Going the Opposite of Cord Cutting - The Tivo Stream

You would think that my being a tech geek/early adopter type means that I would have been one of the first to jump on the "cord cutting" bandwagon and dump my cable subscription.  And trust me...the thought of cutting out a $100+ monthly Comcast bill, along with the usually horrible Comcast customer service department, crosses my mind each time I see that charge on my Visa statement.  But attractive as that sounds, and despite the fact that I am downloading/streaming more and more of my video content, I can't seem to escape the clutches of my cable subscription.  One of the main reasons for this is the obvious one for many us, namely live sports.  Until the major networks come up with an equitable solution for cord cutters to access their live content over the internet this may be a huge stumbling block for me and other sports fans.  The other reason is simply convenience...having all my video content stored on an easily accessible hard disk still beats picking and choosing content from various sources (Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, etc.) and having to deal with the occasional internet connectivity issue while downloading or streaming.

Which brings me to Tivo...I've used quite a number of DVRs over the years, and their UI's range from simply horrible (Comcast) to pretty decent (DirecTV) to Tivo, which is still the best of the bunch despite not having done much in recent years to advance their technology.  The one nice thing about Tivo, though is that it's an open platform, so as a result there are some extremely clever and useful 3rd-party projects such as PyTivo and kmttg that extend the functionality of the platform.  I recently decided to upgrade my unit, because believe it or not I watch enough TV that I occasionally run into situations where I need to record more than two shows at once...their new Premiere 4 allows you to record up to four shows concurrently.  One of the other reasons I picked up the new unit is because Tivo was offering a bundled deal which includes the Premiere 4, a MoCA adapter which basically allows you to attach wired devices to your network via your home's existing cable coax, and their relatively new Tivo Stream mini-device which lets you stream and/or download content from your Tivo box to your iPad.  The device itself is small (4"x4") and super simple - just plug in the AC adapter and connect to your home network with an ethernet cable and you're all set to go.

The Stream allows you to stream content from your Premier that was previously recorded or is currently recording, and it also lets you downloaded content directly to your iPad for offline viewing...both of these functions are performed using the free Tivo iOS app.  As you might expect the app looks and feels similar to its TV sibling, so there was zero learning curve involved.  One cool feature is that you can "slide" the playback marker to any specific time within the program - something that you can't do with the TV remote.  For the most part everything worked pretty flawlessly and as advertised.  If you began watching a program on your TV, paused it and later resumed watching it from your iPad, it remembers where you previously left off and picks up from that point...and vice versa. The one annoying bug I found is that if you stream a program that is still being recorded, your streaming gets interrupted when you get to the location where the Tivo was recording as you began your streaming session...you have to jump back out to the "Now Playing" list, select the program again and then it will resume streaming from the point where it left off.

Will Tivo sell many of these Stream units?  Probably not, as it's really a niche product at the moment with a fairly limited audience.  First off, it only works with the iPad, so if you're thinking about using it to stream to your desktop/laptop computer or Android device you're basically SOL.  Secondly, the streaming function only works within your internal home network, i.e. you can't stream over the internet...which is really a shame because if it did this then I would no longer have a need for a Slingbox.  And lastly, it obviously only works with Tivo and specifically with later modeled Tivo's...and your Tivo needs to be ethernet or MOCA connected to your home network to boot.  However, if you can deal with these limitations then the Stream is a nice add on and essentially turns your iPad into an additional (and portable) home television.

New Job, New Tivo

This is just a quickie update to let folks know what I've been up to lately. First and foremost, I am happy to announce that I started a new gig last month as CTO for a cool (and profitable!) startup called Cypher Media. They are in the online marketing business, and in addition to that there are some major plans afoot to evolve the company in some new and potentially game-changing ways...so stay tuned!

I also recently purchased the new Tivo Premiere box that came out earlier this year. It wasn't a conscious choice on my part to buy the new unit, but my trusty (and recently out of warranty) Tivo HD all of a sudden crapped out one day and refused to boot up. I'm almost positive it was a hard drive problem, and I'm sure that given some time I could have hacked into the Tivo and replaced the hard drive myself. I also had the option of paying Tivo $149 for a refurbished replacement, but that would leave me DVR-less for at least several days. That may have been okay under normal circumstances, but the timing of the failure couldn't have been any worse because it occurred right during the middle of the Tour de France! So unless I was willing to wake up at 5am each morning to watch the live coverage (NOT!) I needed a quick fix, and that quick fix was to just buy a new Tivo Premiere and get it shipped overnight from Amazon.

As usual, setting up the Tivo was a very painless exercise, and props to Tivo for making this as easy as possible for the average Joe. Getting things setup properly with Comcast is an entirely different story, however...as usual it took a couple of calls plus a lot of wait time on the phone before the CableCard "pairing" process successfully completed and I was able to access all of my channels - for some reason HBO always seems to be a problem.

There's been a fair bit of discussion regarding the new Premiere and how it differs from the previous generation of Tivo's. Quite honestly, the differences are relatively few, and so if you are a happy Tivo Hd or Tivo XL owner then I don't think there's enough new functionality to justify the switch. The major new "feature" is the revamped, Flash-based "HD" user interface, and quite honestly it is a mixed bag. If you have an older Tivo you probably have seen what this looks if you've tried the Tivo "beta search" feature, which lets you search for content not only within the Tivo guide but across the various internet sources that Tivo supports - Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, etc. The biggest problem with the UI is that it is incredibly SLOW...the system often hangs and hangs when switching between menus. And the UI is still not complete, i.e. some of the menus sport the new UI but a good number of menus are still using the older UI - making for a very disjointed user experience. There are two very nice things I like about it, though: 1) the Now Playing list (aka "My Shows") now displays the percent utilization on the hard disk for programs that you've recorded and saved; and 2) within some of the top-level menus you can still see what's currently playing on your Tivo via a small window on the upper right corner of the screen. I always found it annoying with the old UI that as soon as I hit the Tivo button whatever I was watching got instantly preempted...the new UI allows you to keep watching that program while navigating within the menu.

The other really nice improvement is the increase in speed when transferring content to or from the Tivo. I can now transfer HD content via PyTivo at a rate nearly equivalent to real-time, i.e. I can start viewing the content almost immediately and not have to worry about getting ahead of the file transfer itself. SD content has never been a problem, but with HD content you're talking 5x or so more data and the old Tivo just couldn't transfer data fast enough to keep up when I wanted to play something "on demand".

Hopefully Tivo will address the UI sluggishness issues before too long. The Premiere also contains a dual-core processor, but my understanding is that the second core has been disabled by Tivo due to some multi-threading problems that were encountered during testing. Perhaps if they can fix this and enable the second core that may help speed up the UI as well.

Tivo Just Keeps Getting Better

I bought my first Tivo right around the time they first came out, about 10 years ago now. I remember feeling like a kid in a candy store at the time, as this completely changed the way I viewed television, and since then it's changed the way most everyone viewed television and made VCR's a thing of the past. As I recall, I also switched from TCI Cable (remember them?) to DirecTV right around the same time, so when the Philips DirecTivo came out which combined both the satellite receiver and Tivo onto one box I snatched up a couple of those to replace my original Tivo. Then a couple of years after that DirecTV came out with the excellent HR10-250 which supported high definition broadcasts over both satellite and over the air (i.e. antenna). I was happy as a clam at this point. Unfortunately, not too long after the HR10 was released DirecTV and Tivo decided to part ways, and DirecTV decided to go forward with its own DVR technology. They initially launched the HR20 and a few follow-on models, and though they were pretty good units and DirecTV was adding lots of bells and whistles like media serving, they never matched the ease of use and intuitive UI of the Tivo. To DirecTV's credit they still supported the HR10, but unfortunately the unit was destined for obsolescence because its internal hardware was unable to support the newer MPEG-4 video streams DirecTV was rolling out for all the newer HD channels.

Well, about a year ago I ended up switching from DirecTV to Comcast, and during that span of time I endured the pain of having to use the incredibly horrible Comcast HD DVR. Why I lived with it for so long I have no idea, but after putting up with its multiple quirks and screwups, and having suffered through the occasional missed or premature stoppage of a scheduled recording I could put up with it no longer. I went out and purchased a new Tivo HD unit, and after getting it all setup I really question why I waited so freaking long to do this...the unit is simply awesome! Since I hadn't used Tivo in a few years I discovered a whole raft of new functions that I hadn't been exposed to before; in no particular order:

• The new Tivos appear to be quite a bit speedier than my old HR10; there isn't nearly as much delay when setting up season passes, setting up complex searches, etc.
• The free Tivo Desktop software that you can download from tivo.com is very handy, as among other things it allows you to download recorded shows to your PC for offline viewing; definitely a great thing to have for those long plane trips. One caveat, though....the transfer rate is pretty slow, so if you're thinking about taking HD-recorded content on the road then you might consider recording the non-HD version of the show first.
• Multi-room viewing, which allows you to stream content recorded on one Tivo onto another Tivo within your home. You can even pause a show on one Tivo and resume it on another!
• Built-in support for Netflix and Amazon video streaming. I had previously purchased the excellent Roku box that support both Netflix and Amazon, but now that I have these services on the Tivo I can conveniently switch from DVR to on demand all on the same box...might be time to sell the Roku.
• YouTube access - Wow, I think the Tivo folks delivered as good of a UI as possible here short of having an actual browser and keyboard. Very, very nice implementation.
• Pizza anyone? Yes, you can order a Domino's pizza right from the Tivo..no need to break a sweat and move off the couch!
• A mulitude of other on demand and content subscription options, too numerous to mention here. Many of these are free.
  
• Real-time traffic and weather reports - Yes, it's easy enough to get these on my PC and/or Blackberry, but if I'm already watching TV and need to check the weather or traffic I can do so with a few button clicks and not have to budge.
• Media serving - The Tivo has the ability to serve up video content from your PC. If your PC is running the free Tivo Desktop software, then your Tivo can serve up a few basic video formats such as MPG. If you upgrade to Tivo Desktop Plus ($25) a few additional file formats are supported. But if you're a little more technically inclined, then the absolute best solution is to download and install pyTivo. This is a fantastic piece of software, as it supports every video file type under the sun, even ones which the Tivo doesn't natively support (e.g. MKV) - those are re-encoded on-the-fly as they are sent to your Tivo.
• Need more storage space? Sure, like all models of Tivo you hack into it and replace the factory drive with a larger one. But if you don't want to spend the time playing tech geek and/or don't want to void your warranty Tivo makes it super easy to add more disk space if you purchase the Western Digital MyDVR Expander. All you have to do is turn off the Tivo, attach the Western Digital to the Tivo's eSATA port, turn on the Western Digital and then turn on the Tivo. After a few minutes to initialize, whoala...instant storage added!
  

Whew, that's a lot of cool stuff...and there's even more available that I neglected to mention. Suffice it to say that the Tivo continues to be the king of DVR's and set top boxes in general. I can't imagine settling for anything else now!