An easy way to record shows in your NetFlix queue.

As a geek, I love things like this! Seeing technology combine and produce new systems is fantastic to me. I love it when systems come together in mash-ups like this and produce something neat. Basically this is a script that runs in the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox that automatically looks at titles in your Netflix queue and searches from them on TiVo Central Online. If it finds them, it adds a link next to the title on the Netflix queue so you can have TiVo record it instead. Like so: Then you can drop the title from your queue and get something else.

I picked this up from PVR Wire @ TV Squad.

Now that 8.1.1 has rolled out to the Series3 units, TiVoCast has been enabled for those users.

A little press for TiVo KidZone. The article is mainly about the FCC and Congress and their Quixotic posturing about violence on TV, with the suggestion that DVRs, such as TiVo, and software like KidZone is a much better solution than trying to legislate content.

There is also this cute story in the Joplin (MO) Globe. I’ve seen stories like this before, but it is always kind of fun to see TiVo get a plug in a local paper like this.

Oh, and I deleted the spam post from the other day. Sorry, I was offline for 5 days - I’m on vacation and I took a side trip to Disney. I decided to not get online at all while I was there, and make myself actually enjoy the trip and not worry about work, etc. It figures we’d get the first spam post in memory while I was offline for the first extended period since, hmm, I think 1998…

A preview release of the coming TiVo Desktop 2.4 for Windows is now available for download. If you have a Series3, this includes the promised HD Photo viewer. Photos are now converted to 1280×720 for the S3, instead of being converted to SD resolution (I think the old photo app was 640×480).

2.4 also includes auto-transcode for other video formats into MPEG-2 for the TiVo. The details state that Windows Media (.wmv), QuickTime (.mov), MPEG-4/H.264, and MPEG-2 videos are supported. This feature does require a TiVo Desktop Plus key.

This is a preview release, which puts it somewhere between ‘beta’ and ‘final release’. You can always remove it and reinstall 2.3a if you have problems.

Gizmodo is reporting on an ‘oops’ by Amazon that exposed a new Sling product. The Slinglink Turbo looks like a new powerline Ethernet adapter that uses the HomePlug 1.0 Turbo standard to support 84Mbps traffic over power lines, as opposed to 14Mbps supported by the old Slinglink. And the new units are physically similar in design to the Slingboxes. One box has a single Ethernet port, which provides the connection to the home network, the other has 4 Ethernet ports to connect to your devices. I’d still like to see Sling support a USB WiFi adapter, like TiVo, but this is a nice improvement.

I’m currently sitting in Jupiter, FL (visiting my parents), watching L&O: SVU from my Series3 TiVo in Worcester, MA. I setup a Slingbox Pro before I left.

TiVo appears to have lowered the one-year pre-paid rate from $199 to $179, and the monthly rate from $19.95 to $16.95. See the pricing plan page. The up-front cost on the Series2DT appear to have gone up - $99 for 80-hours and $199 for 180-hours.

Picked up from ZatzNotFunny.

The Order of the Stick isn’t one of the webcomics I normally read, but a friend of mine forwarded me the link to this one and told me I must read it immediately. You’ll see why.
The Order of the Stick has some fun with TiVo, I mean ‘Teevo’.

There was recently a TiVo promo about careers at TiVo which included a tour given by TiVo Shanan - and now she’s posted it on YouTube.
Read the rest of this entry »

Well, at least part of it. I was playing around on LinkedIn today, updating my profile, and I started looking for people I knew to add to my network, then went a bit wider, and I found the profile for Nova Brown. This may explain a bit why she hasn’t posted anything in a while:

Current
* Freelance Content Strategist/Content Developer at Self (Self-employed)

Past
* Copywriter/Content Engineer at TiVo Inc

It seems she’s no longer with TiVo, which would explain why she’s no longer blogging. I guess they haven’t replaced her on the blog.

TiVoPony announced today that the ‘Winter 2006′ update for the Series3 is finally starting to roll out. The release is 8.1.1 and it brings the Series3 to feature parity with 8.1 on the Series2 boxes - EXCEPT it still does not support MRV, TTG, or eSATA (as expected). TiVo is still working on those issues. It also has a number of bug fixes for issues reported under 8.0.1 on the S3.

Since the S3 population is relatively small, there is no priority sign-up for 8.1.1. It is already rolling out to a few boxes a day, as they test the waters to make sure there won’t be any issues. The ‘big switch’ will be thrown next week for all the remaining boxes.