Category Archives: Consumer-Electronics

One thing about being a TiVo owner: You are never quite sure if things are getting better or getting worse.
bq.Overall the lunch was very enjoyable and I found Stephen to be remarkedly candid. It is important to note that our lunch was a casual one between bloggers and although Stephen was very candid with us that his opinions are his own. He was not meeting with us in any official TiVo capacity and his opinions should not necessarily be seen as anything other than his own. Still, his efforts to meet us for lunch (on his time off on paternity leave) are serious indicators that TiVo very much does in fact want to be a part of the online conversation. Stephen spoke enthusiastically about his employer and with the passion that is the mark of a strong blogger. It was very evident to me that there is not much more in life that he loves than talking about how great a company that he works for. – Thomas Hawk
bq.I think that TiVo has not done enough to keep my interest in their technology. I think that they can still do something about improving the situation, but then they have to be committed to really supporting third-party developers. They need to do much more than throwing their SDK over the wall and hoping that something will come of it. So what does this mean for the Galleon media server which is based on HME? As the lone developer of the project, its been interesting and fun playing with the technology sofar. However, the hope was that the technology would go somewhere and that TiVo would communicate with third-party developers about their roadmap. Although Galleon is developed as an open source project, it would have been nice if it opened up some commercial opportunities. So, I’m sad to announce that I’ve decided to reduce my development efforts on the project. I might still release some bug fixes, but these won’t be as frequent as the releases in the past. – Leon Nicholls This is definitely one of those days.

I had neglected to mention that after all this time, I finally picked out an MP3 Player: the Rave-MP STYLE ARC2.5. At this point, some of you may be wondering why when I just bought a Treo 650 a few months ago. Basically, it all stems from PlaysForSure. Our system signed up recently with NetLibrary. And while there are ways around using a PlaysForSure player, they just aren’t very practical. I was not at all thrilled at having another device to carry. But for what it does, it seems to do them pretty well. And it is small enough not to get in the way. I will have it with me on the plane as I have four books and a whole lot of music downloaded on it. This week will be a good chance to try it out.

I finally decided to take the plunge and trade up from my now-venerable Treo 300 for a shiny new Treo 650. I had followed all the concern over the memory issue, but it wasn’t a big factor for me because I didn’t have that many contacts or that much database driven software. It does use memory quicker than the 300, though, so I was glad to see that software like the Adobe Reader for Palm OS allowed for use of the memory card, and the Lexar SD Card I chose has proven to be useful. I think the biggest changes from me are the higher resolution 320×320 screen and the 9.5x faster processor. The only soft reset I have experienced at all was caused by of all things Big Clock. Until that works itself out, Today seems like a more than adequate replacement. Anyway, I am far from exhausting all the possibilities of this thing yet so expect some more posts over time.

As long-time readers around here know, I have been enthusiastic about TiVo for a while. Unfortunately for TiVo they have been a source of controversy of late and it does not appear to be going to let up any time soon. My humble recommendation: get TiVoToGo out as soon as possible. Before the Duke Nukem Forever comparisons lose their humor.

Since I wrote the entry yesterday, I have become aware of two different products. First off, there is the Hauppage MediaMVP. Check out the features and the pricing. Then find out more about the forthcoming Prismiq Media Player/Recorder. The article includes a statement by a Prismiq executive.
bq.We’re on a collision course with TiVo. I like TiVo, and we want more companies to offer this functionality, not less, to expand the market… better to see it in 20 million homes than just 10. – Brad Kayton

My aunt is getting DSL today. I decided that the best and easist thing for her was to be safely esconced behind a router. So…. I bought a new router, a NetGear WGT624, which is of the line that Adam Kalsey recently recommended. My biggest fear was that I would have problems with the TiVo. As far as I can tell, it barely seemed to notice the switch. I don’t have any Super G peripherals yet, but I like to plan ahead. I then gave my brother my old router, the Linksys BEFW11S4. He doesn’t have anything wireless at all, but again, planning ahead… My aunt is getting the classic 3COM 3C510. It has been running the SMC Barricade Firmware for a couple of years now and has proven to be highly dependable. A lot of switching around, but it makes life interesting.

bq.The operator of a Web forum devoted to and sponsored by digital video recorder maker TiVo has asked people to stop posting information about how to copy video off the device onto another machine, fearing he could be held liable for violating a controversial digital copyright law. – Lisa M. Bowman
bq.Video extraction on the TiVo is now almost impossible. There is a program out there to enable extraction in the old series 1 devices, but it does require some serious hacking involving scripts on the TiVo and a hacked ethernet connection. With the series 2 box, they’ve encrypted the stored movies and made shell access to the device difficult, so the box is essentially locked up. The series 2 TiVo is now essentially a VCR with a giant blank tape that you can record anyting you want to, but you can never eject the tape. – Matt Haughey
bq.Yes, I cover video extraction (and insertion), for Series1 standalones only. Series1 DirecTiVos scramble video by default, and though there is a simple hack out there to disable this scrambling, I’m prohibited legally from talking about it in the book. I don’t cover Series2 extraction either. – Jeff Keegan
bq.Tivo already takes a lot of heat from the networks who think of all Tivo users as commercial-skipping thieves. If Tivo supported (directly or indirectly) extraction of video for burning to DVDs, the networks would think that Tivo and all Tivo users are nothing but thieves and they’d hassle Tivo half to death. – Jerry L Bell
bq.Record your favorite shows onto long-lasting DVDs and take them along for the ride. – DVD recorders with TiVo I think most of you know that I am a longtime TiVo supporter. All I want to do is occasionally back something up that I want to watch but haven’t gotten around to yet and probably won’t for a while. It seems somehow unfair to me that the answer is to spend an extra $1000 dollars.

Kevin Werbach offers both an opinion and a photograph from his new Treo 600. It is interesting but I am not sure at this point I can justify to myself spending so much on the upgrade from the 300. Unless the price drops, I think I may wait for the next round.

bq.”Brian Behlendorf(Apache co-founder talks about open source)”:http://archive.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/11/17/001117hnapache.xml was at the same two presentations at at the end of Raffi’s, he leaned over to me and said that he wanted to be able to get content for his TiVo via BitTorrent. As soon as he said it, it just felt right. – Sam Ruby I just noticed how similar this thought is to P2P Video on Demand.

Many years ago (aka 1997), I was working in a library where we backed up our circulation system every day on floppy disks. We did daily backups of just those transactions performed that day. We could also do weekly backups and full backups . Doing the full backup everyday was impractical due to the vast amount of time one spent switching floppies (and these were 3 1/2″) as well as the write speed. One Christmas there was a major storm that came through and leveled the library at a nearby campus. Fortunately, the librarian had taken time to do a full backup just a few days before. It helped a great deal in putting the collection back together. Eventually, out of frustration, I brought my own 100MB Zip Drive in and we used that to backup. We could do a few backup in just a few moments. Periodically, I would store one of those in a safe place. In fact, I discovered an old folder on my hard drive the other day that still had a one of those 6.33 MB backups. In fact, I eventually discovered that I could also drag the entire folder containing the circulation system on to the drive in the same amount of time. Nowadays there are so many options. In addition to CD-RW drives and Key drives, you can use inexpensive Memory Card Readers and Cards. I bought my father and brother 256MB Compact Flash Cards last week for 50 dollars after all the rebates. These days every library should be backed up fully on a regular basis.