Jeremy, thank you for the TiVo Rewards Referral.

One down, two to go to meet my challenge.

And don’t forget the TiVo HD giveaway entry deadline is less than five hours away!

A number of people have been asking for it, and TiVo has finally made drastic changes to the interface design – of their website. (Gotcha.) Sometime overnight TiVo appears to have launched a new corporate website design. Last night when I went to check on something it was the same design it has been for a long time, and just now I loaded it to find a completely different site design. If you remember way back at CES 2007, TiVo was showing off a prototype for what was going to be their new corporate website. But it never materialized. The new site is not the same design they were showing back then, but it is heavily Flash driven like the prototype.

At first blush the new design is nice, but it is going to take a while to get used to it. The old design was in place for so long that I new how to navigate it quickly to get to the pages I commonly used. Everything is moved around now, so I’ll have to get used to the new navigation. It looks like the whole site hasn’t been updated, if you poke around you’ll sometimes find yourself on pages with the old style, such as TiVo Rewards. Though it could be since the current TiVo Rewards program is being phased out anyway, they just didn’t bother to update that area of the site to the new style.

Overall, it is a dramatic change to the site, and I like it.

Continuing their Sci-Fi month, this weekend Amazon Unbox offers four titles, each just $0.99: Men in Black, Gattaca, Plan 9 From Outer Space, and Resident Evil: Extinction. Additionally, it looks like 30 Days Of Night is also only $0.99.

Wow, in the past couple of days there has been an interesting flurry of online activity about CableCARD, Switched Digital Video (SDV), and the Tuning Resolver. HD GURU posted an ‘investigative report’ entitled “How The Cable Industry Plans to Cheat 10+ Million HDTV Owners”, so you might guess at the tone. Unfortunately, there are a few factual errors in the post – for example, all CableCARDs are two-way capable and always have been. Mike Schwartz from CableLabs responded with an extensive comment that I recommend reading if you read the post. (I’d link to it but the blog doesn’t appear to support comment links, just scroll down a bit.)

The HDTiVo Blog picked it up from there (which is where I found the link to the HD GURU post). Gizmodo also picked up the story, though I have a nit to pick: “Our friend Gary Merson, the HD Guru, has uncovered an issue that may soon piss you off.” Uncovered? Gizmodo hasn’t been paying attention, blogs such as this one, Zatz Not Funny, and others have mentioned the SDV issue and Tuning Resolver repeatedly for quite a while now. Just one example, the issue with Bright House cable pulling channels, and then returning them. This is hardly a surprise issue if you’ve been paying attention. And, unfortunately, Gizmodo repeated the errors from the original post.

Anyway, CableLabs responded to Gizmodo’s original post, and Gizmodo shared the information in a follow-up post. I’m glad a statement came out of it to help clarify things a bit, and correct the misconceptions.

Over at Zatz Not Funny, Dave Zatz chimed in on the SDV Tuning resolver issue as well. Including a link to the most solid, and best, news to come out of the whole thing, at Media Experiences 2 Go. Mari Silbey of Motorola reports that Motorola’s Tuning Resolver implementation, now officially the MTR700, has sailed through CableLabs interoperability testing ‘with flying colors’. The next step is CableLabs certification testing with product submission in April in preparation for the certification board meeting in June. So, presuming the device gets certified, it will be ready at the end of June. Which means it would be very unlikely to make the 2Q2008 release schedule, but will probably be available in early 3Q08. Motorola will be exhibiting the MTR700 at The Cable Show in New Orleans in May. While it may not seem that way to those awaiting a solution, the development of the Tuning Resolver has been extremely fast for a new piece of hardware. The cable industry is really fast-tracking development to get the Tuning Resolver out there as fast as possible. Now it is up to the consumer electronics industry to provide compatible firmware for CableCARD devices with USB ports. (TiVo is, of course, already on board.)

Back in November when the Motorola Tuning Resolver was first revealed, it was noted that it strongly resembled their DCT700 cable box. The MTR700 model number seems to indicate the commonality is more than cosmetic.

TiVo recently added The Gourmet Channel to their TiVoCast lineup. MediaWeek takes a closer look at the addition, which may be the vanguard of a new trend for TiVo and TiVoCast. TiVo is looking for more original content to differentiate their product, and at the same time an increasing number of magazines are creating original video content for their websites to compliment their traditional magazine content. Launching a dedicated TV channel is beyond the means of most of the magazines, but they can deliver their original content into homes via TiVoCast. This is how The Gourmet Channel came to be, showcasing original content created by and for Gourmet Magazine.

“We’re looking to bring more content to TiVo, and magazines are creating video in all these content areas,” said Tara Maitra, vp, general manager of content for TiVo. “It might not make sense for them to create a television show, but we can take their content and bring it to the TV. Now you’re on television without the economics of launching a cable channel.”

Maitra declined to reveal which other magazines TiVo was talking to or a timeframe for adding titles, saying only, “We’re working as quickly as possible to bring on as many content partners as we can.”

I think this is a fantastic idea. Even as a hardcore geek I’ve never really cared to watch podcasts and most other web content. Watching video on a 17″ laptop screen just isn’t as enjoyable as relaxing and watching it on my TV. When TiVo added TiVoCast I immediately started watching many of the channels, and now, with Web Video, I’m watching an ever increasing number of podcasts. I find a lot of this original content much more interesting than standard television content. The more original content TiVo can bring to their platform, the better, I say.

Steven Kim at EngadgetHD has done a nice article on upgrading the internal drive in your TiVo HD using WinMFS. Some people prefer upgrading the internal drive over using the external My DVR Expander because it is one less box to have in the entertainment center, one less device to connect to power and cable to the TiVo, and one less device to potentially fail. Plus a bare SATA drive will generally cost less, and you can get a larger drive, such as 1TB. (Note that I use the My DVR Expander on my Series3, which hasn’t been upgraded, so I don’t think it is a bad solution or anything.)

Note that if you do upgrade the internal drive, you lose the ability to just plug-in an external eSATA drive for additional capacity. You can still add an external eSATA drive, but you want to image and ‘marry’ the two drives simultaneously and install them in the TiVo at the same time. And if if you disconnect the external drive it doesn’t recover like it will with the standard eSATA support.

Universal was the only studio to be HD DVD exclusive from the launch of the format until its death. Since HD DVD went defunct and Universal turned Blu, we’ve been waiting to hear what their BD release plans would be. Today they finally dropped a press release detailing their initial BD plans, and it looks like they’re jumping in with both feet. They’ve got a number of blockbuster titles lined up for Blu-ray in 2008, and beyond, beginning with Heroes: Season Two.
Read the rest of this entry »