Comments on: TiVo To Bring YouTube To Series3 & TiVoHD – Sorry Series2!

By: DSSwonsob

DSSwonsob — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:54:08 +0000

I had trouble initially getting pyTivo to work but the latest update seemed to clear up all my issues.

And yes, I think being able to watch YouTube on my Tivo will be great! I want to show funny videos to my guests all the time and it will be so much easier this way!

By: Michael Boggs

Michael Boggs — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:56:45 +0000

Thats the one, yes. As you can see, I’ve yet to get it to work.
-ScaryMike

By: MegaZone

MegaZone — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:46:45 +0000

Tom – Yes, Apple really likes MPEG-4/H.264. iTunes music is encoded in AAC (aka MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Coding) and video is H.264 (aka MPEG-4 Level 10 Advanced Video Coding aka AVC). But, while more and more of the music is DRM free, the video is still wrapped with Apple’s FairPlay DRM and therefore could not be decoded by TiVo – unless Apple licensed FairPlay to them. And, so far, Apple won’t license FairPlay to anyone basically – they want you to buy an iPod or an AppleTV.

Michael – This one? it looks similar to how TiVo Desktop 2.6 will handle web videos. It downloads to the PC, transcodes it to MPEG-2, then uses TiVoToGo to transfer it to the TiVo.

By: Michael Boggs

Michael Boggs — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:09:13 +0000

Its not ready for public yet, but I know at least one HME developer creating an app for watching youtube on tivos (including s2 boxes).

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:57:31 +0000

Although I think it “cute” to watch YouTube thru TiVo, it’s not something I’d do too often (especially on a big flat panel!). The possibility of HD downloads is more intriguing.

Doesn’t Apple encode it’s TV and Movies (HD and otherwise)downloads in H.264? If so, I doubt Apple would appreciate TiVo doing direct downloads, but a stop at the PC first before heading to TiVo would be a possibility.

By: MegaZone

MegaZone — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 06:12:42 +0000

It is strongly implied in the press release, and even more so in the Google Case Study. TiVo is using Google's new YouTube API, which gives them access to the YouTube videos as is. If you know how YouTube works, and you know TiVo's hardware, it is pretty clear they're going to be streaming the H.264 videos from YouTube just like everyone else. Google is not going to transcode to MPEG-2 for TiVo, and it is also the best explanation for why it is limited to the S3 & TiVo HD - hardware limitations. And TiVo has already said they're planning to enable H.264 support sometime this year. They told me that directly at CES this year during discussions about the Web Video support via transcoding. When I asked about some possible features they said it'd be better to wait for those until they enabled H.264 later in the year. So it fits.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 04:55:59 +0000

Where does the press release mention anything about non-MPEG-2 decoding? I hope that’s the case, but I don’t trust it until I see it spelled out.

By: MHA

MHA — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:34:22 +0000

I’m definitely hoping this will broaden the range of videos I can share from my Mac using TiVo Desktop’s hidden video-sharing feature. At this point there’s a very small set of video files that I can transfer to the TiVo to watch… and many more I would transfer and watch on the TV if I could.