Tivo on your home network

[that_kid]

Don't know if anyone saw this but Tivo has an update coming out for it series 2 devices that will allow the tivo to connect to your home network via wifi. If you have 2 tivo units, you can share shows between them and it you have music,video or photo's on your home network, then you can view those with tivo too. The biggest thing is that you will be able to schedule shows via the net . NOw the qustion is Quartz, Tivo, or MS Media edition. The whole article is Here

[Treetop]

I hope I'm wrong, but what from what I've heard (and read..((on the net))...) TIVO is going to charge $99.00 dollars for that feature to customers of the S2 units......unless a bash prompt can be created on v3.2 of the software ...

Hope I'm wrong..

[that_kid]

Ouch, $99 bucks is steep, if it's going to cost that much, i'll keep my snapstream setup and use that. Thanks for the heads up.

[Treetop]

Well, it is coming on the end of the first day of the 2003 CES. Not a lot of real revolutionary products, but a lot of great evolutions are coming down the pike. For those of us who love our TiVos, there is going to be a lot of competition for our hearts and minds over the next few years. But with TiVo's announcements today, I think they have a good shot at staying atop the ladder.

First, the TiVo announcements. I was at most of the press conference and stayed around afterward playing with the new units. I think 4.0 is going to be a great update for standalone subscribers. A USB dongle (the one I saw was from Linksys, who is their preferred, not exclusive, network adapter provider) was attached to the USB port of a standard Series 2 TiVo to allow the new features.





Music and Photos


A new menu is now on TiVo Central which says "Music and Photos" In the current version of this software, bringing up this menu went to a screen which allowed you to select the server. In the demo I saw, the TiVo connected to a computer in San Jose. Once you connected to the server, a series of thumbnails of various folders were shown. Selecting a folder showed you its contents (photos, other folders, etc.). Selecting a photo brought it up on the screen. Hitting play on a folder allowed you to run a slide show of all its contents (including the contents of any subfolders, I understood). The time between slides was user configurable, and there were some other options for displaying photos available by pressing the Enter key according to an onscreen message. I didn't actually demo the music capabilities (I'll guess I'll have to go back tomorrow!), but they sound good from the press conference. Very slick, very easy (my Grandmother could do this), and a great value-added feature.




Media Sharing


Now this was slick. New on the Now Playing list will be a list of other TiVos in your home. Selecting a TiVo will essentially bring up its Now Playing screen. Selecting an item starts downloading it to the TiVo, and as with a recording, you can start playing it before it finishes downloading. Speed of transfer is really only limited by the bandwidth available (802.11b, 802.11a, Ethernet, etc.) since the ports are USB2. While the cost will be $99 for the first TiVo, and $49 for each additional TiVo this feature alone (in my opinion) makes the upgrade worth it. Hopefully I can convince someone in the TiVo booth to give me some hands-on time with this feature - but I'd spend the money in a heartbeat for this (of course, I won't be able to - but that comes later in this message).
Bad news though - this will definitely not work on any Series 1 boxes with TurboNet installed. Time to pick up those refurbished 60gig models.




Web features


I didn’t get to demo this – the server wasn’t working when we tried it! But my understanding is that you’ll be able search for shows online to tell the TiVo to record a show. The data will get to the TiVo within two hours, but probably much quicker (20-30 minutes). You’ll be able to setup conflict scheduling such that if a web scheduled show has a conflict with a box scheduled show it will either override the previous recording, or back off. Either way you’ll get an email letting you know what happened. Another thing hopefully I’ll get some hands-on time with here!





HD


For the HD enthusiast I am, this was the highlight of the new TiVo features. TiVo was showing both two reference designs. One was an ATSC/NTSC model, the other was a DirecTV/ATSC model. The standalone model was playing the PBS demo feed on a plasma through component outputs, the DirecTV unit was showing HBO-HD via component outputs. In the DirecTV booth, they had HDNet up. I played around with pausing, slo-mo, instant replay, fast-forward, rewind, and selecting shows from Now Playing - all worked as any veteran TiVo user would expect - you just had the great video quality of HD. The standalone is awaiting a hardware vendor to run with it. The DirecTV unit, according to the DirecTV folks, wil be available by the end of the year - but probably not in time for the Holiday shopping season. It will be in the $1000+ price range, though no one could give anything approaching an estimate on cost. It will include one ATSC tuner and one DirecTV tuner. It will only record from one tuner at a time (no recording CSI and HDNet). HDD wise, it will include at least a 120GB HDD for 10 hours of HD recording. It will, of course, record a mix and match of HD and SD programming - but no NTSC capability. The prototype looked almost identical to the existing HDVR2 - but it had a dark green faceplate and a dark grey body. The shipping unit will at least include a DVI connector - everything else (FireWire, and analog component) is still up in the air, as well as who will make it (HNS, Philips, Sony, Toshiba, someone else?).




DirecTV


While we may well see a HD DirecTV TiVo before a standalone model, it is still up in the air whether or not we will get the Home networking features on the HDVR2 – and this is why I won’t be ponying up at first for these new features (oops – no pun intended). According to the folks at the DirecTV booth, they are still weighing whether or not they will include these features in a future software release. However, if they do decide to give these features to us the earliest we will see them is Q1 2004. As far as long term viability of the platform, according to one of the product leads with the Advance Programming Group at DirecTV they are weighing who to use as their next middleware provider. Once they make that decision here in the spring, their goal is to standardize the GUI and STBs from all manufacturers into one standard with the prime differentiator being whether a box has a hard drive (and DVR functionality therefore) or not. This may mean that in a year or two the TiVo DVR may be very different from how we know it today. But nothing is set in stone, and given how phenomenal the DTiVo experience is I hope it will have a long and fruitful life.




Toshiba


Well, the newest entry to the TiVo product family is the new Toshiba media server unit, which includes a DVD player and a TiVo in one unit. It should be available this fall in the $500-$600 price range. It has component outputs coupled with its progressive-scan DVD player so this TiVo may be one of the best PQ units yet. The DVD player functionality is integrated in the TiVo UI with a "Play DVD" option on TiVo Central (not the exact wording, but something similar). The physical looks of this unit has got to be the best looking TiVo yet as well. Otherwise though, it will be a standard 4.0 Series 2 with an 80GB HDD. An excellent purchase if someone is looking to get rid of another box, or have something very stylish on their TV instead of the current look of TiVos.




Folders


Outside of network features, a big item of interest is the inclusion of folders - and an excellent implementation from what I saw - in the Now Playing list. I saw shows could be grouped by show title or, for example, all Wishlist or Suggestions in one folder. On the particular TiVo I saw Now Playing looked pretty much like it does now with the current S O R T fuctionality. But the entry for "The West Wing" was listed as "The West Wing (2)" and you could expand the entry to show the episodes of The West Wing you had. It also had an entry for wishlists which you could expand to show what eishlist items it had recorded. What I didn't see was if you setup your own folder with different shows in it.

Well, that is most of the TiVo stuff I found out about today. Oh, and Shanon and Bob - thanks for the help today! You were very gracious in answering all my questions.

I know there are a lot of questions in some other threads - hopefully I answered the bulk of them here. If not, I'll try to answer them if I can as I find them. And I am sure some other very smart people can probably deal with those much better then I can. There was a lot of other PVR news in addition to all this, but I will post that into another thread. I'll try to visit Dish tomorrow to report on what they're doing. And keep those questions coming (I got a couple already): mobile@hintz.us. I'll do my best to answer them.

And please forgive any mistakes above. I did a rapid proofread of this post but it has been a long day of walking the floor, and I wrote this at a hotspot before dinner! But, mistakes and all, I hope you enjoy this update!

--Andrew


Web Scheduling

[bikr]

It's all free now btw if you have tivo and a network , the media stuff is free now , i have tivo and beyondtv w/ firefly , and i love BTV much better..