Remember a couple of months ago when the telnet interface to control HD TiVos was uncovered? As expected, the user development community has been hard at work producing tools to take advantage of this capability. And one of the most polished developments has tivoremote, for jail-broken iPhones. It is still very much a development project, but it has a decent UI – as seen here. And it can auto-detect compatible TiVos on your network. And it uses the TiVoToGo XML interface to download a list of the recordings from your TiVo to display on the iPhone for selection.

I love developments like this, they really show what the user community is capable of doing. At the same time, however, it is extremely frustrating and disappointing. Why? Because it is just a hint of what we could have if TiVo would only open up some APIs and publish them. If we can have interesting tools like this based on reverse engineering efforts of undocumented interfaces just imagine what could be done if TiVo would officially publish more of the APIs and enhance them. For example, the largest problem with the telnet control interface is that there is limited positive feedback of the status of the commands. If the commands returned the screen the unit was on, etc, you could truly remotely navigate the system. Currently developers have to rely on certain patterns being deterministic, which could break any time TiVo updates the software and changes the menus in any way.

TiVo could really engage the development community just by making some simple interfaces on the units more open. While ReplayTV did a number of things wrong, and ended up folding, one of the things they did right was having an extensive network API. This allowed the ReplayTV users to develop DVArchive, a very nice freeware tool. Their API extended to searching the EPG and scheduling new recordings, viewing lists of upcoming recordings, and more. I’d love to see community tools like this for TiVo.

Maybe someday TiVo will embrace the user development community and publish more APIs. In the meantime we still get to enjoy tools like these due to the efforts of the community.

The CableTechTalk blog has a very nice post up today about CableCARD and tru2way. While the blog is run by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), and the post in question was written by Paul Rodriguez, Director of Online Content for the NCTA, so you might expect some editorial slant, I thought it was a nice, factual article. It provides a concise history of the development of CableCARD and tru2way, as well as correcting some of the common misconceptions. I think it is worth a read.

The TiVo-sponsored group Smart Television Alliance has launched a campaign to educate parents about the increase in children’s television viewing during the summer months. They claim that it increases 150%. They describe the campaign as “a call to action for busy parents and caregivers to use technology to control what television children watch, to make smart viewing choices, and to promote a balanced media diet.” The press release below has more information.

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I got a kick out of this post in MediaPost’s TV Board blog. A friend of the post’s author called Comcast about their digital phone service and got a pitch for a DVR. I loved the summary of the conversation:

“I don’t need your DVR, I already have a TiVo,” she said.

“Our DVR is the same as TiVo but it comes free with our service,” the sales rep adamantly replied.

“Oh, really, well I have a lifetime membership with TiVo. Can you log on from any computer and schedule something to record?” she retorted.

“No.”

“Can the DVR you offer be networked to my computer?”

“No.”

“Can I transfer shows between TVs?”

“No.”

“Can you store whatever you record on the DVR to your computer?”

“No.”

“Can you convert anything that you have recorded to play on your iPod video?”

“No.”

“Can you burn anything you have recorded on your DVR onto a DVD?”

“No.”

“Then I would have to say your DVR is nothing like a TiVo. All yours does is record.”

”I guess you’re right, it’s not the same.”

And that’s not even the half of it when it comes to TiVo’s features. Right on! All TiVos are DVRs, but not all DVRs are TiVos!

TiVo’s latest newsletter:

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While TiVo may not be available to Australian consumers until July 29th, Australian tech site iTWire got some hands-on time with one today and liked what they saw. The author saying “it lives up to my high expectations.” As he put it:

The Australian TiVo offers the four vital features that almost every other PVR on the Australian market lack – a proper Electronic Program Guide, a “Season Pass” feature, intelligent storage management and a generous margin for error when it comes to scheduling recordings.

He seems to have laid to rest the unsubstantiated rumor that the Australian TiVo would somehow block ad skipping by saying it has fast-forward, but not a 30-second skip. However, he doesn’t clarify if he tried the SPS30S 30-second skip backdoor that US TiVo units have, or was just referring to the fact it isn’t a standard feature. I suspect the latter. He also answers a question I had about the eSATA port by saying it is not currently active and will be activated in a future firmware update.

Australian TV networks are worse than US networks when it comes to sticking with a published schedule. They regularly start early and run late, which will make TiVo’s padding abilities useful. But it sounds like TiVo has a special trick up its sleeve for Australia. According to iTWire it will automatically pad recordings by 10 minutes during prime time – ending recording 10 minutes after the scheduled program end (the time is adjustable). And recordings of live programs are automatically extended by an hour, which sounds like a nice improvement on the reminder message US units received in a recent update. This sounds just like the ’soft padding’ that has been oft requested in the US, and I hope we see this development re-imported back to the states. I do kind of presume it only auto-pads recordings when the tuner is free and nothing else is scheduled to record, of course.

All in all it was a very positive review, good news for TiVo’s prospects down under.

Consumer electronics vendor Onkyo announced that they will release their first Blu-ray player later this year, according to Pocket-lint. Onkyo had been one of the few CE vendors to support HD DVD, but they dropped their HD DVD support in February – shortly before Toshiba pulled the plug on HD DVD completely.

Onkyo’s move into Blu-ray could be interesting. They shook up the AV receiver market by introducing receivers with fairly low prices yet a lot of features, causing competitors to slash prices and revise their lineups to retain market share. (Coincidentally I ordered an Onkyo TX-SA606 receiver to replace my suddenly dead Pioneer unit just yesterday.) If they follow the same with with their Blu-ray players, it could shake up the market. Onkyo pledges full support for Blu-ray’s audio and video capabilities, which would seem to indicate they’re player will be Profile 2.0 / BD-Live capable.

TiVo today issued a press release announcing the commercial and program rankings from their Stop||Watch service for May 2008. And, as has been the norm, we see that the top viewed commercials don’t necessarily air during the top ranked programs, running counter to traditional ratings-based ad sales.

“The May data demonstrates that running a commercial during a successful program does not guarantee that people will see it, especially if they are Timeshifting and watching the show later,” said Todd Juenger, Vice President & General Manager, TiVo Audience Research & Measurement. “Grey’s Anatomy had the top four Timeshifted episodes, but only managed to sneak one spot into the Top 10. On the other hand, House didn’t have any episodes in Top 10 Timeshifted viewing, but placed four of the top Timeshifted commercials.”

The press release is full of data, so check it out of you’re interested.

The TV Barn blog has posted a letter Time Warner Cable sent out to customers in Kansas City, MO. It announces that they intend to begin migrating “lesser-viewed channels” to SDV beginning August 20, 2008. They’ve done a fairly decent job providing information and being non-alarmist, it looks like they’ve cribbed from a recent letter sent out by Cox. The TWC letter reads, in part:

The current generation of CableCARD-compatible devices sold at retail are only capable of accessing our one-way services. They were not designed to be compatible with SDV, which is a two-way service. As a result, once the channels listed above are migrated to SDV, they no longer will be available to UDCPs. However, Time Warner Cable has worked with the rest of the cable industry and TiVo Inc. to develop an external device called a Tuning Adapter that will allow certain UDCPs, including TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD digital video recorders, to access channels delivered using SDV.

We expect to be able to offer Tuning Adapters to customers with compatible UDCPs later this year. At that time we will provide you with additional information on availability and device compatibility. It is currently contemplated that the Tuning Adapter will be provided at no additional charge. Until the Tuning Adapter becomes available, however, a Time Warner Cable digital cable set-top box will be required to view channels migrated to SDV – even if you own a Tuning Adapter-compatible UDCP. In addition, certain non-TiVo UDCP models may not work with the Tuning Adapter.

Since The Tuning Adapter is expected to be available starting in July, perhaps they’ll have them available before the August 20th SDV migration. Though one has to wonder, with the Tuning Adapter planned to be available soon, why not just wait to perform the SDV migration until they have them available? Why risk inconveniencing and possibly alienating customers? Corporations move in mysterious ways.

Expect to see more and more of these letters over he coming months as more cable MSOs turn to SDV to add capacity for the growing volume of HD content, as well as additional channels.

I was checking for this repeatedly yesterday, since Australia is across the date line, but the news hadn’t popped before I crashed for the night. Well, it hit while I was asleep and we finally have product, pricing, and availability details for TiVo in Australia.

While July 1st was the launch day, units will be available for retail purchase starting July 29th. The units will be sold at retail in Harvey Norman and Domayne stores (both owned by Harvey Norman) for AUD$699 with no monthly fee, as expected. It was previously reported that Harvey Normal will have a three month exclusive on the sale of TiVo in Australia. While consumers will not be able to purchase a unit in stores until July 29th, beginning July 17th Harvey Norman will be conducting in-store demos to prep the market for the retail launch. The TiVo will also feature in the next Harvey Norman catalog which will be landing in Australian mailboxes during the next week.

ISP Unwired, a Seven subsidiary, will provide distribution and support for both retail and online TiVo purchases. TiVo will launch with all of the standard DVR features found in the US – Season Passes, WishLists, KidZone, TiVo Suggestions, etc. The TiVo USB WiFi adapter will also be available for AUD$59 for customers who cannot use the built-in wired Ethernet connection.

What TiVo will not have in Australia, at least at launch, are most of TiVo’s networking features. Photo viewing, music playback, TiVoToGo (including transfers to PMPs like the iPod, etc), and others will be added later. As there is no monthly fee, it looks like Seven Network will be using these features as a revenue source, charging for the upgrade similar to how TiVo first introduced them as the ‘Home Media Option’. Pricing for the update has not been announced, but it has been referred to as ‘tens of dollars’, so it doesn’t sound like it will be that expensive. I think it could be possible that the costs would include TiVo Desktop Plus capabilities, which runs USD$24.95. It does sound like broadband downloads will not come at an additional fee, but since that’s a competitive advantage and a revenue stream in its own right it isn’t too surprising.

According to Seven’s press releases, they’ll begin rolling out the additional features soon after launch, to continue over the next year. Seven will reportedly be spending ‘millions’ during the Olympics, for which they hold the Australian broadcast rights, to promote the new TiVo service. The TiVo sold in Australia is based on the platform used by the TiVo HD in the US, and it supports analog and digital broadcasts. So it is ready for the growing number of digital (DVB-T) broadcasts in Australia. Like the TiVo HD, the Australian TiVo has dual tuners, which handle both standard- and high-definition, and a 160GB hard drive. It also has an eSATA port and Seven will reportedly begin selling a drive to expand the TiVo early next year. We’ll have to see if the port is actually enabled or not once consumers get their hands on the box, perhaps they’ll work with the 500GB Western Digital My DVR Expander drive used in the US.

According to Smarthouse:

“We are currently in discussions with several content providers and we have already built the backend structure that is needed to deliver content such as movies and content from third party providers. Our initial plan is to give consumers a significantly better recording and management experience of free to air TV and then follow this up with addition services”.
James Warburton said “While the service will be advertising free initially, we do plan to run banner advertising inside content going forward. For the consumer they only pay a one off fee of $699 and no ongoing subscription fees”.

Seven’s major competitor is the pay-TV service Foxtel, which offers their Foxtel iQ2 DVR. While the iQ2 is only AUD$200, AUD$500 less than TiVo, there is a monthly fee. The iQ2 costs AUD$10-15 on top of the standard Foxtel subscription (Foxtel is a Pay TV service), which runs AUD$37.95 up to AUD$105.95 a month, depending on the level of service. Since the TiVo records free-to-air broadcasts and has no monthly fee, it rapidly becomes the less expensive option.

Seven took the opportunity at launch to take a swipe at Foxtel. As reported via Smarthouse:

A senior Seven executive said “We will have no churn like Foxtel and we anticipate that from September onwards Foxtel will see massive churn as consumers switch to the free TiVo service”.

They took a number of other shots at Foxtel, getting some early jabs in at what will be their main competitor. Seven called attention to the 70% of the Australian TV marker which has “turned their back on Foxtel” and opted for free-to-air TV. And claiming that the 30% that have opted for Foxtel still spend half of their time watching FTA TV.

Seven Network Press Releases:
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