Index of TiVo

TiVo today introduced version 2.6 of TiVo Desktop for Windows, adding deeper support for Web videos and podcasts.

Features include:

• You can now transfer all your downloaded Web Video from your PC to your TiVo DVR so you can watch them on your TV.
• Automatic conversions of your TiVoToGo transfers to support portable devices that support MPEG-4 or H.264 video—Transfer video to your iPod, PSP, Treo, Nokia and other portables devices.
• Set automatic transfers of your favorite shows and videos from your PC to your TiVo DVR.
• Improved video quality and aspect ratio in the Series3 and TiVo HD DVRs when downloading high-quality video.
• Automatically transfer shows from your TiVo DVR to a Windows PC or laptop.
• Browse and listen to your computer’s MP3 library from your TiVo DVR.
• Watch full-screen slide shows of your computer’s digital photo collection on your TV.

In a nutshell, the updated Tivo Desktop for Windows allows you to sync content automatically between your TiVo and Windows computers and peripheral devices.

Unfortunately, TiVo’s support for podcasts is fairly convoluted. Details below.

CES: Digital video recorder purveyor TiVo Inc. has announced that its subscribers will soon be able to select Internet video (i.e. podcasts!) for playback on televisions, expanding the digital recording service’s capabilities beyond TV offerings.

The new feature, announced Monday at the International Consumer Electronics Show, will let users apply their “Season Pass” recording capabilities to video content available via RSS feeds. Users would need to use TiVo’s software on PCs for the feature, though TiVo said it will provide a guide within its TV-based menu system to record select Web video sources as well.

Here’s TiVo’s explanation of how it works:

TiVo users can subscribe to and watch a broad range of content available on Real Simple Syndication (“RSS”) feeds, including everything from network nightly newscasts, to vignettes and original content from major networks such as Comedy Central or Discovery, as well as niche interest and hobbyist videos covering areas far more specialized than cable and satellite channels, not to mention new, independently produced media content such as DiggNation and Ask A Ninja.

The Web video recording capability is scheduled to launch in March concurrent with a new version of the TiVo desktop software, which will cost $24.95 for new users (and is a free upgrade for current users).

If TiVo’s base of users adopts the idea of subscribing to video podcasts, television and Internet television start to blur into one. This could be the start of something big for video podcasting.

Update: “Content creators have about a month and a half to figure out the technical details including the right kind of filetype and feed,” says Rocketboom creator Andrew Baron. “The people who do decide to figure it out BEFORE TiVo unleashes this feature, will likely be in a TINY minority. Thus, it could be a great opportunity to try and stick out from the pack.”

Mark Hopkins at Mashable adds “This is clearly a good thing for online purveyors of video, and couldn’t come at a better time for independent producers, who will be willing and available to fill the gaps of entertaining content brought about by the WGA strike.”

Update 2: More big news for podcasting - Wizzard Media has announced that it served up 1 billion podcasts in 2007.

Nero and TiVo today announced that they have entered into an agreement to integrate TiVo’s television UI with Nero’s next generation of PC software. Under the agreement, Nero will develop a software solution that will bring TiVo features to the personal computer.

“This agreement provides TiVo with an opportunity to deliver its interface and differentiated feature set globally via the PC, enabling TiVo to use all avenues of mass distribution — from consumer electronics, to cable and satellite boxes and soon, the PC,” said Tom Rogers, President and CEO, TiVo.

This is likely to make digitizing television shows more trivial than ever.

Podcasting startup PodShow is expected to formally announce a partnership with TiVo next week that will bring PodShow’s video podcasts to TiVo users. The agreement promises to make Podshow’s content available to millions of new viewers, directly on their televisions.

An official announcement is expected at next week’s Podcasting and Portable Media Expo.

Paul Colligan via TechCrunch

A new IBM survey of consumer digital media and entertainment habits shows that audiences increasingly replacing time spent with traditional media with Internet time.

“The Internet is becoming consumers’ primary entertainment source,” said Saul Berman, IBM Media & Entertainment Strategy and Change practice leader. “The TV is increasingly taking a back seat to the cell phone and the personal computer among consumers age 18 to 34. Just as the ‘Kool Kids’ and ‘Gadgetiers’(1) have replaced traditional land-lines with mobile communications, cable and satellite TV subscriptions risk a similar fate of being replaced as the primary source of content access.”

Among consumer respondents:

• 19 percent stated spending six hours or more per day on personal Internet usage, versus nine percent of respondents who reported the same levels of TV viewing;
• 66 percent reported viewing between one to four hours of TV per day, versus 60 percent who reported the same levels of personal Internet usage.

To effectively respond to this shift, IBM sees advertising agencies going beyond traditional creative roles to become brokers of consumer insights; cable companies evolving to home media portals; and broadcasters and publishers racing toward new media formats. Marketers in turn are being forced to experiment and make advertising more compelling, or risk being ignored.

“Consumers are demonstrating their desire for both wired and wireless access to content: an average of 81 percent of consumers surveyed globally indicated they’ve watched or want to watch PC video, and an average of 42 percent indicated they’ve watched or want to watch mobile video,” said Bill Battino, Communications Sector managing partner, IBM Global Business Services. “Given the rising power of individuals and communities, media and entertainment industry players will have to become much better at providing permission-based advertising and related consumer-driven ratings services.”

Amazon and TiVo have announced Amazon Unbox on TiVo, a soon-to-be-launched service feature that will provide TiVo subscribers with the ability to rent and purchase movies and television shows from leading studios and networks including CBS, Fox Entertainment Group, Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Warner Bros. Entertainment. Amazon Unbox on TiVo is currently in beta testing among a select group of TiVo subscribers and will be available soon to more than 1.5 million broadband-ready TiVo boxes.

The Amazon Unbox video download service, which launched in September 2006, offers thousands of movies, television shows and other videos for download to PCs and any Windows Media Video-compatible portable device. Now, in addition to PCs and portable devices, movies and television shows will be available to download directly to a customer’s TiVo box for playback on their television set. This is the first service that uniquely allows for downloadable broadband video to be integrated with programming recorded from TV so the consumer can easily navigate all viewing options.

“TiVo is taking the best way to watch TV and making it the best way to get popular movies and television shows from major Hollywood studios,” said TiVo’s CEO, Tom Rogers. “Now, TiVo subscribers can rent and purchase movies and TV shows and download them to their television set - all without leaving their homes.”

via VPN: Amazon Unbox

TiVo has announced this year’s top Super Bowl broadcast moments, based on aggregated, anonymous, second-by-second audience measurement data about how TiVo subscribers watched the game.

The company’s analysis shows that viewers were as interested in the ads as the game, with several user-created ads among the top moments of the broadcast.

“Commercials were the big winner with the top spots drawing more viewership than any of the action on the field,” said Todd Juenger, Vice President & General Manager, Audience Research and Measurement, at TiVo.

“The broadcast was a real reflection of the dramatic shift in our media culture; the time was ripe for the best user-generated spots to join the ranks of the best professionally developed spots. Both of the Doritos contest winners ranked among the Top 10 most viewed commercials by TiVo subscribers.”

There’s an interesting article in the NYT today about people wanting more from their TVs.

Padmasree Warrior, the chief technology officer of Motorola, said consumers now demand more from their televisions, largely thanks to TiVo, which has forced the cable companies to ask suppliers for more innovative set-top boxes. “Enough people are experienced with time-shifting that there’s a demand that the industry dynamics change,” Ms. Warrior said.

People want more than TiVo. The success the TiVi has had is a result of the fact that it has gotten closer to delivering media on people’s own terms than other solutions.

People want to enjoy media when and where they want to, without arbitrary technological barriers. Podcasting is another major step towards this, and podcasting, combined with the emergence of devices that merge television with the Internet, like Apple TV, will get us closer to what people want than ever before.

via O’Reilly 

The technology for getting TiVo content onto Macs and iPods is evolving quickly.TiVoDecode Manager (TDM) is a free Applescript Studio front-end (i.e. “wrapper”) that automates the process of downloading of TiVo Series 2 files to your computer and decoding them into MPEG-2 files.

Features include:

• Bonjour discovery of local TiVos (or enter an IP manually)
• Listing of show, episode, date recorded, and other information
• One-click download and decoding of TiVo shows

Here’s an screenshot of TiVoDecode Manager in action…..

Mac Geekery has a detailed how to on how to save TiVo recordings so that they can be viewed on a Mac or an iPod.

Unfortunately, you need to:

• Install and set-up Galleon
• Build an application called TiVo decode
• Set up a conversion script
• Set up launchd
• Transcode the video to a compatible format
• Sync it to your iPod

It’s not for the faint-hearted and probably violates the Digital Millenium Copyright Act half a dozen ways, but the fact that someone will jump through these hoops shows that there is an audience that wants to time- and space-shift video really bad.