TiVo Premiere: One set-top box to rule them all

With its new TiVo Premiere DVR, TiVo asks the rhetorical question: Would you like to replace your HD cable box/DVR, broadband Web box (a la Roku) and stereo-connected music player with a single box that lists content search results regardless of their location — broadcast, broadband, video-on-demand — all at one time?

Obviously the answer is yes, but there's a catch.

First, the TiVo Premiere, unveiled last night, is the Handy Housewife Helper of set-top boxes. There are two versions, the Premiere with a 320GB hard drive (45 hours of HD recording, $300) and the Premiere XL with 1TB (150 hours of HD recording, $500), each running TiVo's new widescreen interface and each offering an Ethernet internet connection to bring in Web content including Netflix and Amazon Video On Demand. When you search for shows, the results include content aggregated from all sources. In other words, if you search for, say Up!, it'll find and list where it is on broadcast channels, video-on-demand, Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, etc.

Premiere has a CableCard slot so you can replace your cable box (assuming you don't have to debase yourself too much to get your cable company to give you one), and TiVo will be offering a wireless 802.11N Wi-Fi adapter for $90 in June since you likely lack an Ethernet jack in your living room. Later this year, you'll be able to buy a remote with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard for faster typing.

TiVo improved on the company's legendary interface and artificial intelligence or whatever prestidigitation they use to help you find stuff you'd like even if you didn't know you liked it and didn't ask TiVo to find it for you. Premiere's interface is now completely widescreen, which means more info on a single screen and less drilling down for more detail. And having a terabyte of DVR space alleviates a lot of DVR guilt (having to decide what old unwatched shows to erase to make room for new shows you won't watch).

The caveat is cost. TiVo's monthly service fee (at least $13, depending on the plan you pick) is probably around the same as a cable company's box lease and DVR service fees. But you have to buy TiVo's box, and TiVo is unlikely to come to your house and swap it out on a whim.

One other minor caveat: Premiere uses HDMI 1.3, which means it likely won't play back upcoming 3D broadcasts in full HD. And too bad they didn't build in a Blu-ray player so I can get rid of another box.
If you decide TiVo's telepathic software, enhanced interface and Mr. Creosote recording capacity is well worth the price, you can order Premiere from TiVo's Web site as of this morning for delivery sometime in April.

Via TiVo

By Stewart Wolpin

What’s a Hulu? The Origins of 8 High-Tech Names

by Rob Lammle

You know the names, but do you know where those names came from? Here are the stories behind the naming of TiVo, BlackBerry and more – including what they were almost called.

1. TiVo

Can you imagine if, instead of “TiVo-ing” the latest episode of Lost, you were “Bongo-ing” it? “Bongo” and “Lasso” are just two of the 800 possible names the marketing folks kicked around before settling on TiVo. The final name was cobbled together from “TV” and the engineering acronym “I/O,” which stands for “input/output.” Little did they know their noun would become a verb and their oddly-named invention would forever change the way people watch television.

2. Bluetooth

Despite the lack of dignity displayed by people who shout into their Bluetooth headsets wherever they go, the name of the device actually has a rather regal origin. In the 10th Century, Danish King Harald Blatand was able to unite warring factions in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark under one banner. Similarly, the developers of the Bluetooth signal wanted to unite many different forms of technology – cars, computers, and mobile phones – under one communications network. So when they were coming up with a name, they went with the English translation of the Danish king’s last name, “Bluetooth.”

3. Hulu

Hulu means many things to many people. To some, it’s a great online resource for watching their favorite TV shows and movies. But to a native Hawaiian, it means “hair.” To someone who speaks Swahili, it means “cease.” To an Indonesian, it means “butt.” While these translations are accurate, the folks behind naming hulu.com were inspired by a couple of Mandarin Chinese definitions instead – “interactive recording” and “a hollowed-out gourd used to hold precious things.” Despite this often misunderstood word, the website is rapidly becoming one of the biggest names in streaming video. Well, except in Indonesia…

4. BlackBerry

Would President Obama have fought so hard to keep his “LeapFrog” phone? Because the phone was leaps and bounds over everything else on the market, this was one of the names considered for the BlackBerry. Another possibility was “Strawberry,” because the tiny keys resembled seeds. But when someone felt the word “straw” sounded too slow, another berry was suggested as a placeholder until something more official was developed. Over time, the temporary berry became so synonymous with the new device, it was adopted by default. For anyone addicted to their BlackBerry, the origins of the nickname “CrackBerry” should need no explanation.

5. Nintendo Wii

Although the off-color jokes almost write themselves, Nintendo had other ideas when they named their latest video game system. First of all, the word is pronounced “we,” which emphasizes the social concept that Nintendo envisioned for the console. The name is also universal, without any direct translation into any particular language, reinforcing that all-inclusive idea and avoiding any Hulu-like situations. They even liked the double-i spelling because it looks like two people standing side-by-side. The name was not popular at first, but the concept obviously caught on, because Americans have purchased over 20 million Wiis since its debut in 2006, making it one of the most successful video game systems ever.

6. Wikipedia

While the origin of the second half of the name might seem rather obvious, the first half is still a mystery to many. “Wiki” is used to describe any website content that is specifically designed to be edited by its users. The name was first coined by Ward Cunningham to describe software he wrote back in 1994 that was meant to speed up the communication process between computer programmers

. He borrowed the word from the Hawaiian language, where it means “fast”, after hearing it in the Honolulu airport when an employee told him to take the “Wiki Wiki Shuttle” between terminals. Many people mistakenly believe Wiki is an acronym for “What I Know Is.” However, that definition was actually applied to the word after the fact, making it instead a backronym (which is now my new favorite word).

7. Asus Computers

Netbook computers are the hottest gadget out there, with around 14 million of the cheap little laptops sold in 2008. One of the big names in netbook production is the Taiwanese computer company, Asus, which gets its name from the winged horse of Greek mythology, Pegasus. But if you took a quick glance at the phone book, “Pegasus” wouldn’t have been too high in the directory of computer companies. So, to increase their visibility in alphabetical lists, they dropped the first three letters of their name. It was an unusual strategy, but apparently it worked.

8. Prius

While developing the world’s first mass-produced hybrid vehicle, Toyota believed the Prius was going to be the predecessor of the cars of the future. So to name their groundbreaking car, they turned to the Latin word, “prius,” meaning “[to go] before,” the root of our modern word “prior.” And with the growing popularity of hybrid vehicles, it appears they were right about the Prius’ legacy. What they couldn’t have predicted, though, was the controversy the name would create when people want to refer to more than one of the cars. Many think the plural is “Prii”; others believe it should be “Priuses.” Technically, the plural of the Latin word would be “Priora,” which sounds better than the other two choices anyway. The official word from Toyota is that there is no plural form, it’s just “Prius” (sort of like “moose”). But I’m sure they really don’t care what you call them if you’re buying two or more.

TiVo Redesigns Search Function, Wants to be the 'Google of TV'

By Jose Fermoso

A little less than two years after TiVo debuted its swivel video search engine, it is now killing it in favor of a better integrated search whose biggest improvement is visual.

Announced this week at CES 2009, the new TV search works similarly to the search bar in the Firefox address browser. You type in the first few letters of a show in the 'discovery bar' and relevant recommendations of shows on TV satellite and broadband networks come up. At the same time, you get a nice looking new column arrangement of information about a show, including episode description, rating, and relevant art.

The new appearance, according to TiVo reps, was created to fit to the longer length of HDTV's. The old swivel search had no visuals and didn't provide immediate information that could help a user choose efficiently. Still, this is a feature that is most helpful during passive browsing – if you're the type that already knows what you want, the new search will look much nicer but it won’t make a huge difference.

Already, some are saying that the search function is not fast at all but TiVo reps promise they're working on boosting that speed. That’s an important development that is critical if the company really wants to make this feature the "Google of TV search."

There are three other updates with search that are interesting. Results now come up through the most popular of the day automatically, and you can also browse shows by the season. This is especially helpful for serial shows like The West Wing, where I’m constantly confused about where it falls in line.

But the one I like the most is the Wish List feature, which takes a show that is not currently available anywhere and holds a search on your behalf so that when it’s finally offered, it will record it. It will be even better if you end up forgetting about it and will show up one day like a present you didn’t expect. I will be adding the “Rebels of Oakland” HBO documentary from a few years ago because I can never find it anywhere. C'mon HBO, you can have three docs about the Red Sox in two years, but can't manage to release the Rebels? Get on it, please.

TiVo's search update is in now in beta and available to Series 3 and HD TiVos.

A PC in your entertainment center

TiVo and its brethren get credit for introducing the average consumer to the concept of the digital video recorder (DVR) and opening the door to bigger and better things. The Home Theater PC (HTPC) is the computer enthusiast's answer to all the things that a DVR generally does, with the potential to do everything a full-fledged computer does. The concept had a bit of a slow start until Microsoft's release of Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) 2005, which gave the very familiar Windows a living room interface and the hardware support that HTPCs needed.

No matter what operating system you use for your HTPC, the same general concepts exist: recording and time-shifting TV are the device's most basic functions; playback and recording of DVD and Blu-ray are secondary but (perhaps) no less critical, followed by distribution of audio content and, in more ambitious setups, serving up digital media in its capacity as the whole home network's media storage center. And don't forget the ability to do mundane things like browsing the web from ten feet away on a shiny new 1080p HDTV.

The newest evolution in the HTPC is the continuing development of HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface). HDMI allows a protected connection that carries both audio and video over a single cable, and in the current version, 1.3a, HDMI is finally established enough that it now just works. . . most of the time. When the last update was published, HDMI for content-protected video was working fairly well in the HTPC arena, but HDMI for content-protected audio was not yet working very well. That has changed in the past few months, as AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel have all made substantial improvements in getting full-blown HDMI working. Things are now solid enough to make HDMI a vital part of the HD-capable HTPC.

It has been over three and a half years since the HTPC has gone mainstream. Today, the HTPC front-end is fairly well established, with a slick interface and a compact, living-room-friendly form factor, and it's reliable enough that you rarely notice it's there. Toss in working HDMI for both audio/video signals, and it's possible to fit an HTPC in your entertainment center with even fewer cables strewn about than ever before.

Going beyond the DVR

Though it has made great strides in the past few years, the HTPC is still fundamentally a geek endeavor. An off-the-shelf DVR is almost certainly going to be cheaper, use less power, and be easier to setup than an HTPC. Using an Xbox 360, PS3, AppleTV, or something else as a Media Center Extender to get content to your TV will also be cheaper (and probably easier). If you can skip recording and just playback recorded content, the Western Digital WD TV is cheap and effective. As Mythtv.org points out, lots of solutions exist, almost all of them cheaper than building your own HTPC.

You get lots of potential for additional capability with an HTPC, capabilities like massive amounts of storage space: There's nothing stopping you from building an HTPC with a few terabytes of hard disk space, assuming you're willing to deal with the cost and power consumption. You won't find that in an off-the-shelf DVR. (Of course, with an off-the-shelf DVR, you can call technical support when it breaks; or, more appropriately, when your family's DVR breaks and they live 300 miles away, they can call tech support so you can continue watching The Office, uninterrupted.)

Have a standard-definition DVR already and want to go high-definition (HD)? Sure, it would be cheaper to buy an HD-capable DVR, but what if you want Blu-ray, too? A Sony PlayStation 3 might be able to do the Blu-ray part, but with only 80GB max, it's severely lacking in space. Hence, for those with needs desires beyond the average DVR user, the HTPC starts to make sense.

The fact that you can do it all in one box with an HTPC is the real reason for building one. The HTPC can handle DVR duties, HD playback, and even gaming (now that finding fast yet quiet video cards for 1920x1080 gaming is no longer the chore it once was).

Evolution in the HTPC: proper HDMI support

The biggest change since the last update is the ability to implement the fully protected content path in an HTPC necessary to play HD content (both audio and video).

On the video hardware side, HDCP (high-bandwidth digital content protection), AACS (Advanced Access Content System), and the other mechanisms for the Protected Video Path have worked for the last generation or two of computer hardware. To get full-resolution protected content output on your monitor or TV, both the video source (the video card in your HTPC) and the display (monitor/TV) must support HDCP. Today, most do.

To play protected audio has been a bit more difficult until very recently, as no current video or sound card (no matter which hardware it has) supports the Protected Audio Path needed to get compressed multichannel audio (Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA) from your Blu-ray to your speakers via HDMI. The fix, as Anandtech and others discovered, is to let your HTPC decompress the multichannel audio, and send it over HDMI as uncompressed 8-channel LPCM. The hangup then became that hardware did not incorporate enough bandwidth to accommodate uncompressed 8-channel audio over HDMI, or if it did, the drivers or something else didn't work.

Redemption (or at least a workable fix) finally arrived in summer, 2008. AMD's Radeon HD 4000-series graphics cards, NVIDIA's GeForce 8200/8300 chipset, and Intel's G45 chipset all support 8-channel LPCM and actually work. Technically, Intel's G965 and G35 chipsets also support 8-channel LPCM, but the drivers never made it a pleasant experience.

ASUS's brand-new soundcard, the Xonar HDAV 1.3 would also work if you really needed to get an existing system with only video-over-HDMI to contain audio, but one look at the price of the Xonar HDAV 1.3 (almost $200), plus the thought of cramming another card into an already-crowded HTPC case, makes it a less than ideal solution for a new build.

Anandtech has considerable discussion on this in several recent articles, including one on 8-channel LPCM over HDMI and two more on chipsets with integrated video.

TiVo Delivers Domino’s

Filed by Dave Zatz

Nov 17 2008

Late last night, broadband-connected TiVo Series2/3/HD owners may have stumbled upon the new Domino’s widget. While we first caught wind of this in regards to the Austrailian TiVo service, US TiVo subscribers are first to tap into Domino’s online ordering system - requesting pizza from the comfort of their couch. However, I imagine online ordering via a web browser will still be more efficient. And my laptop is usually with me on the couch. (Not to mention, we haven’t ordered Domino’s in years. Though their new subs got my attention.) In a vacuum, this functionality isn’t so compelling. However, as part of the larger picture these sorts of practical (?) interactive experiences expand TiVo’s value prop and competitive differentiation. When giving the app a spin this morning, I discovered one of the first areas in need of improvement… Where’s the scheduled delivery option?