Unless you live in a box, you probably already know that TiVo and Yahoo announced a partnership back in November ‘05 that allows you to schedule recordings on your TiVo directly from Yahoo’s website. When I heard about this news, it made me wonder why anybody would want to use Yahoo’s website when TiVo already has TiVo Central Online. To try and come up with some type of answer to this question, I’ve decided to put together the following table which is suppose to compare the features of Yahoo! TV to TiVo Central Online.

Based on this unscientific comparison, I’ve concluded that there really is no reason why you should use Yahoo! TV as opposed to TCO. TCO has all the features that Yahoo! TV has plus some. Yahoo! TV is a nice website however; it just doesn’t have all the features that TiVo Central does. Also, TiVo central has a much better user interface.

Which remote scheduler do you use? Did I not compare a feature that I should have?

Is it just me or have other people noticed that TiVo hasn’t been updating their blog all that often? Between Dec. 28th & Jan. 23rd the blog was never updated! What’s the sense in having a blog if you aren’t going to keep it up to date? I had really hoped that the official TiVo blog would be a lot more informative. There has been a lot of TiVo news as of late. Why wouldn’t TiVo use their blog to talk about CES news like the Series 3 TiVo or the fact that TiVoToGo for the Mac is on the way? Come on TiVo, I’m not going to give you a break on this one….

Over the past two months, I’ve been traveling a lot. Essentially, I’ve been on travel a little over one week each month :(. Because of this excessive amount of travel (I usually don’t travel that much), I’ve found a new appreciation for TiVoToGo. As I’m sure you’re well aware, a lot of travel time is spent sitting in an airport doing nothing. Without TiVoToGo, I think I would have gone crazy by now. For example, right now I am sitting in the Syracuse airport with nothing to do but to boot up my laptop and catch up on last week’s episode of The Office. If it weren’t for TiVoToGo, the past two months of travel would have been a lot more boring and annoying. Now all I need to do if find a way to bring my wife and son with me. If only TiVo would develop FamilyToGo :). Come on TiVo get to work!

What do you use TiVoToGo for? Do you use it while on business travel or do you use it mainly to archive your favorite shows and burn them to DVD? Let me know….

I’d appreciate it if everybody would check their feed reader to make sure that they are subscribing to the correct feed url (http://www.tivoblog.com/feed/). I’ve noticed that some people are subscribing to a feed url that may not exisit in the future. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then don’t worry about it…..

Here’s some chicklets for your convenience:

Rmail

Update 01/26/06 @ 8:13 PM: According to the Series2 install guide, a Series 2 TiVo uses 40 watts. Using this information, it costs ~ $14.38 per year to run a TiVo.

((40 watts * 24 hrs per day * 365 days per year) / 1000 ) * .041 kWh rate = ~$14.38 per year

This might sound a like a lot of money but it really isn’t when you compare it to the cost of running a PC 24 hours a day (~$43.13 per year not including the cost of a monitor).

Along with being a super geek, I’m also a bit of a stickler when it comes to energy usage. If I had to classify myself, I would say that I am a cheap-geek :). I enjoy technology but I’m always looking to save a buck especially when it comes to energy usage. That being said, I came across this article on news.com. The article talks about how we as consumers are using more and more electricity for our techno gadgets.

Being the cheap geek that I am, I thought I would analyze how much it costs to run a TiVo 365 days a year. I found this formula online however, I don’t know how many watts a TiVo consumes. Anybody have an idea?

GearLive has posted some close up pictures of the new Series 3 TiVo remote. Check them out…

Update 01/24/06: Setting up my Mother’s TiVo was easier then I thought it would be. Here’s a picture which depicts how I connected everything together.

My Mother called me other day and told me that she wanted to hook up a DVD player to the same TV that she has her TiVo hooked up to. After doing a couple of Google searches, I came up with this article on TiVo’s website. The article recommends that you use an A/V receiver for this type of setup. Before I go out and purchase an A/V receiver for my parents, I want to make sure that there isn’t another way that I could do this. Also, assuming I add a RF splitter to the setup, will this allow my Mom to watch TV while recording another channel?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I certainly don’t claim to be an A/V expert ;).

Here’s some additional information that may be useful:

• No cable box is involved in this setup

• The TV is rather old so it doesn’t have a lot of connections in the back just: RF & Composite A/V (Red, Yellow, White)

After much debate, I finally upgraded this site to WordPress 2.0. Let me know if you find any problems!

Leon has released Galleon 2.1.0. Here are the release notes:

Release Name: Galleon 2.1.0

Version 2.1.0:
———————-
Shoutcast app now supports all stations
Shoutcast app supports station alternates
Shoutcast favorites
ToGo downloaded recordings can now be downloaded repeatedly
Added sorting to internet, RSS apps
Jukebox random play
Support parental controls for ToGo downloads
Fixed Galleon menu duplicate app name bug
Fixed network interface binding bug
Fixed GoBack recording details
Fixed video filename formats
Fixed GoBack videocasting support

Head on over to Galleon’s website to download a copy.

Thanks Dave!

I just received an email from Pablo Fuentes letting me know that he has released a beta version of his software, VEMoDe. VEMoDe appears to be a neat little program that allows you to convert TiVo recordings into several different formats which are then playable on an iPod Video, PSP or several other mobile devices. According to VEMoDe’s website, the software has the following features:

• Easy to use interface. Just pick your file and go!
• Very fast encoder (uses FFmpeg)
• Existing settings for several popular devices (PSP, iPod, Palm, Pocket PC), plus you can create settings for other devices.
• “Encode by Size” to get the most quality for your memory cards.
• “Split by Size” to maximize quality and portability
• Easy to configure encoding options.
• Cropping options to get the best screen usage.
• Select the start and end positions to remove those long credits.
• Auto-shutdown for overnight encoding.
• It’s free!

Unfortunately, when I tried to convert one of my TiVo recordings with VEMoDE, I received the following error: Invalid Video Format. I’ve since sent the developer an email describing my problem. I’ll let you know when I hear something. Also, if anybody else runs into this problem drop a comment on this post so that the developer can know what’s going on. This is after all beta software so bugs are to be expected.

Update 01/15/06: Pablo got back to me with a solution to my problem. Apparently the fact that I was using Sonic as my codec was causing the problem. Here is the solution to the problem, taken directly from an email that Pablo sent me:

I have found a way to leave the Sonic codec and have VEMoDe still work.

I found this from a web site:
“For the Sonic filters you need to add a DWORD registry entry named ALLOWALLRENDERERS with a value of 1 to the \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Sonic\CineMaster DS DVD\2.5\VideoDecoder registry directory”

If you’re comfortable with the registry, you can do this. On my end, I will add code in my next release to look for this in order to prevent the issue altogether.

Thanks Pablo! It was a pleasure working with you. Now that this problem has been “fixed”, I would highly recommend VEMoDE to anybody who would like to convert their TiVo recordings to another “mobile” format.

VEMoDE is just one of several software packages currently available which allows you to convert TiVo recordings to a “mobile” format. AutoPilot by TVHarmony and Videora are two other solutions currently available. I’ve used AutoPilot before however; I haven’t had a chance to play around with Videora as of yet. From what I’ve read, Videora looks pretty promising. If you are interested in using AutoPilot, you can head on over to TVHarmony’s website or check out the interview that I put together with the developer of AutoPilot(Will Wagner) back in November ‘04.

If for some reason you determine that none of these software packages fit your needs, you could always wait for TiVo desktop 2.3 which suppose to be able to convert TiVo recordings to mobile device formats.

Every time I try out one of these TiVo to mobile device converters, I think to myself how nice it would be to have an iPod video or PSP. I don’t actually own a mobile device that can play video :(. If anybody has a chance to play with one of these converters, let me know. I’d be interested to hear what other people have to say. Also, once I hear back from the developer of VEMoDe I will let everybody know what’s going on. Have a nice day and happy converting…….