own resources into this, not as a standard feature in the box, because it would raise the production costs of the boxes and add more red ink, or force them to raise prices to cover it.

I think partnering with someone who has already created a solid product, like Sling, would be better. They could even OEM the boxes and sell them under the TiVo brand.

TiVo PC:
TiVo has done its magic based on specialized hardware and tight control over the OS kernel they use. Porting it to a PC would be non-trivial, they'd probably have to re-write everything to run on Windows. Just like ReplayTV basically started from scratch with the (delayed) ReplayPC software.

And then they'd be entering a market with an 800 pound gorilla - Microsoft. Many vendors have made XP MCE their standard software load, and Vista streets this month (for businesses, January for consumers), with media center features built in. And then they have to compete with BeyondTV, etc, for the market.

I think ReplayPC is going to tank, badly. And, as much as I like TiVo, I'm not sure they'd fair much better. It would take a substantial investment of resources to produce a solid PC-based product, and I don't think they could carve out enough market share to make it pay off. With 'free' MCE features on every PC, how many users are going to pay for TiVo?

The cable box market is different. It is a specialized hardware platform where all the variables are known and controlled. With PCs you have to worry about interactions with the other software. OS changes. A bewildering variety of hardware combinations. And Comcast and Cox are paying TiVo to do the work, no one is going to subsidize PC development.

Honestly, I think they'd be better off writing modules for MCE (like the one they have for MCE/Viiv now) and improving TiVo Desktop. Or making the TiVo a viable Media Center Extender.

QWERTY remote:
I don't see how they could fit a usable QWERTY keyboard into the peanut - unless they had it hinge lengthwise like some of the smart phones. Like this: http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/9300

I wouldn't want to use a keyboard much smaller than the one my my Treo 650, and that's too big to fit under a flip cover or the like. I've seen some phones like that and didn't care for them as much.

But a simpler change would be to do something ReplayTV did way back - support IR keyboards! The IR receiver is already there. ReplayTV worked with WebTV keyboards, for example. They could even support USB keyboards and wireless USB keyboards.

Or, what I've suggested before, expose all of the command interfaces via the web interface on the TiVo or via XML (SOAP?) and allow you to use a beefier TiVo Desktop to do all the management work instead of on screen. And XML interface would allow 3rd parties to hook into it and who knows what cool things we'd see!

TiVo Desktop World Edition:
Actually, you can do this today. If you have broadband and you map the right ports (2190 and 8080 if I remember off hand) from your public IP to your PC, then anyone in the world with a TiVo can enter your public IP on their MPP&M screen and it will talk to your server. I've done it with friends across the net.

While users would always need to setup their router/firewall to map the ports, what is really missing is some central server where you could publish your data to select people and their TiVo could automatically find you. That could be an HME application.

Web 2.0:
My intense dislike of the 'Web 2.0' label aside, this is something I'd like to see. I'd like to be able to suggest shows to my group of friends. Or have my Suggestions influenced by what my group of friends watches. A long time back there was some talk from TiVo about allowing sharing on up to 10 machines, even outside of the home. What happened to that? I don't care if they have to cut deals with content providers and the sender or receiver has to pay a buck to see the show - people would use it. For example, I have Hellboy: Sword of Storms on my unit at home. I've had two different friends who didn't know about it ask if I can get them a copy. Since I have it on my 810H I'll probably burn a couple of DVD-Rs. I could also TTG it to my PC and strip the DRM, but then I'd have to get them the files and that's huge. DVD is easier. But even easier (presuming both parties have TiVo) would be for me to 'publish' it to them, and it could trickle over to them at whatever our connections allow. If they had to pay a buck or two for it, they would.

Now, some of this - basically anything but the video sharing - could be done via TiVo Central Online. In fact, it is probably better to do it there than on the unit itself. We already have the Opt-In status for the Privacy Policy, for KidZone and Guru Guides. Now that we can opt-in to having personal data uploaded, do more with it. Let us back up our settings, transfer them to a new box, etc. Set up social networking groups with shared suggestions, rating pools, recommendations, etc. Build a real online community around TiVo. And you could bring some aspects to the unit, probably via HME.

MRV from one TiVo:
I've been saying this for years. The problem is that TiVo's network performance has been lacking, so streaming may not be possible on boxes which can't push data in realtime. However, many Series2 boxes can, and the new S2DT and S3 are much faster. (S3 has other limitations currently, of course.) So even if it is a feature only for new boxes, with 'maybe' working on older boxes, that's fine. You basically need a box with a decoder and a chunk of RAM to be the receiving device. A stripped down box without the tuner, encoder, disk, etc. And the sending box would need changes to be able to jump around the file as it sends it, so you can jump ahead of real time or back, etc.

If they made it work with the S3, I'd probably buy one. I think a number of TiVo owners would, to have the 'TiVo experience' on other sets. Even if you buy multiple TiVos, you still need to deal with MRV if the show you want is on the TiVo in the other room. And it is overkill to have a box just for that.

Controls on box:
The reason they don't do this is simple - cost. They squeeze as much as they can out of the box by keeping it as simple as possible. The S3 has front panel controls, as do the DVD S2s. All of those are 'premium' models where cost wasn't as big a deal. The first S2, the AT&T 40 hour box, had front panel controls. But they dropped them by the time the TiVo branded S2 came out in early 2002.

TiVo Camo:
While I don't really like the idea of deliberate subterfuge against a spouse, being able to rename recordings would be nice. Sometimes you do a manual recording and it gets the wrong name attached. TiVo already has some ability to name recordings - the DVD units allow you to enter a name for recordings from 'Camera or VCR'. But you can't rename an existing recording. I think the existing naming interface could be extended to renaming and all the boxes.

I think that's long enough. ;-)

Posted at 9:40PM on Nov 3rd 2006 by MegaZone