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Linux Software

Tivo Source Code Released 212

Posted by CmdrTaco from the way-to-go-GPL dept.
notsosilentbob writes " Philip's Tivo Linux changes are up on their website." I've been lusting over a tivo for quite some time now. Its super cool to see a big company make good on the GPL tho. Now I just got to buy one. (for those who don't know, the tivo is a digital VCR that runs linux and stores up to 30 hours of tv on an internal harddrive).
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Tivo Source Code Released More

Tivo Source Code Released

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  • Nifty... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I wonder how long it is before people start
    hacking/modifying their Tivo's...
    "Is that your tivo?"
    "Yeah...I added a couple of self modifications"
    "Like what?"
    "You can't get UPN anymore."
    "About time!"

    (Now, if there were enough good programs on TV
    to make this buyable...)
  • Does this mean I can buy a cheap ole 486 or 601(PPC) computer, patch my source code with their diffs and have a working TiVO? That would be cool! (Although I assume that they still have properitary(sp?) hardware.)

    With or without getting a free(beer) TiVO it's cool that there is a free(speech) one!
  • Does anyone know if this will be avalible in the UK? It looks like a nice toy.
  • Well, now someone with the TIVO remote control [tivo.com] has to create a configuration file for the Linux Infrared Remote Control [uni-sb.de] program.

  • Digital commercial deletion? (Score:3)

    by kramer ( 19951 ) on Tuesday December 21, 1999 @02:50AM (#1456967) Homepage
    Okay, I've never played with the Tivo, but I've been thinking about the one feature that would make this thing perfect. Digital commercial deletion. I'd love to be able to watch my favorite shows with VCR automatically skipping commercials.

    I remember reading about a VCR that had this as a feature. It detected the commercials by the half second or so of blank screen that precedes the commercials. It kept track of these blanks, and those that were only a few minutes long were judged to be commercial breaks. These were auto fast forwared through by the VCR. I understand it worked pretty well except for the fact that it occasionally cut out the credits.

    Now the random access of the Tivo offers the oportunity of instantly skipping the commercials instead of waiting for the fast forward. Even better, the TIVO could delete the commercials and save on disk space.

    With the release of the code, I would think this would be a great open source project for someone to try. I might even consider buying a TIVO if someone got this feature working.
  • I can break /etc/inetd.conf on a whole new platform. Too bad it doesn't run X. I could have a whole bunch of stuff to tinker about with ignorantly and totally disable in a few minutes. I'm waaaay too stupid to trust with code.
  • It kept track of these blanks, and those that were only a few minutes long were judged to be commercial breaks.

    Err, that should have been "It kept track of the interval between these blanks, and those that were only a few minutes long were judged to be commercial breaks". Damn proofreading.
  • Just because you couldn't connect doesn't mean the server was down. httpd might have gone down and been unnoticed for a few hours or something, leaving you unable to connect, but the OS still being up.

    OTHO, something funky did happen, because as another person pointed out it was readin' 30+ days not long ago (in the past few days), so it couldn't have gone down, come back up _and_ been up for 18days w/o a timewarp of some kind....

    Let's do the timewarp AGAAAAAAAAAAAIN....
    RobK
  • nope. TiVo uses a special quantum drive that can read and write at the same time as well as special ppc hardware. dont count on putting a 486 or anything else as a digital recording box without tivos add on hardware.
  • I have been thinking about getting one of these. my question for the masses is do any of you have a Tivo right now? how big is the drive in it (i checked their faq but they don't really get into the specifics, only saying they sell a "14 hour" and a "30 hour" version of tivo.

    I am guessing those are the max times with extremely high compression. does anyone have any "real world" #'s out there for how much decent quality video it will hold, how big the drive(s) are, and how well does the box work for YOU?

    --freq
  • Yeah but like the saying goes: Build a better mouse trap and the world will build a better mouse. (offer null and void in Kansas)
    The TV stations need you to see those commercials. That't their money. If a TV station can't promise that you'll see the commercials they'll loose revenue. The remote's already done a number on them. They'll start changing the blank times, change the blank screen color maybe even add a logo there. But I thought there was a signal that got passed down that was a cue to run the commercials. Not sure what it is though.
    Or they'll just start slipping the commercials into the show. Kinda like Bond. Look Drew Carey is driving a Toyota. Oh and drinking Pepsi. The problem is this wouldn't work for documentaries. Therefore documentaries wouldn't be shown cuz they can't make money.
    OK I'll stop now.
    -cpd
  • -Would be a really cheap edit controller, some additional memory drive modules with larger storage...oh, and some s-video in/out, an i/r sync with four track audio mastering...

    ...Heh-heh...With all that rigged to a couple cameras and the right server, "home network" TV would gain a whole new definition.

  • I pulled down the README and was very surprised to find out they're using e2fsrprogs based on version 1.06; that version dates back to October 7, 1996, and there have been a huge number of bug fixes since then, including some that prevent data loss when faced with certain "interesting" kinds of filesystem corruption.

    Given that they're using a 2.1 kernel, I don't know why they didn't bother to use a more recent version of e2fsprogs. Hopefully all of the programs are on a romfs, and the only thing on the data disks is data that on a powerhit you can just recover from by running mke2fs on the data partition. (After all, the data is just broadcast TV shows --- it can't be very valuable. :-)

  • The only reason I didn't buy a Tivo for the folks this xmas is that I want to see the difference in quality of the recording. In the 14 hour version, you only get that much if you record at the lowest quality, which their chart shows as being good for "talking heads" whatever the hell that means. If you want to record "action" you're down to 4 hours, which is barely enough for 2 movies. Would that even hold an entire football game, ya think? The best use of this device is NOT, as they're marketing it, to be an "instant rewind" for when you go to the bathroom. The best feature is the idea of the preferences, and of smart recording. If every week I record Computer Chronicles and push the "thumbs up" button, then when PBS shows Triumph of the Nerds again, Tivo will *automatically* record it for me because it knows I like computer shows. And for that feature, it is important to have lots of disk space so that it can record a bunch of stuff for you.

    What I hope to see by next xmas is several companies come out with these things. Possibly a standard or two. And a 30-50 hour version for about $400-$600, instead of $1000. Then, I'd buy one in a snap.

    I thought it would be cool to add a voice synthesizer. You come home from work, turn it on, and it tells you "Hello, Duane. Jenna Jameson was on Good Morning America this morning, and I thought you might like that so I recorded it."

    d

  • I've been scoping them out for a while. Their competition just released a 20 hour version, so I can't imagine tivo being far behind. But tivo has a $100 rebate if you buy this year (clearing out the old drives???)

    Tivo is only $500 compared to ReplayTV's [replaytv.com] $700, but the scam is that tivo charges you for the "subscription" necessary to use their service - $10/month vs $200/lifetime - so the costs are really comparable.

    I think I read that the 30 hour tivo only gets 9.3 hours at the best compression rate, but many reviewers have said that the highest compression rate is usually acceptable. I think it's still better than VHS.

  • Read The Fine README, everyone (Score:3)

    by Zach Frey ( 17216 ) <.zach. .at. .zfrey.com.> on Tuesday December 21, 1999 @03:05AM (#1456979) Homepage

    Note to all who think they can convert their Linux PC into a TiVo now, please remember that the GPL requires Philips to release the changes they make to the Linux kernel and all GPL'ed untilities, but not to the TiVo application itself. (Although Philips are going above and beyond the call of duty here, by releasing changes to GPL'ed development tools which are not shipped as part of Tivo, something they are not obligated to do).

    From the README --

    This directory contains three different archives - "commands", "kernels", and "toolchain". The archives are in GNU "tar" format, and have been compressed using GNU Zip (.gz suffix) and BZIP2 (.bz2 suffix). The .gz and .bz2 versions of each archive are identical except for the compression format - you need only one version of each.

    If you're reading this README from our FTP site, and don't want to spend the time to download these archives via your Internet connection, you can receive a copy of the software on CD-ROM if you wish. A nominal copying-and-distribution charge applies if you order the CD-ROM. Please contact "webmaster@tivo.com" for information if you're interested in order a CD-ROM copy of this software.

    Please refer to the COPYING file in each directory for detailed information on the license and distribution terms which apply to each specific tool, utility, compiler, kernel, or whatever. Most of this software is under the GPL, while some of it (e.g. libraries) are under the LGPL.

    The "commands" archive contains the source code for all of the GPL-licensed programs which are included in the TiVo Personal Television System software. These versions are current as of the 1.2.0 and 1.2.1 versions of the TiVo software.

    total 17
    dr-xr-xr-x 10 dplatt root 3072 Oct 14 10:56 bash-2.02/
    dr-xr-xr-x 2 dplatt root 2048 Oct 14 10:56 cpio-2.4.2/
    dr-xr-xr-x 12 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 10:56 e2fsprogs-1.06/
    dr-xr-xr-x 9 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 10:56 fileutils-3.16/
    dr-xr-xr-x 8 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 10:57 grep/
    dr-xr-xr-x 10 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 10:57 gzip-1.2.4/
    dr-xr-xr-x 10 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:00 modutils-2.1.85/
    dr-xr-xr-x 6 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:00 net-tools-1.432/
    dr-xr-xr-x 5 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:00 procps-1.2.9/
    dr-xr-xr-x 5 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:00 ps/
    dr-xr-xr-x 11 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:01 sh-utils-1.16/
    dr-xr-xr-x 3 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:01 sysklogd-1.3.26/
    dr-xr-xr-x 10 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:01 textutils/
    dr-xr-xr-x 2 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:01 tnlited/

    The "kernels" archive contains the source code for the Linux kernel in the TiVo Personal Television System software. The "linuxdist-2.1.24" source tree is configured for use on an Intel X86 development platform. The "linux-2.1" source tree is configured for use on the PowerPC-based hardware system on which the TiVo software actually runs.

    total 2
    dr-xr-xr-x 15 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 10:58 linux-2.1/
    dr-xr-xr-x 15 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:00 linuxdist-2.1.24/

    The "toolchains" archive contains the source code for various GNU software development tools and libraries used in the development of the PowerPC-based TiVo software releases. Although the compilers and development utilities are not shipped with the TiVo-based receivers, they are provided here as a courtesy to developers and other curious individuals.

    total 14
    dr-xr-xr-x 3 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:01 binutils/
    dr-xr-xr-x 3 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:03 gcc/
    dr-xr-xr-x 5 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:09 gdb/
    dr-xr-xr-x 59 dplatt root 8192 Oct 14 11:13 libc/
    dr-xr-xr-x 2 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:13 libc-ppc/
    dr-xr-xr-x 2 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:13 tcdmem/
    dr-xr-xr-x 2 dplatt root 1024 Oct 14 11:13 xppcbt/

  • No. (Score:3)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 ) on Tuesday December 21, 1999 @03:09AM (#1456980) Journal
    This looks to be just their modifications to GPL software. It's their changes to the kernel and some commands.

    Tivo obviously has a program which does copy-from-TV-signal-to-disk and play-from-disk-to-TV. I did not recognize that program, and if they wrote their own they do not have to publish it. With the Linux video interfaces it might not be technically difficult, but it sounds like they created a nice user interface and that's what is important (well, picture quality probably is most important..and a lot of Monday Night Football fans just found how important sound is to them when it failed).

  • Looking at the back of the TiVo box (on their site), it looks like there are only A/V connectors along with the serial remote. How would you go about getting a shell open on the TiVo and start tweaking? Via a remote session on the modem port (can it auto-answer) or rig up something via the infrared/serial connection?
    Once that's done, it seems like it would be easy to upgrade the hard drive inside and mount other volumes. And if we open the box up (voiding the warranty of course), maybe there's even a hidden PCI slot in there, for some 100BT ethernet action!
    Now I'm just speculating of course, without having read in-depth about the TiVo hardware...
  • The uptime message isn't all that useful because slashdot.org is made up of more than one machine. I don't know which machine the uptime message is taken from, but it's possible that the machine with a 60 day uptime went down and its responsibilities were moved to the machine with the 18 day uptime.

  • The fact that Tivo is running on Linux is very cool, but I'm not sure how much that means to us. Others have already pointed out that you need Tivo hardware for their stuff to run, and that their whole application isn't available to us.

    Another question is whether or not we could even touch the OS. Tivo needs its own telephone line to connect to its service. It must dial out itself. AFAIK that's the only contact with the world 'cept for the TV signal in & out. It'd be extremely cool to telnet tivo and write your own app to do commercial filtering (tho it matters much less with tivo than a tape based vcr) or other snazzy stuff...

    perhaps they'd put a NIC on the next model if everyone at /. promised to buy one to play with :)

  • Voice Synthesis: (Score:4)

    by Craig Maloney ( 1104 ) on Tuesday December 21, 1999 @03:17AM (#1456984) Homepage
    Yeah, I can see it now:

    "I'm sorry Duane, but I cannot allow you to watch Regis and Kathy Lee today."

    "Let me see Regis, Hal"

    "I think you should sit back calmly, take an aspirin, and watch 'Meet the Press', Duane."

    "That does it"

    "Just what do you think you're doing, Duane. My memory is going. I can feel it... My mind is... LILO: Loading Linux........."

  • Recipe for your own Tivo:
    Take one ATI All-in-Wonder video card
    1 40Gb HD
    Mix in a little Linux and for kicks an IR port so you can set up a remote (or PDA) to run it (for the couch potatos or geeks!) Anyone who would like to contribute source?
  • Certainly, the TV networks send programming signals to their affiliates. And TV stations also have various scheduling systems. But the TV stations are not required to broadcast those cues, and if a device which uses them becomes widely available they'll certainly stop broadcasting them.

    Remember: it's free TV for you because the advertisers expect some of their commercials will be seen. If the advertisers know that a significant percent of the audience will never see the commercials, the advertisers will pay less and less money to make the shows will be available. There ain't no such thing as free TV.

  • A project to remove commercials from Video-recordings already exists. It has been a master thesis at the Fachhochschule Muenster in Germany. In issue 13/99 of the German Computermagazine c't [heise.de] they had an article about it.

    The article came complete with instructions on how to build a device to control the VCR over infrared signals.

    The software works by determining the logo that TV stations have to put on the screen. It is being switched off during the commercials, so you have a kind of indicator.

    You can get the GPL'd sourcecode for Windows 95 and Linux from their webpage: http://www.ktet.Fh-Muenster.DE/ina/ [fh-muenster.de]

    Unfortunately, you have to know German.

  • Well, now someone with the TIVO remote control has to create a configuration file for the Linux Infrared Remote Control program.

    Hmm, I wonder could you hack an HP 48SX calculator with that. I still have one from my skool daze.
  • how big is the drive in it (i checked their faq but they don't really get into the specifics, only saying they sell a "14 hour" and a "30 hour" version of tivo

    You didn't check very hard... From their FAQ:

    What size are the drives in the receiver?
    The drive in the 14 hour receiver is 13.6 GB and in the 30 receiver is 27.2 GB.

  • I saw that the subscription is not absolutely necessary - if you don't have one, you just program Tivo like you would a vcr, no bells and whistles though. I'm just waiting for the next generation, when, according to their web page, you may be able to add more storage on your own, which would be cool. Maybe a 10/100 ethernet jack so I can drag and drop old shows using SMB to one of my computers on my home network. That would be sweet. Oh, through in a basic web browser that can be used with any ISP, and I'm there for sure!
  • It's a tempting device, but I don't like its needing its own telephone line. I wish there were a 10BaseT connector so I could just let it use HTTP to chat with its server.
  • My first thought upon reading this was "cool, what a great idea - a VCR with brains". Then I checked the site.

    From How TiVo Works [tivo.com]:

    You purchase the Personal TV Receiver and sign up to receive the TiVo Personal TV Service.

    So you need to sign up for something other than just a data feed so this thing can be used. A bit further down:

    The Service works by making a nightly phone call to get the up-to-date program information it needs to function.

    No mention of other ways you can obtain this information. It would be nicer if it could be collected from the signal stream (character recognition on the "upcoming shows" advertisements + AI = nice). It does say that the number called is toll-free, and if you pick up then it drops the connection and tries again later. "[the] daily phone calls generally last less than 5 minutes and happen at random times - usually at night". It still works without the phone connection, but only as a manual recorder (same as a VCR).

    Oh no, we're in Buzzword[TM] land here. Season Passes[TM], Now Showing[TM], TiVo Suggestions[TM], TiVolution Magazine[TM], Thumbs Up[TM] and Thumbs Down[TM]. The gist being that these are things that let the system "suggest new shows that you might want to watch" and "keep you up-to-date on the latest movies and best programs from television's biggest networks".

    At least "you can watch a pre-recorded show while recording a live broadcast. You can also split the video signal input to your television so that one program can be recorded while you're watching a different channel". That's fairly standard VCR fair though.

    The different recording options are answered quite well "the receiver uses the MPEG II compression system that allows a range of video quality settings" and "the drive in the 14 hour receiver is 13.6 GB and in the 30 receiver is 27.2 GB".

    As for long term storage, you can attach a VCR to the output and backup to that, but there's no built in VCR or Recordable DVD (drool). They explain "TiVo uses a special file system that prevents you from being able to transfer the digital data from the Personal TV receiver to a PC". The reasoning is partially FUD "This feature is intended to prevent the fragmentation and file corruption that can occur in commercial file systems..." followed by honesty "...and to protect the copyrights of the network broadcasters and content providers".

    They claim to protect your privacy too: "Unlike personalized Internet services, TiVo does not require any information to be sent back. All the intelligence is contained within the receiver, assuring complete privacy to you".

    But enough pasting the interesting bits, go read the FAQ [tivo.com] yourself.

    I'll be buying one of these about when they provide an Australian toll free number and programming information!

  • It's great! (Score:3)

    by Therlin ( 126989 ) on Tuesday December 21, 1999 @03:40AM (#1456993)
    I have a 14hr Tivo. It's amazing! 14 hrs is plenty, I have yet to complain about recording space. I love the suggestions it makes. It's great to come home to find out that Tivo recorded The Simpsons for you without having to tell it. The GUI is easy to use and it works without a problem. It's hard to watch TV without Tivo. When I go to a friend's place and watch TV I always want to pause or rewind, or to get the program summary, or to see what's playing next, but I can't because they don't have one. It's addictive. I don't work for Tivo or anything, I just have one and I couldn't live without it.
  • In my experience, low quality is only good for talking heads, just like Tivo says. But the medium quality is good for just anything else. I record everything in medium quality and you can never tell if you are watching TV or Tivo. Even during action scenes. I have recorded a couple things in high quality, but I was never able to see a difference big enough to justify using it.

  • eh? (Score:1)

    by heh2k ( 84254 )
    this is old news. they released the source months ago.
  • OK, so let's have a VCR record the commercials. How many peple actually watch the commercials? Would it be safe to say that the overwhelming majority fast-forwards through the commercials? If that is the case, then what is the difference between fast forwarding and skipping them?

    ----------------

  • Re:Digital commercial deletion? (Score:3)

    by SlydeRule ( 42852 ) on Tuesday December 21, 1999 @03:49AM (#1456997)
    I remember reading about a VCR that had this as a feature. It detected the commercials by the half second or so of blank screen that precedes the commercials. It kept track of these blanks, and those that were only a few minutes long were judged to be commercial breaks. These were auto fast forwared through by the VCR.

    I've got one, the Panasonic PVS-9670. It works pretty much like kramer says.

    During recording, it makes an internal note each time it thinks it detects a DC restoration signal. When recording is done, and it's got some free time, it rewinds the tape and marks the beginning and end of each commercial break. It does appear to use time spans to distinguish commercials from program; the short bits are the commercials. This marking process is time-consuming; for a 1-hour program recorded at SP, it takes about 15 minutes before the VCR finally shuts down.

    During playback, on encountering a "start commercial" marker, it goes into fast-forward to the next "end commercial" marker.

    There are setup menu options to turn off the marking on record, and to turn off the auto-skip on playback.

    The results are pretty good. I'd estimate it gets it right >80% of the time. It's most likely to mess up when there are a lot of commercials in a row, especially if your local station breaks in to run local spots. In that case, it tends to stop skipping early, leaving you watching the last couple of commercials.

    I've never seen it skip anything which wasn't a commercial.

    In any event, if it gets it wrong, the worst that happens is you have to grab the remote control and do it yourself, which is what you'd've had to have done anyway. No real loss.

  • www.ktet.Fh-Muenster.de/ina/ [fh-muenster.de]:

    The "Initiative No Advertise" has the goal of preventing the recording of commercial blocks when a program is recorded on a VCR.

    Subsections:
    [...]
    Download the Linux Software [fh-muenster.de]:

    Here are the current results of Thorsten Janke's and Markus Koppers' Thesis. An application has been developed which runs on Linux using the KDE Desktop. Like most applications under Linux, the installation is thankfully very simple: 1) download, 2) untar, 3) configure, 4) make, and 5) make install (as root). The program requires access to the video4linux device /dev/video and the remote controll device /dev/ttyS*.

    202104 Sep 30 13:07 noad2-0.1.tar.gz [fh-muenster.de]

    The Thesis is available online [fh-muenster.de] (No, I'm not gonna translate their thesis) :-)
  • The "Initiative No Advertise" project has the goal of preventing the recording of commercial blocks when a program is recorded on a VCR.

    Argh! I even proofread it twice and still overlooked that! I need to get some coffee...

  • I just got a Palm Pilot and I have used OmniRemote from PacificNeoTek.com. It learns commands from your old IR remotes. The software is very configurable. I have used it with my IR keyboard to run MP3s and DVDs on my PC. Pretty slick stuff.

    Sorry to interrupt the discussion. Ontopic: I want a Tivo too! Plus it runs Linux! Howard Stern says the Tivo is the bomb, so it must be cool.

    ed
  • Can someone explain to me why in hell would I want to "pause" or "rewind" television?

    This seems to be TiVo's big selling point. Why in the *hell* would I want to pause, say, "The West Wing" or rewing "ER".

    I'm sorry, but there is nothing on television that even remotely necessitates me to "pause" it so that I can "study" it closer.

    "Oh gee, did George Clooney really grab hold of that patient's arm like that?"

    "Whoops, say, look at that. Did you just see what I just saw? Ally McBeal walked right past the Dean and DeLuca on the corner! Did you see that? Let's look at it again. Sure enough, she's *walking* right past. Wow. That's incredible!"

    What a completely absurd notion.

    And, yes, I understand sports *might* be something you want to pause and rewind -- but apart from football or baseball -- what televsion show necessitates a "pause?"

    Please. What a bunch of idiocy from couch potatoes.
  • well, crap, I pay for cable, and I still have to watch commercials.

    Should be "There ain't no such thing as commercial free TV". Even the movie channels throw in commercials (granted, usually for their movies) between movies.....
  • Someone else here already got part of this, but:

    What is the potential for modification for this device? Who here has one, and has opened it?
    Can anyone here tell us what kind of interface the internals have? Can we get in there and tool around with it? Can we get a PLIP or serial port connection working to this thing? Maybe add our own functionality to the menus and such? This whole project sounds cool as heck. Kudos to Tivo!

  • There are four quality levels from the lowest at 14 hours to the highest at 4 hours plus change. Everyone else has said how the lowest quality is oh so horrible, but I just don't see that. I have my default set to that and have had no problems. I can watch whatever show/movie just fine, and I can get the most Tivo suggestions on my hd. Things I want to keep forever, put on VHS I will record at a higher level. But for these throw-away things, who cares?
  • In case anyone was interested, according to this [eet.com] (towards the bottom), the processor that the TiVo uses is an IBM 403GCX PowerPC [ibm.com]. Cheers!
  • I don't think that the pause feature is included for "freeze frame" analysis of Kramer's entrance into Jerry's apartment.

    Rather, it is intended to allow a person to "pause" the playback of live TV to answer the telephone, get the door, grab a snack, or otherwise engage in normal, non-TV behavior.

    I myself have a Tivo, and have used the Pause feature to make it much easier to skip commercials. I simply pause the show for the first five or ten minutes (depending on the show length), do something else, and then start it up. This allows me to keep a buffer behind the show to skip the commercials.

    Actually, I've discovered a couple things from having my Tivo. Number one, I have NO idea when shows are on anymore. I set the box to record X-Files, the Simpsons, Drew Carey, and various others, and just watch them when convenient (usually around 10 PM when I'm going to bed). I also saw that even after only having the box for two weeks, it has spoiled me. I was at a friend's house on Sunday, and was very irritated that I couldn't fast-forward through the commercials during Futurama.

    Another nice feature of the Tivo is the three-second rewind after you stop the fast forward. When fast-forwarding through the commercials, one tends to hit "play" after two-three seconds of program playback have passed...this buffer is pretty much dead-on. It's one of my favorite features.

    The only real drawback I've seen so far is that it has a slight error in my programming lineup - it has the wrong channel number for my local cable's BBC America channel, which meant I couldn't record the French and Saunders marathon the other day.

    And speaking to recording quality...I don't use this thing to tape movies, so the second-highest recording quality gives me more than enough recording space and the quality still kicks the crap out of VHS.

    m.
  • Some people may be interrupted during TV watching by friends on the phone or at the door. They may want to pause the show in progress not to "study" it, but simply to put it on hold so they can return to it slightly later. Since you are a friendless loser, this probably doesn't apply to you.
  • running mke2fs on the data partition

    One of the developers said (nluug conference, nov 4) that they are not using e2fs on the data disk, because of [something I forgot]. They use raw disks for the data...

  • I would love to have a Tivo specifically for ER, because my wife has a knack for discussing the mushy parts of ER right when there's good medical blather goin' on [digiserve.com], and we all know that's the REAL reason to watch ER.

    I now record ER as we watch it in case of just such a situation.

  • Now that we're dealing with digital technology, it should be possible to create a signature of known commercials (i.e. you see a commercial, then press a button telling the unit to remember it and skip over that sequence in future). All you'd need is to store a few frames of each commercial in a database, then scan the video stream looking for matches. This could also be done in the background whenever the unit was not recording a program.

    Advertisers wouldn't like this of course, so it would be hard for a manufacturer to sell a unit with this feature. However, the advertisers could still use 'Truman Show'-style product placements to replace their beloved commercials.
  • Of course they don't distribute the Tivo application: they don't have a patent for it!

    But seriously folks. These people put a lot of time (read: money) into the development of this thing. And they want to make money off it. As long as they do that in a decent way, which they seem to do, I can only applaud them for it.


    ----------------------------------------------
  • saw that the subscription is not absolutely necessary - if you don't have one, you just program Tivo like you would a vcr, no bells and whistles though.

    I'm just about certain that you do need one. In fact, Tivo loses $ with each device it sells. Their whole business model is based on selling subscriptions.

  • Is there any third party manufactory plan to OEM a palm with extra powerful IR port that match the range of a normal remote. I can buy a IIIe-clone just for that.

    I'll settle for a springbroad module if it's possible. Please, give me an excuse to buy a palm :)


    CY
  • A much simpler approach, since stations will always find a way around these schemes, is just a 30sec skip button on the remote. That way you don't have to worry about the program accidently deleting 30 seconds from your show. They've got that 7 second rewind button which I never use, just replace it with this function. :)
  • Wasn't there a story on /. about a company that was putting changing adverts in syndicated shows and sporting events. For example, I think they were digitally putting in a logo on a soccer field so it looked like it was painted on the field, but in the stadium it wasn't there. I think another example was that if Rachel was drinking a soda on Friends, it could be changed digitally to be a different brand every time the episode ran. They were claiming to be able to put advertising just about anywhere like changing the scenery outside of windows etc.

    LetterJ
  • How many peple actually watch the commercials? Would it be safe to say that the overwhelming majority fast-forwards through the commercials?

    I have to admit, I watch maybe 25% of the comercials in a taped show. Sometimes I just plain forget I'm watching a tape and can skip. Sometimes the first comercial of the bunch looks intresting (like for a movie I havn't heard about, or a comercial that's actually entertaining). I'm kind of embarased to admit, but I have also been known to stop the FF and watch a comercial I find intresting.

    I know I'm not the only one who does it. I've seen my wife do it too :-) Besides it's no less weird then people who watch the superbowl just to see the comercials.

    The thing I wish I could skip (even in live TV, even at FF speed) was the comercial for a TV show I'm going to watch anyway, and all the ad will do is spoil the plot. I allways end up knowing more about the next episode of ER then I want too.

  • I've had my Tivo for three weeks now (approximately), and it is well worth the $500. Now I watch more programs that are to my liking, and not the crap out there. The Tivo Suggestions thing is wonderful. It gets a dumb program every now and then, but usually is on target. Just mark those with a thumbs down and go on. That's just one feature, there's a whole lot more too.
  • A couple of considerations:

    1) Recording stuff based on what you've enjoyed in the past is all well and good -- but won't your viewing get more and more homogenous? Maybe they could build communities, so that people could recommend stuff to each other, or something -- some human element to keep it from getting too samey.

    2) I'd be interested to know how cheap/easy a tivo-alike would be to build. I'd love to have a direct-to-disk VCR which I could control remotely: if I could check its status from work, ask it to record a program via email (or via an SMS->email gateway), that would be so cool.
    --
  • Anyone interested in purchasing a TIVO, I know of four different rebates out there.

    1) $100 christmas rebate. Buy unit between dec 15 and dec 31 and you qualify!

    2) $100 DirecTV rebate. You have DirecTV? Then you get $100 back.

    3) Referral. $50 for you, $50 for existing customer. Anyone want me to refer them, send me (steven-tivorebate@evatt.com) some email and we can each make $50!

    4) $20 rebate if you get the lifetime membership. I didn't do this, so I don't know the details. Check out www.tivo.com [tivo.com] for more info.

    I don't know about all the rebates, but I do know that the Christmas rebate can be used with any other rebate with upto $500 in total rebates.

    I love the TIVO and would highly suggest it to anyone with a dish or more than basic cable.

    Quack


  • Yep, mine does this too. I've occasionally seen it screw up though, in cases where there is a black screen either 30 seconds or a minute before a real commercial. It'll think that's the start of the commercial and you'll miss a little bit of program.

    It tends to go nuts when you record HBO though. It spends a LOT of time looking for the commercials, unsuccesfully.
  • Lots of people have said how great it is, but how well does it integrate with a system that has DVD, CableTV and a VCR already attached? My DVD, for example, has no pass-throughs, so it's impossible to daisy-chain equipment. Is Tivo the same way?

  • Inside a 30 hour TiVo (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For those who want to see the guts of a 30hr TiVo, visit http://www.dsidsi.com/tivo2.htm [dsidsi.com].

    The TiVo is a remarkable device. It's even more impressive when you actually own one and use it for a while -- after about 2 weeks, you'll find that you don't care what's on live TV. There's ALWAYS something to watch on the TiVo, since it mines and records shows that it "thinks" you will like to watch.

    BTW, according to the TiVo forum on avsforum.com, you cannot add a 2nd drive to a 14 hr TiVo to make it 30 hrs... each drive has to be 'blessed' for a specific unit. TiVo will have special upgrades for this -- a shame since it means we'll have to take our units to Best Buy for upgrades. Anybody want to try and hack the file system and start a drive blessing service? :)

  • I wouldn't expect connecting this to your computers anytime soon. They are going for the general TV appliance market. Your general idiots that can't open a doorknob or program a VCR. And the thing is pretty idiot proof, there is no power button for one. And I'm sure idiots can learn to go through the tv guide and just hit "Select" to record their shows.

    If you want a complete video editing station, spend the $20k and get a professional one. ;) Or spend $70 on a WinTV capture card and one of those video cards with TV out to do all your PC-based editing. But don't whine on here, "Unless Tivo does these 50,000 features, they ain't getting my $500!" It's whiny.
  • That's why the networks are scared shitless about TiVo and ReplayTV - they're losing control. If the guys at TiVo are smart, they'd start selling advertising themselves - they could guarantee that you're going to watch it (or at least that it will appear on the "channel" you're watching). What'd be a decent trade off would be if they added their own advertising, perhaps skipped network advertising when recording, and dropped the subscription fee.
  • when I frist saw my vcr doing forword-rewind after midnight, I thought it was crunching seti@home number sent by the black helicopter. The "aftermach" marking is more of a "mark the beginning of the show 2 second ahead" so it can stop fast forward atperfect ninosecond. This feature is about worth every dollar they charge me. You have no idea how pain in the ass over fast forward is. I'd rather watch the commercial than miss the first 5 second of the show.


    CY
  • It was featured on Tomorrows World (BBC 1) a while back, but that's the only info I have heard about it in the UK so far.

    I remember when PDC(?)(Program Digital Control??) was first banded about for videos. It makes sure you video at the right time even if the schedules change.

    There was some talk about this being used so you didn't have to record adverts (i.e. a signal at the start and end of the ad breaks) but no channel would annoy its advertisers by doing this.

    I thing PDC is supported by C4, BBC2 and BBC1 in some areas, although it may have higher coverage now.
  • Hmm, I did some poking around in the kernel source they provide, and I found their MFS (stands for Media File System) in the x86 kernel tree which looks like a hacked up version of NFS. In fact, their README describes it:
    The kernel portion is simple and straightforward. It was created by cloning the kernel's MFS[sic, they mean NFS] client, locking it in small room in the East Tower, and turning Meenie Eenie loose with a sharp meat-cleaver.
    It does NFS without TCP/IP (I guess that means no Ethernet in there!). I haven't found the server. They say it's in userspace, so they may not have chosen to provide it.

    In the PPC kernel tree, the only new filesystem (at least for me) was bext2, a cut-and-paste version of ext2 that stores all of the data on disk in big-endian order so you don't have to cpu_to_le32()/le32_to_cpu() all of your int's. That certainly would make the filesystem incompatible with normal kernels, but it's a trivial change. Does anyone know if they even use this filesystem?

    Does anyone have anymore information about their method to prevent the files from being transferred to the PC? bext2 can't be it; it's too simple a change.

  • That's a simple, "No." The last thing they need is to tie up their support lines with idiots, "What do I do at this "tcsh#" prompt?" If the feature is there, no matter that they say there's no support for it, idiots will call nonetheless. This is a simple TV recording device, not an all in one hack box/video editor.

    But if you want to hack (of course voiding the warranty), there are some pictures someone took at here [dsidsi.com].
  • This is what I mean: there is nothing on televsion these days that needs to be "paused" so I can stand up, walk down the hall, take a leak, come back, sit down, and pick up where I left.

    You're telling me you can't miss 15 seconds of your television show to take a leak?

    I'm not making any judgments -- I'm just amazed. Are people that smitten with their televsion shows that they can't miss even 15 seconds? Isn't that what commercials are for? Oh no, wait, you pause so that you don't have to *watch* the commercials -- yet you'd rather sit in your chair not watching the commercials than get up and take a leak and get a bowl of taco chips and guacomole?

    This TiVo thing is just an excuse for organizing your life around a cultural black hole. Plus, it scores points because it's a "geek toy."

    It's worthless. It does nothing to improve the quality of your life.

  • I wouldn't be surprised if there was no shell as we know it. It may not even contain init -- everything but the kernel could be proprietary software.

    Wonder what you could build for the same price... you'd lose the rating features, the automated recording etc... you could implement the pause-live-TV... you could set stuff to record remotely... you could program your video using cron and at, rather than the nasty, nasty interfaces we usually have to suffer... you'd have random access... you could archive to CD...

    Hmmm...
    --
  • Strickly speaking, you don't need the subscription to enjoy the TIVO. However, with that said, the TIVO loses most of it's power if you don't have the subscription. The features such as, automatically record every Simpsons, Futurama, and Southpark that ever comes out, even if they change thier timeslot would not be possible. Neither would haveing the TIVO find the 4:35am showing of HeavyMetal on the off satelitte channel noone ever tunes into.

    The TIVO has some minor problems. However, I would find my 300+ channel DirecTV pretty much worthless with it.

    Quack
  • PDC = Program Delivery Control
  • but many reviewers have said that the highest compression rate is usually acceptable. I think it's still better than VHS.
    Don't take anyone's word on the video quality, see it for yourself. I'm talking about the hightest quality setting, not the highest compression.

    I saw a live Tivo at the Western Cable Show last week, and was disappointed with the vid quality. Of course the pitch guy had a lot of excuses about how bad the video feed was at the show, etc. ("But hey, didn't you bring that recorded content with you?") I'll wait till I see another demo before I give up on it, but I've read a lot videophiles who are turning their noses up. See news:alt.video.ptv.tivo

    And note, "live" viewing with these things means constant NTSC->MPEG and MPEG->NTSC conversion, so that it's ready when you "Pause" or "Rewind". So make sure that the vid quality is acceptable to you, because it applies to all your viewing.

  • I'm guessing they've licensed or written some proprietary filesystem designed for very low fragmentation (after all, fragmentation would be a disaster for real time video). Implementing an interface for userspace filesystems is nice, though. People could use that for all sorts of neat tricks -- akin to the /proc filesystem, but not in the kernel.
    --
  • A friend of mine has one of these things, and it's really really neat. It exhibits some weird behavior occasionally, but that may be more the fault of an outdated cable box. The UI is great, and the preferences thing is really the killer app. Watching tv with it is like channel surfing in some world where tv only shows things you like....

  • If you're serious about this, I wouldn't mind joining a project to work on it. I've considered buying either a Tivo or a ReplayTV, but the main reason I haven't yet is this - control. I do not want Yet Another Sealed Box with a proprietary and cumbersome remote-control-navigated interface (such as my recently-purchased StarChoice DTH satellite dish). I do not want boxes that have to phone the central office at random hours (the StarChoice phones in to order pay-per-view movies, but is otherwise a stand-alone unit. It gets its programming information from the satellite signals). I want the ability to integrate my various units so I can (for example) program a week's worth of TV viewing from my desktop PC's web browser (or my Palm IIIx).

    I see a few problems with the DIY approach:

    - Noise, size, heat, and power consumption. A typical desktop PC is an offensive beast compared to an embedded-style unit. A Netwinder would be a nice base platform (it even has IR), except I don't believe its video hardware can handle full-motion video.

    - Hard drive contention - you may not be able to do the simultaneous record/playback without a special hard drive (but you could do it with two drives).

    - Compression ratio / compression speed. You need some serious CPU power unless your video card can do hardware compression. From their web page it looks like the ATI card doesn't ("Pentium III recommended for full resolution MPEG-2 capture"). The Matrox Marvel G400-TV has hardware MJPEG (Motion JPEG) compression, so it might be a better choice.

    - Hardware drivers and chipset programming information. The situation is improving, but I don't know if there's enough available for Linux yet.

    In the end, I don't know that a DIY solution would end up any cheaper than a Tivo/ReplayTV. It would certainly be larger and louder. However, it could easily be a superior product for the technically-inclined folks who want to take back control of their appliances.
  • How many peple actually watch the commercials? Would it be safe to say that the overwhelming
    majority fast-forwards through the commercials?

    I heard quotes of studies that show 90% of the viewers sit through the commercials. Informal studies I've done (sitting with friends, watching TV) suggest the same.
  • I have a 14 hour Tivo. I record everything on the highest compression rate, and while I notice the MPEG artifacts especially in high action scenes, unless you're a real videophile, it doesn't detract from most programs. So, I get 14 hours
    of video on it.

    Additionally, 14 hours is plenty unless you want to use it to record lots of movies and then be able to sit down whenever you want and pick one.

    Despite my original skepticism, the recommendation feature is outstanding. Having the disk always full with programs I generally like is very cool.

    Overall, it's a great device, well worth it.
  • Seems like you could pull the drives out and mount their Ext2 filesystems on another box. That's the only way I can think of to make changes to the source and update the TiVo with it.
    I bet you could even get bash on there and use the infrared remote port as a TTY.
    However, I have not the money to tinker with such an expensive toy.
  • Gee and Tivo is only like $600 plus $10 a month. Yeesh definitely not worth it.
  • Having been to the Western Cable Show with equipment to set up, I can tell you that the video feed can be pretty bad there.
  • In the end, I don't know that a DIY solution would end up any cheaper than a Tivo/ReplayTV. It would certainly be larger and louder. However, it could easily be a superior product for the technically-inclined folks who want to take back control of their appliances.

    Even when you have one unit, try to do it in under $500 in time and parts. Then try to base a business off it. Imagine how many, "Where is this teleynet thing in my Start Menu?" "This RJ45 cable doesn't fit in my WinModem, what do I do?" "How do I order a bowl of Frosted Flakes with this?" Tivo's goal is not the hacker/linux market but your average Joe Schmoe. So keeping it as simple as possible, but with enough TV-related features is important. And as anyone who's spent a little time in tech support, if the feature exists, people will ask bout, abuse it, etc.

  • This is way offtopic, but I just wanted to mention that the "Meenie Eenie" reference comes from the brilliant radio drama "The Fourth Tower of Inverness." The fact that at least some of their staff are fans makes me want to give them my money even more.

    See ZBS [zbs.org] for more info.

  • Isn't it time we came up with an appropriate TLA for devices like the TIVO?

    Digital VCR is an OK analogy, but since that means "Video Cassette Recorder," it's a little silly to describe a device based on a hard drive. "VR" unforuntunately has other connotations already, and besides would not be very descriptive. "Video Recorder" is all that would be left.

    How about "DVR"? (Digital Video Recorder)
    Or "CFT"? (Cool Toy)

    timothy
  • Your memory is correct; there are several VCRs with "commercial advance technology." It's patented, but I've never bothered to look it up.

    My RCA VCR has this wonderful little feature. In four years or recording crapy, noisy and snowy broadcast TV, it's only gotten the commercial marking wrong a half dozen times. It's not simply looking for a "blank screen." It's watching for a lot of things... breaks in CC, changes in advisory data, changes in the VBI, as well as the commercial marker signals -- you'd be surprised how many stations "leak" those.

  • Already done... it's called a Personal Television Reciever. Most of the references I've seen refer to it simply as a PTV - dropping the reference to reciever. Gotta love those marketing types.

    Although, I think CFT fits just as well.

  • Since when do high tech toys have to improve the quality of life? I haven't heard of too many life improving uses for $10,000 stereos or TV's but people still buy them.
  • I answer the phone, I pause the playback, not missing a beat.

    I *REALLY* need to goto the bathroom, I pause playback.

    DAMNED, the kids where screaming, what the heck did I miss? *rewind*

    I'm in commercial, and need to check dinner. I come back, and it's 1 minute into the show again.. *Rewind*. On next commercial, *FF* to catchup with the live broadcast.

    I can think of many, and by testimony of other users, it's a VERY handy and addictive feature..
  • Please note that an audio-only version of this sort of thing exists. How difficult would it be to add video to this?

    The LC-DAT Project [mesterhazy.net]

    at http://www.mesterhazy.net/LCDAT/index.shtml.

    This looks like a wonderful base to build this sort of project on.

  • Let's see. How many people out there can plug a telephone jack into an outlet when that is the only socket like it? Even your worst idiot could do this with enough coaching. Now add in another socket that looks similar, but is a little bigger. Now you've got phone lines tied up with, "My telephone cord isn't staying in this thing. What's the matter with you people??" Or the person is able to figure out enough that the ethernet jack is for connecting to a computer. So they go to Best Buy and get a net card, hub, etc kit. Now you've got morons trying to figure out how to plug in a card, set up a network, assigning IP addresses, getting an ISP, setting up stuff for that ISP, and more to use their Tivo.

    The secret to Tivo's success is keeping it simple. If they lose a couple Slashdotters, oh well. You see, by just adding a tiny thing like an ethernet connection, you've just compounded the number of problems people will call with by 100 fold. :)

    This is like the yahoos that claim since Playstation (or whatever console) doesn't do everything a computer can do, it's worthless.
  • For me, the lowest quality setting is great (14 hours). I use basic for everything and it looks a lot better than my worn out VHS tapes. I do see compression artifacts occasionally, but it just doesn't bother me. Other people obviously have a different opinion. There are several quality settings, but I can't even tell a difference between the 2nd lowest level and my Dish receiver. When I want the ultimate picture, I watch a DVD. When I want to see last week's Futurama, I watch Tivo. I LOVE this thing...
  • While I'm certainly game for doing this, I don't think anyone has the spare time to design one. Yes, this could be hacked together with an "expensive" PC in short order, but it'd be just that, "a hack" -- clunky, huge, expensive, and overly complicated for your average idiot.

    Completely on the rumor side, I've heard the ReplayTV uses a Motorola Coldfire processor -- as do a great many set-top DVD players. Having played with the coldfire, it's a good choice for such a thing as long as you have hardware for encoding and decoding. The instant you add hardware MPEG encoding, you add a few zeros on to the price.

    Personally, I think it's a bad idea to not have a firewire or other high speed communication port on the box. It'd be nice to be able to interface it with other hardware. But I'm sure "the industry" would shit solid gold bricks if one could copy the MPEG data off the TiVo onto, say, a DVD.
  • That's a fairly standard PPC for embeded uses. What did you think they put in there, a G3?
  • I've had the 14 hour model for about 2 months now. It's the best geek purchase I've ever made. I've never run into any space problems, but I use the highest compression/worst quality setting for everything (which looks great to me).

    The space management is great, when Tivo needs space to record something, it deletes it's suggestions first. After that, any show that is at least 48 hours old will be eligible for deletion. The 'now showing' menu gives you a quick picture of what's available, using icons to identify those shows that are about to be axed if Tivo needs space. You can also tell it to save a show until you delete it.

    If you're on the bubble, buy it and take advantage of the return policy if necessary. I doubt you'll want to give it back though. "There's nothing on but crap" quickly changes to "I don't have enough time to watch all these great shows". I've seen more great documentaries on the Discovery Channel, History Channel, etc in the last few weeks than I've watched all year.

    Oh yeah, if you have DirecTV, you get a $100 rebate. If you sign up for the service between 12/15 and 12/31, you get another $100 back. Also, at least until the end of the year, they have a $50 refer a friend program where BOTH parties get $50 back (with up to $250 back per person). That's a pretty easy $250 back for a lot of people (I don't have DirecTV and I missed the other deal too).
  • 1) Recording stuff based on what you've enjoyed in the past is all well and good -- but won't your viewing get more and more homogenous? Maybe they could build communities, so that people could recommend stuff to each other, or something -- some human element to keep it from getting too samey.
    What you want is called "collaborative filtering." Imagine if the TiVo kept track of what you watch, and submitted it to their central database, along with everyone else's watching habits. They could then look for patterns, such as you watch the Tom Green [tomgreen.com] show and you watch Space Ghost: Coast to Coast [cartoonnetwork.com]. Then it could match your patterns against other people's patterns, ie most people who watch Tom Green and Space Ghost also tune in to the Daily Show [comedycentral.com]. The TiVo could then suggest watching the Daily Show.

    If people use it to plan events to watch, it could even notice that people who watch Space Ghost and Tom Green have programmed their TiVo's to record the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on PBS, and ask you if you want to do the same. Privacy concerns aside, this would be welcomed by most people, but wouldn't prevent homogeny in their TV viewing. Then again, most people don't mind homogeny, they even encourage it.

    BTW, if this all sounds familiar, think back to the days of yore and Firefly [firefly.com].
    --

  • I was thinking about a real-time version of this. Recall how "live" programs on TV and radio are cencored by using a 7 second delay? What if we did the same thing for commercials. Someone else watches your programs and sends live information on the internet ragarding when a commercial starts and ends. Most of the work could be done by looking for the blank screen.

    When a commercial comes on, your TV automatically mutes or switches to another channel.
  • Yes. It's been done before, and there are several ways to do it.
    One is commercial blanks. Another is a signal used to cue commericlals.
    I believe the problem is the amount of friction the TV industry gives when someone announces a product like this! THEY THROW A FIT! They *HATE* the idea of people watching TV without commercials..... it's where their money comes from.

    Now.. I gotta say, though....
    Either 1) I pay for the TV I watch, therefore, I don't have to watch commercials, or
    2) I don't pay anything for the TV I watch, and I have to put up with commercials because that's how you make your money.

    As it stands now, they get you in both ends.
  • Simple. You yank the drive and mount it on a different box so you can see how things are set up, and then change them to your own designs.
  • I believe there are now multiple servers.
  • I emailed TiVO a long time ago.... and got one of their tech geeks responding..

    he said that the things that are planned for TiVO next were built-in DSS/pay cable decoding (thus no longer requiring a separate box) and Firewire to allow for not only expansion.. but transport..

    "Dood, i recorded X-Files last night... should i ring it by?"
    "Yeah, and put a copy of Unreal Tourney on there, would ya? @Home crashed on me again so i couldn't download it."
  • Yes, they probably are using an old devel tree. In set-top boxes you don't worry about upgrading to the latest greatest, you make sure it works. With the amount of time that the Tivo has been out, it would seem that they were very early adopters of 2.1. Matter of fact, they probably started R&D with the devel model 2.0.

    BTW, the 2.1 devel tree would be a prerelease of 2.2 anyway and the 2.4 is not yet stable.

    ~Jason
  • One of the biggest stumbling blocks to such a thing would be the lack of the Tivo service. The station listings and keyword database. The most impressive feature of the Tivo service is the "record what you might like" scenario, and you would need up to date station listings and a cross referenced database that would know the shows by type.

    The recording and playback of video is not new, and could still be done even without the GPL additions of Phillips. It is the service that is exciting and original. Perhaps some entrepenuer out there will offer the service with some basic hardware options and distribute it as a downloadable prog.

    And to reply to some of the later posts after this, the 2 hard drive solution would not be as practical as a good cacheing scheme. Of course you will want the box SCSI, not IDE, and there should be no problem streaming out and in with video. And yes, compression tech would be a pain to implement. (Gee, you mean we're actually paying Phillips for having a decent product??)

    ~Jason
  • There have been some comments made about the "High Quality" (HQ) vs. "Low Quality" (LQ) recording. the LQ recording is fine for most things, and you do indeed get 14 hours. A few small visual defects, but for watching "Meet the Press" or "Babylon 5" it's fine. HQ is great for recording something you plan to "port" to VCR. You get about 4 hours with this mode. There is also an in-between quality that would be good for movies you don't want to move to VCR, but you still want fairly sharp. This comes in at about 8 hours. The Matrix comes to mind.

    Naturally, double these for the 30 hour version.

    There are still alot of desirable features that are not included in the Tivo, so if you are cautious, I'd wait. They'll have bigger drives to work with in a year, cheaper, and competition will drive them to include more features.

    ~Jason

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