Galleon 1.8 has just been released. 1.8 includes several bug fixes as well as a couple of new apps.
Release Notes:
Fixed email sorting
Added movie theater favorites
Fixed remote configuration GUI ToGo bugs
Added music current track shortcut
Fixed RSS text escaping
Fixed RSS configuration bug
Added Jukebox app
Added Upcoming app
Fixed iTunes date bug
Hat Tip: Dave Zatz
Dave Zatz has once again posted some great TiVo information on his site. This time Dave has taken the time to gather several TiVo 7.2.1 screenshots. For those of you who don’t know, 7.2.1 is TiVo’s latest software release which includes overlap protection and several bug fixes. Check out his site for some eye candy :).
I just received the following feedback from Joshua Garnett. Apparently Joshua found a post on this site which linked him to Dave Zatz’s article on how to convert a DVD to MPEG2. Joshua has put together a tutorial of his own which is suppose to address some drawbacks he found in Dave’s tutorial. Read on for the link to Joshua’s site.
After searching on google for a way to transfers movies to Tivo, I stumbled upon your site. You included a link to another site, http://www.zatznotfunny.com/dvdshrink.htm, that offered an easy way to convert DVDs into content that’ll play on a Tivo. After experimenting with the How To, I found a few drawbacks. Mainly the fact that most Tivo’s can’t render 16:9 content properly. After reading through numerous guides and making a few guesses I’ve found a way to convert the 16:9 content to letterboxed 4:3. This is by using all freeware/shareware. I think others would benefit from my findings. Anyways, here is a link to the guide.
Thanks Joshua for sharing this with us! Great work!
In my opinion, most tech geeks are a little uppity. They tend to think that the best solution for most problems is more technology and bigger/better systems that cost more money. I know that I’m guilty of this. After all, I’ve been trying to convince my wife for the past couple of months that we need a Mac in the kitchen. After all, how can we go on with our life without a $1400 email checking machine in the kitchen? That being said, most tech geeks are excited with Microsoft’s MCE (Media Center Edition). On the surface the device/operating system looks like a great deal. After all, everybody should have a full-blown PC in their living room right? Wrong! MCE is a great option for a tech geek who has an unlimited budget. This is not the case for the majority of consumers out there. In my opinion, the average consumer wants a device that just works. They don’t want to have to mess around with another Windows box in their living room. Take my family for example, my in-laws would love to be able to record their favorite shows and watch them when they want to. The only thing that they don’t want to have to do is learn how to use a Windows PC. My father in-law is what you would call computer illiterate. He doesn’t know how to use a computer and he doesn’t want to learn. Do you think I could sell him on getting a MCE box when the device is going to hit him hard in the wallet and he is going to have to learn a little bit about how to use a PC? I think not!
That being said, I would like to dedicate the rest of this post to compare the cost of a TiVo to the cost of an average MCE box. After all, most consumers don’t want to pay out the wazoo just to record their favorite TV shows and watch them at another time. If you are a tech geek then maybe this article isn’t for you. MCE has a lot of great features; however, for the cost I just can’t see getting an MCE box when you can get a TiVo for next to nothing. The rest of this post will hopefully convince you as well….
TVHarmony has updated AutoPilot to include a number of bug fixes as well as some great new features that I think people are going to go crazy over. For most people, the two best new features are the ability to reencode your TiVo recordings for the new iPod Video! That’s right, AutoPilot will allow you to watch your TiVo recordings on your iPod Video without a lot of work. The next biggest feature is the ability to automatically remove commercials from the recordings. In order to do this, AutoPilot is using an open source library called ComSkip.
Instead of trying to create my own release notes, I am just going to go ahead and use the notes directly off of TVHarmony’s website after all, I know the site owner and he seems to like me ;).
1.0 Beta 1, v03
Added support for video iPod and Palm Devices Added support for commercial removal using ComSkip Added support for encoding into AVI files including XVID and h264 encoding Removed MAK watermark and replaced with MAK encoded non-visibly into file. Added better control over conversion process
A couple things to keep in mind… Sorry Mac users but this is yet another Windows only software package :(. This is beta software so there are bound to be problems. If you find any problems make sure you head on over to the developer’s fourm and let him know what’s going on. Second, the author wants you to uninstall any previous versions of AutoPilot that you may have previously installed. This is an important one :).
A good friend of mine sent me an IM telling me that his TiVo is having some problems. For some reason, his TiVo’s audio seems to drop unexpectedly. While watching live TV he notices that the audio all of a sudden disappears! If he waits long enough the audio seems to come back on its’ own. He has tried restarting the DVR however; this doesn’t work all of the time. His previous TiVo’s hard drive died unexpectedly so I kind of feel bad for the poor slouch ;). Has anybody ever seen this problem before? A quick look on TiVo’s support forum turned up this post. Unfortunately, this post hasn’t been updated with a solution. The only “solution” was to return the box back to TiVo and have them ship you a new box. Any ideas?
The folks over at TiVo have finally launched an official TiVo Blog! This site and several others have speculated over when this would happen for a long time now. It’s great to see TiVo finally embrace the blogging community and launch their very own blog. I look forward to reading the blog and keeping up to date with TiVo news & information. If you use an RSS reader, here is a link to their RSS feed.
Hat Tip: PVRBlog
In case you hadn’t noticed, for one reason or another, TiVo’s TiVolution magazine has been MIA for quite some time now. I’ve used this feature only a couple of times however; when I did I often found new TV shows to record. In any case, TiVo has reinstated the magazine so make sure you check it out if you haven’t already.
Hat Tip: Dave Zatz.
digitalmerging.la has posted an interesting discussion about what he plans on doing since the TiVo/DIRECTV relationship is on the rcoks. If you read the article, make sure you check out MegaZone’s comment at the bottom.
If you are a DIRECTV user, what do you plan on doing with your DIRECTiVo box? Are you going to stick with the service and try out DIRECTV’s DVR? Or are you going to drop DIRECTV and go with a cable company DVR or better yet a TiVo? Just wondering….
Nobody can argue that TiVo has a wonderful user interface. TiVo’s GUI (graphical user interface) is one of the reasons why the product has been so successful. After all how many high tech gadgets can put in front of your parents or grandparents and watch them use that device successfully? That being said, TiVo has taken the extra step to provide a number of shortcuts to some of the most common features. These shortcuts allow the user to navigate through the system via one or two commands. To access these shortcuts, head on over to the TiVo Central screen (press the “TiVo” located at the top of your remote) and press any of the following buttons to jump to their respective functions:
