Home-Grown TiVo Stories?

PolyDwarf writes "I'm in the process of figuring out how I'm going to build a homegrown TiVo machine (i.e. a computer sitting next to or in my home electronics stack). My question for is "What's worked best for you?" Most solutions I've researched are great if you have regular cable. However, satellite systems and digital cable boxes seem to present a special challenge, in that the software on the PC needs to know about an IR connector that is then hooked up to the front of the digital cable/satellite box. Who has done a solution like what I'm researching? What cases/processors/memory/TV Card/IR transceiver/OS/software/etc worked out for you? Did the end result justify the pain and hassle?"

Freevo and linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Freevo and linux have been working pretty well for me. Just setup xmltv and go.

Mini-ITX form factor

[Anonymous Coward]

A great place to look for small form factor machines is over at mini-itx.com [mini-itx.com], great small form factor stuff. For software, freshmeat.net and a bit of scripting is your friend :D

mythtv

[Anonymous Coward]

mythtv.org looks promissing, version 0.8 works well, dunno about the receiver stuff as I just have cable.

Read avs forums

[scootr1]

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?s= &forumid=26

They'll be your friend.

Regular cable is best, just because of TV tuner cards.

Also check out http://www.mythtv.com if you want to go the linux route.

My setup

[Kallahar]

I have an old Celeron 433 with an STB TVPCI (BT848 chipset). For software I'm running IULabs IUVCR (their site seems to be down) which changes the channel and sets all the encoding options. Everything captures to AVI, which I then play on that computer or any other on the network (nothing has TV out yet)

For scheduling everything is run through the MS Task Scheduler and is under manual control.

Travis

Re:Tivorules

[DankNinja]

Check out Freevo [sourceforge.net].
It uses XMLTV for listings.

Some guidance

[smalloy]

Some guidance may be found at http://www.avsforum.com Search for "HTPC" (Home theater personal computer). Granted, the basic HTPC goes well beyond Tivo-like functionality and worries about things like progressive-scan DVD output, and doing Tivo-like things with High Definition sources.

Re:Freevo and linux

[Deffexor]

Freevo can be found here: Freevo [sourceforge.net]

(for those of you who don't know how to use Google yet... ;)

MythTV, your mythical TV experience

[Anonymous Coward]

For a really nice PC based Tivo substitute, have a look at http://www.mythtv.org.

Even more interesting, mythtv is starting to integrate support for a hardware MPEG2 encoder to be found at http://ivtv.sf.net. The first commercially available consumer MPEG2 encoder that has linux drivers;)

Here's a build your own walkthrough

[jd142]

http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/HTPC.html [ramelectronics.net]. Found it this morning for the earlier discussion.

MythTV

[pz]

The MythTV Project [mythtv.org] is what you want. As often noted on Slashdot, it does nearly everything that TiVo does, and a heapload more. It's open source, and under active development ... however, it's not quite at full functionality. The most recent stable release is version 0.8 and while not without some bugs seems to work quite nicely. I've paired it with a AVerTV Studio TV capture card, a Shuttle FV25 mainboard, and a Celeron 1.4 GHz processor. To my understanding, MythTV supports external tuner devices such as satellite systems. Installation/construction is straightforward but not for the faint of heart. Some RPMs exist for certain required components, but much of installation involves the "./configure; make; su; make install" cycle.

IF -- and this is a strong supposition -- you either have spare hardware laying around that's pretty strong (eg, in the GHz range rather than 100s of MHz) or have a weird bent on building your own systems, then by all means roll up your sleeves and dig in! However, if you are looking for the least expensive or easiest alternative, then buy a used or refurbished TiVo.

My Answer For You

[dbretton]

My question for [you] is[,] "What's worked best for you?"

Tivo

MCE clone

[Anonymous Coward]

Myhtpc seems to be coming along pretty well if you want to run your pvr on windows

www.myhtpc.net

Re:just buy a damn tivo

[falser]

Yup, don't go the homebrew route if you want to save money and have a robust, simple, solution. I'm in the process of building a freevo/mythtv box. It's a lot of work to get the drivers working, I'm getting poor performance with an AMD 1.4GHz machine, and the software is not ready for prime time. The remote control that comes with the Leadtek Winfast TV2000 is a little flakey - it works, but not all the buttons are functional under Linux. Overall it's just one big expensive pain in the butt.

There are only a few reasons that you might really want to go this route:

1) you already have the spare parts you need
2) you live outside the US where Tivo is unavailable
3) you like spending lots of time getting stuff to work in Linux
4) you absolutely need the extra functionality that Tivo does not give (DVD burning, network capability etc.)

Otherwise, Tivo with the unlimited subscription is cheaper and less hassle.

Re:Noise

[agilliland]

seems like one good way to cut the noise and design a scalable system is to provide independent frontend and backend systems. I know mythtv does this. This way you can run a "server" that can do all your recordings and store all your media and be as loud as it wants since it will be anywhere in your house on a network. Then you can attach any number of frontend clients to tvs or monitors ... and those can be hacked down mini boxes of all sorts. To keep the noise down you wouldn't use HDD's or many fans, you would just netboot or boot from cd or floppy. There are also some using XBox as a frontend as well. Pretty nifty if you ask me.

How about Alienware?

[valkraider]

Alienware [alienware.com] seems to have a good model [alienware.com], looks nice too. Apple [apple.com] needs to bring back the Cube [cube-zone.com] for this very purpose...

Re:mythtv

[Col. Klink (retired)]

Yes, I'm very happy with mythtv. With the 0.8 release, it's split between a front-end and a back-end. You can record all your programs on one machine and watch the recordings (or live TV) from any front-end machine, even if the front-end machine doesn't have a tuner card of its own.

Mythtv also has hooks to execute any command you desire to change the channels. Plus a web front-end (mythweb) for viewing program info and recording a program or deleting old recordings.

It doesn't recommend stuff for you to watch and it won't think you're gay if you tape Will & Grace.

Re:Buy a Tivo

[Quarters]

(cough)yes you can(cough)

TyStudio [sourceforge.net]

That, plus a DVD burner and life is good. Heck, it even lets you cut out the commercials before you burn.

Re:Buy a Tivo

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's not so much the expense that is the issue as it is the lack of features. TIVO still stores captured programs in a proprietary (encoded) format that prevents you from directly downloading the content for burning on VCD/SVCD/DVD. It also (unless you purchase one of a series of NIC kits) does not have a NIC natively.

The $200 for a TIVO (which is the low-end version, read "small HD") is not that bad, but then you add more space, a monthly subscription, NIC kit, etc, etc. to get where you want to go and you ARE talking about a lot of money.

My personal favorite is MythTV (www.mythtv.org). It doesn't solve the satelite control issue, but provides for some really nice features. For instance:

1.Record/Playback via NUVRec (easliy ported to MPEG)
2.Web interface (remote scheduling)
3.Game center
4.MP3 player
5.Free channel listings download
6.Multiple TV tuner card (multiple recordings)

The cable t.v. route may not be as bad a deal as you first think. Many traditional cable broadcasts have improved in quality and selection. The quality isnt such a big deal because you're typically playing this back on a T.V. or going to SVCD with it. I will admit that the price cable tv broadcasters want to charge can be outrageuos. One of the biggest advantages is being able to have multiple taps into the cable tv line (no charge) and record multiple shows at once.

All in all I can see many reasons for the effort/hassle of a home-brew TIVO.

Re:Noise

[craw]

Check out this site [silentpcreview.com] for information about quieting your system.

Re:Cable.

[notNeilCasey]

Many Digital cable receiver/decoders have a serial port on the back that can be connected to your PVR System and controlled by it using a script you'd have to write. Barring that, yes, you can set up a script using lirc to change channels.

From the MythTV FAQ:
Is it possible to have MythTV change the channel on my digital cable/satellite box, instead of my tuner card?

- Yes. In the setup program, under "Input Connections", you can configure a command to run whenever the channel needs to be changed on an input which does not have a tuner. In the 0.7 release, this was a global option in the configuration file, "ExternalChannelCommand".

Re:Buy a Tivo

[oGMo]

They are $200 and you save time, money and effort. Even the geek effect isn't worth it this time.

It took me at most an hour to hack up a script to record using Ruby [ruby-lang.org] and mp1e [sourceforge.net] from RTE. Here it is [nwlink.com], and here's a sample listing [nwlink.com]. Real hard. Not. It finds dupes, conflicts, and can easily support multiple cards just by running multiple instances.

Granted, it doesn't track showtime changes, and it's not fancy at all. But it gets the job done, it was easy to write, it's easy to modify, and it's been recording all the TV I watch for the past few months without a hitch. It cost me an hour of my time.

Spend the money and help a company.

Why would I want to do that? TiVo isn't exactly a "nice" company, either. It might be one thing if these came with open specs for modification, pulling the files off and burning them, and modifying the source to do what I want. But they don't. And they won't.

Here's a list of sites that can help if you're married to doing this:

How could you forget MythTV [mythtv.org], particularly when Freevo is just a ripoff of MythTV source?

Re:Mini-ITX form factor

[loucura!]

Mini-itx supports PCI. You can get hardware mpeg decoders.

Re:Any cheap DVB capture cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

www.dvbmaster.com $139 CDN

HDTV

[WatertonMan]

I couldn't tell if it supports HDTV though. There are several HDTV feeds out now and several PCI HDTV capture/play cards. It seems like a nice intermediate step towards full HDTV. I get a multimedia computer which plays/records HDTV either to a monitor capable of the resolution or to a TV where some card downscales it.

After downloading episodes of 24, Alias, and Smallville which were in HDTV format I really am a believer in it. Fantastic looking, even on my 17" monitor.

Unfortunately the software with the PCI cards I've seen aren't that great and are Windows only. (Sadly none are yet available for my Mac)

Re:Mini-ITX form factor

[pardey]

The VIA ME6000 has a hardware MPEG-2 decoder on the board, and I found a review of its performance playing various media types here [techseekers.net]. Apparently it did pretty well.

Re:MythTV is great

[foom]

Compare my box to the price of a TiVo. From Amazon.com: TiVo Series2 80 Hour Digital Video Recorder - $399 - $50 rebate = $350. (I couldn't find the price of a 120 hour TiVo, so I'll give TiVo a little advantage)

Okay, now add the lifetime service fee of $299. Now you're up to $650. Wow look, all of a suddenmy box is cheaper! Or maybe you just want to add two years of service. Well then $12.95/month * 24 months of service fee - oops that's more than the lifetime fee!

But guess what: my box can also play video games, and MP3s. I can get TV shows OFF of it onto other media. It can be a webserver, file server, whatever else I want it to be. It stores my MP3s and can play them. Guess which one's a better deal?

Outside US

[IanBevan]

Your comment is fine for people in the US. However here in New Zealand the options are considerably more limited as I expect they are in the vast majority of countries, large and small alike.

a no-subscription alternative TiVo-alike ...

[timothy]

Spotted this earlier today in a web advertisment: http://www.lbdata.net/dvr/ [lbdata.net]

I have no idea what OS it runs.

I have no idea if anyone has ever ordered, received, and been happy with one.

I have no idea why it looks like it has built in speaker thingies.

Just the same, it looked like a cool box, so someone out there besides me is probably interested :) Until I am older and more settled, I would like to avoid (to the extent practical) things that require subscriptions, telephone priveleges, etc. I'd pay quite a bit more for a box where the programming / scheduling fee was built in up-front, or (of course, better) didn't exist at all. I can program a VCR, and by extension a DVR, if it has a decent UI ;)

timothy

Re:just buy a damn tivo

[Nugget]

It's hard to add storage space to a TiVo. You have to crack the case, remove the existing drive, and replace it with a new one.

Please explain how this is more challenging than building an entire machine, hard drive and all, to host one of the opensource solutions?

Re:MythTV is great

[foom]

And oops, I forgot to include the Home Media Option which lets you have the webserver capability, that's an additional $99. So the real TiVo is up to $749. Yet, that comes for free with a custom built one.

So the TiVo costs more than $100 more than my box, yet my custom built box does more and won't stop working when TiVo goes out of business.

Re:Buy a Tivo

[grungeKid]

How could you forget MythTV [mythtv.org], particularly when Freevo is just a ripoff of MythTV source?

That's bullshit, Freevo and MythTV have completely separate codebases (Freevo is built using python + some C parts for display), MythTV is built on C++ and QT.

Tivo is hard to beat

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hard to beat a Tivo. Especially now that they support changing channels via Serial port on the most common digital cable box. (GI/Motorola DCT-2000). (Assuming you have the latest firmware on the digital box, unfortunatly mine it too old... ).

You can also aquire the guide data from the serial port on the back of most Satellite boxes. Either MPG or APG.

If you figure out the format let me know.

(I have the specifications from ATSC (www.atsc.com) for the data in-stream, but not sure how to package it up for the serial port stream into my Tivo. (As it would fix the fact I cannot get Guide data from Tivo for my area, but APG or MPG would solve the problem since it IS supported.).

Re:just buy a damn tivo

[LoadStar]

Just to correct/clarify a few of your points...

• Standalone: $13 monthly fee, or $249 product lifetime. DirecTiVo: $4.99 monthly fee, no product lifetime available.
• If TiVo goes out of business, they have promised to release a "boatanchor" code to the public to allow TiVos to continue to function.
• TiVo will not record the same episode of a show within a 28 day period, unless the user overrides this feature manually, or the episode guide information is missing/incorrect.
• TiVo will delete episodes to free space for new recordings, unless marked "Save Until I Delete." If "SUID" is selected, that episode will not be deleted unless manually deleted by the user. Number of people using the TiVo is irrelevant - if one person deletes the episode without checking with the other, that's not TiVo's fault. And TiVo will delete shows not marked SUID regardless of if 0, 1, 2, or more people have watched the episode.
• Correct - there are no "dual tuner" TiVo's compatible with cable or "over the air." You can, however, record one program while watching another pre-recorded show without a problem.
• TiVo requires a phone line, or you can use an internal NIC for Series I units, or a USB NIC for Series II units. See the TiVo Community Forum for details.
• It's only marginally harder to add space to a TiVo than it is to add space to a "roll your own" PVR. The only additional step required is to "bless" the drive, and you can purchase pre-blessed drives on the internet.

Re:MythTV

[nexthec]

A couple of notes
1) Currently there is a project to support the WinTV PVR 250/350 under linux, and issac has purchased one of these. The cool thing is that this card does hardware encoding, so you should be able to use a 600-700 MHz machine for live pauseing.

2) Seperated backend/front end is sorta working. meaching you could have a IDE raid machine with a couple of cards, and have some very basic playback units.

3) It use X, this could be good or bad depending on your POV. Basically it has allowed a lot of modules to be created.

4) the video format is nupple for the regular stuff so archivale is a bit tricky if you want to replay else where.

5) satelite/cable tunner boxes is sorta an on your own project, but a lot of people have done it so community support is out there.

Re:Don't know how many times I'm going to post thi

[thedbp]

Not bad video from the EyeTV. its straight to MPEG-1, so you have to edit it in the EyeTV app, and its about 650MB per hour. Equivalent to VHS quality (LP). And the VCDs that you can burn w/ Toast play in almost any recent DVD player and honestly don't look too bad. I put some South Parks on a VCD and took them to my mom's house and her big ass 40" HDTV, and to be honest it didn't look or sound all that bad. I mean, we're not talking DVD by any standard, but definitely worthwhile.

Plus I can put my 4 favorite zombie flix on one data DVD.

Re:Opening the case

[Nugget]

I haven't used a TiVo machine before, but I'd assume that...

So what compelled you to reply, then? Good lord, man.

TiVos use the same phillips head screws that a PC uses. You may, at your option, replace them with thumbscrews if a screwdriver poses too much of a barrier to you.

Windows XP Media Center

[SrlKlr]

I am really surprised that no one has mentioned Windows XP Media Center. It has one thing that many other apps lack, the easy User Interface. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/

Right now you still have to buy Media Center box from a vendor like HP, but the OS is already on the filesharing networks and someone release a hack to any XP Pro machine to turn it into a Media Center. (Its on sharereactor.com - an emule network)

I am putting together a high end entertainment system for my non-technical Dad and this seemed to make the most sense.

Also, Anandtech did a nice review: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1766

Re:Buy a Tivo

[billmaly]

I have got to second this!! The Tivo box (hardware) is great, no complaints. But, where the whole idea really shines is in the software/UI/program guide marraige. The way TiVo allows me to search for shows, select alt. viewing times, specify recording quality, the whole package, really and truly makes it worth the $13 a month for the service. Home rolled is nice and all, but for the time and money you will expend, you will not grow a TiVo clone..not even close. Do yourself the favor, buy a TiVo, check it out...if I am wrong, take it back and get your money back, One of the best devices I ever bought!!

Finally, the solution. :-)

[gozar]

Get a ReplayTV and DVArchive [sourceforge.net]. You use the ReplayTV to schedule and record your shows and DVArchive to backup the shows and watch them in other locations. You can also watch shows on the ReplayTV from the DVArchive machine (or multiple DVArchive machines).

DVArchive can be set up to automatically download the shows from the ReplayTV. I haven't looked into whether MythTV supports DVArchive though.

P.S. Someone was asking about regular cable and Satellite. The ReplayTV has two inputs (although you can only record one show at a time) so I have one setup for my Dish Network box and the other for my local cable. The ReplayTV grabs both guides and unifies them for viewing and recording.

My experiences

[Lurgen]

I built a system up for exactly this purpose - DVD playback, MP3, TV tuning, Cable-TV tuning, digital VCR, etc. I wasn't happy with the typical DVD player's support for less "mainstream" formats either (such as DivX, MPEG4, SVCD, etc), so I was pretty motivated to find a better solution.

In the end I gave up on the TV tuning part of the project. I ended up with a dead-silent machine that can play almost any sound or video codec with perfect quality, but could not find a decent solution to the TV tuning functionality.

Quality was my first real problem with the TV signal. Even the software supplied with the Leadtek TV-2000XP resulted in lousy picture quality. The UI was awful too! I didn't want a monitor, so I was depending heavily on my TV out support.

The second problem was that the UI was never really intended to be used as a VCR replacement. It's like nobody ever seriously considered that I didn't want a keyboard or mouse (just a remote).

Finally, drivers were buggy, crashes were frequent, and I gave up.

On the other hand, I now have the best DVD player on the market. Picture quality is better than any commercially available DVD player. The digital audio output supports standards that my amp can't begin to decode (Dolby Digital 7.1 is a little too advanced for my amp).

My advice to anybody trying this sort of project is to focus on the achievable first - TV tuning is not yet mature enough to be a viable option.

Buy yourself a Realmagic X-Card, a copy of JovePlayer [8dim.com] (easily the best DVD player application in the world, but requires the X-Card), and build the machine. Then look at extending the functionality as the software/hardware matures.

Lurgen [lurgen.com].

The most important bits...
RealMagic X-Card
Jove Player
Zalman CNPS-6000Cu (silence is golden)
Seagate 60GB hard disk (nice and quiet)

Re:My setup

[CheapEngineer]

I run IUVCR at the TV station I work at for an Aircheck recorder; set to record in 1 hour chunks, 24hrs a day, ground down to a level that allows me to fit 7 days on a DVD-RW. Not even close to VCR quality, but good enough to make sure commercials aired, audio was okay, transmitter was on the air, etc.

Sweet program, even if it's under Windows.

Re:MythTV is great

[Judebert]

So buy a Tivo, if you don't want to build one.

Really, the discussion is about building your own PVR; I'd mod you offtopic, but the metamoderators wouldn't really understand.

Some of us are reading the topic because we are more interested in not paying a "lifetime" fee to a company that might go under (I've already done that once), computing on our TVs, copying to DVD/CDROM, playing games, streaming Vorbis, and writing our own custom control scripts. We'd spend the extra $100 for those capabilities. Knowing that your proprietary box has only the TV capabilities for a slightly lower price isn't contributing to the discussion.

Re:Buy a Tivo

[Cramer]

The tivo does not store recordings in a "proprietary (encoded) format". It's 100% perfectly spec compliant MPEG. Just because you don't have any software or hardware capable of processing a packetized elemental stream, does not make it proprietary. PES is used for ("live") broadcasting (i.e. where there isn't a nice little file there to be streamed and there isn't time to create one.) As such, almost no PC hardware or software is coded to handle it -- it's more complicated and you're very unlikely to encounter it normally.

(Yes, with the correct codec, one can play tivo mpeg streams right off the drive with ZERO modification. I have an NT 4.0 system that does so just fine.)

ShowShifter Works Best for me.

[lordfoul]

I own a Tivo and 2 ReplayTvs They are great Machines. About a Year and a half ago I moved to Thailand and had to come up with a PC based alternative. I Found that most programs out there were very light on features except Showshifter. Showshifter works an ir Blaster (RedRat) to control my Sat Box. It recompresses my shows to divx after it records them (there are other formats to choose from). The best part was I built everything using 3 year old parts (except for the RedRat) that I had lying around (PIII667, ATi AIW). Total cost 70$.

SM

A great solution, the Creative Digital VCR

[cheapgrlz]

I use the Creative digital VCR. It is super solid on my AMD 1.4, 512 ram, 120GB, and win2k. It has a scheduler, no guide though. I love it it does MPEG-2 encoding on the fly. only uses 26% of CPU when on full screen. and 3% for standby mode, even while recording! I really like it and it is worth the $80 you can find it for.

Linux Video Disk Recorder

[Ridgelift]

The most promising I've seen is the Linux Video Disk Recorder [cadsoft.de]

I especially like the idea of installing multiple MPEG cards to record multiple channels at the same time.

Re:Digital Cable is possible, but not yet

[SiliconJesus101]

Once you get into digital CATV, channels (in the classical sense) become irrelevant. In the digital cable world a channel is nothing more than a 6Mhz strip of badwidth that can in reality transmit approximately 10 "channels" to your TV. What this means is that if you are watching "channel 13" it is most likely NOT running in the standard 211.2500 to 215.7500 Mhz range as your old TV tuner does. Channel 13 will in fact be far higher up...likely above the 500Mhz range where 256 QAM is used to essentially stuff 10 channels of MPEG compressed, groomer allocated digital on what used to be 1 channel of analog. Of course you do have a limitation in the fact that 256 QAM is capable of approximately 48.81 Mbps of data....depending on who you talk to. A groomer box essentially figures out what channels have higher bitrates and tries to pair them up with lower bitrate channels. Trying to stuff 10 action packed sports channels onto one 6Mhz strip won't work too well as your bitrate needs increase dramatically in high motion encoding. The breakdown for HD channels is approximately 2 per analog channel.

In my area we have HD HBO, Showtime, Cinemax and all of our local channels that broadcast in HD. Granted, the HD boxes are like gold and are very hard to get ahold of (waiting list)....but it is offered.

So....I guess in summary....what your digital cable box says on it for a channel actually has nothing to do with true "channels" as you know them. The Discovery Channel, for example, could be reallocated to a different band if it was deemed necessary to move it for bitrate reasons. It would just be too hard to ensure that a standard will be devoloped that will account for different channel lineups in different regions and among different cable carriers etc.

Re:Windows XP Media Center

[Billly Gates]

The reason you need an HP box is because its drm-ed. I think I will stick with a tivo thank you.

Re:Buy a Tivo and get SCREWED!

[linux11]

And not getting the "quality" of TiVo subscription service is exactly what I want.

I got TiVo when they where still advertizing their product and promoting the "Season Pass" feature as something you set and don't have to worry about, the TiVo will automatically record the season even if their is scheduling changes. The reality is, if there is a hick-up in the TiVo subscription service then the TiVo might just automatically delete the season pass in mid-season. I had a season pass for Buffy on Chicago's WGN channel 9 be deleted four times until I sold off the TiVo crap machine. Each time I called support to complain they gave me the run around:

Me: Why does this keep happening?

TiVo "support": What is your cable company? They must have notified us that you aren't getting the WGN line-up through your cable any more.

Me: I'm using standard antenna.

TiVo "support": Huh?

Me: Rabbit ears. Over the air free broadcast. Standard antenna. No cable service.

TiVo "support": Oh, then our guide data supplier must have thought that the channel went off-air. You know that TV channels come and go, right?

Me: Who is your guide data supplier?

TiVo "support": Zap2It

Me: So, your telling me that Zap2It, a Chicago Tribune affilated company had throught that Chicago WGN channel 9, another Chicago Tribune affilated company had gone off-air?

TiVo "support": This will have to answered by a line-up specialist.

Me: Can you have one get in touch with me?

My voice mail later had a message that the specialist could see that the line-up data was working again and to call if I had any further questions. I called back and left a message asking what was being done to keep the problem which had occured three times already from happening again. While the "specialist" never called back, I got my answer a week later when the season pass/line-up deleted for the forth time.

ANYTHING is better than the TiVo rip off for "Nature of Television disclaimer-ed" program guide "data" or the lack of data.

And how to ensure that my season passes aren't auto-deleted again by TiVo wasn't answered in their "You ask, we answer" segment. Should have been "You ask, we blow you off (or scape-goat on Zap2It)."

Btw, another feature advertized at the time I got my TiVo was that the TiVo would continue to improve for free through software updates without anything additional having to be done by the TiVo owner than plugging in the phone line. Home Media Option sounds like a software update. Getting the USB ethernet adapter is listed as an **seprate** pre-request to getting HMO. They aren't billing for the hardware for HMO so they must be billing for the software update. So... lets see:

Advertized claim: Season Passes will record an entire season of programs regardless of scheduling changes.

Actual truth: TiVo reserves the right under the "Nature of Television disclaimer" for the Season Pass to be auto-deleted in the middle of the season.

Advertized claim: Software updates are free with nothing additional required of the TiVo owner.

Actual truth: TiVo charges $100 plus $50 for each additional TiVo.

At what point does TiVo become guilty of fraud?

And all TiVo has done is *REDUCE* a computer to a PVR. Several things that can be quickly and easily done has been artifically excluded from TiVo. For example, in addition to getting guide data, it would make sense for TiVo to provide offline web browsing. Even a cheap old Palm III running Avantgo or a cheap alpha pager makes it easier to get the weather or sport scores than a TiVo does. And while the TiVo requires your zip code as part of activating your service, to get the weather, you still need to record it. And think about the possiblities on a networked PVR that have been artifically put aside by TiVo HMO. A TiVo will send/recieve mpeg streams from another TiVo but not to any other computer? Why shouldn't I be able to stream a VCD through my PVR as easily as an audio MP3 or view a JPG? As a customer, do I really get to decide where the line is drawn in the sand as to what my PVR can do?