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Television Media Entertainment Hardware

New HD TiVo and Cable Incompatibilities 155

Posted by kdawson from the so-it's-interaction-you-want dept.
Lauren Weinstein writes "The rapid deployment of Switched Digital Video (SDV) by cable companies can cause major problems for buyers of the new HD TiVo, preventing any access to some channels."
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New HD TiVo and Cable Incompatibilities More

New HD TiVo and Cable Incompatibilities

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  • More background from TivoCommunity (Score:5, Informative)

    by voidstin ( 51561 ) on Thursday August 23, 2007 @12:37PM (#20331923)
    here.... seems like there's still a transition period where channels are being offered in both SDV and analog

    http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.ph p?t=357703 [tivocommunity.com]

    • We've let greedy companies take us for a ride, but others places have not been as ridden [slashdot.org]. We've got third rate broadband and second rate cable, despite having invented the internet and being the headquarters of the major content providers. On second thought, the suck you feel is because we have those headquarters.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by WhiteWolf666 ( 145211 )
        Huh?

        Most of these 3rd party digital tuning solutions suck, quiet frankly. Anything that is sold as an add-on for the PS3 is not going to have much market uptake.

        The real "long-term" solution to this stuff is IP video, not switched. Content providers *should* go online, and you should have IP boxes that hook up to your TV to access the stuff. Locally cached content should play the same as remote content.

        And we're getting there in the U.S. You can go to ABC.com and watch most of the latest shows (unfortunatel

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cadfael ( 103180 )
      More correctly, what you are talking about is Digital Simulcast, where the same info is being forwarded in a single 6 MHz analog channel and digitally inside a multiprogram transport stream (MPTS...) for digital reception on another 6 MHz channel. sdv is about switching services on and off as people watch them, ergo recovering bandwidth in your digital modulator space.

  • Oh no (Score:4, Funny)

    by Joseph1337 ( 1146047 ) on Thursday August 23, 2007 @12:37PM (#20331933)
    But the porn channels... why!?

  • if we had a tough FCC, (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jay2003 ( 668095 ) on Thursday August 23, 2007 @12:38PM (#20331943)
    they'd stick to guns on the CableCARD mandate and shut down cable systems that were not compatible with 3rd party devices. With a credible shutdown threat looming, this problem would get fixed in less than a month. I know it will never happen due to the huge campaign contributions politicians get from cable companies.

    I'm not convinced the cable companies are doing themselves an favors. I'm unlikely to upgrade from my old analog cable if can't have an HD Tivo. Cable companies seem to think HD is a form of crack people cann't live without but I'm doing just fine on analog.

    • Re:if we had a tough FCC, (Score:5, Insightful)

      by svendsen ( 1029716 ) on Thursday August 23, 2007 @12:41PM (#20331999)
      Come on you know you NEED cable and HD and everything else they sell. I've come to the realization that nothing on TV is worth what is being charged. I just dropped all my HBOs, Showtimes, digital cable, boxes, etc. for plain old standard cable (76 channels at a rip off price of $50).

      The funny thing is the lady on the phone kept saying she didn't understand why I didn't want all this great stuff.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Monkey ( 795756 )
        Yeah, when I had cable I watched five different programs. Good Eats, Iron Chef, Stargate. Right now it would be nice to get Dr Who, Good Eats, Iron Chef, Feasting on Asphalt, Mythbusters, and reruns of some old shows every now and again would be cool. Quite honestly, if I had to pay a few bucks to download them, and they had adds, it would still be a better deal than cable.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
          That is pretty much what Apple is hoping with the AppleTV , Sony is hopping for with the PS3, and Microsoft is hoping for with the 360, and Google with YouTube.

          When will we see the first direct to iTunes TV show?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Amouth ( 879122 )
            and i would get an iTV if it had composit or svid out.. sorry but not everyone has an HD tv .. and nore do we want to pay for one.>

            also a build in dvd rom for movies would be nice but not required....

            oh .. and please kill iTunes already

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
              "oh .. and please kill iTunes already"
              Not going to happen. Most people seem to like iTunes. I am not a huge fan but people do seem to like it and it is how they sell their stuff.
              I want iTunes for Linux and for Apple to make iTunes fit into Windows and or Linux better.
              Right now it looks like a Mac app running on a windows box.
              Which it is

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Amouth ( 879122 )
                it isn't that i hate it.. it is jsut that it is the only way to get content onto the itv.. i think this is unneeded..

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
                  Unneeded? Well maybe I don't have an iTV but Apple is all about the interface. They want it to be as easy and as consistent and possible.
                  What I hate about iTunes is I find it very hard to organize my music. I would like to have the options of expanding the list by artist or album much like I can on my iPod. I find creating play lists to be be not that easy to do. And once you get enough music in your iTunes it is a bit of a mess to work with.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ivan256 ( 17499 )
          Mythbusters has jumped the shark. It happened right around the time they built that sign which says "Warning: Science Content".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hurfy ( 735314 )
        lol, i promised not to give the cable co any money after trying cable internet and getting a 12K speed test ... 8 years and counting :)

        I decided a couple years back i might get cable if i saw an ad that actually said how much it costs...they don't. 6 months is not relevant if i will have it for years and years. Even one telemarketer couldn't tell me what if would cost after the promo.

        Just not worth the $55+extras it takes to get to a tier i would want. All i really want is SciFi (duh) and Speed (to get som

      • Re:if we had a tough FCC, (Score:4, Interesting)

        by planetralph ( 944937 ) on Thursday August 23, 2007 @02:39PM (#20333707) Homepage
        Try over the air HDTV. Antennas still work and work great with HDTV. www.antennanweb.org will tell you what stations you can get. I didn't upgrade cable to HD when I got an HD TV, but I got an antenna and its working out great for network HDTV content. With an HD Tivo box I would have plenty of content at hand, so I wouldn't need cable's 100 stations. My kids don't want me to cancel their Nick and Disney channel, but if Comcast jacks their rates up after my 1 year trial is over cable is gone. Ralph

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by antdude ( 79039 )
        Why even have cable? Why not over the air (OTA) unless you're way too far? I don't have cable and satellite TV services.
    • Amen, brother! How long have we been talking about freeing up the analog spectrum? Why is this taking so long? It's because the FCC has no intention of shutting anybody down.

      It's the old axiom "all work expands to fit the amount of time allotted to its completion." If the FCC keeps wringing its hands and telling broadcasters/cable companies to get it together "or else..." it's never going to get done. Mostly, the cable companies are coming up with newer and better ways to take as many rights away from co
    • Think about getting a receiver for over the air HD. It's fewer channels, but usually the signal is less compressed than it is with cable, and you can do almost anything with the incoming signal.

      That works to fill all your live TV needs, then for series that would normally be on cable buy them on ITMS or elsewhere.

      ---> Kendall
      • Agreed. All you need to recieve over the air HD is a UHF antenna and a digital tuner.

        I bought a device called an HDHomerun just for this purpose. It's an inexpensive dual tuner reciever for unencrypted digital content; streams content over ethernet to any computers on the lan. Now my only concern is harddrive space; storing the shows in their original quality can take 6G per hour -- not that I'm complaining, it's noticably better than the pixelated crap my (analog) tivo produces.
      • Even better, the HD TiVo includes an over the air reciever.

        I have a series 3 TiVo and live in Time Warner's SDV test market. I dumped their video service and went OTA as a result of SDV.

        On the other hand, this is really old news.
    • Or just get all your broadcast channels in HD over the air for free. Or get a satellite. There are definitely options at this stage in the game. I'm on the phone canceling my account with Comcast as we speak. They didn't want to give me an HD DVR unless I was paying for one of their $50+ a month cable plans. Basic broadcast channels are fine for me, and now I'm getting them for free over the air.

      Sure I'm paying Tivo, but they're offering me DVR service, and I'd rather Tivo gets my cash than Comcast any

      • Or just get all your broadcast channels in HD over the air for free. Or get a satellite. There are definitely options at this stage in the game. I'm on the phone canceling my account with Comcast as we speak. They didn't want to give me an HD DVR unless I was paying for one of their $50+ a month cable plans. Basic broadcast channels are fine for me, and now I'm getting them for free over the air.

        Sure I'm paying Tivo, but they're offering me DVR service, and I'd rather Tivo gets my cash than Comcast anyway.

        Just to let you know, Comcast is very much organized on a regional basis, and some regions are, to put it mildly, dumber than others. Around here, Comcast will happily sell you a DVR to go along with your $14.95/month local-only, limited-basic package. YMMV.

    • If we had a smart government and populace, the government wouldn't have anything to do with cable TV. It's not a public utility, it's not using public property like the phone company, and it's in no way necessary to anybody's well being (I'd say it's actually detrimental). Why do you thing further government intervention into private business is a good thing?

      • Re:If we had a smart government (Score:5, Insightful)

        by bcattwoo ( 737354 ) on Thursday August 23, 2007 @01:47PM (#20332889)
        It's not a public utility, it's not using public property like the phone company

        Really? Do you have some sort of fancy cable-less cable company that doesn't rely on public rights-of-way and utility easements to get its product to its customers?
      • Tell me why it's not using public property like the phone company? Where I live, it's run on the same pole as the phone line. Cities cede monopolies to the cable companies in exchange for their wiring of the city. Sounds more or less like a public utility to me.

        Because of this monopoly the FCC stepped in to dictate that cable companies couldn't abuse their monopoly by only renting their own gear to consumers. The FCC mandated that the cable companies come up with a solution to letting consumer electronics

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by coryking ( 104614 )
        At least here in Washington State, the city elects a "cable franchise" that is granted access to use the city's cable infrastructure. The city has an oversight board composed of citizens whose task is to make sure the cable company isn't screwing people.

        If you wanna change the system, at least here in Washington, your best bet is to lobby your city government.

  • Preemptive Counter Flame (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23, 2007 @12:56PM (#20332171)
    No doubt there will be countless "TiVo Sucks" comments. Usually by people who believe that building their own MythTV box (costing more than the price of an HD TiVo and 3 years of service) is better than paying a monthly or annual subscription to TiVo.

    Here's the rub. TiVo is powered by Linux. Every time you tell someone to build a MythTV instead of buying a TiVo, you're re-enforcing the argument that companies cannot be successful and use open source software. That's right. You always sit there as armchair CEO's and wax poetic about how running or selling open source software can be profitable... that companies can have a successful business model by selling services (i.e. Redhat). And yet when a company comes along with a service plan, using Linux as their OS, and selling an awesome product... you say that only a fool would pay subscription fees and try to spin your own.

    Thanks a lot folks.
    • Yeah, but building a MythTV or Freevo box gives you a lot more flexibility. Don't know about Myth, but Freevo has the ability to be an entirely client-server architecture, where you can have one box be a record server, and another box be a player, etc. This allows you to have HTPCs in every room of the house and watch anything you want anytime you want, without having to pay for a bunch of cable boxes. Plus, a MythTV or Freevo box is DRM free and you have commercial skip (as unreliable as that is), etc.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by grasshoppa ( 657393 )
      Ok, but here's the counter argument; MythTV and TiVo are two completely different products, each serving different needs. So while yes, myth does end up more expensive, you get far more for your money.

      In my specific case, I couldn't live without MythVideo. I have tons of videos stored on the thing, all accessible from the click of a button. Instead of having to hunt down the DVD, plop it into the machine and navigate the fucking ads and menus, I just click a button and watch the video. Last I heard, Ti

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by jollespm ( 641870 )
        Actually, you can with a Series 2 TiVo. You have to have a Windows based computer to run the TiVo Desktop software (the Mac version won't stream, yet) and you dump your video files to a specific folder in mpeg2 format. Then, on the Tivo you can browse the host computer and pick what you want to watch. Depending on file size/resolution you can watch as is streams or wait a bit to cache enough of the file on the TiVo.

        I've never used any of the Myth stuff, so I can't say if it's any easier or harder.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Galaga88 ( 148206 )
          Even better, with TiVo.net, it'll transcode non-MPEG2 files on the fly and stream them to your TiVo, so the issue of converting files beforehand is moot. There's a similar plugin that'll handle all your non MP3 music as well.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jedidiah ( 1196 )
          >> You have to have a Windows based computer to run the TiVo Desktop software

          That kind of makes it a non starter.

          OTOH, there is a VAIO media center that includes a DVD jukebox.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Jerf ( 17166 )
          Galleon [sourceforge.net] is supposed to be able to do the same thing on anything that can run Java, but I've never tried the video viewing as my TiVo is on a Wireless B network, and streaming any video to or from it is basically impossible on that setup.

          I can confirm the MP3 streaming works from a computer to a TiVo.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jedidiah ( 1196 )
      No, I believe that buying a standard PC and putting better software on it is better than using the Tivo & lifetime membership that I already own.

      I get more features, better codecs, better responsiveness, unmatched (by Tivo) multiroom feautures, desktop support for my OS of choice and unlimited storage.

      This is true for ALL of the other available options, not just MythTV.

      All of the other commercial competitors to Tivo make it look anemeic.

      They always have actually (replaytv).

      The only edge that Tivo has is
  • I've had the TiVo HD pretty much since the first week it came out. I've had a dual tuner TiVo in one form or another for the past few years so I was really excited when the new TiVo HD came out. However, I've been less than impressed with it.

    I love the TiVo software, it beats Comcast's DVR hands down, but there are technical limitations. For instance, there is a lot of random artifacting that occurs on digital channels. Even more annoying is the fact that the audio will drop out randomly at times. I

  • Reason: Cable Card 2.0 standards dispute (Score:5, Informative)

    by philam3nt ( 267961 ) on Thursday August 23, 2007 @12:59PM (#20332209) Homepage
    This has been well known in the Tivo/Windows MCE/Non-Locked-in Cable-Box community for some time, and was blogged on engadget, which has a fantastic summary at Engadget: Cablecard 2.0 is ready [engadgethd.com] . However, knowing most of you won't RTFA:

    At this point you should be asking, what is stopping TiVo or Microsoft from creating two-way, multi-stream CableCARD devices? The answer is, some CE companies are not happy with the certification specification that CableLabs has decided on. As we previously discussed, the point of contention is the OCAP requirement...

    ...to put it in layman's terms, this would cut out the middle man, -- where the middle man is your cable company. With OCAP, TiVo couldn't deploy their software on a two-way host device without the cable company's approval, so the concept of going to the store and buying a TiVo that works anywhere wouldn't exist unless every cable company agreed to distribute and support TiVo's OCAP software -- this is how the long-awaited Comcast and TiVo agreement is going to work. The same might also be said for Vista Media Center, Microsoft would have to develop an OCAP VM in Vista Media Center and then work with each cable company to get them to deploy their user interface...

    ...In the end, we hope that the FCC steps in and requires CableLabs to certify two-way devices that do not require OCAP.


    Charles doublerebel.com
    • You'd think that with downloadable TV (appleTV, revision3, democracy, youtube, etc, etc) becoming a real threat, cable companies would actually want to embrace products people love. I have DirecTV and am stuck with the HR20 for HD. It is awful. I'm thinking that 60 bucks a month could go much further on Netflix and iTunes...

      It's not like it's going to take a lot to get customers to ditch time warner and/or comcast.... these companies are reviled.
      • Who's network will be distributing that content? Hint, for a lot of broadband users, it's their cable company.

        With net neutrality in contention and backbone infrastructure reaching capacity, how far is it of a stretch to assume that you won't see some kind of throttling of video content from a provider who's also trying to sell you their video service on the same wire? For ordinary people who just want their video to look good and get delivered when they want it, once their AppleTV or Netflix or whoever'

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by voidstin ( 51561 )
          Sure, but it isn't the only option. And not even an attractive one to me. Speakeasy is much more customer friendly, and FiOS is loads faster. That monopoly may not be all it's cracked up to be, esp if Google starts lighting up dark fiber. My speakeasy DSL is slow as hell since I'm far from the CO, but my AppleTV content still looks great. As long as it's not streaming (ie, not breaking news or sports), customers will not care. Price and Ease of Use matter much more than quality anyway. (see Crappy +
          • It's not the only option for some people, but it is for a lot. Even in major cities, sometimes the only choices are DSL and Cable. Satellite's high latency and poor upstream capacity isn't much of an option, and can be very expensive. And now with cable companies offering voice service, and telcos offering tv channels, a lot of people are going to consolidate for deals like the "Triple Play", not shop around a-la-carte.

            And I'm sure the major media companies are keeping a *very* close eye on Apple. There
    • Just because a cable box is required to support OCAP doesn't mean that it has to only support OCAP, right? So TiVo should be able to build a box that has the native TiVo GUI and also allows users to view OCAPlets through a menu option. Maybe we should call it OCRAP.

  • CableCards (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iPaige ( 834088 ) on Thursday August 23, 2007 @01:09PM (#20332321)
    Even when cablecards follow the standard it's a botched job 90% of the time. Here, read this article on OCUR. http://www.maximumpc.com/article/ocur [maximumpc.com] Microsofts own lead for the program couldn't assist in getting the cablecards working. Shipped by two of the best PC manufacturers in the business, and due to the backwards ass way it's setup, completely unusable on arrival, or with aide from the cable company / microsoft / whomever wants to try. If that's the future of Media Center PC's, I'd rather just get downloadable content.

  • When will people ever learn? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just use a freaking VCR! Why do people fall for these "redundant technologies" (as I call them) which simply do what the older, "obsolete" stuff has been doing for decades?

    I guess there's a sucker born every minute.

    • Re:When will people ever learn? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Kirby ( 19886 ) on Thursday August 23, 2007 @02:53PM (#20333903) Homepage
      Yeah, I hear some people are using this new Linux thing, but Windows 3.1 works just fine!

      Seriously, there's a substantial gap between features between the two devices, including:

      * Ability to record high definition on the TiVo (VCRs are very poor quality, which is easily noticeable, especially on modern televisions). Ability to record good quality of non-high def shows as well. The new boxes even record 5.1 sound.
      * Ease of repeated recording of favorite shows
      * Ability for device to know the difference between first run and rerun
      * Ease of delete without subsequent quality loss
      * Not taking up valuable space with stacks of videotapes
      * Ability to auto-record based on keywords (Particularly nice for sports fans), directors, actors, and such.
      * Auto-fill of space with shows you like. Seems small, but I _always_ have two or three Simpsons and Buffys sitting around, so I don't end up watching Home Improvement on a slow Sunday when I want to veg.
      * Ability to record two things at once.
      * Ability to watch something recorded while recording up to two live shows.
      * Ability to pause, rewind, and fast forward 'live' tv. Very nice if the phone rings, or if nature calls!
      * Ability to auto correct for schedule changes. No more losing track of a show when Fox moves it to Saturdays, or miss the last 10 minutes of Lost because it's a 70 minute episode! This is not a small feature. Tivo has an excellent track record at being on top of this kind of thing.

      Now, there are downsides, mostly in the cost department, but if you consider television to be a hobby, I highly recommend tivo. (If you think TV is a waste of time, and are reading this thread, well, is trolling really a better use of time than tv? Honestly.) Other DVRs provide most of these features, and are better than a VCR, but Tivo still has the best featureset. Hopefully, they'll work out these cutting-edge-technology stumbles in a way that's good for current consumers. (But I've had the original HD box for almost a year and never had any problems.)
    • What's this VCR you speak of?
  • They didn't want it from the get go, and they are going to do anything to insure that it dies. How dare the FCC tell them how to do business.

  • cablecards and company-provided STBs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Icculus ( 33027 ) on Thursday August 23, 2007 @01:15PM (#20332433)
    Weren't all the cable companies supposed to be using CableCards in their own new set top boxes by now? How are they handling this problem with those units?

    • Re:cablecards and company-provided STBs (Score:5, Informative)

      by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Thursday August 23, 2007 @01:51PM (#20332941) Journal
      They use custom pre-release versions which work with their boxes. Just because TiVo won't make 100 custom boxes that only work with specific systems isnt' their fault, right? And deploying switched digital before the offical spec is complete is no big deal, right?

      If you want my opinion, the FCC should forbid any content provider from selling or leasing end-user equipment, and requiring that all providers use a common specification (we do it for OTA, why not cable?). As for my OTA comment - the FCC fucked that up, too. We should be watching 720p, period. If it weren't for all those mama's boy TV manufacturers who were so damned afraid of losing their interlaced teddy bears, we'd have been much better off.

      • As for my OTA comment - the FCC fucked that up, too. We should be watching 720p, period. If it weren't for all those mama's boy TV manufacturers who were so damned afraid of losing their interlaced teddy bears, we'd have been much better off.

        I'm not quite sure what your complaint is.

        Despite interlacing artifacts (spacial/temporal aliasing), it gives the best of both worlds. You have 1080p/30 resolution with low/slow motion, and 60fps during fast motion.

        I would very much like to see 1080p become standard in

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Overzeetop ( 214511 )
          The problem is that there are 18 different (ATSC) acceptable formats, and the result was years of delay and tons of poor products. I don't have any problems with sports on film, and that's only 24fps. Interlacing is a crutch of television technology, and the inabilityof 1950s technology to get horizontal refresh rates high enough to do progressive scanning. The problem is that the FCC decided to let the decision made by someone else - and the result has been two decades of poor results.

          I'd prefer they chose

          • The problem is that there are 18 different (ATSC) acceptable formats, and the result was years of delay and tons of poor products.

            The different possible resolutions and frame rates certainly didn't cause any delays. Once you've implemented the highest, the rest are simple. And for high definition, there's really only 2 formats (720p/1080i).

            I don't have any problems with sports on film, and that's only 24fps.

            Your poor vision shouldn't be the basis for video standards.

            Interlacing is a crutch of television t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

      In my case, Comcast replaced it with a used box. At least I get the channels I'm supposed to now.

      I really want to just ditch my cable box and replace it with a TiVo Series 3. But until this whole CableCard mess is sorted out, I'm not really willing to.

  • DRM? (Score:2)

    by PPH ( 736903 )
    From the article:

    The stumbling blocks to the required two-way communications for supporting SDV natively on TiVo devices apparently have been cable company demands that certain of their (cable company) control software be running on the associated TiVo units themselves (something that TiVo has been unenthusiastic to permit)
    It appears that this might be an attempt by the cable companies to get stuff like DRM software installed on consumer's equipment.
  • I would like to take this minute to extend my middle finger to both the FCC and every single person who works or owns stock in the cable and media industry. You people created a mess with this HDTV stuff and you all should be ashamed of yourself.

    At the present time, I *CANNOT* purchase a device that allows me to record shows I currently record in Hi-Def using my SageTV. Worse, I cannot even prove that last claim because there is no definitive list of channels the my local cable company broadcasts in th

  • To the Early Adapters... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Toonol ( 1057698 ) on Thursday August 23, 2007 @02:13PM (#20333351)
    Thanks to all of you who are cutting edge, purchasing all these incompatible devices under the spectre of still-evolving standards. When I, and the rest of the world, follow in your footsteps three years from now, the process will be smooth and error-free because of your trials and tribulations.

    Seriously, I'm grateful for you guys. You take it on the chin so we don't have to.
    • Except you could have written that same statement 10 years ago, and you'd still waiting...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jedidiah ( 1196 )
        Not quite.

        In the history of television, the current situation is unique. You have content providers trying to get in the way of the end users. That problem didn't exist before. So standards were simple and accessable and any one could exploit them.

        Infact, I use a 20+ year old video standard to get the most out of my current new fangled HDTV because I am not interested in any funny business. I don't want anything hijacking or screwing around with my video signal.
  • "any access to some channels" => "access to some channels"
  • The whole digital TV, Blu-Ray, HD DVD, TiVO, and cable TV mess just makes me tired all over. I am watching less and less TV these days because the quality of programming just stinks. There is no cable news channel that isn't, as Scott Adams said in another context, "nuttier than squirrel poo" - they all cover the celebrities and the Nancy Grace outrage of the week type of junk; and the broadcast networks have totally been taken over by accountants with seemingly no artistic sense whatsoever.

    Why all of t

  • Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Cramer ( 69040 ) on Thursday August 23, 2007 @03:16PM (#20334263) Homepage
    Nothing new to see here. SDV has been a problem for 3rd party cable hardware from the get-go. Tivo owners have been in this mess since the Series 3 was released A YEAR AGO. The only thing that's changed is the price for the Tivo HD... it's now cheap enough for some of the village idiots to aford one.

    As for the BS comments w.r.t. cablecard requirements... SDV isn't part of those requirements. And wouldn't matter if it did. All the products on the market (and there are things other than tivo's that cannot support SDV, btw) are UNIDIRECTIONAL devices. There are no certification paths for bidirectional devices. (partly because there's no set standard because the cable companies keep changing their mind.) SDV is 100% unnecessary. Cable companies have plenty of capacity if they drop analog cable entirely or even start using the parts that no longer carry stations. (TW/Raleigh has room for ~40 HD stations above the analog broadcasts. That number goes up every year as they reduce the analog tier.)

    The reason SDV exists -- and, btw, it was created by Time Warner and Scientific Atlanta -- is to subvert the cablecard mandate and attempt to push back the "integration ban" that took effect (finally) July 1. It's the difference between "spirit" and "letter". However, as SDV is linked in the UDCP license, there may yet be a loophole to their loophole. But I'm pretty sure no cableco will go along with it -- they're doing a bang up job keeping cablecards from working properly in the first place.
  • This isn't just a matter of being lazy and bittorrenting, it's also a matter of practicality. The technology is not yet mature enough for anyone to be buying the new TV's and playback devices with their DRM and shortcomings. Well, maybe you can get the TV but you'll want to play the content, conveniently ripped, from your computer. The odds are still too high that you'll pay too much and wind up with hardware that isn't compatible. The HD-TV encodes of current broadcast television look great on my laptop as
  • People are upset that TiVO is telling you what you can and can't do with the hardware, and last time I checked the big 3 cable companies (Comcast, Cox and TimeWarner) all offered DVR service with their cable box.

    With Cox, I pay $5 a month extra for a DVR box as opposed to my normal box. I don't buy any hardware, and $5 a month is far cheaper than paying for TiVo service. I've had a HD DVR box for 4 years, and I've replaced it three times. Each time it hasn't cost me a penny, since Cox is responsible for
    • At the Risk of starting another heated discussion....

      "People are upset that TiVO is telling you what you can and can't do with the hardware, and last time I checked the big 3 cable companies (Comcast, Cox and TimeWarner) all offered DVR service with their cable box."

      Isn't that EXACTLY what the FSF is complaining about? That if you are using software under the GPL license, the spirit of the GPL (both licenses and codified in v3) is that the user should be able to control the software running on their hardwar
      • The FSF foundation is based on software, not hardware. The GPL v3 is a software license that seems more fixated on hardware issues than anything else.

        The main proponents who are upset at TiVo are people who were hacking the TiVo hardware to avoid paying the monthly subscription, which I don't understand. Just build a MythTV box or something. TiVo released the source, and their profit model was based on a monthly subscription fee. They obeyed the law, probably brought more attention to the GPL, saw the m

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by NateTech ( 50881 )
      How well does "Season Pass" work on your Cox DVR? (In other words, everything I've read says that it doesn't.)
      • Works fine. We have about 15-20 shows set to record the entire season at any given moment, but most of that is for my wife. I watch about 4-5 shows myself.

        We can specify first run, repeats, whether to pick it up from multiple channels, HD only, save X number of episodes before deleting, delete when necessary for space, etc.

        The only thing TiVo has that I wish Cox had on their remote was the 30-second skip button.
  • Basically the cable companies have a proposal for 2-way cablecard that uses OCAP (a java variant)
    to handle all 2-way communications including SDV, Pay-Per-View, Video On Demand, full program guide info and interactivity.

    The device makers (who put cablecard slots in their devices) have another proposal that implements most 2-way features including SDV, PPV, VOD and program guide via a standardized interface with OCAP and programs downloaded from the cable company being only used for interactive content. This

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