NewTeeVee sat down with TiVo VP Jim Denney for a conversation about TiVo’s new YouTube feature.

Picked up from TiVo Blog.

As I reported earlier, TiVo is launching YouTube support on Series3 and TiVo HD units with the new 9.4 software revision today. Now they’ve put out an official press release confirming the launch.

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. )

TiVo Blog uncovered a 30-second TV spot for TiVo that Harvey Norman is airing in Australia:

Australian tabloid TV program “Today Tonight” ran a segment on TiVo last Friday.

This is a short little video in which Dave Zatz displays his true feelings about hjs now worthless Moviebeam box:

A little morning amusement.

ARCHOS has long been a leader in the PMP market with devices like their model 605 and 705 PMPs. And they’ve added some innovative features to their products, such as the ability to copy shows from DISH Network ViP622/722 DVRs. Lesser known is their TV+ DVR. The TV+ is a Ethernet/WiFi media player and DVR in one box, and the software seems to be based on their PMP software.

Now Archos is adding place-shifting to the TV+. Called ‘TVportation’ it will be a $49.99 software plug-in for the TV+, or free if the TV+ is registered on the ARCHOS web site. ARCHOS claims it will allow streaming of content from the TV+ to the ARCHOS 605 WiFi and ARCHOS 705 WiFi PMPs, as well as PCs, laptops and smartphones. You can also use an ARCHOS 605 WiFi or ARCHOS 705 WiFi as the streaming source, but you need to leave it docked in its base station. (So if you have two you can have one at home as the source and one as the client.) Details on the smartphone support is thin, saying only “compatible with Symbian later this spring”. Though the demo video on the website shows it running on a Windows Mobile Palm Treo.

A little exploring shows they have downloads for Windows Mobile 5 & 6 both Professional and Smartphone as well as Symbian Series60. But most curious is that all of the links are right to Monsoon Multimedia’s HAVA clients – on Monsoon’s servers! At first glance it looks like they’re leeching the clients, but perhaps Monsoon and ARCHOS did some kind of deal. Still, it looks sketchy.

There’s a lengthy demo video up on YouTube:

From the video it is clear that one client at a time is supported, so you can’t have multiple devices streaming from one TV+.

Spotted in EngadgetHD.

Disclaimer: I’m currently employed by Sling Media, which produces the Slingbox series of place-shifting products. And I suppose TVportation is ostensibly a competitor to Sling.

G4’s ‘Attack of the Show‘ has a segment called ‘The Loop‘, which recently interviewed TiVo’s Jim Denney about TiVo’s new Web Video feature in TiVo Desktop 2.6, as well as the general future direction for TiVo with broadband content, YouTube, the TiVo brand, etc.

Jim did misspeak at one point. He said “delivering content right to your PC via the home network” when he meant “delivering content right to your TiVo via the home network”.

And if you want a really circular experience, and you have TiVo Desktop Plus 2.6, go to Find Programs & Downloads -> Download TV, Movies, & Web Video -> Browser Other Videos -> All -> Attack of the Show’s Daily Video Podcast and sign up for an SP, because this interview is the latest download on that channel. So you can watch Jim Denney talk about TiVo Web Video using TiVo Web Video.

This is a video of TiVo’s Joe Miller demonstrating TiVo at the Best Buy in downtown Toronto.

Picked up from TiVo Blog, who was tipped to it by Davis Freeberg.

TiVoShanan has posted a new video to YouTube, promoting the TiVo HD: