This issue of Home Media Magazine has an article, ‘Battle of the Boxes‘, which compares the four main options for watching broadband downloaded video on your TV: TiVo, Apple TV, VUDU, and Xbox 360. Overall the article is kind of down on the download services in general:

“Not a consumer interviewed wants to buy another set-top box,” said Richard Doherty, research director for research firm The Envisioneering Group.

I certainly can’t argue with that, I’m loathe to add another STB to my stack. And I’ve said so repeatedly. I think that gives TiVo and the Xbox 360 an edge - people buy them for other functions (DVR & gaming, respectively), and the downloads are kind of a bonus. And when it comes to HD, I have to agree with this as well:

Richard Bullwinkle, chief evangelist for Macrovision, predicts a layering effect. Macrovision has looked at TiVo, Xbox 360, Vudu and Apple TV.

“The best experience on a large TV is Blu-ray,” he said. “None of the download boxes gives you the same experience.”

But I thought what they said about TiVo in particular was unfair.

But download times are long, nothing is available in high-def, and the 24-hour rental period once the movie has started can be problematic.

The download times are roughly comparable to other services - but it, of course, will vary a lot. The TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD have had progressive download since 9.2 - which means they can start playback once enough of a buffer has built up, with no need to wait until it is all downloaded. I’d expect the Series2 to get the same in the next update. (They’re still on 9.1.) And the article makes the 24-hour window sound like a problem unique to TiVo when it is common to all of the download rental services. They don’t mention it when talking about the three other products, so readers who don’t know what will think this is a TiVo limitation. But there is more:

However, Bullwinkle said, TiVo offers the worst quality of any of the movie downloading options he’s tried, and the number of TiVo owners who download movies is small.

Ouch. That especially stings given who it is coming from. Why? For those who don’t know, once upon a time Richard Bullwinkle was known online as TiVolutionary. He was one of the early TiVo employees and their primary online evangelist on forums like TiVoCommunity.com. Back in May of 2002 he left TiVo and went to work for ReplayTV. And now he’s with Macrovision.

The quality issue is largely subjective, so I’ll leave that as may be, but how does he know how many users download movies? I don’t believe TiVo or Amazon release those numbers. Did they do an independent survey of TiVo owners? Where is the data to back up the claim?

But TiVo isn’t the only one to get a little heat in the article. All four products get what I consider to be fairly poor reviews, highlighting their shortcomings. But read the article for yourself.

TiVo also got another mention in this issue, with a small article on the roll-out of TiVo Desktop 2.6. (And I apologize for not having my review of said up yet, the behind-the-scenes work on the renaming took a lot more time than I expected.)

One of the open questions with Roxio Toast 9 is if it solved the outstanding issues with TiVoToGo experienced by users of Toast 8. Well, Roxio responded to Dave Zatz at Zatz Not Funny via a comment:

Roxio PR

We did indeed believe that we had addressed all the sync issues in Toast 9 and were planning to issue an update for Toast 8 customers. Post launch, we have become aware that some problems persist. As a result, we are going through the process of acquiring the problematic files and working to resolve any remaining issues. We fully intend to continue to work through all the issues and update Toast 9 and Toast 8 customers as required. We are asking for Toast 9 customers’ assistance. If a Toast 9 customer has experienced sync issues, we ask that they email TivoFiles@roxio.com, as we would like to acquire and test the problematic file.

Thank you.

So it sounds like Toast 9 has improved things, but not completely resolved them. If you have Toast 9 and are experiencing trouble, you have a chance to help get things fixed.

And it is nice to hear that Roxio intends to issue a fix for Toast 8 users as well, so they won’t be forced to upgrade to Toast 9 just to get the fix.

Roxio has rolled out their latest update to their flagship Mac product, Toast 9 Titanium. This new version will set you back $99.99 for new users, or $79.99 as an upgrade for existing users. Toast 9 offers full support for high-definition video, and the ability to burn Blu-ray Discs, via a $19.99 HD/BD plug-in. But if you purchase Toast 9 through April 13, you get the plug-in for free.

Toast 9 also introduces Roxio Streamer, which allows you to stream your video to any Internet connected PC or Mac, as well as connected devices such as the iPhone or iPod Touch. Kind of like having a Slingbox for your Mac videos. It also offers the ability to capture streaming audio, such as recording Internet radio, with automatic tagging of the recordings.

What remains to be seen is if Toast 9 Titanium resolves the TiVoToGo issues users of Toast 8 have been experiencing. I don’t have a Mac, so I can’t comment on that. But if anyone out there has been having issues with Toast 8 and you decide to upgrade to Toast 9, leave a comment either way. For that matter, anyone who upgrades to Toast 9, let us know what you think. Is it worth it?

Roxio’s press release:
Read the rest of this entry »

Back in October, 2006 Apple filed a patent application for a ‘Search user interface for media device’ which describes a search interface on a media device, which sure sounds like an Apple TV variant, with a remote control which resembles an iPod Nano with the click-wheel interface. Here’s the abstract:

A search menu includes a search input field and input characters rendered on a multi-dimensional displacement surface that rotates in response to a user input. A highlight region intersects the multi-dimensional displacement surface and highlights input characters while the input characters intersect the highlight region according to the rotation of the multi-dimensional displacement surface.

Don’t you love patent-ese? But perhaps the most interesting aspect are the images included with the patent. They show what looks very much like a TV Guide-style EPG for live TV.

AppleInsider uncovered the patent application, and they have some of the images posted in their write-up. It is easier to see them there than in the US Patent Office interface. Interestingly, the remote is meant to be a fairly intelligent device, with a display and local storage. It would download the EPG data so that you could take the remote with you and decide what to record, and then when you returned it to the device it would sync and setup the recordings. That seems pretty complex, and frankly of questionable utility, for a remote - but it does make more sense if the ‘remote’ could be a real iPod, doesn’t it?

The filing also includes a hybrid search which would search both the EPG data and the iTunes store for content - which sounds just like TiVo’s Universal Swivel Search, which searches the local EPG, as well as broadband content from TiVoCast and Amazon Unbox.

As with all patent applications, this doesn’t mean Apple is actually working on a product that does this, just that they had the idea and felt it was worth patenting - just in case they decide to do it, or someone else does and they want to collect licensing. But the lack of DVR functionality is the glaring omission from Apple TV, so many people expect that Apple will address that at some point.

Picked up from CNET News.com.

It is a bit ironic that, after the ‘death’ of the format’, the HD DVD studios have released some of the formats strongest titles ever. This has boosted HD DVD’s market share in its final weeks. For the week ended 3/3, HD DVD took a 25% share, with Blu-ray holding the other 75%. This puts them at 76:24 for the year, and 66:34 since inception. HD DVD didn’t manage to take the top selling spot this time around, that went to 30 Days of Night on BD, but it did grab the second and third spots - with the new release Beowulf, and American Gangster, in its second week of release. Beowulf was close, selling 82.52% of 30 Days of Night’s sales. After this, there aren’t really any Blockbuster HD DVD releases left. So I expect their percentage to start falling off again.

This issue of Home Media Magazine also includes an article which states Sony and Microsoft are in talks to bring Blu-ray to the Xbox 360. President of Sony Electronics U.S., Stan Glasgow, said that a Blu-ray drive could be incorporated in the Xbox Elite model, or as an add-on, as originally reported in the Financial Times online edition. Glasgow also said that Sony is in talks with Apple about the use of Blu-ray in Macs.

I’m not much of an Apple fanboy, but I am something of an iPod fanboy - I highly recommend them in general, based on my personal use. And Apple today dropped their pricing on the 1GB iPod Shuffle to only $49 - with free shipping! They’ll also be launching a 2GB iPod Shuffle for only $69 soon.

And if you’re interested in the MacBook Air - it is now shipping. But if that’s too rick for your blood (it is for mine!), they do have refurbished Macs.

It seems the TiVoToGo problems reported with Roxio software on the Mac last November still linger. While a patch was issued in November, it seems that it didn’t resolve the issues for all users. Today both Zatz Not Funny and CNET News.com wrote about the troubles. ZNF cited this post at TiVoCommunity made by Roxio rep patatrox yesterday:

We’ve been running a limited beta with a small number of users from the forums to test an update to both Toast 8 Titanium and Popcorn 3 and we’ve had positive results. We’re going to expand the testing for more users who are still having audio/video sync issues, please send me an e-mail to toastfeedback@roxio.com.

We’re going to extend this to about 50 users from TiVoCommunity.com and after a short time if feedback is positive move towards releasing this as an official update. Please keep in mind I will only be contacting users who are accepted for testing.

Please include the following information:
- Name
- Product you own (Toast 8 or Popcorn 3)
- TiVo Service Number (TSN)

If you’re having trouble with Roxio Toast or Popcorn and TiVoToGo on your Mac, you might want to jump on that.

TiVo made a statement to News.com for their article:

“It is important to us that all TiVo subscribers using TiVoToGo receive the same great TiVo experience whether they are utilizing a PC or Mac,” the company said in a statement to News.com. “It has been brought to our attention that a small subset of customers using Toast 8 have experienced a problem when trying to transfer their shows. We have been working with our partner Roxio and currently have a fix in beta.”

Roxio product manager Patrick Nugent said that they’ve been working with TiVo to fix the issues an that it affects “a small number of users.” He also said that it has been difficult to fix because it has been hard to reproduce and it doesn’t happen with ever recording.

Hopefully the code now in testing will be the final fix. Of course, there are other alternatives for Mac users. Such as the TiVo NowPlaying Widget, SeasonPassGetter, TiVoDecode Manager, and others.

I was happy to see Apple announce today that they’re boosting the iPhone’s capacity from 8GB to 16GB, and the iPod Touch from 16GB to 32GB. I’m not really much of an Apple fanboy, in fact, the only Apple product I really use is my iPod and iTunes. I do think OS X is a great operating system, and if they’d sell it for use on generic hardware I’d probably use it, but I haven’t been willing to pay the Apple Tax on their laptops. (Yes, I know about Darwin.)

But I really do like the iPod, and, having tried a number of alternative portable digital music players, it is still the only one I really recommend. However, I’m still using a 60GB iPod with color, initially known as the iPod Photo. The first generation of video iPods just wasn’t enough to make me jump - the screen is too small. And I have almost no interest in the iPhone. I’ve played with them, I know people who own them - and I still prefer my Treo 680 to the iPhone for my needs. I really use my ‘phone’ more for email and such - text applications - and I just didn’t like typing on the iPhone. It is shiny and sexy, but that’s not enough for a serious relationship.

But I do love the screen and the interface for other things, including the browser. So when the iPhone was announced I was excited, not because of the iPhone, but because I knew it was only a matter of time until an iPod popped up with the same design. And it did, the iPod Touch. But when it was announced I was very disappointed. What I wanted was a high-capacity unit with the UI of the iPhone. I was thinking 80GB, or even 160GB, with the same screen and UI, not 8GB or 16GB! I’m getting close to filling my 60GB iPod, and I like having all my music on tap. I started with a 20GB iPod and quickly dumped it for the 60GB model because I couldn’t stand picking and choosing which songs to load, invariably not having the song I wanted to listen to on there, of course. So there was no way I was going back to even 16GB.

So I’m happy to see the 32GB model announced, not so much for what it is, but because the next logical step is 64GB. I just have to wait and the price/performance curve will bring Flash memory prices down far enough for Apple to kick up the capacity again. And when they finally launch the 64GB model, I expect to finally upgrade. I think it’ll happen in the second half of this year.

I can wait.