TiVo, say it isn't so!

It's quite sad. Then you read articles like this one from http://www.tvpredictions.com/tivo030211.htm

 

well, at least they have some kind of job security at tivo.



https://twitter.com/#!/AeroR1/status/52765393181347840

 

That's true about the retail presence. When my Series 1 started crashing on the data downloads I went back to the store where I bought it and they told me they didn't carry DVRs. Instead they referred me to the cable or satellite provider for those. When I mentioned buying my old TiVo there he agreed and remembered that "those were cool back in the day". As I wandered around, I did find two TiVos in boxes, eight feet up in the overstock area with no sign/price on them. None where on display.

Later I went to Best Buy and got the same story about how they don't sell DVRs because they come from the satellite or cable company. When I mentioned TiVo, he said: We do have those! (Odd that "DVR" didn't include TiVo in his vocabulary). So he walked me over to an isolated spot where there was a TiVo on display and two boxes under it. He said it was basically the same old TiVo I bought in 2000 - "They haven't really changed anything about it." I got the impression that he thought that only old TiVo owners buy new TiVos so not changing was good.

 

The truck roll to set up the cable cards must be a big factor. It's less hassle to get a cable company DVR. This is the major difference introduced to use a Tivo with cable.

 

yep, the way cable card was handled by the FCC made standalone HD DVRs pretty much something only the foolish or the tech brave would get into.

 

And those losses are mostly related to DirecTV subscribers with TiVo. I would have been one of them in if they had not come out with the Series 3. So I was able to dump DirecTV since they were not going to have a TiVo for their MPEG4 HD content. And went to Comcast and then to FiOS.

 

Any good reason why provisioning a cable card should be any more daunting than provisioning a customer-owned cable modem? With a cable modem, I plug it in, enter my account info within the walled garden, and it works.

With a cablecard there's more involved but industry could make pairing as simple to the customer as authorizing a cable modem, except that there's absolutely no incentive to do so.

 

That's where the Cable providers screwed things up (not that they had reason not to). FiOS cable cards work very well because that's basically all they do and you just slap them in the TiVos. With TWC, at least, they have to no only authorize them but they also pair it to the particular slot in the TiVo so it's fraught with errors. And don't get me started on the CCI byte crap they pulled.

 

-The FCC could have retained control
-sent it to a normal standards body
-not allow a separate charge for the cable card unless they did the exact same separate charge for cable box with cable card (see cable modem reference - no one pays a sep. charge for the cable modem anymore)
-make the cable card install follow the same process as a cable box

number one with a bullet though -- only allow cablelabs to do hardware certification and keep the cable company out of the TiVo software.
Let the content owners worry about the CCI flags and copy of shows or not.
make it illegal for broadcasters to turn on the CCI flag but simply pass through what content owners hand them for CCI
FCC makes TiVo comply with CCI flags as set by content owners


oh and take less than 11 years to do the above

 

They could have allowed the S3/HD to control one or more set top boxes and to allow mapping of QAM channels.

 

You mean they could have controlled one SD box. Hardware was pretty expensive to record HD over compenent a few years ago. I've recorded HD over component this year, and it still loses a fair amount of quality.

They could add QAM mapping. And I would love to see all the people complaining when the QAM map changes, and TiVo records the incorrect channel/program.

 

Some of my thoughts, from a sister thread, if anybody feels like reading it:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=8452938#post8452938

 

I believe for the most part, that bug fixes (those that don't affect functionality) are extinct for the older S2 Tivos. TiVo has that platform pretty stable (from what I can tell) and I don't think they'll be adding any more features that would make the software unstable.
Series 3 models still seem to be addressed when a problem arises, but they usually have to affect functionality for TiVo to do something about them.

Right now, I hope TiVo is focusing on finishing the Premiere.
My S2ST and TivoHD are working fine right now so all the effort needs to be on the Premiere.

 

Yes, many government agencies have been gutted over the last couple of decades. These days many people do what they want and laugh at the idea that any government agency has the staff to keep up with them. Then again, even if the FCC was better staffed, I'm not sure making the cable world safe for TiVo would have been high on their agenda. It's just a small money-loosing niche company from their point of view.

 

TiVo should have marketed direct to cable companies. Dealing directly with the public hamstrung their growth.

For example, I used to use the Tivo 1 and Tivo 2 and then moved to a cable company DVR. I now use the Motorola 1225 DVR which supports two other Motorola 1200 STB's. All the units can record and play from the single 1225.

However, all this is via ATT Uverse. I believe Tivo was going to supply Comcast with DVR's but haven't heard much of it's progress.

By dealing almost exclusively direct with the consumer Tivo missed it's market.

By the way, Tivo used to work with an IR blaster wire over the Cable STB 10 years ago. Now Sony has released their NSX40GT1 HD TV which has internet access via Google Chrome and uses IR blaster to control the Motorola 1225 DVR and my Sony Blue Ray player. IR blasters are back in style once more.

 

Yes, except:
- before separable encryption (CableCard), there's very little chance an MSO would ever consider a technology company without an end-to-end infrastructure solution
- after separable encryption, the MSOs had already gotten very comfortably in bed with one of the companies that had an end-to-end infrastructure solution, and so it was at that point an uphill battle to get them to even consider a third party provider.

It also doesn't help that TiVo has... well, a very TiVo interface. The MSOs are big into branding their particular interface to make it distinctly Time Warner, Comcast, etc. The two don't mix very well.