Breakthrough TiVo Innovation Allows Customers to Easily Download Internet Video

[BlackBetty]

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080107/aqm172.html?.v=20
TiVo Applies Highly Valued Season Pass Functionality to Web Video
Further Demonstrates TiVo's Commitment to Providing a One-Box, One-Stop Destination for all Entertainment and Content Needs


ALVISO, Calif., Jan. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- TiVo (Nasdaq: TIVO - News), the creator of and the leading innovator in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs) today announced TiVo subscribers will soon be able to easily watch an enormous variety of video content from the web directly on their television sets by applying TiVo's popular Season Pass functionality to web video. With the proliferation of content available online today, consumers have access to thousands of hours of content from well-known networks to special interest videos, but need an easy way to search, discover, and enjoy this entertainment on the TV set.


TiVo users can subscribe to and watch a broad range of content available on Real Simple Syndication ("RSS") feeds, including everything from network nightly newscasts, to vignettes and original content from major networks such as Comedy Central or Discovery, as well as niche interest and hobbyist videos covering areas far more specialized than cable and satellite channels, not to mention new, independently produced media content such as DiggNation and Ask A Ninja. Through this new approach, TiVo elevates web video, making it easily available as part of the personalized and customized TV viewing experience that TiVo provides.

"By adding the Season Pass functionality to web video viewing, we are providing consumers a new way to easily and automatically access the content they want to watch on their television sets," said Tom Rogers, President and CEO of TiVo. "TiVo is building toward the dream of providing one stop for all content, through one box, integrated into one interface, accessible through one simple remote control. With TiVo providing this web video feature, along with 20,000 Amazon titles, millions of songs, thousands of music videos, and an enormous collection of photos, we have already gone a long way toward building out the dream."

In delivering web video automatically, it will appear in the user's Now Playing List alongside recorded TV shows. In addition, TiVo will provide an on-screen guide of select web video sources for users to browse and select Season Pass recordings. Consumers can even get a Season Pass recording of their own personal video folders on their PC, where they save their home movies and other video downloads. And High Definition Television enthusiasts will appreciate that TiVo will preserve the original quality of high-resolution web videos when delivered to TiVo Series3 or TiVo HD DVRs.

The new web video capability requires TiVo Desktop Plus 2.6, an update to the Windows application which also converts recorded TV shows for viewing on portable devices like iPod and Sony PlayStation Portable. TiVo Desktop Plus 2.6 will be available in March for a one-time fee of $24.95, and will be a free upgrade to earlier versions.

"With our innovative and robust broadband offerings, TiVo already provides more content than any other TV service that exists today," said Tara Maitra, Vice President of Content Services at TiVo. "Now that TiVo has made retrieving web content easier than ever by integrating it with the popular Season Pass technology, consumers can enjoy great web video as if it's a whole new set of TV program options. And, if the writers' strike goes on, these options on the TV set may become more important to many viewers even more quickly."

TiVo boxes are available at leading consumer electronic retailers including Best Buy and Circuit City. See http://www.TiVo.com for details.

[nrc]

Beat me by three minutes. Excellent.

[jlb]

Nice.

[ZeoTiVo]

[dylanemcgregor]

As someone who doesn't have any broadcast television I'm very interested in this. It will be exciting to see what is available.

[rainwater]

If it doesn't require TiVo Desktop at all, then it would be a real feature I could get excited about. Unless we are talking about a rewritten TiVo Desktop, adding more features that make the app even more buggy than now isn't that appealing.

[c293716]

Not trying to be a doubting thomas, but how is this different than the video podcast stuff you can already download and "season pass"?

[rainwater]

Originally Posted by c293716

Not trying to be a doubting thomas, but how is this different than the video podcast stuff you can already download and "season pass"?

It appears it just makes sharing "easier" from TiVo Desktop. Right now, you can't subscribe to video podcasts from a TiVo except a select few that TiVo has in it's TiVoCasts that are encoded in a special TiVo format. This new "feature" of TiVo Desktop appears to just make sharing easier and it uses the transcode feature to TD+ to convert video podcasts to mpeg-2.

[dylanemcgregor]

Originally Posted by c293716

Not trying to be a doubting thomas, but how is this different than the video podcast stuff you can already download and "season pass"?

My quick read is that you will set up a SP in TiVo Desktop on your computer for any sort of internet video download content that uses RSS. TiVo Desktop will then automatically download as soon as new content is available, transcode, and then transfer to the TiVo.

I'd prefer a solution that didn't involve having to use the computer, as I don't like to leave mine on all the time. But I think the current problem with TiVoCasts (the video podcast stuff) is that it needs to be downloaded direct to the TiVo in MPEG2, since the TiVo doesn't have the power to transcode by itself. So in order to get content TiVo has to negotiate individual deals with each provider and have the content converted into the right format somewhere upstream. This of course limits what content is available to watch on the TiVo and makes it kind of a walled garden...this new approach should help to open it up a bit.

Now if they could figure out a way for this to work easily with streaming content that places like Netflix and Hula are offering I'd be in heaven.

[ilh]

I don't think they know what "One-Box" means. PC + TiVo = 2.

[dylanemcgregor]

Originally Posted by ilh

I don't think they know what "One-Box" means. PC + TiVo = 2.

They did say they are "building toward the dream of..."

[ZeoTiVo]

Originally Posted by dylanemcgregor

I think the current problem with TiVoCasts (the video podcast stuff) is that it needs to be downloaded direct to the TiVo in MPEG2, since the TiVo doesn't have the power to transcode by itself. So in order to get content TiVo has to negotiate individual deals with each provider and have the content converted into the right format somewhere upstream. This of course limits what content is available to watch on the TiVo and makes it kind of a walled garden...this new approach should help to open it up a bit.

Now if they could figure out a way for this to work easily with streaming content that places like Netflix and Hula are offering I'd be in heaven.

way more than a bit They have the all on Tivo now in TiVocasts and not everyone on the internent is going to make a TiVocast compatible format.

It will be fun to see if we can use this to add in our own movie archives and even .tivo files we save to PC and present them back to the TiVo in a folder type manner. to me the big lack in Dekstop and ToComeBack is the fact that everything is in one big list and a pain to wade through if you archived a bunch of stuff.

[rainwater]

Originally Posted by ZeoTiVo

not everyone on the internent is going to make a TiVocast compatible format.

Mainly because TiVo will not let everyone do it. It's a shame that couldn't open up their system to at least allow content providers to provide TiVo specific rss feeds.

[dylanemcgregor]

So anyone have examples of some good content that might be available this way? I know that most of the major broadcasters have at least some of there shows online. Do you think I'd be able to use TiVo Desktop for any of this, or is this all streaming content?

Just wondering if there is much professional video content out there available? Most of the free content available via TiVoCast so far has left me cold, and I haven't really explored what is available online since I don't like to watch video on my laptop.

[RoyK]

Yawn. I just wish they would fix the outstanding bugs they have now.

[morac]

Unless they can fix the performance problems and memory leaks in TiVo Desktop by the time 2.6 is released this won't be very helpful since you'll need to periodically restart all the TiVo executables on the PC.

On the positive side, folders are a much needed feature. Being able to transcode practically any video source (which can now be done using pyTiVo and Tivo.net BTW) is also a plus. Oh and HD on my S3 will be nice, but if it still needs to be in MPEG-2 format, it will still take a very long time to transfer.

[dylanemcgregor]

Originally Posted by morac

On the positive side, folders are a much needed feature. Being able to transcode practically any video source (which can now be done using pyTiVo and Tivo.net BTW) is also a plus. Oh and HD on my S3 will be nice, but if it still needs to be in MPEG-2 format, it will still take a very long time to transfer.

I haven't really looked into pyTiVo and TiVo.net much, but can they auto-download content as well using RSS? It seems the automatic nature of just having new content show up on your TiVo with little to no human interaction is the real selling point of this. Of course it probably won't work quite as well as I'm imagining...

[d_anders]

Originally Posted by rainwater

It's a shame that couldn't open up their system to at least allow content providers to provide TiVo specific rss feeds.

I agree, but even for the folks that are contributing TiVoCasts have to do special work to encode their shows just for TiVo...and some of them have issues keeping up with the cadence of their normal web delivery....this next version of TiVo Desktop 2.6+ should just be a stop-gap to a new revision of hardware.

The next series of TiVo...Series 4, should eliminate this need an provide a means of accepting (and have additional in-box transcoding, if necessary).

If they could swing this on the TiVo HD/Series 3 models then great, otherwise they'd be fools not to consider eliminating the need for a PC with the next TiVo Series.

[rainwater]

Originally Posted by d_anders

I agree, but even for the folks that are contributing TiVoCasts have to do special work to encode their shows just for TiVo...and some of them have issues keeping up with the cadence of their normal web delivery

Yes, that is because they require them to attach special encoding/drm. All S2 and S3 TiVos can view mpeg-2 content which would not be hard for most content providers to provide if TiVo would just open up their system.

This solution they announced today will only appeal to a small group of people since it requires a much more complicated setup.

[ZeoTiVo]

Originally Posted by morac

Unless they can fix the performance problems and memory leaks in TiVo Desktop by the time 2.6 is released this won't be very helpful since you'll need to periodically restart all the TiVo executables on the PC.

On the positive side, folders are a much needed feature. Being able to transcode practically any video source (which can now be done using pyTiVo and Tivo.net BTW) is also a plus. Oh and HD on my S3 will be nice, but if it still needs to be in MPEG-2 format, it will still take a very long time to transfer.

I did some more reading on Zatznotfunny
http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2008-01/...op-26-details/

and actually this is designed for a PC that you might not leave on all the time.

TiVo Desktop 2.6 allows you to monitor a folder of video - which is automagically transcoded and transferred to a networked TiVo. What’s new is the whole element of automation… Here’s one of example of how you might put this to use: Subscribe to various video podcasts via iTunes, have TiVo Desktop monitor that folder, and specify the number of videos (of each podcast) the TiVo should store (as shown above). Once that setup is complete, whenever your PC is powered up new videos are automatically transcoded and transfered - meaning, video content resides on the TiVo and doesn’t require the PC stay powered on for television playback.

[ZeoTiVo]

Originally Posted by rainwater

Yes, that is because they require them to attach special encoding/drm. All S2 and S3 TiVos can view mpeg-2 content which would not be hard for most content providers to provide if TiVo would just open up their system.

This solution they announced today will only appeal to a small group of people since it requires a much more complicated setup.

I am not aware of special DRM requirements for the casters. It is the audio that needed redoing to match up TiVo playback correctly and required the extra step to be used as a TiVocast.

So the PC idea is a way to use the PC horsepower to do the same thing for now until some way to do it on the DVR might be provided. problem as always there is that such a thing adds cost to the DVR which TiVo has a hard time passing along. The age old stroy of the needed hardware has to become dirt cheap and easy to implement in software to be viable in a commercially sold TiVo DVR.

[rainwater]

Originally Posted by ZeoTiVo

So the PC idea is a way to use the PC horsepower to do the same thing for now until some way to do it on the DVR might be provided. problem as always there is that such a thing adds cost to the DVR which TiVo has a hard time passing along. The age old stroy of the needed hardware has to become dirt cheap and easy to implement in software to be viable in a commercially sold TiVo DVR.

The problem is we aren't talking about sync'ing. To use the current TiVo Desktop software in the way they want you to, requires you have the PC running 24/7 and always logged into to the user sharing the video. This isn't going to appeal to many TiVo users (I would imagine the percentage of users who even have TD installed is small compared to the overall user base).

[JohnBrowning]

Can I be first?

Where's the Mac version???

[tgmii]

I was hoping this was all from the tivo. A rss reader on the tivo would have been better to capture the feeds.

I'll continue what I'm doing now... which is running pyTivo, pointing to the Miro output directory. Works great! All my desktops run Linux, and Tivo Desktop doesn't work on wine/crossover.

Tom

[ZeoTiVo]

Originally Posted by rainwater

The problem is we aren't talking about sync'ing. To use the current TiVo Desktop software in the way they want you to,

2.6 is not the current software but has a new way that does sync via a season pass type operation when the PC is on to load the requested files to the TiVo.

read
http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2008-01/...op-26-details/

[windracer]

So does this require an update to the HME libraries to be able to "push" content to the TiVo instead of having to initiate a "pull" request?

If so, that same functionality should be able to be added to third-party apps like pyTiVo (for those of us that prefer Linux for our video servers).

[ZeoTiVo]

Originally Posted by windracer

So does this require an update to the HME libraries to be able to "push" content to the TiVo instead of having to initiate a "pull" request?

If so, that same functionality should be able to be added to third-party apps like pyTiVo (for those of us that prefer Linux for our video servers).

Good questions. if TiVo adds it to the public API of HME then they are good to go, otherwise someone will have to reverse engineer the process and figure out the handshake that allows a "push"

[rainwater]

Originally Posted by ZeoTiVo

Good questions. if TiVo adds it to the public API of HME then they are good to go, otherwise someone will have to reverse engineer the process and figure out the handshake that allows a "push"

TiVo is no longer updating the public api for HME. If they aren't publishing the current version, then its doubtful they will be publishing any future changes.

[windracer]

Ah, true ... the code to allow it could already be in the current implementation. Otherwise that would require a software update on the TiVo-side, right?

Looking forward to this ...

[ZeoTiVo]

Originally Posted by rainwater

TiVo is no longer updating the public api for HME. If they aren't publishing the current version, then its doubtful they will be publishing any future changes.

TiVo has not updated the public API in quite some time. That does not mean they never will update it, just that it became a very low Java priority for TiVo given Comcast and the OCAP java implementation. I have no idea what the priority list looks like these days though, but they obviously have been updating their own private APIs.