PVR/DVR – Page 4 – Digital-Lifestyles

TiVo SDK: looking to influential new pals, new ideas, anything!

TiVo SDK Squeezed on both sides by ever-competitive satellite and cable providers, TiVo is trying to woo third party developers into creating compelling new add-on services for their product.

The company has rolled out a Software Development Kit (SDK) in the hope that it will create a vibrant market in application for the TiVo. The SDK has been released on to SourceForge, a home for open-source software.

To stimulate the market, they’ve got the ball rolling with three initial add-ons: a weather information plug in, an RSS reader and a game, with users needing a Series 2 TiVo, a home network and broadband connection to take full advantage of the applications.

The move is part of a larger strategy, code-named Tahiti, which lets DVRs download information and content from the Internet. Howard Look, who regales under the magnificent title of ‘vice president of application and user experience’ at TiVo was heard excitedly exclaiming, “All the great ideas don’t have to come just from us.”

Some users may feel that there haven’t been enough great ideas coming from anywhere recently.

Although TiVo boxes are well regarded for their easy-peasy interface and excellent aesthetics, many feel that it’s being left behind by newer technologies. Sales haven’t matched expectations (only 2 million boxes so far) with the company racking up truly eye-wateringly large net losses (half a billion according to Om Malik).

Clearly something hugely impressive has to be pulled out of the bag to turn the company around, but posters on Slashdot weren’t exactly overwhelmed by TiVo’s announcement, but then Slashdotters are rarely overwhelmed.

If they’re represeantative, it seems that what many users really want – instant commercial skip, sharing recorded programs with other devices and free channel guide services – isn’t on TiVo’s horizon and barely anyone seemed excited by the somewhat less enticing prospect of bolt-on weather forecasts and an RSS reader.

TiVo does have a very enthusastic base of owners, many of whom are capable of developing software, so this could be a very wise move for TiVo. We wait with bated breath to see how many applications arrive.

The Developer Toolkit
Slashdot discussion: TiVo to offer SDK

TiVo effect, TV still doesn’t know what to do

TiVo with remote In a long line of articles where TV execs try to ponder how to stop losing sleep and preserve their once comfortable lives, Meg James in the LA Times covers the impact of PVR’s, in particular TiVo, and how the TV industry is still trying to adjust to its impact.

It’s warming to see that there are still articles coming out, with quotes from TiVo users such as, “Once you’ve used one, you can’t imagine life without TiVo,” as Charlie Flint of Marina del Rey, California did. It’s somewhat reassuring that the impact is still as great for new users as it was when TiVo was first introduced.

One thing that doesn’t get mentioned in connection with this, and this is something that TV people should have sympathy with, is that ad breaks, do exactly that, break up the programme. Interrupting its flow.

This has been more than amply proven in the UK where The Simpsons have moved from commercial-free BBC2 to the advertiser-supported Channel 4.

Previously used to watching the show from beginning to end, without interruption. When watching the show, on TiVo of course, the story is interrupted by having to skip through the adverts.

Interestingly the exact opposite of the programmes sponsor desired intention is achieved. I have now come to resent the Pizza chain, as they are associated with interrupting my viewing pleasure.

One of the reasons that articles like this continue to make press is that estimated figures coming out of research houses and banks make worrying reading for the TV, and therefore the entertainment world.

By 2010, half the US households with TV sets are expected also to have digital recorders, according to a recent Smith Barney report. The tipping point could come as early as 2007, the report said, when the television industry may lose as much as $7.6 billion — or about 10% of its annual ad revenue — as advertisers seek other ways of reaching consumers.

A number of alternatives are suggested including pay-per-play, product placement in shows.

In one, viewers would pay $1 to see an episode of a show On Demand, “much as music fans do when they download a song from Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes music store,” appearing to forget that the iTunes users don’t pay another $1 when they listen to the song the following week, as would be that case with a VOD show.

It’s gratifying that Meg James ends the article with a wise quote from her interviewee, one that the TV industry should be listening to, “I’m now trying stuff that I never would have watched before. I’ll give it a shot and set the TiVo, then watch the show later … when nothing else is on,” TiVo-user Flint said. “I’m watching probably 50% more TV than I used to.

LA Times – Looking for New Ways to Make Viewers Pay
TiVo

500GB Hard Drive from Hitachi

Hitachi-7k-drive In an effort to keep up with the demands of the ever growing appetite for digital storage, Hitachi has announced a 500-Gigabyte drive.

With the rise of Digital Obesity (the hoarding of digital data) and the continued growth of Digital Video Recorders (DVR’s), in particular the early days of availability of the High Definition TV (HDTV) DVRs, the demands for storage are growing drastically.

The 3.5-inch drive will be joining the DeskStar range of drives as the Deskstar 7K500.

When used in a DVR it will be able to hold around 200 hours of Standard Definition TV, a serious step up from the 40 to 80 hours now available.

For those of a hardcore technical nature, you’ll be excited to hear that Hitachi will be the first hard drive vendor to deliver all of the major design enhancements identified in the SATA II (second version of Serial ATA) specification, including a 3 Gb/s data transfer rate. Translated – the serial interface isn’t going to be what slows the path of data from the drive to the processor, that’s more likely to be restricted by the drive (817 Mb/s in this case). SATA II doubles the transfer rate of SATA 1.0.

The drives also feature what Hitachi is calling Smooth Stream Technology, which is based on the recently ratified ATA-7 AV Streaming Feature Set. Why is this important? It’s been designed to simultaneously lay down a number of large data streams (each HDTV 1080i stream runs at 19 Mbits/s) as well as smoothly handle data errors.

When handling AV (Audio Visual) information the accuracy of the information is of less importance than its fast transfer. If the video doesn’t arrive in time, the glitches that are seen on the screen are far more noticeable that one or two bits missing

Hitachi hopes to ship the 7K500 in Q1 2005. Hitachi
Serial ATA
ATA-7 Working Draft (doc)
ATA/ATAPI AV Streaming Command Set Usage Guidelines (doc)

NDS Threaten TiVo with DirecTV PVR

There won’t be much surprise to hear that the now Murdoch-controlled DirecTV is readying the launch it’s own PVR around Spring 2005, whose function mirrors TiVo. Added to this, NDS the creators of the rivals PVR, claim their unit will handle Pay Per View programming better – by charging for the content when it is watched, not recorded. This will give them the opportunity to speculatively tempt the viewer with lots of yummy content.

The divorce of DirecTV and TiVo has been long, protracted and painful to watch. Much like friends watching from the outside as a marriage crumbles, where everyone appears to know that it’s over, except the unhappy couple.

TiVo has already had experience of the Murdoch approach to their business, when the two ‘worked together’ to bring TiVo to the UK. It is sufficient to say that TiVo stopped selling their product in the UK after only selling 30,000 units. It’s likely that most of these, probably would’ve been brought directly from the US anyway.

The big problem for TiVo is that DirecTV is their largest single customer and it will seriously impact their business. We imagine that they’ve been expecting it since DirecTV sold its 55% stake in one lump and its vice chairman, Eddy Hartenstein, resigned from their board back in June this year.

When this news is combined with, in our view, the near suicidal idea that TiVo plan to ‘upgrade’ the software on their subscriber’s boxes to display popup banner ads when fast forwarding through the TV adverts, you have to think that TiVo is in serious trouble.

Times have changed, and what was once special about TiVo has now become commonplace, and sadly, they don’t appear to be able to add anything to their offering as magical as the original.

We’re dismayed to read in the news report that the new DirecTV device will not have the ability to skip through the adverts. While we’re not surprised that an integrated company like News Corporation want to stop their subscribers for skipping through a revenue stream, we’re saddened that a feature that was so much a selling point for the original PVR, is going to be withheld. We wonder what the reaction of the subscribers that currently have the TiVo box that will be ‘upgraded’ to the new system will be? Even if the reaction is bad and vocal, it’s highly lightly that this will be a mere blip in the media landscape stretching forward.

DirecTV
TiVo

VoD, NVoD & DVR All to Grow In Europe – Yankee

Combined Annual VoD and NVoD revenue will increase fivefold to Euro 2.2 Billion by 2008, while DVR service penetration will also increase to 20% of Western European Digital TV Homes by 2008, says Yankee Group.

Video on demand (VoD) and digital video recording (DVR) are phrases that service providers are getting very used to – because that is where their business is heading, and both will “coexist as complementary options for digital TV customers,” says Jonathan Doran, Yankee Group Broadband & Media Europe senior analyst, in yesterday’s news release.

Yankee predicts that Video-on-demand (VoD) and its variants will account for an increasing proportion of digital TV revenue in Western Europe, with products like FastWeb and arrivo accounting for a growing proportion of European pay-TV revenue in the next 3 to 5 years.

Two reports, On-Demand TV, Part 1: VoD Will Grow Europe’s Pay-TV Markets, but Not Much, and On-Demand TV, Part 2: Operators Must Move Fast to Add DVR to Their Digital Proposition, mention some challenges that VoD must face. Cable operators, for example, will have to fork out for digital upgrade costs and provision of customer-premises equipment, while satellite operators won’t be able to provide true VoD services if they don’t have a return path. Furthermore, while services such as Sky+ and PILOTIME are showing strong initial appeal among early adopters, high subscription fees will deter many users.

But most importantly, Yankee says platform operators will have to recognise that VoD represents an enhancement of the digital TV value proposition rather than a core application, so that although VoD will become an intrinsic part of digital TV, it will only account for a modest share of overall service revenue.

Operator-provided DVR service faces numerous challenges, Yankee warns, like competition from standalone retail DVR and DVD-R units. However, as equipment prices continue to fall and platform operators increase their marketing push, consumer adoption of DVR service is increasing. “DVR services will be more widely and frequently used by digital TV subscribers than regular VoD offerings that are limited to the less ubiquitous cable and broadband platforms,” says Jonathan Doran.

It’s still more theoretical than practical at the moment, so many cable operators will have to play it safe and offer both VoD and DVR until a demand pattern is established.

TiVo to Restrict Content Usage

In the very near future, your TiVo machine will surreptitiously download a patch that will put restrictions on how long your DVR can save certain kinds of TV programmes. It’s the first time since its inception that your TiVo won’t let you watch whatever you want, whenever you want.

The slippery slope started when Macrovision became concerned about TiVo’s imminent TiVoToGo service, which will allow users to transfer programming from the TiVo to a PC. One patch will cause TiVos to automatically delete pay-per-view content after a preset period of time, while another change affects TiVo viewers’ ability to view National Football League broadcasts.

NFL was concerned that TiVo’s new remote access service would somehow circumvent the league’s broadcast regulations by playing real-time retransmission outside of the subscriber’s local television market. A new agreement with the NFL prevents TiVo owners from doing this.

In a recent interview with J. D. Lasica on endgaget, Mike Ramsay, CEO of TiVo said, “When you are a slave to television it screws up your life.” It would seem though that TiVo might be assuming the mantle of slavery by being too deferential to the broadcasters.

TiVo say they are changing because Macrovision is changing, and that it’s a case of having a more restrictive Macrovision licence or no licence at all, especially since the restrictions are limited to pay-per-view and video-on-demand – so far.

The thing is, TiVo is not legally required to have copy protection, and in an interview with Lucas Graves in the latest issue of Wired, Graves asks TiVo’s general counsel, Matthew Zinn why TiVo just don’t tell Macrovision to stuff it? Zinn replies, “That was an option. But if there was no Macrovision license, we would run into a lot of copyright problems with things like remote access and “TiVo to Go” functionality. To innovate and give people more flexibility with broadcast content, we decided it was acceptable to allow content owners to apply protections to higher-value content.”

Having an arbitrary expiration date set after which your copy gets wiped cannot be good for customer morale, the risk being that they may find non-legal ways to get what they want.

Tivo
Engadget interview with Mike Ramsay, CEO of TiVo
Wired interview – Lucas Graves, general counsel, TiVo

Amino shows tiny IPtv PVR STB

Amino AmiNET500 Amino, the broadcast electronics company based in Cambridge, UK, have unveiled the AmiNET500, a tiny, low-cost, Internet Protocol Television (IPtv) set top box with built in PVR. The diminutive 184mm x 240 x 56 box can hold up to 40 hours of programming on its 80Gb drive. It runs on a Linux platform and uses a Java-based PVR application

Amino have taken a flexible approach to delivering content to the box. The AmiNET500 will monitor the speed of the broadband connection and will enable the uploading of content for later replay if, bandwidth is insufficient for live delivery.

Amino plan to support leading DRM and conditional access systems and, if protection is used, the programming will be stored encrypted on the hard drive. Delivery of content around the home, to different STB’s is also possible with this machine. Presumably the disparate STB’s will need to be able to decode the encrypted material.

The first vision of the box, destined for US release is available form October and the European version in early 2005.

Amino Communications

Pace launch PVR2GO – 1st Mobile PVR for payTV

Page PVR2GO Pace, UK-based supplier for TV-focused technology, announced what they claim is the world’s first mobile personal video recorder of payTV.

The 40Gb device, which enables the downloading of protected TV content, has an interesting and innovative approach to the display. The device will feature two screens, a large high quality and resolution screen to display the content, with a secondary, smaller strip of screen underneath it that is used for navigating the content. The normal approach to this would be to use a large high quality screen, but in discussion with their Director of Technology, David Gillies explained that Pace would get significant financial saving using this approach.

The upper high-resolution screen will be a new range, supplied by Samsung, using one quarter of the power a currently available equivalent. Using ‘clever new battery’ technology and other power saving features, the battery life of the device will be at least 3 hours – more than long enough to watch a feature film.

Unsurprisingly it will also have the ability to play audio files and view photos. One unexpected feature is the ability to play games, the make up of which we assume will be dependant on which OS is installed.

On the OS question, we were told it would be soft, depending on who the operator customer is. If some purchasing operator has a Set Top Box (STB) with a defined look and feel or EPG, this can also be ported, extending the payTV operators brand to their viewers hand.

Although a fully working demonstrator was not available, they were showing a version, using the older screen, displaying video content. Given an order, Neil Gaydon, Worldwide Sales and Marketing Director told Digital Lifestyles that they could have it in the market “within six months”.

Pace Micro

TV-Anytime v2 to include iTV timeshifting

Today the TV-Anytime Forum, the collective of PVR industry-luminaries and deep-thinkers, announced it would soon complete its second, and final phase of the PVR standard.

The new phase, whose scope will be frozen in November 2004 will include

enabling the saving of interactive TV content to be saved to a PVR
a metadata framework enabling innovative advertising models for PVR’s
rights management of content, allowing transfer of programming between devices

We think that the first of these, allowing interactive TV (iTV) content to be saved to the correctly equipped PVR, is the most exciting. The playback of timeshifted iTV content has been the significant missing piece as far we’ve been concerned and if they achieve a standard that can work with any format of iTV content, they will have done very well.

The initial phase, which was been passed as an ETSI standard (TS 102 822 – “Broadcast and on-line services: Search, select, and rightful use of content on personal storage system”, is being implemented in Europe, the US and Japan, with PVR’s with enhanced functionality expected to launch during 2005.

Commenting on its widespread adoption, Simon Parnell, chair of TV-Anytime, “The adoption of TVA’s first specification by DVB, ARIB and ATSC shows how important this work will prove to be for the widespread adoption of PVR standards the public can reply on.”

TV-Anytime

Netflix and TiVo to Team Up

Newsweek is reporting that Netflix and TiVo are soon to team up to offer a film on demand service. Netflix currently operate a DVD-by-post delivery mode, but clearly that doesn’t cater for the people at home who don’t really fancy waiting three days for their chosen film to show up.

In many ways, the two companies were made for each other – Netflix has a huge library of films, there are TiVo boxes sitting under thousands of television in the US.

The proposed service will allow subscribers to download DVDs directly to their TiVo box via their broadband link home, and then watch them on their television. No popping out to the video shop, no waiting for the post, no crowding around a PC to watch downloaded films.

TiVo’s first step in this direction was its acquisition of Strangeberry earlier this year – the company produced a technology that allowed TiVo owners to plug a broadband modem into the back of their PVR and download media from the internet. Since then, TiVo have made hardware and software upgrades to their platform, and improved security and other copy protection features.

If Netflix can get distribution rights to their entire library, then many people may never go out again – and the Netflix name will finally make sense.

Tivo

Netflix