Comments on: Home Media Magazine Compares Video Download Boxes

By: Keithrichardson

Keithrichardson — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:18:57 +0000

hallo i am looking for a software to download youtube videos in my pc and convert them to mp3 to listen them in my ipod too, can you help me pls?

By: MegaZone

MegaZone — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 05:27:49 +0000

Brad - It is the content owners. They could license things to allow copies to be made. Or they could just not use CSS at all - since it really isn’t stopping anyone who wants to make copies these days anyway. It certainly doesn’t reduce piracy. So using it is really just causing pain to legitimate users and holding back potential synergy.

By: Brad

Brad — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 05:03:03 +0000

Isn’t that the problem that content holders are having, is that since there is no legal way to utilize DVDs people investigate no legal ways. Seems like the people that are holding the CSS should seek out good ways for good and protected commercial technologies to use DVDs in new ways? I guess the question is, is CSS protection set in stone where no one can ever legally break it or is there some coalition of the willing business that can exempt their content to this type of application? Or am I just pie in the sky thinking here?

By: Stephen Mack

Stephen Mack — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:28:49 +0000

I love Richard, but he doesn’t know anything about our download business, and certainly doesn’t have access to any numbers. As you say, they aren’t released. But I would certainly not use the word “small” to describe the number of TiVo users who have downloaded a movie.

By: MegaZone

MegaZone — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:45:07 +0000

Technically ripping any DVD protected by CSS, which is most commercial discs, is illegal - thanks to the DMCA. That’s probably the main reason TiVo doesn’t do something like that. There is no legal way to do it - the very act of ripping the content from the DVD requires breaking CSS, which violates the DMCA.

That’s why you don’t see the feature in the big commercial authoring tools. The software that supports DVD ripping is generally either open-source and/or based off-shore.

By: Brad

Brad — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:37:16 +0000

What i don’t understand is why doesn’t Tivo add to their desktop software the ability to “rip a DVD to the tivo” and flag it? This way I can watch my DVDs with a Tivo functionality (Pause, return to what I was viewing), and get a good quality version of the movie. To be totally honest you can already do this with bit torrent versions of movies, why not enable a legal version of this that respects the legal aspect of content holders? Putting a flag means that they would not be able to move it to other Tivos, or transcode it into another format… I mean sure there are other non-approved ways to do this, but it would be a great future, that would also mean one less box in my Tivo set up… Just my 2 cents…

By: DSSwonsob

DSSwonsob — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:09:46 +0000

My biggest complaint about Unbox was having to wait for the movie to download before I could watch it but since 9.3 is here that’s not a problem anymore. I agree that not having HD downloads for my TiVoHD stinks but I CAN live without it - after all I still watch rentals on my DVD player since I haven’t gotten a Blu-Ray player yet.

Like the people polled, I don’t want another STB in my rack so my hope is that TiVo will release a box that plays Blu discs (and Unbox will give us HD). It seems to me that a large part of the PS3’s success with it’s Blu player is that it has a PC driving it and can download software patches to provide new features. TiVo would have the same opportunity if they added Blu to a future box. Otherwise I’ll be buying a Blu-Ray player that can download HD from SOME service.

By: MickeS

MickeS — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:53:02 +0000

The problem for me is that the Unbox offerings are of such uneven quality. Some have been near-DVD, others have been an unwatchable mess. I don’t disagree much with Bullwinkle’s assessment, but I’ve never had any problems with download times, except the very first time I tried it.
And FWIW, TiVo has started to roll out version 9.3 to Series 2 boxes, and it does indeed enable progressive downloads: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6102488#post6102488

By: Robm

Robm — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 01:09:39 +0000

I am pretty down on the video download scene so far, myself. Between the poor quality of the downloads from Amazon, and the inconvenience of the Microsoft “Points” system, I’m happy to stick with Netflix, and with Netflix I get another advantage. If I want to watch a movie tonight, but my mate wants to go to sleep and watch it another time, we can watch it more than once. None of the services I know of offer that convenience.

By: Ben Drawbaugh

Ben Drawbaugh — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:30:40 +0000

I agree that it’s unfair that they mention the 24 hour period, since that is the same on all the services, but the rest of it in regards to TiVo is dead on.

I agree it’s the worst quality and the amount of time you have to wait to start a movie is longer than I experienced on the ATV. Sure I only watched like two movies on each, so it might be a coincidence that HMM and I had the same experience.

Amazon UnBox on the TiVo could be free and I wouldn’t use it, but then again, I’m an HD snob.