Add Slingbox functionality to TiVo

[pseamans]

I am thinking of buying a Slingbox to allow me to view programing on my TiVo when I'm out of home or in a different room. While it appears Slingbox is a good solution the question arises; Could my TiVo do this for content on the TiVo? It has a high speed internet connection, has the original content, effectively knows my public IP address. Basically it appears to have the necessary components to stream the content but is the hardware capable of transcoding as necessary to send over an internet connection? Surely I'm not the only one to imagine this functionality.

[petew]

Tivo has a feature called Multi Room Viewing that allows shows to be copied between Tivo's on the same account and physically on the same LAN. So the the technology is there, the issue is copyright infrigement. ReplayTV added a feature which allowed shows to be shared over the internet and got sued, which ultimately led to them going under. Slingbox is a little different since it is place shifting but not time shifting. The broadcast is retransmitted but not recorded.

[megazone]

Actually the technology is not there today. All TiVo can do today is transfer recordings as is - the fullsize MPEG-2 files. They're very unsuitable for placeshifting like the Slingbox. The Slingbox, and the associated viewing software, do a lot of work. The video is transcoded on the fly to the optimum resolution and bitrate for the viewing device and the connection. You really need a dedicated encoder to do that work - and you want it to support formats better suited to mobile, like MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 and/or VC-1/WMV9.

TiVo and Slingbox could work together to produce a more effective solution - put code in the TiVo to support a Slingbox as a USB device, that kind of thing, but that's about it. I don't see putting the extra HW into every TiVo, because a small percentage of the users want it and it'd raise the cost of all the boxes.

[cmc850]

With a networked S2 and Tivo Desktop, try DVRAnywhere, an add-in for Orb....just google it. Software on the PC gives you full functionality....you can stream recorded shows that have been transferred via TivoToGo.