Techdirt has informed me of the fact that several TV execs are considering filing a lawsuit against TiVo. Apparently these execs aren’t happy with the fact that TiVo wants to allow the consumer to watch TV on the go. To be honest I’m not really surprised by this news after all, when was the last time you heard of a TV exec wanting to enable the consumer?

This quote from a NBC spokesman pretty much sums it up:

“TiVo appears to be acting unilaterally, disregarding established rights of content owners to participate in decisions regarding the distribution and exploitation of their content,”

Don’t these TV execs know that TiVo is actually good for the TV industry? As a matter of fact, if it wasn’t for my TiVo, I would probably get rid of cable all together.

More news and discussion is available on Variety.com and ThomasHawk.com.

CNET News.com has put together a wonderful FAQ which attempts to answer many of questions about the TiVoToGo, iPod & PSP news from yesterday. If you haven’t already checked out the article you really should. I know it answered a couple of questions that I had.

According to Bob Poniatowski (TiVo Product Marketing), TiVo is going to provide TiVoToGo functionality for the Mac in Mid-2006.

Taken directly from TiVoCommunity:

Regarding the Macintosh…

Yes, we intend to support it, but not in the February release. Macintosh support for the new features announced today is planned for mid-2006.

Pony

Later on in the thread:

Hmmm…I see that I have to be very careful with each and every word that I choose to type.

I did not intend for my statement to exclude playback on the Macintosh. My understanding is that that should be supported as well, in the same timeframe (mid-2006).

Pony

This is obviously great news for all you Mac users. I understand why everybody has been frustrated with TiVo’s lack of support for the Mac. Hopefully this latest news comes to fruition. I plan on getting a Mac once Apple releases a laptop with the Intel architecture. Maybe TiVoToGo Mac support will be out before I get my laptop!

Updated: More information can be found on Macworld.com.

Hat Tip: Dave Zatz

According to the following news.com article, TiVo will announce today a new feature that allows you to transfer your TiVo recordings to an iPod video or PSP.

Taken from news.com’s site:

Owners of the Apple or Sony devices will need to pay TiVo to unlock the portion of the new software that converts videos to the MPEG-4 format used by those players. While TiVo has not yet set the price for the software, similar programs typically cost between $15 and $30, Denney said. The cost will cover licensing fees and other expenses associated with using the MPEG-4 format, he said.

The new TiVo software will also have a syncing feature that will allow subscribers to choose whether they want new recordings of their favorite programs transferred to their portable devices automatically via their PC.

Based on the above quote, it looks as though you will have to buy some additional software to remove the DRM and allow you to play it on your PSP or iPod.

More info from here:

TiVo plans to begin testing software to enable video downloads to iPods from its digital video recorders within the next couple of weeks, the newspaper said. It said the company intends to make the software available to all TiVo users in the first quarter of 2006 for a one-time fee, most likely between $15 and $30.

While I don’t own an iPod video or PSP, this is definitely big news for TiVo. After all, look at how many shows have been downloaded off of the Apple’s iTunes music store. Apparently people are ready for portable video recordings.

In the event that you don’t want to shell out the 15-$30 for TiVo’s new software, you could instead use AutoPilot which allows you transfer your shows to your iPod, PSP at no cost.

Hat tip: MegaZone & several others…

In case you missed it, Galleon 1.9.1 and 1.9.2 were released over the weekend. According to the release notes it looks as though both versions contain mainly bug fixes. Go here to get your copy….

TiVoPony (TiVo Director Of Product Marketing) confirmed the fact that TiVo is going to offer a dual tuner HD box sometime next year!

Taken directly from TiVoCommunity:

There’s a dual tuner HD box coming next year that will work with both cable and ATSC.

Or, if you have Comcast cable, there’s a version of TiVo coming that will work on the 6412 dual tuner HD cable platform.

Both are dual tuner HD, and both are planned to be out next year. Dan’s right - CES is typically where you’d hear more info/details.

Cheers,
Pony

spotted on: TiVoLovers

TiVoBlog.com is offering a free TiVo T-shirt (size large) and $25.00 Best Buy gift card to anybody who writes the best essay for one of the following topics:

• “How TiVo Has Changed Your Life”
• “Why TiVo Is Better Than The Competition”
• “What Is Your Favorite TiVo Feature And Why Can’t You Live Without It”

As always, there are a couple of ground rules:

• Entries must be submitted by December 14, 2005
• A winner will be selected by December 21, 2005
• All entries must be submitted to the following email address: contest@tivoblog.com. Please include your mailing address and contact information so that I can contact you if you win.
• Please submit your essay as a word doc or as plain text in the email.
• The winner agrees to have their essay posted on TiVoBlog.com.
• Sorry, but I am not going to ship outside of the continental USA.

If anybody has any ideas for another essay topic please let me know. I am open to other suggestions.

You might be wondering why I am doing this. Well, in order to give back to my faithful readers, I thought it would be a nice idea to have a little contest that shows my appreciation. Sorry it couldn’t be more but I’m not Donald Trump after all :).

Yesterday’s and today’s news that TiVo is going to offer downloadable content over the internet made me wonder; is the company concentrating on the wrong set of features? Are people really interested in getting video over the internet or should TiVo concentrate on developing a dual-tuner HD DVR? I know that there has been news about a dual-tuner DVR for quite some time now however, it would be nice to see TiVo come out with an “official” launch date. Can you imagine how much excitement this would create? I know that I would start saving my pennies if I knew a dual-tuner DVR was coming out soon.

Now don’t get me wrong, one of the best things about TiVo is that they innovate and create features that other DVR units just don’t have. Take for example HMO and HME. That being said I’m concerned that the company isn’t concentrating on what they should be. After all, is the general public really ready for TV over the internet?

Today’s news suggests that several other people think the same as me. Right now TiVo’s biggest competition is the cable company DVR. In order to stay in step with what the cable companies are offering, TiVo needs to get a dual-tuner DVR out the door soon. As I said in a previous post, a dual-tuner DVR is a must for the majority of people who just want to be able to record their favorite shows without having to worry about which shows conflict with one another. Without this, TiVo is going to loose more and more customers to those horrible cable company DVRs. After all, how many people do you hear saying that they are going to buy a TiVo just because you can get 15 minute reviews from c|net?

What do you think? Would you rather see TiVo announce that a dual-tuner DVR is coming soon or would you like to see more announcements about downloadable shows over the internet? I know that TiVo can work more then one thing at a time however, it just seems like they are putting a lot of emphasis on the downloadable content….

Ever since I was a kid I’ve enjoyed watching many of the holiday specials that are on this time of the year. I remember as a kid looking in the TV guide for when Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer was going to be on. My entire family would gather around the TV and watch Rudolph as if it was the first time we had ever seen it.

Now that I have a TiVo, I no longer need to schedule my life and make sure that I am around for these wonderful shows. So, in the spirit of being a geek, I’ve setup several Wishlists to record my most favorite holiday specials. As a matter of fact, I am currently transferring How The Grinch Stole Christmas to my computer so that I can burn it to a DVD using MyDVD and TiVoToGo. If you’re a kid at heart like me, you may want to get your Wishlists established. I was a little surprised to find out that some of these specials are already being shown.

Just thought I would let you know that Galleon version 1.9.0 has been released.

Release Notes For Version 1.9.0:
———————-

• Added artist name to Jukebox listing
• Updated to TiVo HME 1.4 SDK
• iTunes app performance improvements
• Fixed organizer support for names starting with digits
• Added single track selection to Jukebox app
• Added traffic app
• Improved MP3 tag parsing
• Fixed podcasting/videocasting download logic

Click here to download your copy of Galleon.