In what can’t be a good sign for the progress of the TiVo software for Comcast, CNET’s Matthew Elliott has posted in their Crave blog that he’s finally given up in frustration and returned to using the standard non-TiVo Comcast DVR. He first starting using the TiVo software May, and while his initial impression was favorable overall, he had some issues with it as well - especially performance.

He followed up in July, and by then the bloom was already off the rose. His patience was low with the performance issues by then and he was experiencing frozen screens and missed recordings. He was already considering returning to the standard Comcast DVR.

Things apparently improved for a while starting last month. The number of glitches dropped and the performance seemed to improve. But then, last week, he was locked out of On Demand and lost the ability to record anything - and that was the last straw. As he sums it up:

My two biggest gripes with the Comcast + TiVo service were its speed and reliability. Setting a recording took anywhere from 20 seconds to over a minute. With Comcast DVR, a recording is set almost instantaneously. Service reliability was the bigger issue; TiVo would regularly freeze up and required to be reset–a process that required me to pull the cable box out, unplug it, plug it back in, and wait 10 to 15 minutes for the service to return–and then re-enter the 30-second skip code for the remote. Other than encouraging me to read more, the only advantages I found with TiVo were its suggested recordings, its ad-free channel guide, and a better organized list of recorded shows, which grouped multiple recordings of a show and all HD recordings into folders.

I’d really like to see TiVo succeed in bringing their software to cable DVRs, but the road so far has been long and rocky. At this point it seems that there is still a lot of work to be done, and some of the troubles may be due to the lack of power in the fielded hardware. The TiVo software is running on top of a middleware layer (currently a precursor to tru2way, and it should be tru2way in time) which runs on top of a base OS, and that means it will be hard to match the performance of a native OS. A solution for this could be newer generations of cable DVR hardware which are bring designed from the start to support tru2way applications, instead of existing hardware that has been updated with software.

There are so many variables involved it is hard to say if the troubles are with TiVo’s software, the middleware layers, the base OS, the hardware, the head-end servers, or something else. So the issues may be out of TiVo’s hands. But in the end it doesn’t matter to the end user, they just want the software to work and don’t care who’s problem it is. So I hope that TiVo and their partners can sort things out and make it ‘just work’, or it will continue to struggle to gain traction.

Thanks to a tip from reader Jack I discovered a post in the blog ‘Infinite Abyss’ which has some very interesting information. The blogger was asked to answer a survey for e-rewards.com, and he noticed the survey was sponsored by TiVo. It turned out the survey was designed to gather feedback on a UI design for a DVR, a UI that is radically different from what TiVo has today. He posted images from the survey as well as three WMV videos of the proposed UI in action - video 1, video 2, and video 3.

I’ve emailed the author to ask for permission to rehost his images and videos, since I fear this may ‘Slashdot’ his blog. If I get permission I’ll edit this post to link to new sources. (I did rehost a couple for this post to avoid direct linking his images and abusing his bandwidth.) For now check out his blog post for more images and the videos.

EDIT: EngadgetHD has re-posted the videos via Viddler:

I really like this new design. And I spotted some interesting things in the videos.

In the first video you see that under the ‘My Shows’ menu there appears to be folders for different members of the family - ‘All, Mom, Dad, Mom & Dad, Jeff’. That’s an oft requested feature. There is also an interesting item ‘Connect with family & friends’, which hints at some kind of social networking. And an ambiguous ‘Extras’ button. Of course, the biggest and most obvious change is the way the currently playing video keeps playing in the upper right corer, and the ‘ribbon at the top contains suggestions for other content presented as thumbnails.

And the video continues the Find TV, movies, & more menu looks to have similar options to today’s TiVo. The My Recordings menu is different with what appear to be filters on the left (All, HD, TV Shows, Movies, Playlists, My Providers). The last filter is interesting, sounds like it allows you to filter say cable from Amazon VOD. The list of videos itself is laid out a bit differently. And one item jumped out - “Recommendations from Friends”. Again, social networking implied. This is something I’ve been saying TiVo should do for years now. There is also one called “Bookmarks” which is intriguing, people have long asked for a way to ‘Bookmark’ locations in content.

Drilling down into ‘House’ in the folder the way the episodes are presented is nice, with ‘Season X, Episode Y’ shown right on the list. But one down into a specific episode I’m again intrigued by the ‘Bonus features’ link. Sounds like it is setup for content providers to provide DVD-style bonus content to link to their shows. An interesting value add TiVo could provide.

In the second video (note the TV content is the same, the videos demo different menu flows) it goes down into Browse TV & Movies. On the left are filters for TV shows, Movies, and, again. Video providers. TV shows contains the options Most popular TV shows, Now available to download, HD shows, TV networks, Catagories [sic - their misspelling], and Search all TV shows. Movies contains New releases, Most popular rentals & purchases, HD movies, Free & on sale, Search all movies, Movie trailers, and, oddly, Search all movies. Well, this is almost certainly a mock up for the survey, so little quirks aren’t unusual.

When you drill down into Movies: New Releases you get a screen that looks remarkably like Amazon VOD’s shopping screens with a grid of cover art and as you select each title the details appear in a panel on the right. Very nice looking interface. But most interesting is that once you drill down into a specific title you see icons at the top for the provider(s) it is available from - the list shows Amazon Unbox (clearly this mock up was made before the name change to Amazon Video On Demand), Blockbuster, and Netflix. Select ‘Rent this movie’ and it shows options:
- FREE from Netflix [HD]
- Amazon ($4.99) [HD]
- Blockbuster ($5.99) [HD]
- FREE with Blockbuster Total Access [HD]
- Rent in standard definition from $3.99

That’s interesting in that multiple providers are shown and that all of the primary options are for HD content, something TiVo lacks for Amazon VOD today. I’m sure it is speculative, since Netflix doesn’t do HD streaming (and doesn’t do downloads at all today), but I like where that is going.

The third video shows the ribbon at the top of the screen. When you select one of the items there a ‘drop down’ section appears with details on the item and an explanation of why that content is being recommended to you. I have to say that, of all the elements of this UI, this is the one that doesn’t grab me. I don’t use Suggestions that much. Sure, I have them on, but I only use them when I’m out of my own recorded content. And I don’t check to see what is being suggested often enough that I think it’d be useful to have on the main UI screen. But maybe having it there would change my behavior, hard to say.

One of the images shows an interesting ability to control the elements of the ribbon. Apparently allowing you to adjust how often TV content, Movies, or Advertisements appear, using sliders to adjust the weightings, as shown in the image. I do like that ability.

All in all I really, really like the look of this UI concept. I wonder if this is something we might see on the ‘Series4′, or, hopefully, perhaps an update for the existing Series3/TiVo HD units. Of course, this was just a survey on the concepts for a new UI. It could be complete pie-in-the-sky that will never see the light of day. TiVo could change their UI in completely different ways. But I do like the direction this mock up indicates is being considered.

As I said, if the author gives permission I’ll repost all of the images and videos to be more accessible. This is very exciting news.

Zatz Not Funny is giving away some TiVo swag - a TiVo Glo Remote, TiVo coasters, and a set of TiVo antennae. Jump on over there and take your chance - and read the blog while you’re at it, it is a good one.

Picked up from TiVo Blog.

NewTeeVee has an entry from Liane Cassavoy, who recently switched from a Series2 TiVo for an HD DVR from Verizon FiOS, and she calls out five areas where Verizon, and other DVRs, could take a lesson from the “trusty, user-friendly TiVo”. Of course, they could just cut to the chase and license TiVo’s software to provide their users with the best of breed DVR. I like Liane’s closing paragraph:

Of the 26 million DVRs in the U.S., only 1.7 million of them are from TiVo. I understand completely why so many people opt for a DVR from their cable company rather than purchasing one from TiVo. After all, it’s cheaper (about $15 per month, as opposed to spending $300 on an HD TiVo and $13 per month for the service) and it’s convenient. I just wish that all of those people didn’t have to settle for a DVR that can be too hard to use and simply not as good.

I won’t quibble over her pricing, there are less expensive options for TiVo hardware and subscriptions, but she’s right on about settling for a lesser product. TiVo is worth the cost because it is a better experience, that’s my opinion anyway.

Of course both Dave Zatz and myself left comments pointing out that you can use a TiVo Series3 or TiVo HD with Verizon FiOS, as they support CableCARD.

Web video from Hulu, CBS, ESPN, etc, is great, but it is generally stuck on your PC. Sure, you can hook up a PC to the TV, and some web video is available on set-top boxes, such as YouTube on TiVo, but it is still limited. There are are some devices which allow access to more of the sites, like the D-Link DSM-520, but then you need Yet Another STB in your A/V stack. What to do? Well, PlayOn from MediaMall Technologies can help.

PlayOn installs on your Windows XP or Windows Vista PC, and acts as a kind of transcoding proxy for web video. It retrieves the web video and streams it to DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) compatible devices such as the PlayStation3, Xbox 360, and HP MediaSmart TVs. While those are the officially supported devices, they state that they will work to expand the list, and since they’re using DLNA I’m thinking may work on other DLNA devices even if not officially supported. They currently tout support for Hulu, CBS, YouTube, and ESPN, and promise Netflix support “just down the road”. They’ve also promised playback on the Nintendo Wii “by the end of 2008″. PlayOn is currently in beta, and MediaMall plans to charge $30 for the final product when it is ready for release.

MediaMall also has a blog where you can keep track of their development efforts. In a post there they reiterate that Netflix will be added before GA (that’s general availability, aka the official release for the non-geeks), and also state that CNN will be in before GA. MediaMall also develops the ActiveTV platform that powers the above mentioned DSM-520, which supports a plethora of web video sites, so it seems logical that they’d be bringing that know-how over to PlayOn to add more sites over time. After all, PlayOn was only released to beta on Monday.

Picked up from EngadgetHD.

There’s an interesting discussion in the comments on a recent PVRblog post. Matt of PVRBlog noticed a comment in a New York Times profile of Jon Stewart and posted it:

The day begins with a morning meeting where material harvested from 15 TiVos and even more newspapers, magazines and Web sites is reviewed.

That sparked discussion and speculation that Jon was using ‘TiVo’ as a generic reference to some other DVR setup, but no, a former researcher on the show posted a comment and confirmed their setup.

Nope, it’s literally 15 rack-mounted TiVos of various models, many from the pre-Series 2 era. Some Philips boxes, some Sonys. And because there’s a limited number of remote codes, when a staffer operates one, he has to hold the remote directly against that box’s IR receiver so that the beam doesn’t hit any of the other boxes (i.e., so he’s not inadvertently controlling multiple boxes at once). No joke! It’s pretty primitive.

There’s a lot more in the comment, an interesting look behind the scenes of The Daily Show. Since they’re using old Series1 units, how do they get the clips on air?

When TiVo footage is needed for TDS that day (i.e., every day), the clips are dubbed off to Beta tape and brought to an editing bay. Yup, sneakernet. Sounds like a lot of work, right? It is. I wouldn’t be surprised if the show upgrades to a networked PVR system — especially with an imminent move to HD — but I don’t know what their plans are.

So the rack of TiVos may not be in place for long. It sounds like an opportunity for TiVo to supply them with a new HD-capable setup, based on the TiVo HD. I wonder if there is enough business to make it worthwhile for them to develop a customized version of the software with features designed to make it easier for commercial users.

The Daily Show isn’t the only major program using TiVo. An intern for Late Night with Conan O’Brien posted a comment at Boing Boing stating that they use three TiVos content.

I intern at Late Night with Conan O’Brien and am privileged enough to realize how a set-up like The Daily Shows is so mind-boggling. At Late Night we have three TiVo’s that are set-up to record every other late night talk show, several morning to afternoon shows and a few special events that happen now and again. Every morning we burn DVD copies of the previous day’s shows, a process that takes less then 2 hours, depending on the temperament of the recorders.

I picked that one up from CNET’s Crave.

Amazon is holding another sale on Bluray, this time it is Buy Two, Get One Free on 14 Sony titles. The titles are Across the Universe, Spider-Man 3, Casino Royale, Superbad (2-Disc Unrated Extended Edition), The Fifth Element (Remastered), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition), Ghost Rider (Extended Cut), The Patriot (Extended Cut), Underworld Evolution, Black Hawk Down, We Own the Night, Surf’s Up, Kung Fu Hustle, and Spider-Man - The High Definition Trilogy (Spider-Man / Spider-Man 2 / Spider-Man 3).

Picked up from Blu-ray Stats News Log.