[diamondsw]

Okay, a whole bunch of questions that I'll ask here (and may have been answered). I'm not asking on Tivo.com, as it's likely to be deleted over there.

1. Does Tivo have any intention of fixing the Mac OS X Tivo Desktop installer (as promised in MacWorld)? Tivo Desktop itself works fine (for photos and music only), but the installer has been crashing and "unsupported" since Tiger came out nine months ago. All that is required is to remove "AddFirewallEntry" from the postinstall script. My feelings on Tivo for this lapse are largely unprintable, but suffice to say, you wouldn't want to meet me in person.
2. Does Tivo have any plans on supporting Mac OS X for Intel? As people are probably aware, PowerPC Preference Panes (such as TivoToGo) will not function in Rosetta, the PowerPC translator on Intel. This means we'll need a "universal binary" for Tivo Desktop. This may be as simple as a recompile, but since fixing the installer is as simple as removing one line from a postinstall script, I'm not optimistic.
3. In the same MacWorld article above, iPod Video and PSP support were mentioned for TivoToGo. Since this means non-DRM'ed H.264, what would prevent Mac OS X from using TivoToGo at that point?
4. Any news on rumored version 2.0, especially as it relates to the above points? It seems strange that the screenshots show the video coming over as MPEG2, not as H.264. Given that Mac OS X does not ship with MPEG2 playback but does support H.264, it would seem like a no-brainer to just use H.264 on Mac OS X and leave it at that.

I hope this isn't too inflammatory - I rewrote things a few times already trying to tone it down, but, well - I'm really pissed off.

 

[davezatz]

TiVo reps have stated TTG support for the Mac is being developed with hopefully a mid-2006 release. The new TiVo Desktop software would conceivably have fixed the installer issues. At CES it looked like they were using VLC as the default player, though that could change before it ships. TiVo produces MPEG2 not H.264 video files. As far as the Intel platform, I don't know... I imagine that could slow them down.

 

[Dennis Wilkinson]

Does Tivo have any intention of fixing the Mac OS X Tivo Desktop installer (as promised in MacWorld)? Tivo Desktop itself works fine (for photos and music only), but the installer has been crashing and "unsupported" since Tiger came out nine months ago. All that is required is to remove "AddFirewallEntry" from the postinstall script. My feelings on Tivo for this lapse are largely unprintable, but suffice to say, you wouldn't want to meet me in person.

The installer is not the only issue with the current version of TiVo Desktop for the Mac, so it isn't just a "remove the AddFirewallEntry logic" (or, even better, make it work) situation to fix this. TiVo Desktop mostly works on Tiger, but there are sporadic crashes in the System Preferences pane (that have a command-line workaround), and there appear to be sporadic out-of-memory cases for at least some users when watching slide shows ("broken image" icons displayed instead of slides, replaying the slide shows the real image.)

I'd suspect that their (probably limited) Mac development bandwidth is focused on getting 2.0 out the door, for better or worse.

 

[diamondsw]

The installer is not the only issue with the current version of TiVo Desktop for the Mac, so it isn't just a "remove the AddFirewallEntry logic" (or, even better, make it work) situation to fix this. TiVo Desktop mostly works on Tiger, but there are sporadic crashes in the System Preferences pane (that have a command-line workaround), and there appear to be sporadic out-of-memory cases for at least some users when watching slide shows ("broken image" icons displayed instead of slides, replaying the slide shows the real image.)

My mistake then, I haven't seen any issues here; nor have I seen problem reports elsewhere. Even if there are issues, find another similarly major piece of software that has yet to be updated for Tiger - pretty much everything was updated within the first two months.

I'd suspect that their (probably limited) Mac development bandwidth is focused on getting 2.0 out the door, for better or worse.

It would be nice if Tivo had more honesty and transparency. They've been promising this for over a year now with a date of "soon". Long on promises, very, very short on delivery. In the last year we've lost functionality (Tivo Desktop 1.x) while the Windows side has gained several updates.

 

[diamondsw]

TiVo reps have stated TTG support for the Mac is being developed with hopefully a mid-2006 release. The new TiVo Desktop software would conceivably have fixed the installer issues. As far as the Intel platform, I don't know... I imagine that could slow them down.

What can I say - I don't trust Tivo anymore. They promised TTG "soon". Still hasn't happened. They even reneg'ed on their promise to fix the current Tivo Desktop:

The Macintosh development of the TiVoToGo product isn’t being held up because of that issue, said Denney. In fact, he said that a fix for the TiVo Desktop for Mac software should be released “imminently.”

Two months later, "imminently" hasn't happened.

I'd love to get a Tivo Series3 in the future (as it's the direction I thought they should take - a new hardware platform for the future), but how can I support a company that has shown a complete lack of support for me?

 

[diamondsw]

At CES it looked like they were using VLC as the default player, though that could change before it ships. TiVo produces MPEG2 not H.264 video files.

True, but their iPod Video and PSP plans show they are actively looking at transcoding from their native format (MPEG2) to an unencumbered format those devices can play (H.264). Since DRM won't work in that arena, it's fair to say that the DirectShow-based DRM that blocked TTG on the Mac before is no longer an issue.

As for VLC, I'd imagine there would be licensing and support issues with such a move. I think it's more likely that development system had VLC loaded for the exact reason that Mac OS X doesn't ship with an MPEG2 decoder (outside of DVD playback).

 

[gonzotek]

True, but their iPod Video and PSP plans show they are actively looking at transcoding from their native format (MPEG2) to an unencumbered format those devices can play (H.264). Since DRM won't work in that arena, it's fair to say that the DirectShow-based DRM that blocked TTG on the Mac before is no longer an issue.

No, it wouldn't be fair to say that. The DRM encryption that is applied by the TiVo unit is not, and never has been, dependent on DirectShow or Microsoft technologies(it was developed in-house by Arthur Van Hoff). The DRM decryption code was developed for the Windows platform, using DirectShow technology, to pass the decrypted video data into the Windows video playback chain. That's totally a seperate issue from mpeg2 vs. other video encoding formats. Encrypted or not, the only format the TiVo Series 2 box understands for recording or playback is mpeg2 video. So a Mac solution would still have to first download an mpeg2 file (quite probably with the same DRM still included) then transcode to mp4/h.264/et al, in the same general way a Windows machine would.

Now, it is possible that a future update to the TiVo system software could allow unencrypted file transfers to both PCs and Macs, and those files could(most likely would) be watermarked with personally identifable information (your MAK or a hash of it, probably) rather than the encrypted .tivo files we get today (that even today, a Mac or Unix-based system can download via the web interface).

 

[diamondsw]

No, it wouldn't be fair to say that. The DRM encryption that is applied by the TiVo unit is not, and never has been, dependent on DirectShow or Microsoft technologies(it was developed in-house by Arthur Van Hoff). The DRM decryption code was developed for the Windows platform, using DirectShow technology, to pass the decrypted video data into the Windows video playback chain. That's totally a seperate issue from mpeg2 vs. other video encoding formats. Encrypted or not, the only format the TiVo Series 2 box understands for recording or playback is mpeg2 video. So a Mac solution would still have to first download an mpeg2 file (quite probably with the same DRM still included) then transcode to mp4/h.264/et al, in the same general way a Windows machine would.

Now, it is possible that a future update to the TiVo system software could allow unencrypted file transfers to both PCs and Macs, and those files could(most likely would) be watermarked with personally identifable information (your MAK or a hash of it, probably) rather than the encrypted .tivo files we get today (that even today, a Mac or Unix-based system can download via the web interface).

Thanks for clarifying that - I had completely forgotten that the encryption is applied on the Tivo unit itself, and this clarifies how DirectShow is involved. A real shame they couldn't have simply written a ".tivo" codec that disallowed any exporting, much like the Flip4Mac WMV codecs do (although now I'm moving WAY out of my areas of expertise).

Ultimately, they've said they'll be on the iPod and PSP. Whatever else they do, that means watermarking, not DRM, and that further means such files should play anywhere that has the codecs (which to my knowledge includes Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, etc).

 

[gonzotek]

Ultimately, they've said they'll be on the iPod and PSP. Whatever else they do, that means watermarking, not DRM, and that further means such files should play anywhere that has the codecs (which to my knowledge includes Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, etc).

Agreed. Although (and this is only a minor nitpick) watermarking is a form of DRM (Digital Rights Management), as is encryption. It's a much less draconian form of DRM(and one I personally would prefer), as it gives the user much more flexibility in what they do with the content, but it still provides some protection to the rights-holder, since if the file shows up on a sharing network, it should be possible to track down the person(or at least the account the file was attached to) who allowed it to be released into the wild.

 

[diamondsw]

Agreed. Although (and this is only a minor nitpick) watermarking is a form of DRM (Digital Rights Management), as is encryption. It's a much less draconian form of DRM(and one I personally would prefer), as it gives the user much more flexibility in what they do with the content, but it still provides some protection to the rights-holder, since if the file shows up on a sharing network, it should be possible to track down the person(or at least the account the file was attached to) who allowed it to be released into the wild.

True - it's the best form, as far as I'm concerned. I don't mind limiting piracy, as long as I have the freedom to use content however I want on my own equipment. Hopefully we'll move past all of this encrypted content BS after a while. You know, sort of like how copy protection died out in favor of serial numbers.

 

[LtKernelPanic]

I too wish Tivo would at least update 1.9.x to at least work on Tiger. It used to work just fine on my G5 now it refuses to show up in the Tivo's list of media server while my iBook shows up fine. That annoys me to no end.

 

[rog]

Guess what kids?

TiVoDesktop for Mac OS X (10.4 Tiger) is finally out:

http://www.tivo.com/4.9.4.1.asp

TiVoDesktop version 1.9.2 adds official support for Tiger and apparently includes some stability enhancements. It does *not* offer TiVoToGo functionality at this time, but it's a start.

A bit overdue, I'd say, but still great news!