TiVo Archives - Page 109 of 149

Cellphone DVR Scheduling For Homezone, TiVo

use their mobile handsets to remotely view listings and schedule or delete recordings from their DVR set-top boxes. All that is needed is a WAP 2.0-enabled handset that lets subscribers access the AT&T-Yahoo portal.

As soon as I read that, my immediate thought was: Where’s the TiVo Verizon Java scheduling widget? Well, PVRWire reports something may be announced shortly:

Next week Verizon and Vodafone will launch a service allowing customers to program TiVo units by phone. Sprint plans to enter the remote recording market later this year.

Megazone dropped me a note that Amazon Unbox on TiVo has been enabled. I immediately registered and ordered A Scanner Darkly ($3.99) through Amazon’s web site – video to be shipped direct to my Series3 via the Internet. Within just a minute or two the download began…

If you register on Amazon to link your TiVo box(es) before April 30th, you’ll receive a $15 video credit. So we’ll find out pretty quickly (and for free) if the size of the library and if the video quality (SD) are both sufficient.

TiVo & Daylight Savings Time

In an attempt to save energy nationally, Congress has extended the period of Daylight Savings Time here in the US. So we’ll be springing ahead a few weeks early this year. I’ve received several news alerts in the last week regarding TiVo and DST, a few of which caught my attention…

WTVM9:

And even V-C-Rs and Tivo which don’t have built-in updating devices

Mercury News:

But be prepared to reset your computer clock, too — and the clocks on your TiVo, BlackBerry and anything else electronic that depends on time.

TiVo units do have the ability to receive updates via dial-up or broadband and I don’t recall ever setting the time on my DVRs, so I did a little digging around. From some posts on the TiVo Community Forum (here, here, and here) it seems like:

Time Warner Faces Inferior DVR Legislative Action

Forrester recently did a survey where they asked consumers an open ended question about how they felt towards their DVR and 20% of the respondents used the word love to describe their relationship with the gadget.

When a consumer electronic device can generate this type of an emotional response, it’s safe to assume that for better or worse, the technology is going to have an impact. On a positive note, Forrester’s study revealed that this passion translates into DVR owners churning less and being more likely to pay for premium services.

less than 2% of people who owned DVRs have stopped using them. While today’s DVR owners are demographically mainstream, they are off the charts in their adoption of premium TV services and home electronics. Nearly half of them have a home network, which is four times the penetration of a typical online household.

Media Extender Day, Part 4: TiVo

We can’t have a media extender conversation here at ZNF without mentioning existing TiVo boxes. Though, at this point, it’s really a tale of two cities: Series2 and Series3 units. Networked Series2 units offer multi-room viewing (MRV), allowing the transfer and playback of recorded shows from one TiVo to another within the house. While we’ve … Read more

Picture of the Day: Double Your Pleasure

Ben’s Rack.

Expand Scientific Atlanta 8300HD DVR Storage

As a guy living in Comcast + Motorola country, I was pretty surprised to learn that Scientific Atlanta 8300HD DVRs (running SARA) support external drives. I’m only two years behind in the news, but being able to upgrade a stock cableco box is pretty exciting. I could see myself putting up with an inferior interface … Read more

TiVo Desktop 2.4 Public Beta Released

While I was preoccupied in Canada, TiVo released a public beta of TiVo Desktop 2.4. Notable new features include the ability to broadcast “HD” photographs (1280×720) from computer to Series3 TiVo and the ability to transcode several video formats (other than DivX) for transfer to and playback on Series2 units. A less glamorous, but useful, feature allows the software to map beyond the default TiVo folder.

A few gotchas… TiVo has labeled this Preview software, though they document about a dozen known issues (hence my Public Beta label). The ability to transcode video (for TiVo playback OR in the other direction for iPod and PSP playback) requires a Plus codec license: $25. Sorry Mac owners, this is a Windows-only release — Perhaps Roxio will incorporate similar functionality into a Toast update.