Some news in the DVR industry today - BSkyB is buying DVR vendor Amstrad. BSkyB is the leading satellite TV vendor in the UK and Ireland, as well as being a major content provider with a number of Sky Television channels. Similar to DirecTV, a large stake of BSkyB is held by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (I believe they hold about 39% of BSkyB, compared to about 40% of DirecTV.)

A number of changes implemented at DirecTV after the News Corp acquisition originated with BSkyB. BSkyB tightly controls all of the features and branding of their products. All of the BSkyB set-top boxes are branded BSkyB and must follow the same specifications. One of the first changes at DirecTV was pulling the licensed for 3rd parties like Sony to manufacture DirecTV receivers, and re-branded all of their hardware as ‘DirecTV’ instead of have different consumer electronics brands selling receivers.

Amstrad reportedly produces about one-third of BSkyB’s Sky+ STBs, as one of three vendors along with NDS and Thomson. This is interesting because News Corp also controls NDS and NDS is a STB and DVR vendor to BSkyB, as well as DirecTV. This acquisition of Amstrad could indicate a shift away from NDS’s platform for BSkyB, bringing a vendor fully in house. Once BSkyB closes the acquisition and wholly owns Amstrad, it would be much more cost effective to use that in-house platform than to purchase from NDS.

Wow, it has been a busy day for activations - I decided to consolidate these.

My thanks to Chris, Jae, Peter, and Karl for the TiVo Reward Referrals.

It looks like the inventory clearance on the old Series2 units has started. Buy.com has the 80-hour Series2 free after rebate. Well, mostly free - shipping is $14.96. But if you haven’t used Google Checkout before you can sign-up and as a new Checkout customer save $10 on the order, making it $4.96 shipped. After the $170 mail-in rebate, of course. I don’t know if there is a way to get free shipping with Buy.com.

Circuit City is already offering a discount on the TiVo HD - instead of $299.99 you pay $258.99.

But there’s more, there are also current Circuit City coupons to save $40 of a purchase of $199 or more. Using a coupon brings it down to $218.99 (plus any tax). A number of users at TiVoCommunity.com have picked up units for this price at their local Circuit City. And some have also received refunds for the difference in price, since they purchased it in the last week before the price dropped.

You might be able to get other retailers, such as Best Buy, to price match. Can’t hurt to try.

I’m really surprised to see it discounted so soon after launch. This should really boost sales - until CC runs out of boxes.

(Personally I stopped shopping at Circuit City when they backed DIVX over DVD… yes, I’m old and crotchety.)

One of my co-workers recently received an email from TiVo about her billing, and she asked me about it as the resident ‘TiVo expert’:

From: CustomerCare@tivo.com
Date: Jul 27, 2007 2:14 PM
Subject: Important message regarding your monthly billing

Dear Valued TiVo Customer,

It has come to our attention that you have not been billed for one or more months of your TiVo service. After your gift subscription was used in full, the credit card you provided when you activated your DVR, should have been billed for your ongoing service. Due to a system error however, this did not happen. We apologize for this inconvenience and are working quickly to fix this issue. Within the next ten days, you should see a charge on your credit card for the service you have received since your gift subscription expired.

To see a detailed view of the charges on your account once the appropriate changes have been made, please visit www.tivo.com/manage.

Thank you for being a loyal TiVo Subscriber.

Sincerely,

The TiVo team

At the time I hadn’t heard anything about this, so I advised her to contact TiVo to make sure this wasn’t a mistake. She did, and TiVo told her that this affected ‘thousands’ of customers. It seems to be related to gift subscriptions. Apparently they gave people an extra month ‘free’ between the end of a gift subscription and the start of monthly billing. In the case of my co-worker, she started with a 3-month gift but she received the 4th month free before billing commenced. I went looking and found this thread on TiVoCommunity.com from other users who received the same email.

So, if you received that email and were wondering what it was about, now you know. If you don’t think it applies to you, I recommend contacting TiVo’s customer support.

/~ It’s the end of the world as we know it… ~/

*Checks calendar* No, July 31 is not April 1. *looks outside* I don’t see anything falling from the sky - no toads, locusts, or brimstone. *checks weather* It is 94F in Hell (Michigan). Not frozen over.

Well, after eliminating the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth.

So, it looks like DirecTV and TiVo have warmed up their relationship somewhat.

DIRECTV, Inc. (NYSE:DTV), the nation’s leading satellite television service provider, and TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ:TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVR), will develop a software upgrade to enhance the user experience for DIRECTV customers who have DIRECTV DVRs with TiVo(R) service built on the Series2(TM) platform.

Launching in early 2008, the new software download will provide these customers with DVR enhancements offered with the TiVo service, including a Recently Deleted Folder and Overlap Protection(TM), as well as DIRECTV’s Remote Booking feature. In addition, DIRECTV and TiVo will continue to explore ways to bring future enhancements to DIRECTV customers with TiVo receivers.

Remote Booking is basically online scheduling, so it sounds like the USB ports might be enabled for networking - unless they plan to rely on the phone line. But using the network is much more responsive and makes for a better feature. That could open the door for more network-based features, like music & photos, HME, TTG, etc. But I wouldn’t hold my breath for those just yet, not after it took this long for DirecTV to adopt just these features. Still, this is a good sign - and maybe lends some more hope to a real reconciliation between DirecTV and TiVo once Liberty Media assumes control of DTV.

One of the things discovered soon after the TiVo HD started getting into users’s hands is that the traditional MFSTools used to prepare larger drives for installation do not work on the TiVo HD. No one had been successful with installing a larger drive in a TiVo HD. And that appears to include the resellers - DVRUpgrade.com and WeaKnees.com.

I had an email exchange with Lou Jacob of DVRupgrade.com today and he told me that the pre-orders for the expanded TiVo HD were based on the expectation of the existing tools working. His best guess is that WeaKnees is in the same boat.

He said they’re open to commissioning someone to re-write MFSTools and they’d return the modified version to the community. (So, if you’re a hacker who thinks they can pull if off, there’s a potential job.) TiVo is not working with DVRupgrade.

The good news is that someone has made progress. Over at TiVoCommunity.com, user Spike2k5 has posted his success. You may remember him from the ‘Kickstart 62′ discovery. He also runs MFSLive.org which has been the home to the MFSTools. The traditional tools are based off of a Linux boot CD. However, Spike2k5 has been working on a new tool that will run directly under Windows - WinMFS.

He has the alpha version of WinMFS working on the TiVo HD and he’s posted a screenshot of a TiVo HD with a 500GB drive as well as preview screenshots of the tool. It isn’t up for download yet, but Spike says it is coming soon.

And before the conspiracy theories start, this does not look like a deliberate effort by TiVo to disabled expansion. Spike says it looks like TiVo made changes to MFS (the file system) to support 64-bit addressing. The existing system couldn’t support more than 2TB of capacity, total. And with 1TB drives out now, it is possible to max out a unit with 2×1TB. Spike isn’t sure yet if they’ve actually lifted this cap in the OS, or if they’re just laying the groundwork with the change to MFS for future software.

My advice to anyone who pre-ordered an expanded unit is to remain calm and be patient. Since Spike already has it working, it is clearly not an insurmountable obstacle. Spike believes MFSTools could be re-written to handle this, but it would take more time than he has right now so he may not do it right away. But it is open source, anyone else who has the skills could do it. And both DVRupgrade and WeaKnees have a lot at stake - profits from selling expanded units - so that’s motivation to find someone to do the work sooner rather than later. Perhaps they’ll hire Spike to do it - getting paid has a tendency to increase the priority of a project.

Keep in mind the box has only been out one week at this point. If having an expanded unit is critical for you, just wait a little while and the tools will be out there.