One thing I forgot to mention earlier is the TGC box TiVo has on display. That’s the unit recently launched in Taiwan. From checking out the box and in talking to TiVoPony, TiVoJerry, and all the TiVo folks who were so cool today (I apologize for sucking with names, no slight meant), TGC licenses the reference platform and the software, but they are free to make changes to it. They licensed the Series2 reference platform, and made the obvious change of adding a 10/100baseT port to it. So I asked the obvious question of a few people – any hope of seeing that in the US? It is a possibility, but there are no firm plans at this time. TGC also did all of the localization and customization for the software – and in the photo I took of the info screen you can see the version is 1.0 – a new tree. But the menus are so familiar that even though I can’t read Chinese, I was able to navigate the box – which is how I got to the info screen. The remote, as is obvious from the pictures, is a bog standard Series2 remote, except it is labeled ‘TGC’.

Also, the TGC units currently do not support any of the networking features – no MRV, TTG, HME, etc. The network port is only used for calls home at this time, though TGC may introduce the other features over time.

I also took more photos of the Series3 unit, including macro close ups of the ports on the back, and the OLED display and controls on the front, as well as photos of many of the new TiVo Central Online screens, and I uploaded those this evening.

I was utterly shocked by the response my post has received. Unbelievably, it seems like I may be the only person who posted info about the Series3 unit and the only one who posted photos. And now those photos are *all over* the net. If I’d realized that I wouldn’t have just casually dumped the raw 5 mega pixel photos on the server.

So, some changes to the photos:
http://www.gizmolovers.com/Photos/CES2006/Small/ – this now contains photos resized to 10% original. Better for the web anyway, and much smaller byte-wise. Thanks to usagijer for the quick resize script.
http://www.gizmolovers.com/Photos/CES2006/Large/ – this contains the original 5 mega pixel images for anyone looking for images for print, resizing, cropping, etc. Please don’t grab these unless you really need them, my server will appreciate it.

krellis pointed me at this mirror – which I don’t quite understand how it works yet – which may help get to things when the load is bad on my server:
http://www.gizmolovers.com.nyud.net/Photos/CES2006/Small/ – it looks like it is still caching the pre-resized RAW images. That should update at some point I guess.
http://www.gizmolovers.com.nyud.net/Photos/CES2006/Large/ – the RAW images.

Alex at tivoblog has been kind enough to setup a mirror here: http://www.tivoblog.com/archives/2006/01/05/tivo-pictures-from-ces-taken-by-megazone/ It looks like it is still partial (33 of 42 right now), but he’s working on it.

I’m also uploading the photos to Dave Zatz at ZatzNotFunny and he plans to mirror them – he has a few now that he managed to grab from my server when it would respond.

If anyone else wants to mirror them, feel free to grab them from my server – or I can SFTP/FTP the originals to you if you give me a login. If you use my photos or host them, etc, all I ask is that you give credit to ‘MegaZone’ and/or ‘TiVoLovers.com’. I’m not going to bother watermarking them or anything, I don’t care that much, it is just a nice thing. If you do setup a mirror, please drop a comment here with the URL. Thanks!

I wish I could tell you about what I overheard being discussed around me while I was sitting in the TiVo room blogging my two entries earlier today, but it didn’t sound like something I should blab – and I asked and confirmed that they’d rather I not. So I’ll just have to bite my tongue (fingers?) for now, which is going to drive me nuts. But I’m not going to ruin my relationship with TiVo just to scoop something.

EDIT: Some more mirrors! Thanks folks!

http://www.something-fishy.com/photography/TiVoS3

http://spidertrace.com/Gallery/Tivo3

http://starjewel.org/pics/tivo/

For the record, there are 42 photos total – at this point. I may take more tomorrow.

EDIT 2: Dave Zatz has his mirror up now too: http://www.zatznotfunny.com/PSN/tivoces.htm

EDIT 3: More mirrors!

http://64.247.19.118/

http://theomelet.com/index.php?itemid=62

So, the Series3 box is the big news everyone has been waiting for, but it is hardly the only thing TiVo is showing at CES.

As I posted yesterday, TiVo put the sign-up for the 2.3 Desktop beta up on their site, and they’re showing it off here. 2.3 brings some features found in 3rd party applications like Galleon and TVHarmony to the TiVo Desktop – automated transfers, and transcoding shows. Typical for TiVo software, they’ve kept the interface simple. So this isn’t for power users, but it will work nicely for the average user. To setup automated transfers you have to have the show on your TiVo, and when you select the show from the transfer menu you have the option to setup an automatic transfer for the series. So you can’t write your own rule set or request transfers for series you don’t current have recorded, but I think that’s not going to be an issue for most users.

You can setup the desktop to automatically transcode transfers to one of three formats – Windows Media Library, Sony PSP, or Apple iPod. At least in the first release you cannot transcode shows that have already been transferred. And you can only select one format for the desktop, so you can’t transcode transfers for both a PSP and an iPod, or put some shows into one format and other shows into another. But, again, I suspect most users will be OK with these restrictions, and TiVo says they may add these capabilities in subsequent releases. Advanced users still have other options.

Another software update is for TiVo Central Online. The site has been overhauled with new features, it has a very clean look and it is an AJAX application now. For the non-geeks, AJAX is Asynchronous JavaScript And XML – turning simple web pages into dynamic, browser-based applications. It is a very nice design. Search has been enhanced and results are displayed in a new format. You can display shows in the context of a grid guide, and dynamically expand or collapse episode details, highly different genre shows in the guide, etc. The new design is in beta now, and it will be rolling out soon. As a web developer and a TiVo user, I like what I’ve seen. A very nice improvement.

TiVo has also worked with Intel as part of the Viiv platform push to develop a plug-in for Windows Media Center Edition which gives TiVoToGo a ‘ten foot interface’ that allows you to use the TTG features – transfers, etc – from the MCE remote control. It makes TiVo a seamless part of an MCE installation and it looks pretty slick.

There is also a new feature in the HME API, and I think this one has already been made available. HME applications can launch other HME applications. So if you’re running application 1, it can save its state, close down, and open application 2. Then application 2 can hand back to application 1 which resumes at its previous state. But this also means that you can programmatically call an HME application with a ‘state’ for it to start in. TiVo has tied this to another feature in the OS – ‘wormholes’, which are shortcuts that can jump from one screen to another area. The demo there’s showing here is a TiVoMatic that pops up on a program for King Kong. You press Thumbs Up for more info and that takes you to a King Kong showcase with promo, trailer, etc. But the new thing is a link to buy movie tickets for the film now – and that jumps into the Fandango HME application, right into the listing for King Kong, highlighting the theater closest to you (based on zip code) and the next showing. Seamless, very nice.

TiVoPony also answered some questioned I had about HME and this new feature. It is possible to have the TiVo call an HME application it doesn’t yet know about, by having it call the app’s URL. So this kind of thing could be used for interactive advertising, promotions, etc. Pressing thumbs up could open an HME application with interactive features, etc. THAT is a very powerful thing to be able to do.

Oh – the photos have finished uploading: http://www.gizmolovers.com/Photos/CES2006/

ATTN: The original image links are getting swamped – so if you have trouble, there are a number of full and partial mirrors listed here. And I’m open to anyone else mirroring.
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Sorry for the delay, I got a later start today than I’d hoped, my bad. I went straight to TiVo’s booth and I’ve been here for a while now, looking around and taking photos. I got a personal tour from TiVoPony of all the new stuff, most of which I can share. Through the marvel of unsecured WiFi I’m coming to you from their booth. The biggest thing they have on display is the Series3 box. The Series3 is the CableCARD HDTV unit, which is due out in mid-to-late 2006. And let me tell you, it is a *SHARP* looking box! Very sleek design, very nice. I have photos, I’ll get them up ASAP, but I didn’t want to wait to post.

The unit has two CableCARD slots on the back and it will support Multi-Stream or Single-Stream cards. If you have multi-stream then you only need one card, but as long as only single stream cards are available you can use two of them. Yes, the unit is dual-tuner – actually, like the HD DirecTiVo it can use any two of the tuners it has, and it has six. 2 cable tuners, 2 ATSC tuners, and 2 NTSC tuners. Yes, it supports digital and analog cable, digital ATSC OTA, and analog NTSC OTA.

The only inputs the unit has are a coax cable in and a coax antenna in. There are no RCA or S-Video inputs on this unit. For output it has HDMI, Component Video, S-Video, and Composite Video. It has optical digital audio out, as well as RCA stereo out. Like the Series2 units it has 2 USB ports, and it also has a 10/100baseT Ethernet jack built-in. The unit also still has the modem, which seems increasingly archaic. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot – it also has an external SATA port.

The unit has front panel controls clustered on the right, and a nice display in the middle with a very cool feature – it displays the title of the show(s) tuned at the time, so you always know what it is recording at a glance. There is also an output indicator that indicates if the unit is outputting in 480i, 480p, 720p, or 1080i – and it can be set to any of those. It can also be set to pass-through, so it will send the shows to the TV in whatever format they were received.

The remote ls also sleeker – a slick update of the Series2 peanut with minor changes for HDTV (such as an aspect button). But the big change is that the remote is backlit! It is also weighted and has a ridged pattern on the back towards the base, so there is VERY distinct tactile feedback as to having the remote the right way around in your hand. So those who dislike the peanut because of the ambiguity should be happy.

The box unit still encodes analog content as MPEG2, like the current units, but it supports playback of advanced codecs such as MPEG4 AVC/H.264. This will open up the possibilities of broadband content using more efficient codecs, including HD downloads.

The photos are currently uploading to http://www.gizmolovers.com/Photos/CES2006/ – I’ll fix the permissions as soon as they’re all up so you can see them. Warning, they’re HUGE since they’re 5 mega pixels, I don’t have time to make thumbnails at the moment. I’ll do that later – I noticed some of them are a bit blurry, I’ll take some more and upload those as well.

Oh, and remember that SATA port? TiVo will also be selling an external SATA drive for easy storage expansion, and they have that on display here too.

I have more, I’ll post it in a moment.

EDIT: To clarify, it supports analog cable, even any digital cable channels sent in the clear, without CableCARD. You only need CableCARD for any protected digital channels, to handle the descryption. And since all digital cable systems in the US *must* support CableCARD – it is an FCC mandate – then it should work with all cable systems, analog or digital.

I also got a bit more info, the chipset used in the Series2 supports VC-1 (aka WMV9) and MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, along with MPEG-2, so it has all the same codecs as HD-DVD or Blu-ray. When I asked if it was using a Broadcomm chip I was told that would be a good guess.

There is also another URL for the photos: http://www.gizmolovers.com.nyud.net/Photos/CES2006/ – and if anyone else wants to mirror them, please feel free – just give me some credit. If you want to repost them in your own blog, site, etc – please COPY them to your server, don’t kill mine.

As for price – nothing has been announced yet, that’s still To Be Determined.

I have more photos which I’ll be uploading shortly.

EDIT 2: Oh, one other tech detail I forgot. The S3 is still using IDE drives internally, only the external drive is SATA. Also, the external drive is not removable in the conventional sense. Once it is connected, the OS makes it part of the file system and shows may be recorded using both the internal and external drive – as in the SAME show may have its bits scattered on both. If you disconnect the external drive the unit will cope with it, but any shows recorded with any data on the external drive will vanish. So it isn’t something you connect, record to, then take to another unit to watch the shows.

As for CPU, RAM, etc. I don’t have that info yet, but I’ll ask.

Anything else?

EDIT 3: See this entry for more info on the photos – more uploads and mirrors. Also, to permalink to this post, use this as the best direct link.

EDIT 4: Greetings Slashdotters.

EDIT 5: To clarify, the Series3 WILL NOT support CableCARD 2.0. It is strictly a unidirectional device. It will support CableCARD 1.0 and MultiStream, but NOT 2.0/bidirectional. The earlier content that suggested it would was the result of a miscommunication.
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ATTN: The original image links are getting swamped – so if you have trouble, there are a number of full and partial mirrors listed here. And I’m open to anyone else mirroring.