David Zatz has posted an exclusive interview with Leon Nicholls. For those of you who don’t know, Leon is the developer of Galleon which is an award winning TiVo HME media server. I interviewed Leon twice, once in Sept ‘04 and again in Feb. ‘05.
If you are a geek like me, you’re probably wondering what the future of JavaHMO is considering the fact that HME has been released. Also, as I mentioned in a previous post, I noticed that JavaHMO was one of the screenshots shown in the sample apps section of the HME website. Instead of speculating about these different things, I decided to send Leon (the creator of JavaHMO) a set of questions that he was kind enough to answer. What follows are the questions that I asked him. If you remember, I did this once before. If you’re interested in the previous interview, check it out here.
Have you had a chance to look over HME? If yes, what do you think about it?
Yes. HME is a significant improvement over HMO. It provides developers much more freedom and gives them much more control over the kinds of applications they can develop for TiVo. TiVo should be applauded for developing this protocol and making it available to developers for free. The HME SDK also does a very nice job of hiding the technical details of the HME protocol and makes it very easy to get applications up and running. Since the SDK is implemented in Java, it opens up opportunities for developing apps running on many different platforms. HME also makes it possible to develop applications to satisfy many of the frequently requested features made by TiVo users. For example, it would be possible to implement a slideshow viewer that could play music at the same time. TiVo has also indicated that they will be supporting DVR capabilities in the SDK in the future which up
to now could only be done by hacking your TiVo.
JavaHMO has just released a new version that directly supports TiVoToGo! According to an email that I received from Leon, this version has the ability to automatically download a show based on a set of criteria. This sounds like an interesting feature especially since the download time is somewhat slow. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, I am going to post what Leon sent me.
JavaHMO now supports the ToGo functionality similar to that of the TiVo
Desktop. In addition, JavaHMO adds a feature to automatically download
recordings from your TiVo based on a list of configurable criteria.
This release contains the following:
1. ToGo
2. ToGo auto rules
3. Fixed iTunes OS X default playlist path
4. Added iTunes playlist library file chooser
5. Fixed iTunes playlist file parser
This release is labeled a beta since it contains new functionality which
hasn’t been tested enough for a public release.
The main objective of this release is to find bugs and fix them for the
final 2.3 release.
This release is NOT recommended for the casual user and should only be used
by people with some technical background who are willing to provide feedback
on any bugs they might find.
If you are using the TiVo Beacon then currently JavaHMO is not able to
automatically determine the TiVo’s on you network; you have to manually
configure JavaHMO with those details. If you do not use the TiVo Beacon
service then JavaHMO should automatically locate your TiVo’s.
Before you can use the ToGo functionality, you have to configure the
download path and media access key using the JavaHMO configuration GUI
File/Properties menu.
Your TiVo needs to run the 7.1 version software for the ToGo functionality
to work.
This release has been developed for JRE 1.4.2_06.
The Windows installation wizard, Mac OS X disk image and complete source
code is currently available from the project web site on Sourceforge:
http://javahmo.sourceforge.net
The Linux distribution will be made available at a later stage.
