I’m a bit of a Woot.com fanatic, and I was surprised to see the TivoHD for $179.99 inlcuding 90 days free service. As with all woot.com purchases, you can order up to 3 of them all for $5 in shipping and handling. It’s a “one deal a day” type site (although they tend to offer some deals over and over again in certain circumstances), so it won’t be here tomorrow (today is 3/5/08).
I love my TivoHD so I’d highly recommend it.
I thought I’d give a shout out to TivoBlog.com, one of my favorite daily reads, and they are giving away a TiVo Series 2 for one lucky individual. If you don’t normally visit them, now’s a good time to add them to your daily RSS habit.
Via ZatzNotFunny.com, I’m not sure what to make of the announcement TiVo have entered an agreement with Nero to license some of their technology to create a TiVo like experience on the PC. According to the Press Release:
Under the agreement, Nero will develop a software solution that will bring TiVo features to the personal computer. Capitalizing on the growing PC TV tuner market, it will answer the consumer demand for a trusted PC-based DVR experience for use with the estimated 50.8 million PC TV tuners that will be sold worldwide by 2011, according to In-Stat research report published in April 2007.
I wouldn’t mind running the TiVo software on my home server as a replacement for other DVR software (it’s MCE at the moment but I do like BeyondTV and SageTV as alternative commercial products), but I believe part of TiVo’s strength is its brand recognition and if they are serious about entering the retail market, I’m not sure why they don’t build out their own product and market it directly.
My guess is that this is less about collaborating on PC DVR Software but the beginning of TiVo asserting its intellectual property rights on its patents. My guess is that sometime soon, providers of software like BeyondTV and SageTV will get a note in the mail stating that they’re stepping on TiVo’s patents and they’ll need to pony up or get sued.
Via TivoBlog.com, TiVo and Amazon are offering 20 free classic movies to help entice customers to try out the new Amazon Unbox service.
If you haven’t tried the Unbox service, there is no better time.
It’s been reported here, here, and here that Tivo has started the lifetime subscriptions back for existing customers who purchase a new HDTivo or Series 3. It’s all very confusing to me, but thankfully, TivoLovers.com has a readable breakdown of the prices. It’s still pretty complicated to follow, especially if you want to replace a unit as opposed to add an additional unit. It’s a pricing strategy only a CFO could love.
Got a question about Multi-Room Viewing or TivoToGo on a HDTivo or a Series 3? User bkdtv of TivoCommunity.com has posted a great FAQ with lots of great info.
(Hat Tip: The Definitive TivoBlog.com)
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There have been times in the past that I’ve been critical of TiVo, but with the recent service update 9.2, I have been a very happy user of the product. The service update, as mentioned on TivoBlog.com, included features that I’ve always wanted in the box including:
- Support for external storage albeit only available from a proprietary product
- Multi-room viewing between TiVos
- Most importantly for me, TivoToGo support including HD content
Like many families, we’ve started replacing our old televisions with HDTV’s, and it’s hard to go back to watching standard television. With the TivoToGo functionality, it’s now possible to download a show and play it on another TV as long as you have some sort of media player attached. It’s also possible to watch higher quality videos on your computer.
The only downside is that the HDTivo can only use eSata drives that are “TiVo Approved Devices”, as opposed to the Series 3, which allows any eSata drive to be used. I’m sure there is a nice licensing fee that TiVo gets for each external drive sold, and TiVo needs to make money somehow, so I can’t complain too much.
If you are in the market for new TiVo that supports HD, I can’t recommend the HDTivo too much!
Related Info:
NewTeeVee.com Article
Dave Zatz is reporting that Tivo is downloading system software 7.3 which includes the new Kidzone feature. This sounds like something pretty useful for parents like me that have little ones and don’t want them to be exposed to many of the shadier programs on daytime tv.
You can push yourself to the head of the line for the update by going here.
(Hat Tip: TivoBlog.com)
According to USA Today, TiVo will be adding more web video content for subscribers for users who have networked TiVos and a broadband connection with a new feature called TivoCast. Among the content that can be viewed on your TiVo:
Providing video for the new TiVoCast service will be: the National Basketball Association, The New York Times, CNet, H2O: Hip-Hop on Demand, women’s social site iVillage, gay network Here!, action sports network Union on Demand, digital entertainment provider Heavy.com, Danger Rangers kids content and video blog Rocketboom.
According to the article, the service will be started by the end of July.
This seems like a smart move to me in trying to differentiate itself from competitors and providing extra utility for users.
It would be great if they opened up the service with an external API to allow anyone to publish content to their TiVo. The TivoGoBack feature is somewhat crippled in it’s implementation, as is the HME SDK which only allows audio streaming and not video streaming. Creating a platform for third parties to implement video delivery systems would open the door to some cool new innovation and undoubtedly add value for its users.
(Hat Tip: TVPredictions.com)
