Previously Sling Media only updated the remote control collection in SlingPlayer whenever SlingPlayer itself was updated. However, that’s hasn’t been often enough. New devices are released regularly, and it also meant that new remote codes could be held up for a while, until the next release of SlingPlayer. Well, that’s no longer a problem. Sling has de-coupled the remote updates from the SlingPlayer updates and this is their first independent remote update release. Get all of the information here, including a list of the new remotes. A lot of people will probably be happy to see that Apple TV, Front Row,and iPod are included, along with the TiVo Series3.

TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), today announced that Tom Rogers, Chief Executive Officer of TiVo, will present at the Deutsche Bank Media & Telecommunications Conference on June 4th at 2:50 p.m. ET. The webcast of the presentation will be available on the Investor Relations section of the TiVo website at http://investor.tivo.com under the events calendar tab.

As I ramp up posting in the blog, I wanted to shed some light on some changes.

If you want to read the content from the blog and/or the community, there are different RSS feeds you should use:
Site updates: http://www.gizmolovers.com/category/site-updates/feed/ or on LJ
TiVo category only: http://www.gizmolovers.com/category/tivo/feed/ or on LJ
Full blog feed: http://www.gizmolovers.com/feed/ or on LJ
LJ community feed: http://community.livejournal.com/tivolovers/data/rss or on LJ

You can probably detect a pattern with the categories. You can subscribe to any specific category you wish (categories are on the lower-right of any blog page), using http://www.gizmolovers.com/category/[CATEGORY]/feed/ Where, obviously, you replace [CATEGORY] with the category of which you wish to subscribe to the feed. (If you’d like any of the other categories syndicated on LJ, just ask.) Note that the ‘TiVo’ category will be a super-set of the posts in the LJ Community, as I will keep the more tenuously linked posts to the blog. I also plan to post any ‘thank you’ posts, such as for TiVo Referrals, only in the blog, as it seems they bothered some users in the community.

If you run a blog or a site, and have a general link to TiVo Lovers, I’d appreciate it if the link is to http://www.gizmolovers.com/ directly. And if you have a blog, and want to refer to my posts, it is better to use the blog than the LJ community. Since it is actual blog software it has support for trackbacks, proper permalinks, etc.

I’ve been going through all of the posts I imported into the blog, cleaning up the markup, tagging posts. fixing broken links (internal LJ markup isn’t automatically corrected), etc. I’ve done all of 2003, 2004, and 2007 so far. I’ll be working on 2005 and 2006 as I find the time. I also have plans for more content for the site in general, it is mainly an issue of finding the time.

Thank you, and I hope you enjoy the expanded TiVo Lovers!

Apple announced today a couple of enhancements to Apple TV. First and foremost, YouTube is coming to Apple TV. Beginning in mid-June, Apple TV users will be able to access YouTube directly from their TV. That’s significant, as web video, and YouTube in particular, is very hot.

I know that Sling Media is working on the SlingCatcher, and using SlingProjector on a PC you’ll be able to proxy web video to the SlingCatcher and hence the TV, but being able to access it directly is simpler. I’m hoping that the SlingCatcher has these kinds of abilities and we just haven’t heard about them yet. Native support for web video would be big. Of course, it’d be nice to see this kind of thing on TiVo, but I don’t think the hardware can properly support Flash video. Maybe with a SlingProjector-like feature in a future TiVo Desktop.

The other shoe to drop is a new build-to-order Apple TV option. Instead of 40GB for $299, now you can get 160GB for $399. That’s going to put a crimp in the after-market upgrade vendor’s sales, but it is good to see. One of the things that made the Apple TV unappealing to me was the high cost-to-storage ratio. 40GB isn’t even enough for just my music collection.

I’m still not about to buy one, but I’ll certainly keep watching to see what happens. If the price comes down and/or the functionality goes up, I may yet try it.

There must be something in the air today - quite a number of acquisitions were announced.

Fox Interactive Media acquired Photobucket and Flektor. Fox Interactive Media, a division of News Corp, is the parent of MySpace. Photobucket is a popular photo sharing side, and the 34th most visited site on the Internet. Flektor is a site that allows users to create slide-show mashups from audio, video, and photos.

CBS acquired Last.fm Last.fm might be better known to some as AudioScrobbler, which was absorbed into Last.fm some time back. Last.fm has plug-ins for popular music software, such as iTunes, and it will track your listening habits. It then suggests new music, and lets you listen to some online. There are also social networking aspects to the site, as you can link to friends, join communities, etc. This is my Last.fm profile, I use it mainly to track my listening habits.

eBay acquired StumbleUpon. eBay? I’m not sure I get it. I could kind of see Skype, maybe using it to connect buyers and sellers, etc. And, of course, way back when, buying PayPal made perfect sense. But StumbleUpon? I’m not sure how that fits into eBay’s business. eBay had this to say:

“StumbleUpon is a great fit within our goal of pioneering new communities based on commerce and sustained by trust,” eBay’s senior director Michael Buhr said in a statement. “StumbleUpon’s downloadable toolbar provides an engaging and unique experience to its users, but it is the similarities in our approaches to the concept of community that make it such a compelling addition to eBay.”

OK… I still don’t see it. Guess I’ll just have to wait and see how they glue it onto their operations.

The Hollywood Reporter, Esq. has a story on MLB’s beef with Sling Media. Specifically, MLB Advanced Media, the group that oversees online distribution and does things like police YouTube for unauthorized MLB clips.

MLB is upset because they feel the Slingbox can circumvent the exclusive regional broadcast rights that the teams have with local TV and radio stations. The feeling is that if users can access content from another region it lowers the value of the contracts, and therefore the revenue for MLB.

Deja vu. This reminds me of back in 2004 when the MPAA and the NFL tried to block TiVoToGo. But then the FCC sided with TiVo. And, in light of that, the NFL decided to work with TiVo.

Last year, MLBAM tried to get Sling Media to pay licensing fees for any redistributed televised baseball games. Sling refused. I don’t blame them, just how would that work anyway? Would Sling have to pay a blanket license based on some perceived number of redistributed games? (Which the MLB would almost certainly inflate.) Input is input to the Slingbox, it doesn’t know baseball from the Antiques Roadshow.

It has already been decided that it is OK for me to TiVo a game while I’m away from home and then watch it when I get home. I can even TiVo a game before I leave, move it to my PC with TiVoToGo, and take it with me. Or burn it to DVD - on my Series2 DVD-RW box or my PC. But they’re claiming it is not OK for me to TiVo it at home and then watch it remotely via Slingbox, or watch it live via Slingbox. Not just not OK, but not legal.

“Of course, what they are doing is not legal,” he said. “We and other leagues have formed a group to study the issue and plan our response. A lot depends on ongoing discussions. Plus, there’s no guarantee that Slingbox will be around next year. It’s a startup.”

He being Michael Mellis, Senior VP and general counsel of MLBAM. I love the cheap shot at Sling Media too, classy.

Sounds to me like another established entity having a fit because the world is changing and they may have to change their business model. Just like the RIAA fought against MP3 players. Content providers fought the DVR - even calling ad-skippers criminals! The MPAA and NFL fought TiVoToGo. These established industries always seem to need to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the modern era. And they do everything they can to prevent it - DRM, lawsuits, the DMCA, half-baked technologies (like the original Divx, the disc not the codec), etc. Like it or not, the landscape is changing. Evolve or go extinct. Just hurry up and do one or the other so the rest of us can stop dealing with your hissy-fits.

Place-shifting, like time-shifting, is here to stay. Even if you knocked Sling Media out, which seems unlikely, there is Hava and Orb. Not to mention numerous other solutions - plug-ins for Media Center, hacks for MythTV, etc. And if you push the fans, they will resort to BitTorrent and P2P services to see it near-realtime if they can’t place-shift live.

The MLBAM just wants to double-dip. They want fans to pay for the content in the first place, subscribing to things like MLB Extra Innings, and then pay for the right to watch it when away from home. Even if it is Sling paying the license fee, it is really the consumer who pays in the end. Content owners are looking for ways to squeeze every penny out of consumers, charging for the same content repeatedly.

I picked this up from Gizmodo, who picked it up from Crave. Crave’s entry is worth checking out too.

…the harder they fall.

Panasonic 103-inch plasma smashed at CeBIT Sydney

It seems that during the load-out after the recent CeBIT Sydney tradeshow the 103-inch plasma screen Panasonic had on display fell while being lifted by a forklift. It was irreparably damaged. It was fully insured and Panasonic has other display units, so it was written off.

Ouch. I wouldn’t have liked to have been driving that forklift. In honor of the forklift, a little MST3K…
Read the rest of this entry »

- Net income was $835 thousand in the first quarter, compared to a net loss of ($10.7) million in the year-ago quarter - Adjusted EBITDA was $6.7 million in the first quarter, compared to a loss of ($6.9) million in the year-ago quarter - Service and Technology revenues were $58.1 million in the first quarter - TiVo Service on Comcast to first be launched in Boston and other parts of the New England Division - Announced significant deal with Seven, Australia’s leading broadcaster - Amazon Unbox on the TiVo Service successfully launched - Launched Impactful “My TiVo Gets Me” marketing campaign - Unveiled Universal Swivel Search on the TiVo Service - - the first TV-centric on-screen search tool for broadcast, cable and broadband content

That’s the excerpt from the top of their release. Right off the bat there’s some long-awaited news - the Boston area will be the first to get the TiVo service on Comcast. I live in Worcester, MA myself - which is, unfortunately, an island of Charter in a sea of Comcast, but maybe someone I know will get it and I’ll be able to check it out first hand. (Hey, even if I don’t know you, if you get this and you’re willing to have a stranger pop-in and mess with your DVR and take some photos, let me know. ) From the con-call, the trials will continue into summer with the initial commercial launch planned for August.

Financial results are clearly improved over last year, with positive results instead of losses - including a positive net income. Analyst consensus was for a loss of $.02 a share - but TiVo posted net income of $.01 a share, once again beating analyst estimates.

One thing that jumped out as a wee exaggeration in Tom Rogers statement in the release: “And, through the successful launch of Amazon Unbox on TiVo, which now has about 10,000 titles available to TiVo subscribers, we ushered in a new era of delivering premium broadband content directly to the television set.” If you go to Amazon Unbox and search on ‘TiVo’, you get 3,570 results. Without limiting it to TiVo, the total is 6,140. Not nearly 10,000, either way. In a comment, TiVo’s Stephen Mack pointed out that Amazon Unbox lists seasons of TV series as one ‘title’ in the search results, instead of each episode. So that would likely account for the discrepancy between the number given in the interface and the 10,000 figure stated by Rogers. On the con-call Rogers did say ordering Unbox videos from the TiVo with the remote will be coming to the TiVo service soon.

Rogers once again mentioned “introducing a lower priced HD box later this year”. And:

– Third, we continue to make progress toward a lower-priced, mass appeal
High Definition unit, which is expected to be available later this year
and will complement the important role that TiVo is playing in working
with retailers to offer High Definition products and services to
consumers.

I can’t wait to see what that box looks like - and what the price point is. I’d guess $300-400.

TiVo-owned gross subscriber additions for the first quarter were 57,000, compared to 91,000 a year ago, or 1,000 net additions compared to 51,000 a year ago. Overall TiVo-owned subs are up to over 1.7 million, compared to 1.5 million a year ago. DirecTV subs continue to decline, as expected with 103,000 net losses, compared to 2,000 net additions last year. Churn is 1.1%, up from 0.9% a year ago, but down from 1.2% last quarter. (This is very low churn.) TiVo’s total subscriptions are down slightly to 4.3 million compared to 4.4 a year ago, but now 59% of those are TiVo-owned, compared to 52% last year. TiVo-owned subs are worth far more to TiVo.

From the Q&A, almost 60% of S2DT, over 80% S3, and over 50% of all new subscribers are using broadband.

And important fact relating to the Australian deal announced yesterday is that Australia uses DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting - Terrestrial) for broadcasts. This same standard is widely used around the world, and dominates in Europe. The product development work done for the Australian product will support development of products for additional world markets that use DVB, in the same way that developing OCAP software for Comcast allowed TiVo to also work with Cox, and to pursue additional cable MSOs. Most of the development work is being funded by TiVo’s partner, Seven Network, the leading network in Australia, so this is a big win for TiVo all-around.

I could see this being the way TiVo can re-enter the market in the UK, where DVB is also used. As they said on the con-call, Australia is a major English speaking market. So any development done there would be directly transferable to another English DVB-T market, such as the UK. New Zealand has also adopted DVB-T, but it hasn’t been deployed yet. Of course, TiVo has also developed a Spanish language interface for Mexico, which could form the basis for work in other Spanish-speaking countries. And remember TiVo is a share holder in TGC (TiVo Greater China), which currently sells TiVo-based products in Taiwan and mainland China, with plans to expand to other countries in the area.

TiVo seems to be picking up steam lately, with an increasing pace of software feature development and new partnerships. And it will be good to have the OCAP software finally see the light of day.

Oops, I hate when that happens. It seems Palm’s press release hit their RSS feed prematurely, and it got spotted before it was pulled. A user on the TreoCentral forums posted as copy, and CNet confirmed it before it was pulled.

And now the official page is up. It seems that the speculation was mostly correct, but off in some ways. The Foleo does run Linux, and it uses Opera for browsing, as expected. It also has a large screen - but that’s about all that was on target. The Foleo isn’t really a standalone device.

The Foleo is basically a companion to the Treo, or another smartphone. It has a 10-inch screen and a full-size keyboard, and it syncs wirelessly via BlueTooth with your smartphone. The Foleo weighs just two pounds, and it provides five hours of work from the battery. It looks like it works with both the Windows Mobile and Palm OS Treos, as the email application is compatible with both Outlook Mobile and VersaMail. I hope that it can be linked to other clients, as I vastly prefer ChatterEmail to VersaMail.

You can also view and edit Office documents using a version of DataViz’s Documents To Go. You can also access PDF documents. Foleo comes with a VGA adapter, so you can run PowerPoint presentations using an external screen or projector. JPEG, GIF, and PNG image formats are also supported.

I’m sure a lot of geeks who were hoping for the Holy Grail of uber-gadgets will complain that this is too little, but I can see the appeal. I use my Treo for a lot - work email, checking the web from the road, etc. When I travel I still pack a laptop though, because as nice as it is, the Treo gets kind of tedious to work on after a while. You don’t want to spend hours on email, or try to edit a large presentation, on the Treo. Not if you can help it. With the Foleo, I could see ditching the laptop entirely.

The Foleo isn’t strictly tethered to the Treo. It also has WiFi and it can be used to browse the web from public hotspots, etc. But you can also use the Treo as a data connection via BlueTooth when you’re out of WiFi coverage. So it is also something of a web tablet. Flash is supported, so you can browse most web sites. However, from the QA session, the processor isn’t powerful enough to really support web video. They’ll address that in a future product.

Another point Palm makes on the site is that as smartphones get smaller, working on them becomes harder. The Treo family has been stuck at about the same size since the 600. Sure, the 680, 750, and 755p are a bit slimmer, no antenna, etc. But you can’t shrink the screen and keyboard without impacting usability. I have to wonder if this is laying the ground work for a new generation of tiny Treos. Just big enough to be useful for casual use, but relying on the Foleo for heavy lifting. Just thinking aloud…

The web conference has just started, Jeff Hawkins is presenting the Foleo now. It really is Linux, complete with a command line if you want to get to it. It is open to 3rd party developers, so hopefully we’ll see more applications for it. All of the ports are grouped on one side - power in, USB, video out, SD, and a headphone jack. There is also an internal CF slot to expand the device memory if you need it.

Foleo works with more than just Treo. It should support any Windows Mobile smartphone. They’d also like to support RIM and Symbian and they’re working towards that, and if Apple is willing to open the iPhone, they’ll support that too. (I wouldn’t hold my breath for that one.)

They’re doing the Q&A. They are open to 3rd party email clients and they’re encouraging those vendors to support Foleo, which is good to hear.

It is not a touch screen, and the resolution is 1024×600, but when using the VGA-out you get the full 1024×768.

It is solid-state, Flash memory. Expansion via the SD slot, or the internal CF slot (which is under the battery). Full details of what cards will be supported will be posted on the site in the coming weeks.

Email, attachments, folders, and contacts are sync’d in the first release. It sounds like memos, to-do lists, photos, etc, are not sync’d in the first version, but that may be expanded on in a future release.

Ok, so, it is basically a small, light, solid-state Linux laptop. It has basic features by default, but from the presentation and Q&A, it sounds like it is really open for 3rd party developers to go crazy with it. I could easily see this becoming a little Linux laptop for the hacker crowd. I may pick one up when they go on sale this summer.

TiVo Shanan has posted another video to YouTube, in which she covers a number of the advanced TiVo features.