2. The progress bar has a ‘quick clear’ setting to make it go away faster. And if you press ‘Clear’ on the remote it will go away immediately.

3. The copying vs. streaming isn’t so bad. You can watch the program while it is still copying, so you don’t have to wait for it, and while it will use disk space while copying and viewing, you can immediately delete it. It would still be nice for TiVo to add streaming at some point, but having the ability to copy is nice too. Though I don’t use it much anymore, since my main TiVo is a dual-tuner S3. I used to use my bedroom TiVo as a second tuner and then copy shows to the living room regularly. Now I don’t need to do that.

The need for two cable boxes would be solved by a dual-tuner DVR, like the TiVo Series3 or TiVo HD. Not only dual-tuners, but native digital cable support, including HD recording.

I’m a fairly hardcore geek, and I prefer TiVo to ReplayTV for a number of reasons. I tried them both before buying my first TiVo in 2002. I felt the TiVo was more powerful and even geekier than the RTV, because of the ability to do advanced scheduling with WishLists and all of the hacks available since it runs Linux. There is an even higher geek factor now, with Home Media Engine.

ReplayTV was a good product, and the only real direct competition TiVo ever had, but they just couldn’t seem to get traction in the market.

I want my replaytv units to be useful forever – ha ha. I am already frustrated that digital tuning will require me to have multiple cable boxes in one location (since I have picture-picture and want to record while I watch something else). They are really designing entertainment technology for simpletons and not for the geekier crowd in my opinion.

I’ll try to find out what’s up at CES.

Do you know what has happended to the idea?

So a blanket statement of ‘RTV looks better than TiVo’ is hogwash. ‘And RTV 5000 looks better than a TiVo Series2 on Content X’ would be a better statement.

Also:

Multi-tuners and HD are features that RTV would have easily added had they still been around.

Thanks for making my point – the code is STALE. The fact they they HAVEN’T been around, and therefore HAVEN’T evolved the code to keep up with the market, is kind of the definition of the code being stale!

Now, to counter:
- TiVo has a much better recording management system with clear, priority based conflict resolution. This is the number one thing even RTV fanatics will state. And RTV even shifted their system to partially copy TiVo in the 5.1 software. But they didn’t do a complete job.
- TiVo has Wishlists, which are incredibly useful and powerful. RTV doesn’t have a decent equivalent.
- TiVo has native USB WiFi support. RTV promised that and didn’t deliver.
- TiVo allows you to view digital photos over the network. RTV’s photo support requires you to hard partition the drive to dedicate space to photos, then *copy* the photos to the RTV.
- TiVo supports network playback of digital music. RTV promised it and didn’t deliver.
- TiVo supports online recording requests – WITHOUT any blackout window. Even on broadband RTV has a 24-hour blackout window. You’d think they were still using modems. Oh, and TiVo has partnered with Yahoo!, AOL, TVGuide, and Zap2it.com so you can schedule recordings from all of those sites too.
- TiVo supports movie rentals and purchases from Amazon Unbox. RTV talked about broadband features and never delivered.
- TiVo also has TiVoCast content, free video downloads.
- TiVo has a slew of broadband features – Yahoo! Traffic & Weather, Fandango movie tickets, Live365 & Rhapsody music, Music Choice free music videos, Picasa and Photobucket viewing, podcasts, etc. RTV – nada.
- TiVo also has the Home Media Engine API for 3rd party applications, which allows for sites like Apps.tv and PlayTeeVee.com, as well as 3rd party applications like Galleon and AudioFaucet. TiVo has a LOT more 3rd party support than RTV – which mainly has DVArchive.
- TiVo has official support for transferring video from the TiVo to a PC, and from a PC to the TiVo. RTV doesn’t – it only works because RTV didn’t secure their box-to-box protocol. (Which DTV would pretty much have to secure to get away with a new box in the market.)
- TiVo has KidZone, which many parents love.
- TiVo has searching that spans local and broadband content in one search, Guru Guides, and other unique features.
- TiVo actually has a To Do List! (I oculdn’t resist that dig – it has long been one of the major complaints from RTV owners.)
- TiVo has TiVo Suggestions, which is a nice feature. (And if you don’t like it, just ignore it – or turn it off.)
- TiVo’s code is Linux based and there is a large, active hacking community offering many options. RTV’s code runs on a commercial, proprietary embedded RTOS and there are basically no hacks to run on the box itself because of that.

RTV does have a few features that I’d like to see TiVo add. While it isn’t officially supported, RTV has an API on the box that lets you control a lot of the functions over the network. I’d like to see TiVo expand their current API to be more like that. RTV shows which programs will record in the Guide, TiVo doesn’t. And that’s always been kind of disappointing – even though I don’t use Live TV, or the Guide, well – EVER – I think it should be there for those who do.

RTV had component outputs first (and VGA on some units IIRC, I don’t feel like looking it up now). TiVo didn’t get those until the DVD units, and now on the S3 and HD. Of course, the latter also have HDMI now.

RTV has some other bells and whistles, like being able to jump to a specific minute/second – but while those are nice ‘gee-whiz’ things, as a geek, they aren’t really that useful as general consumer features.

TiVo always had features RTV lacked, and vice-versa. Having tried both, I felt TiVo was simply a better DVR – it had a MUCH clearer, more reliable scheduling system and Wishlists, which were the most important functions for a DVR. Everything else was just extra. RTV’s scheduling system, with theme channels, etc, was obtuse and overly complex. (Which is why RTV eventually partially copied TiVo.) Both RTV and TiVo continued to add features – but RTV stopped over four years ago, and TiVo picked up their pace. RTV talked about DVD combo units (I heard the interview with a SonicBlue exec myself) – TiVo delivered the product. TiVo delivered dual tuners. Then HD and CableCARD.

A LOT of work would need to be done to RTV’s code base to:
1. Port it to modern hardware, dual tuners, refresh the UI, etc.
2. Add support for DBS tuners, and probably OTA ATSC tuners as well (as DirecTVs consumer HD DVRs support ATSC and satellite).
3. Add features to at least give it market parity to be competitive. It would, at a minimum, need to do as much as the DirecTiVos and NDS DirecTV DVRs.

And, to make all of this harder, you’d have to get engineers to first decipher the existing code base. One of the hardest things to do as a developer is to take someone else’s code, especially stale code, and first understand what it is all doing – and WHY it is doing it that way. It is difficult when you have the engineers who wrote it as resources, it is damn frustrating when you don’t. If the reports that all the old RTV engineers are long gone are true, it would be a difficult task. And it isn’t exactly a simple code base.

TiVo already has working DirecTiVo code. In fact, it would be trivial for them to make it feature competitive with the standalone boxes – the code is in there, just disabled by DirecTV’s request. DirecTV and TiVo have already announced a code update for the existing boxes in 2008 – that could easily be the basis for a new platform. And, speaking of new platforms, the TiVo HD was designed as a reference platform that can be readily re-purposed for new markets – like DVB-T for Australia. Supporting DBS for DirecTV wouldn’t be hard.

To name a few:

- Commercial skip
- Unlimited buffer
- Recording from other sources (VCR, DVD, unlisted channels, etc)
- Line 1, Line 2, RF3 input
- Better audio/video quality all around – especially on lower settings

The ONLY advantage Tivo has is the ability to record within the buffer. Multi-tuners and HD are features that RTV would have easily added had they still been around.

Tivo is DVR for dummies. Click and record. RTV’s rich features was its downfall in a dumb consumer market that couldn’t even figure out how to set VCR timers.

RTV’s 5 year old software is better than Tivo’s ever was or is.