PVRblog

TiVo for DirecTV finally (sort of) launches!

After hinting at rekindling the DirecTV-TiVo relationship for the last 5+ years, there is finally a new DirecTiVo out. It is only available in large cities at the moment (Chicago, Denver, LA, NYC, Philly, Phoenix, Sacramento, SF, Seattle, DC) but it's definitely good news to anyone that has ever used the older models in the early 2000s. I myself thoroughly enjoyed the DirecTiVo I had from 2002-2005, and I only gave it up when there wasn't a viable HD option for DirecTV.

There isn't a ton of specs available yet, but if this was available where I live, I would seriously consider moving to it, especially as my own fiber optic cable provider has strongly hinted that they are canceling TV service in the next year or so. Here's hoping they spread it to more markets soon.

Mark Suster on the Future of TV

Mark Suster is an investor in new net-based TV startups and in this 10 minute talk he breaks down ten reasons why Internet TV is ready to disrupt the industry. His full list of points and explanations is available on his blog, and in a presentation format.

It's a great bunch of ideas that take note of the weird transition period we are currently in. When I was giving away my old TiVo, I had trouble finding any close friends with a HD cable package that could even use the device. Almost everyone I know is either cutting cable completely for internet video, or cutting way back on their cable plans to the absolute bare minimums. My friends tend to be technology canaries in the coal mine, but the writing is on the wall, and in the next few years we'll definitely see a mainstream switch to online video (and cancelations of cable TV plans).

Boxee announces Live TV attachment

Boxee, the creators of the beloved Boxee Box announced an interesting new product: Live TV, a $100 attachment that can connect HD over the air TV antennas and unencrypted cable to your Boxee Box. In their blog post they include a FAQ with all the common questions answered.

This is a fascinating product, clearly aimed at helping people cut the cord on their cable bill, while letting them not miss live TV events that relying on downloaded/streaming content lacks. This is clearly a stopgap measure for the weird time we live in right now where you either have to pay $100+ dollars each month for 500+ channels or you skip it entirely and just download/stream what you like and miss out on major news, sports, and events on the main networks. (via Uncrate)

New release of GoogleTV is out: now with apps

via www.flickr.com

GoogleTV owners (all 6 of you!), the long-awaited update to GoogleTV was finally released this week, and my Sony player picked it up on Thursday.

One of the big features is an app store, though the entire store on day one is only a couple dozen random apps. It's a cart-and-horse problem, but now that it's out there, it will be interesting to see what types of apps are created and released specifically for the GoogleTV in the future.

No live TV streams: Here’s why?

Over the years, there have been fierce bat­tle between the con­tent play­ers and con­tent car­ri­ers over such fees, lead­ing, for exam­ple, to TV sta­tions not being avail­able on cer­tain cable chan­nels as pres­sur­ing tac­tics dur­ing nego­ti­a­tions. Part of the rea­son is that some of the con­tent play­ers are now also owned by con­tent car­ri­ers, lead­ing to sit­u­a­tions where large con­glom­er­ates that own both car­ri­ers and cre­ators look to get an advan­tage by forc­ing higher trans­mis­sion fees on their competitors.

via www.tnl.net

A good essay on some reasons why streaming live TV isn't even offered these days, and why it may be a long time coming.

My (lukewarm) Sony Blu-ray GoogleTV review

Early this year, I decided to ditch my PS3 for Blu-ray playback and when picking out a replacement I figured I might as well test out the GoogleTV enabled Sony model.

It showed up in some nice packaging and the box itself is oddly clean. The same can't be said about the remote control, which is so complex looking at first sight that I literally laughed out loud when I saw it. Turns out there are even worse controllers, the Logitech GoogleTV controller looks even more complicated and less like a remote control but at least the Sony remote has a nice feel in the hands (it is basically a Playstation controller with many more buttons) and the principal interaction is a nice thumb-powered mouse controller.

I'll start with the highlights first: GoogleTV is the best (and almost only) way to watch any random Flash video you find on the web on your TV. I watch a lot of online feeds of European bike racing, and often it's someone's stream of local Belgium TV feeding to a Flash widget on a website, and GoogleTV can load those pages, play those videos and I can run them full-screen to minimize the web browser-ness of the whole thing.

My (glowing) Boxee Box by D-Link review

A couple years ago, I started playing with the early Boxee betas available for PCs and eventually on a hacked AppleTV. I followed the development of the software for months, running the latest betas and having to reinstall it whenever Apple released new patches for the unit rendering my hacks inoperable.

Eventually I grew weary of the choppy network streaming and the inability to play video with higher resolutions than 480p. I considered the Boxee box when it was first released but found my previous experience with the beta software on other devices so rocky that I avoided it until a friend boasted about how great it was.

He said things like you'll be able to play 720p and 1080p video without issues. You can watch video streaming from YouTube, Vimeo, and almost anywhere you've marked with the "Watch Later" bookmarklet on your computer. I decided to pick one up and it quickly became my favorite go-to device to play internet video.

My Home Theater Upgrade Bonanza

It all started innocently enough -- I'd gotten a new xbox360/kinect unit as a xmas gift but I was out of HDMI ports on my 5 year old A/V unit (it had the most HDMI ports you could get at the time: 2). After switching HDMI cables with other devices I realized I needed a new more capable home theater A/V unit. I punched up Denon's US site and found a similarly priced (about $700) and named model as my last unit now boasted 6 HDMI input slots. I was in HDMI port heaven.

It was at that moment that I decided to upgrade everything in my A/V cabinet, with an eye towards the latest and greatest. My goals were simple: I wanted to be able to play any video from any source I could possibly want on my TV. Funny YouTube clip I found on my desktop? British broadcast-only TV show not destined for the US shores for another year? Flip video from my daughter's ballet recital? Show off a movie I just shot on my iPhone?

From the new A/V unit, I fired up Amazon.com and ordered up a slew of devices. The final tally is below and the absolute mess of seven remote controls shown above is what controls it all. I'll post in-depth reviews of each device over the next week.

Marco and Rafe on the future of TV, decline of cable & TiVo

It was an odd coincidence this morning to see two people with personal blogs I follow both talk about TV and the possible future ahead. 

Marco mentions how he and his wife no longer have cable or watch live TV -- it's all on demand, Netflix or AppleTV stuff and he goes on to describe how in the new Steve Jobs book there is a passage about possibly reinventing TV in the same way Apple tackled music players, cellphones, and tablet computing.

Rafe talks about the decline of TiVo and how it really needed to be included as software for cable companies in order to succeed and how their future looks grim as young people move away from TV towards more internet streaming.

Rafe's point about people moving away from broadcast cable TV reminded me of how last week when I upgraded my TiVo to the latest Elite version, I thought of my circle of friends when thinking who could have my TiVo Premiere with lifetime service I bought a couple years ago. I literally had to go about ten people down before I found someone willing to take it, and even they didn't have a full cable package and mostly wanted to record OTA signals. My circle of friends includes a lot of early adopter geek types, but if they are the canary in the coal mine for cable companies and TiVo, know that they are moving in droves to downloaded content instead.

Why is TV gear so proprietary and weird, and how can it get better? (guest post)

Ed note: What follows is written by John Bergmayer of Public Knowledge, the non-profit group that "preserves the openness of the Internet and the public's access to knowledge, promotes creativity through balanced copyright, and upholds and protects the rights of consumers to use innovative technology lawfully."

I've linked to Public Knowledge in the past when issues around CableCARDs and Internet access have come up. They do great work and when John contacted me to say that the cable companies are trying to kill the latest initiative to broaden consumer choice (a new CableCARD-like technology called AllVid) I asked him to write something up.

Last week I wasted an hour with a cable company rep trying to move my CableCARD from one TiVo to a new one and like all the other times, it required a scheduled visit from someone that had never worked with a CableCARD before (I've probably seen 6 or 7 techs in the past five years and I'm always the only customer they've met using CableCARDs). It took a couple calls from the tech to the corporate headquarters to re-authorize the card and in the end the tech said I would miss all the on-demand stuff anyway. Oh well.

 

Why is TV gear so proprietary and weird, and how can it get better?

You can use any computer with any ISP: you don't have PC-only or Mac-only Internet providers, and people don't expect to rent their computers from Comcast or Verizon. Because of the subsidy model, mobile phones are more complicated, but there are global standards for mobile phone networks, and if you get an unlocked phone you can use it with any compatible carrier.

But pay TV didn't work out that way. Different MVPDs (multi-channel video distributors, the term that encompasses cable and satellite as well as newer telco-provided services like FiOS TV and AT&T's U-Verse) each use different technologies, and with minor exceptions which we'll get to, as a result you basically have to rent set-top boxes and other equipment from your MVPD.