TiVo Offers a Taste of the Web
DVR’s Broadband Features Are Novel, But Limited
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 5/6/2007 8:00:00 PM
If Steve Jobs is doing it, it’s going to be a mass market, right? The latest consumer-electronics craze — among manufacturers, anyway — is any device that pumps video over the Internet to your TV.
Apple last month began shipping an oversize version of the iPod, called Apple TV. The device can transmit video and music you’ve bought from iTunes over to your living-room TV set. Microsoft has engineered its video-game console, the Xbox 360, to let you download TV shows and movies — some in high-definition format — from its online store.
Others in this nascent category include Sony Electronics, which has designed an Internet adapter for its line of high-definition Bravia TV sets, and startup Vudu, backed by two top-tier Silicon Valley investors, which promises to provide access to 5,000 titles from major studios via a proprietary, broadband-connected set-top box (no launch date has been announced). Netflix has also announced plans to somehow deliver downloads to its customers’ TVs.
| Quick Stats |
|---|
| TiVo’s Internet Video Player |
| Sources: TiVo, Multichannel News research |
| Model tested: Series2 DT DVR with 80 hours of storage |
| List price: $99 (direct from TiVo); $249 (manufacturer’s suggested retail price) |
| Software fee: $24.95 for TiVo Desktop 2.4 software |
| Monthly fee: $16.95 with one-year plan; $12.95 with three-year plan |
| Movies and TV shows on demand: Amazon.com’s Unbox |
| Internet video content: Break.com, CNET, Danger Rangers, dLife, GolfSpan, Heavy.com, iVillage, LX.TV, The New York Times, Rocketboom, TasteTV, The Onion, Union On Demand |
| Video formats supported: MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, QuickTime, Windows Media (excluding videos protected with digital-rights management) |
REINVENTING THE WHEEL
But after trying out one of the first Internet-connected video players on the market — TiVo’s Series2 digital-video recorder — I was left wondering how well these reinventions of the wheel will play with consumers.
At best, the TiVo’s Net-to-TV features were a novelty. At worst, they illustrated how weak made-for-Internet content is today, compared with what most TV viewers are accustomed to.
For this Test Drive, we intended to take a look at the Xbox 360, as well. However, the review unit the company sent us had a defective hard drive (error message 67 on boot-up), rendering the unit usable only for … well, playing video games. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a replacement drive in time for our review.
In addition, Multichannel News put in a request for an Apple TV, but Apple representatives said they didn’t have one available. Ditto for Akimbo Systems, which sells an RCA-branded device that provides Internet content from more than 100 on-demand channels to your TV.
After checking out the Internet-video features of the TiVo Series2 dual-tuner DVR, it was apparent that the regular video-recorder functions remain more useful and entertaining than any of the newfangled stuff.
The DVR now offers three ways to get Internet-delivered video to your TV: by purchasing movies and TV shows from Amazon.com Unbox, the online retailer’s video-download service; free through TiVoCast, an assortment of packaged Web clips from content providers like iVillage and The New York Times; and with TiVo Desktop, software that transfers certain video files from your computer to your DVR.
SIMPLE SETUP
Setting up the TiVo was simple enough. My cable modem sits next the TV in our living room, so I just plugged an Ethernet cable into the TiVo and stepped through the setup (about half an hour).
I started with Amazon Unbox, ordering The Pursuit of Happyness, with Will Smith in an Oscar-nominated role. But although I had correctly registered my TiVo unit and Amazon gave me an order confirmation, it wasn’t clear I had to separately click the “Download to TiVo” button.
OK, done. But it still didn’t work. I checked the TiVo settings. A message said the TiVo needed to be rebooted after updates had been installed. All right! After restarting the DVR, I clicked the download-to-TiVo button again, and the download started this time.
Then, I waited. You can’t watch videos until they’ve completely downloaded. One hour later, which Amazon correctly estimated as the download time, the video was queued up and ready to play. However, according to TiVo, on slower broadband connections (under 1 Megabit per second) a movie could take up to 5 hours to transfer.
After all this, what exactly is the advantage? Amazon’s rental price for new releases ($3.99) is the same as that of most cable video-on-demand services. Amazon claims Unbox is easier to navigate and browse than VOD menus. Maybe, but even if it takes me a minute longer to find something on VOD, with cable I don’t have to wait an hour — or five — to watch it.
Plus, Amazon’s Web-based ordering interface presents an obvious downside: You can’t browse or order video titles from your TV set. You have pick a movie from your computer, then dash over to the TiVo to see if it started to download. On the other hand, I suppose, you could order a movie at work then have it waiting for you when you get home.
And right now, Amazon Unbox doesn’t even have an edge over VOD where you might expect —library size. After all, this is a company that touts having “Earth’s Biggest Selection.”
At the time of this review, the site listed 791 titles for rent on TiVo and 1,464 to buy (out of about 4,000 movie titles on Unbox). Cable continues to ratchet up its VOD offerings. Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications, for example, have begun rolling out “virtual video stores” with upward of 1,500 movies.
BURPING GIRL
Next up was TiVoCast, a service that magnified how positively lame some Internet video is compared with “conventional” TV programming.
On the sophomoric-humor front, from Break.com, a girl burps the alphabet. Charming. Heavy.com offered The Superficial Friends, a crass animated series parodying Paris Hilton, the Olsen twins and other celebutantes.
NBC Universal’s iVillage served up such fare as Dr. Bob on Recovering from Infidelity, a talk-show format series that is finely produced, but not really up my alley. Video-blog site Rocketboom.com provided the most frequent updates on TiVoCast, but the self-consciously cutesy style of this (news? lifestyle? comedy?) program doesn’t get any better when viewed on a TV.
The most entertaining bit I watched on TiVoCast was from New York Times technology columnist David Pogue, a 4-minute segment about his frustrated attempts to set up high-speed wireless routers. Let me repeat: The best video was of a guy in his basement unable to get 802.11n wireless routers to work at advertised throughputs. Yes, spine-tingling.
TiVo has announced deals with CBS, Forbes, the National Basketball Association and Reuters to provide content through TiVoCast, but at the time of our review none of them had any video clips available.
According to TiVo public relations manager Krista Wierzbicki, each of these partners has “either had content up there promotionally at some point or will start their TiVoCast channel in the near future.”
Finally, I tried out the PC-to-TV video-transcoding features available with the TiVo Desktop 2.4. (A $24.95 upgrade to the “plus” version is required to use these features.) This works as advertised, shifting Windows Media, QuickTime and some MPEG files to the DVR, but I immediately realized that I don’t have any video on my computer that I’m eager to watch on a TV set.
What about YouTube? No can do, even if you wanted to. The TiVo software doesn’t support Adobe Flash — the most commonly used format for Web video today, used by YouTube, Google, Yahoo, as well as Viacom, NBC Universal and many others.
I also found out that while TiVo Desktop supports standard MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 formats, a lot of the “mpg” files from the Internet, apparently, don’t conform to these standards. Thus, the hilarious 30-second clip of a newborn baby kicking its doctor in the face I had downloaded from some German Web site could not be transcoded by TiVo Desktop. You can imagine my disappointment.
OTHER LIMITATIONS
There are other limitations with this application. It works only on Windows XP (not Vista) and the transcoding features aren’t yet available for TiVo’s Series3 high-definition DVRs.
Also, the software doesn’t support files with digital-rights management copy protections. So, for example, anything you bought from Amazon Unbox and downloaded to a PC can’t be transferred to the TiVo.
TiVo Desktop also lets you view photos and listen to music you have stored on your PC. The photos-on-your-TV slideshow is nifty, but I found the TiVo’s built-in access to Yahoo! photo albums more convenient because it doesn’t require leaving on your PC.
All told, for the week I tested out the unit, TiVo’s DVR functions delivered way more fun. I caught up on The Colbert Report, and the TiVo picked up an old episode of The Sopranos on A&E that I wouldn’t ordinarily have known about. The “pausing live TV” feature alone delivers more utility for your average TV junkie than Amazon Unbox, if you ask me.
I could rattle off other cool TiVo features, like WishList, which automatically finds and records anything airing on TV by actor, director, genre or keyword (say, Julia Roberts).
Sorry, Rocketboom. I’d honestly sooner watch Mystic Pizza.
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It seems you missed the point of my review.
Which is: the core DVR functions of TiVO are far more useful to me as a consumer of video entertainment than its newer Web-based features.
Todd Spangler - 5/10/2007 3:15:00 PM EDT -
Apparently, your review contrast with most TiVo users, who claim that after trying TiVo, they say, they can not live without it. It is been the first time I read that , a TiVo user or tester claims, that Amazon Unbox on TiVo is not great. I wonder what are you looking on TiVo -- because according to a recent World Mag survey -- TiVo is the third best invention in history. It is incredible, you miss something that the Emmy Academy has prized TiVo for, as being the best and the top entertainment/interactive DVR today, who can be more wrong the Emmy Academy or you?. I also wonder why you didn''t examine why TiVo is claimed to be the world only approved DVR to be a George Lucas Ltd THX certified. What about other features like cell-phone programming, KidsZone etc were not touched in your review. I am aTiVo fan and I recommend TiVo anyone who can afford to pay to enjoy the best on TV entertainment. I guess you need a little more time to learn more about TiVo.
John Denham - 5/5/2007 10:00:00 AM EDT
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