PVRblog

Potential new TiVo UI

The Infinite Abyss blog has some pretty amazing screenshots and video of a potential new TiVo interface with plenty of details about each. If this is true, it's certainly breaking loads of nondisclosure agreements that testers must abide, if false it's still a pretty interesting and convincing new direction that TiVo could someday take.

I love the preview of each top level menu's options (seems like a time-saver when you're hunting for a specific function) and aside from the standard TiVo screens it looks a lot like the functionality on AppleTV where buying and renting video is first and foremost. I like the idea of owner profiles (mom, dad, kids get different shows/options) and hope that becomes a reality someday. The overall visual design of it reminds me of Windows Media Center and I can't say I like the large images across the top -- they take up 1/3 of the screen without conveying any information. [thanks davezatz for the pointer]

HD TiVo coming (back) to DirecTV

Dave Zatz has a post reporting what many DirecTV users have been wanting for years now: a (New) HD TiVo is coming to DirecTV!

This is great, great news. I was a former DirecTV customer that left for Comcast back in 2005 when their HD offerings were slim and the HD DirecTiVo was already being phased out. I've heard nothing but horror stories about DirecTV's replacement HD DVR (the one made by NDS) and several friends and family members have jumped ship to cable (either Comcast or FiOS) to get a deeper HD channel lineup that works with a real TiVo.

For the friends and family that don't have a cable option (those in rural locations), they'll definitely be happy to hear a new HD DirecTiVo may be out by early next year. This looks like good news for both DirecTV and TiVo, and though it may poach a few sales of TiVoHD units (and people leaving satellite for cable), I bet the licensing fees TiVo will charge DirecTV will make up for it.

I still get asked via email several times a week if it's possible to get a new Series 3 or TiVoHD to work on their satellite system, and now I can finally tell them to just wait for the new units to roll out.

The Daily Show and their TiVos

How does The Daily Show compile all their amazing clips of politicians saying one thing one day, and the opposite thing several months before? From a long New York Times profile of Jon Stewart and his operation of the show:

The day begins with a morning meeting where material harvested from 15 TiVos and even more newspapers, magazines and Web sites is reviewed.

Crazy, huh? I suppose that's what it takes to record every 24hr news network around the clock, every day of the year. I wonder if they could reduce some of those by going to dual tuner TiVoHD models and dropping terabyte drives into them? I'm also curious if they store archival video footage onto file servers, or if they're only tracking the past 24hrs of the news cycle each day.

TiVo auto-delete flag seen in the wilds again

Back in 2005, there were reports that a few recorded shows on TiVos were auto-deleting themselves due to a "copyright flag glitch" that TiVo said was a mistake and was rectified. A reader of this blog named Jeff sent in screenshots and a report of the same behavior popping up around a Star Trek episode. Here's his email and screenshots below:

I just got home from a day of running errands and turned on my TiVo in order to watch a favorite Star Trek episode (The Galileo Seven) that I had recorded earlier today at 1:00 PM.

When I looked at list of shows I had recorded I was surprised to see a flashing red flag next to the program with the following informational text: "Due to policy set by the copyright holder, this recording: Can only be kept until today at 3:26 PM. Cannot be transferred to VCR, DVD, or any other media device. To learn more, visit www.tivo.com/copyprotection"

Umm, that's a whopping < 3 1/2 hours in which to view the program -- how generous! Oh, and the link that they suggest you visit that explains the issue returns a "Page not found" error. Spiffy!

I thought that this had happened before and was deemed by TiVo to be a "mistake." Looks like the "mistake" is back!  I'm not sure if any other folks out there have seen the same thing.

Screenshots below the fold:

How To Watch The Beijing Olympics Online

As the start of the Olympics draws near this list of tips on how to watch the Olympics online at Silicon Alley Insider should come in handy.

Last night my wife and I spent about an hour scouring the next two weeks of listings, setting up every recording we could find for our favorite sports (me: road, track, mt bike, and bmx cycling events, her: swimming and soccer). I noticed that even with an upgraded 750Gb drive in my TiVo, recording dozens of 3-to-8 hour blocks of HD programming is going to max out our TiVo if we don't stay on top of it and watch/delete every couple days during the next two weeks.

Having the chance to see things live online will be a nice addition to that as well, in the cases where events we like are tape delayed until primetime.

New Dell PCs look like an old concept, but still cool

Over three years ago, I blogged about some really cool looking home theater PCs. I thought they looked terrific (still do) and they were a refreshing approach to something that might sit in your living room.

Looks like Dell is producing a very similar design with bamboo wrapped cases. They pack HTPC features like blu-ray drives and TV tuners and have pretty good prices. If these were cablecard compatible, I'd actually consider getting one.

BoingBoing Gadgets has all the details on them.

TiVo Summer Update (9.4) rolling out

Dave Zatz has the info on the new updates to TiVo HD and Series 3 software. The new features are summed up as:

• Play or Delete a Folder, all shows in a folder
• Browse the Guide Any Time, even during playback/downloads
• Jump Forward in the Guide 24hrs with a single click
• Find a Station in the Guide using the call letters (MSNBC, CNN)
• Toggle Closed Captioning On and Off with a single click
• Review Thumb Ratings

From the sounds of the new features, this sounds like the efforts of the latest TiVo beta are going live to customers over the next few weeks. A friend had been in on the beta and mentioned a couple of these new features to me and they all look like nice improvements on the experience.

I especially like the station call letter search because I recently changed cable providers and can never remember the station number and making closed captioning turn on/off easier is great. About once a week I'll be watching something and I can't understand what someone is saying on screen, so I'll turn on captioning for a minute to see it typed out, but often it takes longer to enable them and disable them than I even need the feature turned on.

The history of the TiVo Remote

Gizmodo has an awesome and exhaustive history of the TiVo remote including lots of prototypes and molds and reasoning for why things turned out the way they did.

After 8 years of using it, the TiVo peanut remote is still one of my favorite things about TiVo, and one of the best examples of well-designed hardware interface.

TBS ups the ante on annoying commerical insertion

My friend Jason caught TBS going to extraordinary lengths to get people to view an ad about an upcoming show by having an overlay character "walk on" and "pause" the current running show to plug their own show, then the original show was resumed, but right before a real commercial, producing an incredibly annoying result.

It shouldn't be surprising to hear this was the work of Turner Broadcasting, the same company that once proclaimed anyone getting up to use the bathroom during commerical breaks was stealing TV.

With the advent of DVR devices, networks began an arms race to get around commercial skipping: first came product placement, then the overlay ads, and now I'm seeing commercials that seem purposely slowed down so they appear readable during fast forwarding. Turner's latest trick is easily the worst of the lot -- you can't simply skip or fast forward the short ad break and instead have to endure it as the show hangs until it is over.

It's a race to the bottom to see how much you can annoy viewers with ads before they'll give up and look elsewhere for entertainment -- I hope this latest attempt by Turner isn't long for this world.

Netflix Player by Roku

The long rumored set-top box for Netflix movies has finally arrived: Roku's Netflix Player. At $99 it doesn't look like too bad of a deal and along with a $17.99 Netflix account, it'll allow you to watch an unlimited number of movies and tv shows instantly through the device. Of course, the selection at Netflix for instant streaming isn't their complete library, but it's a decent chunk of my personal queue there. I'm curious about the picture quality and speed to get movies streaming from the time you select them for viewing, hopefully they struck a good balance between picture quality and filesize. As a Netflix customer myself, I've gone ahead and ordered one and will post some screenshots and impressions on the video quality once it arrives. [via uncrate]