Talk:TiVo

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Contents

[edit] Intelligence?

"Tivo systems function similarly to VCRs, but use non-removable hard-disk storage, and generally contain more intelligence."

What does it mean that they 'contain more intelligence'? Koyaanis Qatsi, Sunday, March 31, 2002

It means they are able to schedule recordings without codes, using TV guides, suggest recordings based on what the user watches, and all around have better capability than a VCR. 68.107.17.239 19:58, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Content flagging

I have reverted this page again. I believe User:Fxer may not understand what Macrovision actually is. Macrovision is a signal embedded in the vertical blanking interval of the television signal. TiVo does detect these Macrovision signals and uses this information to determine its content protection policy. So, you could say that TiVo "uses" Macrovision - that is what is meant by TiVo's statement. However, Macrovision does not write software for TiVo. --204.176.49.25 21:32, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

The way I've understood TiVo's statements is that they licence proprietary software from Macrovision (the name of the company, and the name of the software they created) to deal with the Macrovision signal in the broadcast, TiVo wasn't actually writing any software with the name Macrovision. I could be wrong, TiVo isn't really forthright with the issue. I wouldn't be against rewriting the sentence though (which I just did), it doesn't really matter where the code comes from, just that Macrovision is at the heart of the content flagging flap. --Fxer 23:57, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
Hello - please do not be so quick to mark this edit as vandalism. It isn't. It is a good faith edit to correct the article with a good faith explanation on this talk tage. When was the last time you saw a vandal do that?
It is factually incorrect that Macrovision wrote any software for TiVo. It is an established fact how the TiVo content-protection works. TiVo checks the Macrovision signals and determines policy based on that. To be allowed do this, TiVo must become a licensee of Macrovision technology. This is how all consumer electronic vendors work. Nowhere does TiVo state that they use Macrovision software - they use Macrovision signals embedded in the video signal. However, I agree with the new phrasing of the section. --204.176.49.25 00:21, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Correction, perhaps?

On my TIVO at least (perhaps this differs by models?) the "Season Pass" function does not record "regardless of ... what channel," -- rather, a season pass is based on the series and the channel. A series airing simultaneously -- or on a 1-week delay, as is common with the USA network -- on multiple networks will only be "captured" from one.

There also seems to be a certain intelligence regarding the same series airing in different "seasons" on one channel. For example, some programs are playing new episodes weekly and are also in reruns 5 nights a week. Even with "First run and reruns" selected, the TiVo is smart enough to distinguish the two on one network.

Can someone more familiar with different TiVo models verify whether this is a common functionality difference or whether specific models differ? I haven't got the model number, but my unit is a "DirecTiVo" by Phillips.

It may be that TiVo recognizes that syndicated programs aren't "new", by the date the episode first broadcast. Press the Info button while viewing the episode description page to see this information. Gentaur 20:44, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Correct. A program is 'First Run' if it is within two weeks of the original air date. --MegaZone 08:42, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Season Pass is NOT channel specific. It will pick up episodes of the same show on different channels if you don't specify First Run. Example: I have South Park on Season Pass and it picks it up from Comedy Central as well as our local Fox affiliate. It also has a two-week 'memory' in that it will not pick up the same episode twice within this two-week period no matter how many times it airs. This has been proven with Comedy Central's airing of everything they have. They air a single episode about 7 to 10 times a week. I've also run into this with Family Guy airing on Fox and rerunning on Cartoon Network a few weeks later. Example: If (arbitrary Episode #621) airs for the first time on November 1st on its primary channel, then repeats on November 15th on another channel it will pick it up again unless you have specified first run only. 24.39.192.122

[edit] Availability in Canada?

Service is available in Canada but they don't sell the PVRs to Canada? I don't understand that. SD6-Agent 17:52, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Just as you say. The service is available, but the hardware isn't sold in retail chains in Canada. TiVo hasn't officially certified all their systems for Canada, so the end-user has to import it themselves. There are resellers who will ship to Canada. --MegaZone 08:43, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Malaysia's Third Pay TV just like TiVo Technology

In December 26th, 2005 Malaysia is going to launch it's third Pay TV just like TiVo Technology. The TV Station which is, 'Fine TV' was brought up by a local Malaysia company called Network Guidance Pvt Ltd.

So, it is going to be the tough competition in broadcasting industry here. Well after the launches of Malaysia's second Pay TV, MiTV.

[edit] Link

There's a link on the page that leads to Sonicblue Airways. Somehow I don't think that's correct but I don't know where it should go. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 09:59, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. --Coyoty 20:37, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New services

Someone should add in the new services TiVo distributed this month. --Coyoty 21:24, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GSoD is scary but good?

It says the Green Screen of Death is a "good sign" despite its scary appearance", how good can it be, when you cannot use it at all when it is down?24.238.68.106 08:59, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

It means that the unit is recovering from an error, and will likely work just fine when it's done. So while it's true that you can't use the box for a few hours, at least it's not critical and you'll be back in business shortly. seinman 15:48, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rebates don't add up...bad math

"the company recognized $5,000,000 in additional revenue when nearly half of the 100,000 new subscribers to the service failed to successfully apply for a $100 rebate." Hello - 100,000 subscribers x $100 rebate equals $10,000,000, NOT $5,000,000 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.198.246.38 (talk • contribs).

Yes, but "nearly half of the 100,000 new subscribers" equals $5,000,000. Image:Tycon.jpgCoyoty 19:05, 17 March 2006 (UTC)


As an aside, I fail to see how rebates are a controversy? It seems like a buyer beware kind of thing. I know I fall into the latter category on the rebate field, so I always purchase something that I want at the full price. This is known going into the deal, not something sprung upon you at the last minute. -User:H110Hawk

I don't see how this rebate thing is "bad" or worthy of criticism. They offer the rebates, it's not their fault people can't be bothered to fill out the paperwork. 66.240.35.207 01:03, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] First Customer Shipment date?

When did TiVo FCS? When did the very first TiVo go on sale? What model was it, what did it look like, what were the specs, and what did it cost? I did some googling but can't seem to nail down the specifics. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.163.130.57 (talk • contribs).

The first TiVo units were sold or at least shipped on March 31, 1998. The tiny TiVo team worked insane startup hours to ship the first product ahead of their only competitor at the time, ReplayTV, and within the first quarter of 1998 which had been promised to at least investors and possibly the public. March of 1998 also had two full moons, the second of which is sometimes called a "Blue Moon." As a result of the hard work and sacrifice, co-founder and CEO Mike Ramsey declared March 31 to be a company holiday, the "Blue Moon Holiday," which it is to this day (at least it was on March 31, 2006).

It was a plain black box, very similar to the original Philips OEM box, with Lego-like bumps on the top of the case and a small arched badge in the center (unlike the later Philips "Big Brother Eye" which TiVo advised them against). The retail price was something like $599, and required a monthly, yearly, or lifetime subscription on top of that. There may have been two models initially, a 14 GB "14 hour" unit, and a dual-drive "28 or 30 hour" unit. The drives used were Quantum "Bigfoot" 5.25" drives, and the CPU was a 33 or 66 Mhz PowerPC (601?). Keeping up with Live TV (caching at all times) and another playback stream, and a transactional database was only possible with such a modest CPU and single disk because of the TiVo Mediaswitch implemented as an ASIC, and TiVo's Media Filesystem. -- DougEngland

[edit] Statement not true.

"Unlike tape-based recorders, a program can be viewed while it is being recorded." Stuff can be recorded on a "tape-based" recorder and watched at the same time. Or am I mistaken on the intent of the statement? Either way it seems ambiguous. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.227.171.6 (talk • contribs) .

There may be commercial tape-based recorders that can playback a show whilst also recording it, but I don't know of them. This certainly isn't a common feature of consumer-level machines. If you know of examples of VHS machines that can do this, can you provide sources? If so, then this article would need to be reworded. By the way its a good idea to sign your edits to talk pages - add ~~~~. Best, Gwernol 20:17, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I believe the original writer meant that the recording, not the program being recorded, couldn't be watched at the same time it's being recorded. I've changed the wording to make it more accurate. Image:Tycon.jpgCoyoty 18:34, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
The statement is still confusing, making it appear that you couldnt watch the show you were recording on a VCR, which isn't accurate. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.235.22.2 (talk • contribs).
Unlike tape-based recorders, a recording can be viewed at different time locations while it is still being recorded, e.g. watching the beginning of a movie while the movie is still being recorded. - it's ugly, but it works. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 20:16, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External links

Why do the external links keep getting trimmed? It is understandable when they're spam links to non-TiVo related sites, etc, but there are a lot of good TiVo sites out there and it is appropriate to link to them to make the entry as useful as possible for the public. Having links to other blogs, communities, etc, is makes the entry all the more useful. You don't want to try to pile all of the other content into Wikipedia. --MegaZone 23:24, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Blogs, communities, etc. are not encyclopedic. Most of them don't add anything notable to the article, and their information is largely opinion, point of view, unpublished, and unverified. Read Wikipedia:External links for more information. Image:Tycon.jpgCoyoty 19:59, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Further to this, I've removed the ext links to non-tivo specific blogs. Perhaps if really needed they ought to exist as links from the generic PVR article. --Oscarthecat 17:31, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TiVo in the UK

Would it be useful to have some content on the situation with TiVo in the UK? There is no active hardware service in the UK, only the subscription listings service, with users having to source hardware from a finite resource of the Thomson PVR100UK. THe old business model still holds in the UK, with the monthly/lifetime split. --Worm 20:12, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GPL Issues

the article:

[edit] Free software comunity Controversies

The tivo run free software, but at the same time it comes with a special mecanism that prevent running modified version of the free software that is included on the tivo,this has led to the creation of the term Tivoisation by Richard Stallman and the creation some part of the gplv3 that are against such restrictions.
There is a debate in the free softeware comunity on if such behaviour should or should not be allowed

The fact that a device running free software use DRM has also is also contreversed just like the tivoisation


[edit] previous talk about the the article beeing reverted

Copied from my talk page:

why did you reverted my oart on free software in the tivo article Stallman speech and the gplv3 are a lot influenced by the tivo restrctions and in the free software comunity there is a big contreversy on if we should allow or not such behaviour

this part is also important in order to improove the gplv3 article—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 00 tux (talk • contribs).

Because I don't have enough time to copyedit what you wrote, and there isn't a huge controversy. I've hacked TiVos for a few years now, and TiVo has been very open about Linux - the other day I added a link to TiVo to their source page. The true controversy is when it comes to units like the WRT54G. It's perfectly acceptable in the real world to run closed source code on top of a GPL OS, and TiVo follows the GPL to the letter by providing all their changes. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib Reverts 10:13, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
the contreversy comes from the lack of the freedom to modify and run on the device the gpl part not the proprietary part

00 tux(my point of views(for npov), howto customise a signature) | talk 20:57, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I am putting a copy here too, because after I went to bed the change was inserted again, and another editor reverted it too. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib Reverts 10:20, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

from my talk page: i was told to include my content here in order to be reviewed before inclusion on the main page because of gramatical reasons:

reverted your TiVo edit for a few reasons. Firstly, it was poorly written from a grammatical stance.
Secondly, the way it was worded  made it read as being very POV. 
Thirdly, I don't feel that it's worthy of being included. 
While I realize that TiVo's policies are of  concern to open source enthusiasts, 
I just don't think it's necessary to have that in the article. 
However, that's not my call to  make, so perhaps if you re-wrote the section to make it more gramatically sound and asked if it was appropriate on the talk page, 
it  could be added to the article, assuming others agree. - seinman 04:51, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Linux kernel patches by TiVo link:

This link is pretty useless, as it links to Linux, Kernel, and Patches respectively. What one would expect is that it links to a URL where one can have a look at the patches made by TiVo. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 222.153.13.244 (talk • contribs).

Um, no. The "Linux" link clearly goes to TiVo.com and goes to the patches made by them. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 03:44, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tivoization

Tivoization is an invented word to describe TiVo's lockdown of their machine to circumvent open-source requirements of the GPL, and doesn't need its own page. As a result I suggest it be merged with this article. Kamek 03:10, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Oppose I personally don't like the word nor the complaints about it. ref1 ref2 (about 5 lines up) However, I accept that it's a real word and some people are concerned about it even if I disagree. I believe if it should be merged anywhere, it should go into the GPL article. (BTW, I moved the merge request to a more reasonable section - Controversies.) — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 11:16, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Weak Agree (vote assumed by RevRagnarok) The word Tivoization only has 591 hits on Google, and Tivoisation has 209. The term is a very minor Internet memes, and it is important to note that the use of the word to refer to the GPLv2 issue is not the only (or first) use of the term...

I havent found an exact date, but Richard Stallman dicates[1] it was early 2006.

I agree that this article should be merged into GPL and/or Tivo. Jayvdb 01:11, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Oppose (vote assumed by RevRagnarok) I've never heard this word used to describe this practice, but Tivo is certainly not the only company to lock down their hardware like this, and therefore it is not fair to associate it with the company and their device. The attempt to put this on the Tivo page is just an attempt to disparage the company. If I were looking for information on Tivo, this would not be appropriate information for the wikipedia to show me. However, merging this into the GPL page would be appropriate, as it describes a term used by some in the GPL community to describe a specific practice of circumventing the GPL. Jmelby 17:50, 14 August 2006 (UTC)


Oppose merge. The fact is that many people know what tivoization is without having ever used a Tivo. This is an important concept and short for "mandatory code signing", and becoming a more and more widely used term in the open source movement and in the controversy between DRM implementors and non-DRM activists. Merging Tivoization with Tivo is unneccesary and unhelpful, as the tivoization article will undoubtedly grow in another direction over time. TH 20:49, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Oppose merge. tivo use free software and so the view of the free software comunity and the FSF is important...this tivoisation has led to very important and contreversed changes in the GPLv3 that is a very important licence in the Free software comunity.
instead:add a short explanation on what is tivoisation in the contreversies and point to the bigger article just like the
Wifi#Wi-Fi_and_free_software article
see also here for inclusion of such thing

00 tux(my point of views(for npov), howto customise a signature) | talk 21:17, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Oppose (vote assumed by RevRagnarok, who moved it here from Talk:Tivoization) Should not be merged. Tivoization describes a phenomenon of which TiVo is just an example, and deals with free software and DRM, which are entirely distinct issues. GregorB 08:53, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

  • It's been over two weeks, and it looks like there is a lot more oppose. I'm removing the flags. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 21:02, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tivoization Part 2

what about incluging a link to the tivoisation in the tivo article in the contreversies? 00 tux(my point of views(for npov), howto customise a signature) | talk 21:11, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it needs it. If you absolutely insist (this does seem to be some kind of crusade), then make a {{seealso}} under controversies (but it is already a See Also). — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 10:57, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comcast

Does anyone actually know when Tivo software will be uploaded to Comcast DVRs. The only thing I've heard is it will be available by the end of this year. We are approaching that soon, just wondering if anyone has a heads up.

[edit] subscriptions

I think there should be a clearer YOU NEED A SEPARATE ***CABLE*** SUBSCRIPTION notice in this article. Some think it functions on its own instead of needing additional and separate monthly cable company fees. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.12.116.12 (talk • contribs).

I don't see how you would get that impression. It's not going to magically pull television signals out of the air. Oh wait... — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 02:16, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
actually, there have been numerous people in the shop thinking that getting a tivo machine and tivo subscription is enough. (granted, their first language often isn't english.) and, i don't think snide comments are considered encyclopædic. =P —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 152.163.100.14 (talk • contribs).
It was a snide comment on a talk page, which is fine since it wasn't a personal attack. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 10:29, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mentioning tivoisation

In the controversies section, I wrote a paragraph about the device not running unauthorised kernels. My text was quickly deleted, but I would like to re-add it. The person who deleted my text pointed me to this talk page, but the only relevent negative comment I found was a comment by that same person. And there is one relevent positive comment by someone else suggesting that this topic get a paragraph and a "see main article" link. Here's the text, which is quite short, I would like to re-add:

/===Blocking modifications "Tivoisation"===

Main article: Tivoisation

Because the software in the tivo is mostly free software is based on the GNU+Linux operating system, users might think that they can modify the software to suit their needs. However, Series2 included a chip that checks for a digital signature in the kernel and refuses to run modified versions.[1] This has been controversial in the free software community and has been one of the motivations for the drafting of version 3 of the GNU General Public License.

Gronky 15:55, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

Is the Controversies section really necessary? It's written with quite a strong anti-TiVo bias.

Chrisch 08:58, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Major Rework of Article

This article had a lot of good information, but it didn't flow at all. I revised much of what was the former first part of the article, which talked about the functions of the TiVo DVR, then re-sorted and re-grouped the article to make somewhat more sense, at least to me. I didn't do TOO much revising of text (though the history might indicate otherwise) - with the exception of the first paragraph or two under the former heading "Operation" that needed some cleaning and tightening up, the rest was just a lot of re-sorting. There's still some cleaning up to be done, but this article reads better, to me at least. LoadStar 06:44, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

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