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There has not been much TiVo news as of late. It’s kind of to be expected since it is the holiday season and even the people at TiVo deserve some time off :). That being said, the next big TiVo news will more then likely be the release of TiVoToGo. A couple of sites including these ones (FlatScreens.biz, TiVoCommunity) have reported that TiVo will probably announce the official release of TiVoToGo at next year’s CES (Jan 7th). TiVo had promised that TiVoToGo would be released before the end of the year however; like many software projects, it has slipped. All we can do now is sit and wait for TiVoToGo. I hope that TiVo has taken the extra time to work out some bugs and finalize the product.

Looks like somebody over at Sigmund, Carl and Alfred had nothing better to do then to bash TiVoBlog.com. Apparently the author of this site doesn’t own a TiVo :).

I would like to wish everybody a Happy Holiday! I hope your holiday season is filled with joy!

TiVoLovers has alerted me to an interesting read about TiVo. Instead of trying to summarize everything in the article, I am just going to post a link.

Two days ago I received my 140 TiVo from the rewards program. Needless to say, I set it up as soon as I arrived home from work. In fact, my wife called me during the day and told me she had some good news for me. Being the big geek that I am, she knew that I would be excited about my new DVR. At first I thought she was going to say that we hit the lottery however; she let me know that my new TiVo had arrived :).

If you’ve been following my previous posts (post 1, post 2) about my TiVo rewards TiVo you’ll know that I’ve been planning on giving my parents my old TiVo (60 hr series2). Being a man of my word, I setup my old TiVo at my parent’s house last night. I showed my Mom how to setup several season passes and within a couple of minutes she was doing it herself. My parents are kind of tech savvy (hey what do you expect, there son has a TiVo website) so I kind of expected them to be able to pickup on it. I think that my Mom finally realized the true benefit of a TiVo. She was able to go and take a shower without having to miss her Jeopardy. She setup about 13 season passes so I’m sure she’ll have more shows then she can ever watch. It�s but I just got an email saying that the following comment has been posted:

Alex, I’ve only had the TiVo for one night and I am already happy. Last night I was tired and saw that “THE GODFATHER” was going to be on, so I TiVoed it! Thanks, now all I have to do is explain it to Dad and we’re good to go. Love Mom

Little does she know that you aren�t suppose to use TiVo as a verb. I guess I�ll give Mom a pass on this one ;)!

JavaHMO 2.1 has just been released! Leon has informed me that this is a maintenance release, which fixes the following bugs:

1. Fixed iTunes plugin drops 1 song
2. Fixed Email plugin protocol value reset bug in configuration GUI
3. Fixed shuffle repeat play bug
4. Fixed playlist shuffle bug
5. Fixed iTunes default path

Try it out…

A number of sites including TvHarmony are reporting that TiVo is offering a free DVR to anybody who brings a Comcast bill to their headquarters in Alviso. Great idea TiVo :). Harry (one of the readers of this site) was kind enough to send me this email that he received from one of his friends.

Subject: A FREE TiVo box for your friends — Fri. 12/17 ONLY!

Start spreading the word as far and wide as you want. Here’s the scoop:

WHAT:
We’re giving away TiVo boxes this Friday, December 17, from 11 AM to 1
PM to disappointed Bay Area Comcast customers who have been waiting and
waiting and waiting… uh, much to their chagrin… for the Comcast
version of a DVR.

WHY:
Because ’tis the season of good tidings! And while Comcast has let
down its customers with promises unfulfilled, we can bring Joy NOW by
gifting them with the critic’s choice of digital video recorders: a
TiVo box. Yes, FREE! They will pay the low monthly fee (or pay for
product lifetime service), but the TiVo box is 100% on us! YEOW!

HOW:
Tell your friends to show up at TiVo headquarters in Alviso and bring
the following to qualify for a FREE TiVo box:
1) An original Comcast cable bill, current within the last 2 months
2) A new toy or piece of clothing to donate to The Family Giving Tree
charity

WHEN:
One Day Only, for 2 hours or while supplies last!
Friday, December 17
11 AM - 1 PM

WHERE:
TiVo headquarters in Alviso.
More details forthcoming about parking.
We can expect quite a crowd!

Additional info can be found here…

According to this New York Times article (subscription required), TiVo has started to defend its’ trademark as of late.

The company has begun sending letters to news organizations whenever it sees the term misused. “We’ve gotten more aggressive,” said Kathryn Kelly, a TiVo spokeswoman. “It’s a much more talked-about subject now.”

This all goes back to a post I had on 9/1/2004 titled: “TiVo does not equal cable company DVR”. TiVo has finally caught on to the fact that they need to defend their trademark. One of the worst things that could happen is for the word “TiVo” to represent all DVRs. Nice job TiVo!

It looks like Leon and his crew have worked out most of the bugs in JavaHMO 2.0. I just received an email from him letting me know that he has released version 2.0! Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, I am going to paste what he sent me…

This release represents a significant upgrade of JavaHMO, the media server
for the Home Media Option from TiVo. This version includes numerous new
kinds of content, significant performance improvements and increased
reliability.

This version is also major re-organization of the code and includes a new
plugin architecture.

All of the previous 1.2 content are available as plugins:
Desktop viewer, Games, Image viewer, Internet images, Movie listings, MP3
player, MP3 organizer, M3U and PLS playlist support, Shoutcast streams, and
Local Weather conditions.

In addition, 2.0 introduces numerous new plugins:
- Email: read your incoming email on the TiVo interface,
- Image organizer: similar to the audio organizer to allow you to categorize
your images by dates
- iTunes playlists (MP3 files only)
- Jukebox: every song you play in the other JavaHMO plugins will
automatically appear in the Jukebox playlist
- NNTP: download and view NNTP (News server) images automatically
- RSS: view RSS published content on the internet
- Web pages: view fullscreen versions of any web page
- Expanded weather: alerts for your county from the National Weather Service
will be part of the weather plugin
- Stocks: view the daily trading information of stocks

This release has been developed for JRE 1.4.2_06.

This version also includes a new Swing-based configuration GUI. The previous
HTML configuration GUI is no longer available.

The Windows installation wizard and complete source code is currently
available from the project web site on Sourceforge:
http://javahmo.sourceforge.net

The Linux and OS X distributions will be made available at a later stage.

The release notes for this version are available at:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?group_id=87487&release_id=289072

Thanks to everybody who contributed to this release and who participated in
the beta testing.