Just yesterday I reported that development on Galleon was about to start back up thanks to somebody by the name of John Kohl. Well, it looks like John has been working over time because late last night John announced the release of Galleon 2.3.1 and 2.4 alpha. According to a forum post, 2.3.1 mainly includes some code cleanup with minor internal changes. 2.4 is in the alpha stage however, this version will ultimately bring HD support to Galleon.

Nice job John! I’m excited about getting a new version of Galleon especially since I now own a HD capable Series 3 TiVo.

Release notes:

Version 2.4.0 alpha:
———————-
HD application support. Try out HD photos!
Local forecast page added to weather.
Known problems:
* tracker on music in HD is goofy
* galleon skins in HD don’t cover screen–use tivo skins
* lots of layout glitches in HD
* HD menu highlights are too big for text

Version 2.3.1:
———————-
Upgraded open-source components to mostly current versions
Use track title instead of file name for “Music” listings
Published modified Bananas library
Switched to build with Java 1.5

*** Please send in bug reports if there are any problems with things
that work fine in 2.3.0. This release should not behave any
differently ***

I just noticed a post on the Galleon forum in which John Kohl (I’m not sure who John is) states that Galleon development is about to restart!

Posted By: johnkohl
Date: 2007-06-03 20:15
Summary: Galleon development restarting Galleon development is restarting. Goal #1: learn the source base, get up to recent source releases of third-party components.
Goal #2: HD applications

It’s been a long time since the last Galleon release. Hopefully this forum posting is accurate and we will start to see some updates for Galleon.

Stay tuned for any additional information….

Here’s a link to a NYTimes podcast in which David Pogue grades many of the internet features which are available on the Series 2 & Series 3 TiVo.

Here are all the TiVo HME Applications that I know of. I plan on updating this post on a regular basis. Let me know if I this list doesn’t include a HME app that you think should be on this list.

• TiVo NetFlix RSS Reader: If you are a NetFlix user, you probably have wanted to be able to take a look at your NetFlix account directly from your TV. This application allows you to do just that. NetFlix provides a lot of your account information in “RSS” format, which can easily be translated into screen you can view from your TiVo.

• TiVo TrafficCam Viewer: Many areas of the country now have road cameras or traffic cameras covering their most problematic traffic areas. This application is designed to let you choose and save a list of the cameras you’re interested in, and quickly view them from your TiVo before you leave for work.
• Audiofaucet: Whether your music is organized in iTunes or in a folder somewhere on your hard drive, AudioFaucet is ready to serve it up to your TiVo!
• Galleon.tv: Galleon is a free open source media server for the TiVo^® DVR which allows you to enjoy many kinds of content and interactive applications right on your TV. The server runs on your home computer and organizes your media collection so that they can be viewed on your home network. Galleon also brings Internet content and applications to your TV.
• Flickr viewer: Displays Flickr pictures on your TiVo.
• Music Monkey: Music Monkey is a music quiz game for one or two players.
• TiVo Bloglines: Allows the user to login to their Bloglines account and read feeds through their Tivo.
• TiVo Movie Rental Plugin: A TiVo plugin to manage your online movie rental queue. Blockbuster Online is currently supported. It uses HME to provide the TiVo interface and can either run standalone or as a plugin to Galleon.
• Apps.tv: apps.tv provides a directory of HME applications which you can run on your TiVo DVR. apps.tv currently offers 15 TiVo HME Applications.
• HME Satellite Radio: This uses the Tivo (TM) SDK HME capability to allow you to control/view/PLAY your Xm Satellite Radio (TM) XMPCR or XM Direct (with proper cable) from your Tivo. It also has the ability to control/view/play Xm Radio Online from your Tivo.
• HmeYme: Control your Yahoo Music Engine from your Tivo. It uses the Tivo (TM) SDK HME capability along with YmeSocket (a Yahoo Music Engine plugin which allows you to control it via socket commands) to allow you to control/view/play whatever is in My Music or ALL of Yahoo Unlimited
• Stock Viewer For TiVo: This application provides an easy way to keep an eye on your stocks, mutual funds, and market indices, all from your TiVo! The application comes with a little configuration utility that will let you enter one or more lists of ticker symbols (along with an optional number of shares, if you also want to track dollar value). Once your lists are entered, you can view your lists, updated regularly, from your TiVo.
• Homeseer Plugin: This plug-in allows TiVo® DVRs to control their HomeSeer devices and trigger HomeSeer events.
• tivo-www: This is a sample TiVO HME application for viewing web pages on your TV. The current goal is to allow browsing of specific web pages rather than the web in general. This is for a number of reasons including, TV’s resolution, lack of a Java wrapper for firefox that renders into a lightweight peer and the obvious one of, well, if I want to surf the web at large I’ll boot my laptop.
• Remote Control: The Remote Control application enables you to control your computer from your TiVo. It displays your computer screen and lets you pan around the screen and type in a variety of keys using the TiVo remote.
• ApcupsdHME: Apcupsd monitoring agent for use with TiVo DVRs supporting the Home Media Engine (HME). ApcupsdHME is similar in concept to the multimon CGI scripts, only it displays UPS information on your TV via the TiVo HME instead of a web browser.
• eBay on TiVo: This sample application is a case study for bidding functionality from a TiVo Box using the TiVo Home Media Engine (HME) and the eBay Java SDK. It provides search functionality for the categories Books, DVDs, Music and Video Games on eBay. All BuyItNow items matching the query entered in the search will get displayed. The user can browse through the list and see the details for each item. If the user wants to buy the item displayed, he or she can do this by using the remote control. This can be a great way for an Affiliate to complete this application, make sure its gets distributed to the TiVo system, and turn bids through it into money.
• TiVoSlimserverClient: TivoSlimserverClient is a software application that turns your network-enabled Tivo Series2 DVR into a streaming audio client for SlimServer.
• TiVoSlideshow: TivoSlideshow is an application for showing a series of images accompanied by music, intended for use on the Tivo DVR (Series 2 or higher).
• TiVo RSS Reader: TiVo RSS Reader is a simple, general-purpose RSS reader.

The ability to watch Amazon Unbox videos on your TiVo is great however, wouldn’t it be nice if you could browse and purchase Unbox videos directly from within the TiVo interface? Well, thanks to the hard work of Doug Swallow this functionality is now available! Doug recently released a TiVo HME Application known as Unbox On Demand. Unbox On Demand allows you to browse and buy Amazon Unbox content directly from within the TiVo interface!

If you haven’t tried out Unbox On Demand yet, I highly recommend you give it a try. It really does make the whole Unbox on TiVo a lot better (why hasn’t TiVo or Amazon developed this?).

Setup on Windows was extremely easy. All I had to do was make sure that I had java installed and that I configured the applications’ properties file (unboxOnDemand.properties) located in the conf directory. I also setup this app on my Mac however, the run script (run.sh) which is included with the software had a number of problems so I was unable to start the app out of the box. In order to get around this issue, I found a post on TiVo Community, which includes a script that works. For some reason the developer hasn’t updated the download with this script…

Let me know what you think about Unbox On Demand. Do you see yourself using Unbox more now that this app is available?

Spotted on TiVoLovers. Additional information can be found here.

DVRPlayground alerted me to a new TiVo HME App (?) which allows you to control HomeSeer devices from the comfort of your couch. According to the HomeSeer website, this plugin provides the following features:

The opening screen has Locations (devices), Events, and Favorites. Use the configuration screen provided with the plug-in to filter which locations and groups can be used, and which devices and events appear on the Favorites screen. Using the familiar TiVo® remote control buttons, navigate to a location or group, select a device or event, and then control the device or run the event - all from the convenience of your favorite DVR watching chair! The system uses the new HomeSeer Device Control API so there are almost no limits on what devices can be controlled - thermostats, remote controls, devices with buttons, devices using status/value pairs, it does it all!

It’s great to see that others companies are developing TiVo HME Apps. Now if only we could get an update on HME so that other third party developers would feel as though the platform isn’t dead and that TiVo plans on supporting it in the future.

Paul’s Time Sink has put together an interesting post in which he (I can only assume Paul is a man) compares the experience of listening to podcasts on his TiVo versus Apple’s FrontRow.

With the Series3 installed, we now have two ways to easily listen to podcasts on our main system. We can either use FrontRow on the Mac mini, or use the podcasting application on the TiVo Series3. There are good and bad things with both of these solutions.

Other then in the Apple store, I haven’t really had a chance to play around with FrontRow. I’m interested to hear what other people have to say about this. Is TiVo’s podcasting application better then what FrontRow has to offer?

Apps.tv has added a new app to their growing list of TiVo HME applications. This application connects to InteracTrivia.com and serves up trivia questions directly to your TiVo. For those of you who don’t know about InteracTrivia, here’s a little summary taken from there website:

InteracTrivia is an online, interactive, multiplayer trivia game allowing users to go head-to-head against other players around the world in a battle of knowledge - all happening in real time. Players compete against one another in four exciting rounds of fun trivia scoring points by answering questions quickly - and correctly - to fight your way to the top of the leaderboard.

I just signed up for an InteracTrivia account so I’ll let you know what I think of this new app once I try it out.

To connect to Apps.tv and start using their apps, simply follow the these instructions:

1) Press the TiVo button on your remote to go to the TiVo Central screen, then select the “Music, Photos & More” entry.

2) Scroll down to near the bottom and select “Manually add a server…”

3) Using the keypad on your remote enter the ip address for apps.tv: 209.97.196.52

4) Press LEFT to go back to the Music, Photos & More screen and you should now see the Subscription Manager Entry. Select that entry to run the Subscription Manager.

A business writer from the AP has put together an unfavorable review of some of TiVo’s newest features. I don’t normally cover unfavorable reviews but, I felt like I should cover this one since it brings up a couple of good points. Are some of the new features that TiVo has introduced better suited for the computer? For example, is it necessary to be able to order movie tickets from the comfort of your couch?

I’m not sure where I stand on this issue. Being the geek that I am, I like having all of these new features. However, when it comes down to it, does the average user (i.e.: my Mom) really need this functionality?

Apps.tv has added a couple new applications to their growing list of TiVo HME apps. The two new apps are: Web-a-Tune for TiVo & Web-a-photo for TiVo. They both look like neat apps especially if you’re already a user of web-a-photo.com.

Follow these instructions if you would like to access any of apps.tv’s software:

1) Press the TiVo button on your remote to go to the TiVo Central screen, then select the “Music, Photos & More” entry.

2) Scroll down to near the bottom and select “Manually add a server…”

3) Using the keypad on your remote enter the ip address for apps.tv: 209.97.196.52

4) Press LEFT to go back to the Music, Photos & More screen and you should now see the Subscription Manager Entry. Select that entry to run the Subscription Manager.