When I reported on the release of the 9.4 software for the TiVo Series3 & TiVo HD on Tuesday, I speculated on whether the update also included the promised YouTube support. Well, that question has been answered - it is in there, and Dave Zatz got a look at it and to keep things circular, he posted a video of it to YouTube. Since this was only announced on March 12, 2008 it is nice to see it coming out so soon.

9.4 enables native H.264 decoding on the S3 & HD, required for YouTube support. What is not known is if there decoding support has been extended to other areas as well, such as video podcasts. If so, it could eliminate transcoding on a PC via TiVo Web Video, at least for video podcasts in H.264 - which is many, if not most, of them. I’m hoping the H.264 support does apply to other video sources, it would make life much easier. TiVo Web Video is OK, but not ideal.

Speaking of, allow me a small digression…

I realize I never did pull together a review of TiVo Desktop 2.6 as I’d said I would. I’ve been pretty busy and it got away from me. And, honestly, I’ve had so many problems with it that each time I think about writing it up I just get upset again. I recently had TiVo Web Video forget all of the podcasts I’d subscribed to, twice in two days! I noticed it wasn’t transferring anything after a couple of days, and when I checked the config file it was back to default - all the subscriptions gone. So I restored them and it started transferring again, so I went to bed. The next day it had stopped, and the file was wiped out, again! I wiped everything and started from scratch and it has been working for over a week now. And this isn’t the first time this happened, early on it lost all the subscriptions too. Of course, since TiVo Web Video, unlike TiVoCast, doesn’t just start with the most recent recording and move forward, but insists on downloading and transcoding back episodes as well (default is 5), it would re-download and re-transfer everything. It literally takes a few days for my PC to suck down all the backlog (I subscribe to a number of podcasts) and transfer it. So when this happens it is a major pain in the posterior.

And it doesn’t clean up after itself, I found over ten gigabytes of abandoned downloaded recordings sitting the the Downloads directory. Recordings it should’ve deleted after transferring to the TiVo. It just slowly uses up the drive. The leaking seems to vary - right now there are two files from back on 7/8 totally about 50MB. But all it takes is a few long-form HD podcasts to be missed and it adds up fast. Those are just a couple of the problems with it. Don’t get me wrong, having it is better than not having it at all, but it is far from a stable solution, let alone ideal. But I digress, I really should make myself write up all the issues and such.

Back to the topic at hand..,

So anyway, I would really love to see TiVo allow the S3/HD to download H.264 podcasts directly, bypassing the PC. Heck, as an interim even if they downloaded to the PC but skipped transcoding and just transferred to the TiVo as-is it would speed things up a great deal. Transcoding really slows things down.

Dave got a look at what is apparently a pre-release version of the software, so the final release could vary, but probably won’t. YouTube is added as another option under the TiVo Central -> Find Programs & Downloads -> Download TV, Movies, & Web Video menu item. It looks like the screen has been retitled from ‘Video Downloads’ to ‘Broadband Video’, which may be a reflection of the fact that TiVo is now streaming video and not just downloading it. The ‘Movies & TiVo from Amazon Unbox’ link has been changed to ‘Amazon Unbox TV & Movies’, which I think sounds better. And just below that, slotting in above ‘Brows Other Videos’ is a new link entitled, simply, ‘YouTube’.

The only sub-option at this time is ‘Watch YouTube Videos’, and once you select that you get into the YouTube HME application interface proper. The color scheme reminds me of the current Music Choice application. Within the application you can select Featured Videos, Most Recent, Search, Top Favorites, Most Viewed, or Top Rated. Each selection then has sub-selections. The interface looks pretty good, and you can even rate the videos 1-5 stars, just as you can online.

From Dave’s video I don’t see a way to link this application with your YouTube account, which would be nice. I’d like to be able to pull up the subscriptions I have on YouTube from my TiVo. And to have ratings from one location be reflected in the other. Being able to subscribe or favorite a video on the TiVo and having it show up online would be nice. But this is the first release, and from what I can see it looks good. This could always be a future enhancement.

UPDATE: Shortly after I posted this I was looking over some other blogs and over at Gizmodo I saw that TiVo will indeed be adding the ability to login to your YouTube account, in an update due eight weeks out.

Dave also tacked a quick look at the Tuning Adapter and Network Remote Control screens at the end of the video. He says we can expect the official press release later today, and the application may start showing up on TiVos with 9.4 as early as today (Thursday) as well. TiVo has a new page on their site as well: http://www.tivo.com/youtube

Now that TiVo has support for H.264 and streaming video, I’m hopeful we’ll see more features using them. Aside from the aforementioned video podcast support, TiVo could support Amazon’s upcoming video streaming service, HD video downloads (most HD downloads use H.264), perhaps even streaming video between TiVo units, or from a PC to a TiVo.

I’m still waiting to receive 9.4 myself, can’t wait to play with this.

(And no Dave, you’re not the only one still waiting for Tekzilla. )

I have a Keyword Auto-Record WishList on my TiVo for ‘TiVo’, just for situations like this. Last night it caught the year 2000 episode of “I Love the New Millennium” on VH1, which featured TiVo. It is repeating several times this week, so you can hit that link to schedule it on your TiVo. It was a very positive bit, with various celebs singing the praises of TiVo and how it changed their lives. With a humorous tone of course, as is the nature of the show. The TiVo segment starts about 30 minutes in and lasts just over two minutes.

But the best bit, the bit that made me stop my TiVo to catch my breath from laughing, was that they, without explanation, flashed the (in)famous picture of Gizmodo’s Brian Lam reclining on a sofa, wearing TiVo antennae and cuddling his TiVo Series 3. The BLam pops up just before the 32 minute mark, for just a couple of seconds. Priceless.

Christopher Mascari of Gizmodo has written an excellent article on the history of the TiVo Peanut Remote, from the early prototypes to the current Glo Remote to some of what they’re looking at for the future. It is also chock full of pictures of the various incarnations of the remotes, including prototypes and design exercises never before seen. (I just realized he missed the AOLTV remotes though. I wonder if there are any other evolutionary dead-ends in the peanut’s history that TiVo is sitting on.) I thought I knew a lot about the history of TiVo’s remote, but even I learned a few things from this article. For example, I never knew about the ‘5 Year Reward’.

I’m interested in the future design possibilities mentioned in the article, such as a QWERTY keyboard or a touchscreen. Personally I would very much not like to see TiVo drop buttons to go to a touchscreen. I’ve found touchscreens difficult to use without looking, because there is no tactile feedback from the button layout or shapes. (Crappy remotes with a grid layout of identical buttons are almost as bad.) And while I would very much like to see QWERTY keyboard support, I think it might be better to have that in an adjunct remote, a dedicated thumb-board design. I’ve seen some remotes with hidden QWERTY keypads - under sliding/flipping covers, etc - but either the remote is bloated to make it large enough, or the keypad is terribly cramped - smaller than what you get on a smartphone. I’d rather see TiVo add generic IR keyboard support (one of the things ReplayTV had, you could use a WebTV keyboard with) and/or support for wireless RF keyboards via USB. TiVo could still offer their own TiVo-designed remote for this, of course.

In any case, definitely check out the article, it is an interesting history.

Ever since the Apple iPhone hit the market, people have been asking for a version of SlingPlayer Mobile for the platform. To date Sling has only expressed their desire to support the platform when it is possible to do so. But with the Apple WWDC kicking off this week, they’ve been showing off a bit of what they’ve been up to, and a number of blogs have coverage:
Engadget (video)
Gizmodo (video)
Zatz Not Funny (video)
PVR Wire @ TV Squad
Ars Technica
Macworld
NewTeeVee
Electronista
jkOnTheRun
The Mobile Gadgeteer
Crave
CrunchGear
AppleInsider
Mobility Today
Gizmos for Geeks
9 to 5 Mac
I4U News
Gear Diary
Download Squad
Unwired View
GottaBeMobile
Nerd Beach
Brighthand
Geek.com
SlingCommunity

And I’m sure there others that I haven’t spotted.

Dave Zatz posted this video to YouTube:

Note that this is a proof of concept, a technology demonstrator, and not the SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone that will eventually be released. This was an engineering project written for jail-broken iPhones to characterize the performance of the platform and ensure that Sling could deliver a high quality customer experience on the iPhone & iPod Touch platforms. This allowed Sling to gain experience with the platform while waiting for the SDK to be released. The official SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone will be written using the SDK and sold through the iTunes App store like other official iPhone/iPod Touch applications. At least that is currently the intent.

If you’re attending the Apple WWDC this week you can get a look at the proof of concept application first hand. Sling Media Product Manager Vicky Shum will be at the Starbucks at 120 4th Street, San Francisco (across from the Metreon) between 10:00 and 16:00 (10am and 4pm) on Monday, June 9th running demos.

Disclaimer: I am currently employed by Sling Media.

What’s an HDTV without an HD DVR to go with it? Who wants to be a slave to TV schedules just to catch HD content? Well, Amazon has a solution to that problem, they’re offering what I consider the best HD DVR on the market, the TiVo HD, free with the purchase of a Samsung HDTV. There are five LCD models to choose from, with prices from $945.72 for a 37″ 720p up to $1,849.98 for a 46″ 1080p, and six plasma models with prices from $979.99 for a 42″ 720p up to $2,999.99 for a 58″ 1080p. If you’re in the market for an HDTV, it is a pretty good deal.

And, if you’re not in the market for an HDTV, you can get the TiVo HD for $230.13.

Thanks to reader Kevin for the tip. He got it from WatchingTiVo at InvestorVillage, who spotted it at Gizmodo.

The rumors started way back in February, 2006, reappeared in June, 2007, and got another boost last October. And now it is a reality.

CNET is reporting on the Netflix Player by Roku. It is a very simple device that allows you to stream Netflix’s ‘Watch Now’ content right to your TV, via the box, over your broadband connection. No PC required. It is very basic, that’s all it does - allows you to stream Watch Now content you’ve already placed into your queue. But they did get something major right - it retails for $100, which means it will almost certainly be available for less. And the Watch Now content is available ‘free’ as part of a standard Netflix membership, so there is no pay-per-view pricing to deal with.

The biggest issues are the lack of content, there aren’t many first tier titles available via Watch Now, and the quality - no HD here, it is all 480i. This is all about convenience. As CNET put it:

We watched video on TVs ranging in size from 19 inches to 50 inches. While there wasn’t a huge difference in sharpness on any of the sets, the picture did look a little better on the smaller TV. Still, as long as you sit far enough away from a larger TV, the picture will seem OK. Just don’t expect the same kind of sharpness you’d get from a high-quality DVD. Think in terms of watching programming on one of the stations that your cable company doesn’t devote quite enough bandwidth to, and that’s the sort of picture you’ll be looking at.

The box is very simple. It has a wired Ethernet connection and built-in 802.11g WiFi. Output includes HDMI, component video, S-Video, composite video, optical digital audio, and stereo audio. So it should work with pretty much any TV shy of an ancient one with only coax RF input. CNet does say that you want a broadband connection that can sustain 1Mbps at a minimum, and ideally 2.2Mbps. So those with slow connections need not apply. The streams use the VC-1 codec, same as used when streaming to a PC. (Interestingly, the TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD have a decoder that can handle VC-1… I’m just sayin’.)

CNet has a full review if you’re interested. Since we know this capability will be coming to other platforms via partners like LG, I think I’d recommend holding off. It’d be a much better value to get an upscaling DVD player, or Blu-ray deck, with Netflix streaming built in. And Netflix hasn’t revealed all of their hardware partners yet - we could yet see Netflix streaming to TiVo, Xbox 360, etc.

EDIT: Gizmodo has also just posted a review which offers some more details.