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Sean Mota

Supporting Founder

Last reply Jan 18, 2005 · posted in Old VOOM CHIT CHAT Archives

Where is TIVO as a company future going?

Where is TIVO as a company future going to be?

I never had TIVO but have read the great experience that a lot of TIVO users had with their DVRS (HD/SD). Their software had a lot of great features from reading the great reviews of users. One article I read a few months ago stated that the big mistake of TIVO was not to have the Cable Companies license their software for their DVRs. There was no push from TIVO to this. It looks like TIVO exclusively stated with DirecTv and at the end got the short end of the stick. What do you think Tivo is going? can they survive as a stand alone company? can they survive without DirecTv, now that DirecTv is going with their own DVR and Ucentric software? Will we say remember TIVO, great software but bad business?

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jagouar

Jan 11, 2005

CDH said:
This is indeed a feature of Tivo and (I believe) most other DVRs. When I lived in a Time Warner Cable area a couple of years ago I believe the DVR I had worked this way. I think this is what people refer to as "time-shifting" and is available on some of the DVR recorders on the market too.

CDH.

Most if not all DVR's could do this... what Tivo does for recording TV was do what mac has done for the PC and AOL does for the internet... make things for the idiot. Thier guide and season pass and its basic UI is what most people e-hump tivo over. That said everybody else has caught up with tivo now and some have blown past it (the voOm dvr and most cable hd-dvr's for instance.. if it works like voOm describes)

CDH

Jan 11, 2005

jagouar said:
Most if not all DVR's could do this... what Tivo does for recording TV was do what mac has done for the PC and AOL does for the internet... make things for the idiot. Thier guide and season pass and its basic UI is what most people e-hump tivo over. That said everybody else has caught up with tivo now and some have blown past it (the voOm dvr and most cable hd-dvr's for instance.. if it works like voOm describes)

Such negativity! (I'll ignore the mac vs. pc flame war aside, though many of my colleagues using dual G5 macs would want to argue this one.)

Quite apart from the fact that Voom's DVR isn't yet available, TiVo also has some new features (some available, some coming soon) not available on other DVRs that move beyond the basic guide/ season pass/ UI. See my posts above.

The big killer right now is the difficulty of creating a DVR that can handle HD streams. Unless a proprietary box (whether cable or satellite) it is currently almost impossible to create an STB that can do the compression necessary on the fly, at least at a reasonable price. Obviously this means that as a Voom subscriber I'm going to want the Voom DVR when available because it will be able to store the compressed digital streams direct from the satellite or OTA antenna.

This isn't a "Tivo" problem per se, but rather one facing manufacturers of all non-proprietary off-the-shelf DVRs.

Tivo's future market is going to be the cable industry where a cable-card compatible HD-DVR will be able to handle digital cable streams.

CDH.

Sean Mota

Jan 17, 2005

I think this article has very good points TiVo Faces Threat As Options Multiply

Competition in the growing and lucrative industry is intensifying as cable providers, satellite operators and consumer electronics companies push ahead with models of their own, giving consumers more choices while threatening to significantly blunt TiVo Inc.'s edge. Its subscribers, who tend to be an evangelistic bunch, account for one in three of the estimated 6.5 million U.S. households with digital video recorders.

Its subscribers, who tend to be an evangelistic bunch, account for one in three of the estimated 6.5 million U.S. households with digital video recorders.

But the small company based in the south San Francisco Bay community of Alviso is now playing in a land of giants, faced with a mass market of consumers looking for convenience and low prices.

Even with its latest innovations, TiVo will find it difficult to compete against the clones of deep-pocketed cable or satellite operators. Those companies can afford to subsidize hardware costs and already have tens of millions of customers on their rosters.

News Corp.'s DirecTV, a longtime partner whose satellite customers accounted for about two-thirds of TiVo's subscribers by the end of October, said that it will introduce later this year a new media receiver that employs the DVR software of its sister company, NDS Group PLC. DirecTV is also expected to continue offering TiVo-based recorders at least through early 2007, when its contract with TiVo ends.

WaitingForMineToWork

Jan 17, 2005

Not so fast...

Judging by Tivo sales this Holiday season I wouldn't count them out so fast. We're on a voom forum for which it's all about HD and as things may be moving that way, it's still moving slow. Plus, Tivo is moving that way also with the Cablecard.

I currently have a Tivo and the SA 8000HD DVR from Comcast. I would gladly pay 10 dollars per month for the cablecard plus the $299 for the lifetime service from Tivo for a HD Tivo.

The SA records HD and has dual tuners. That's as much credit as I'll give it. It's ugly, clunky, and you can't start a show which is in the middle of recording without rewinding to the beginning and then getting tossed from the show when it finishes recording.

The Tivo has a reliable guide, smart season pass feature which let's you give priority to recordings, wishlist recordings by actor, title, keyword, and more, can stream mp3s and jpeg files from my computer, can transfer shows to my laptop for business travel, and it's all done in an intuitive, fluid and speedy manner so that my grandmother in a nursing home can even use it. If a person has multiple tivos they can even transfer shows between rooms. There is a reason the people that own them are so evangelical, just try using one for a while.

Stargazer

Jan 18, 2005

Its going to the dogs.

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Scott Greczkowski

Staff member HERE TO HELP YOU! Cutting Edge

Last reply 27 minutes ago · posted in The Chit Chat Club

Song Name Game Part 3!

Sometimes a thread gets so many posts in it that is can cause issues for the server so that why today we introduce The Song Name Game Part 3!

So let the game continue!

The last song was added by Bobby who posted...

One Meat Ball - Andrews Sisters

CONTINUE ON AND HAVE FUN! WELCOME HOME TO SATELLITEGUYS.US!

Here are the original rules for the game as posted by WebbyDude back in 2006. http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/68645-Song-Name-Game

Just name a song title and the band who performed it. The next person does the same thing, but needs to list a song title or band name which includes a word from the previous entry. Pick songs from any genre.

Example:

Long Live Rock and Roll -- Rainbow

Rainbow in the Dark -- Dio

Another example:

Ride the Lightning -- Metallica

Lightning Strikes -- Ozzy Osbourne

Get it?

An additional note: we all know that song titles, sometimes, use profane words. Because this is a family friendly website it is advised that you clean up that title up a bit. This is accomplished by using something like sh!t instead of the real word. Thanks....

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sdfntx

Today at 10:19 AM

I Care About Detroit - Smokey Robinson & the Miracles

dishstaller

Today at 10:32 AM

I Wanna Talk About Me - Toby Keith

Bobby

Today at 10:51 AM

98.6 - Keith

harshness

43 minutes ago

I'm Easy - Keith Carridine

gms49ers

27 minutes ago

It's Easy - Boston

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reubenray

Last reply Today at 10:36 AM · posted in Computers and Gadgets

Laptop Shutting Off When On Battery?

Lately my eight year old Dell laptop has been shutting off even when I have a full battery. I have had to keep it plugged up all the time to keep this from happening. Any idea what is causing this? I replaced the battery about three years ago.

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arlo

Today at 10:09 AM

A recalibration might be needed. Even if it shows full, the individual cells may have become unbalaced. And the BMS chip in the battery reports false information to the pc.
Try this. Start it up in the bios/uefi and leave it there until the battery dies and it shuts off.
It might just keep running longer than in Windows. Or run for a short while and shut off.
If it's the first case. Probably just needs a balancing. If the latter, the pack might just be dead.
Not throwing stones but perhaps just a cheaply constructed battery with substandard cells. Could be.

Patience. Keep restarting it in bios/uefi until it won't fire up anymore.
Then plug the charger in and let it complete a full charge. And see what happens. If it's better.
Do the same thing one more time. Run it until it dies dead-dead. Then just let it charge, pc shut off.
When charged, it might be better. It might not be.

There are bench jigs that read the actual BMS and override it to let a tech manually monitor and charge the separate packs. They can also reset any "time bombs" in it that cause an otherwise good pack to show bad.
Maybe Santa will be good to me some year.

You might just need a new battery. Maybe the PC power management chip is going. A Dell common thing.
Leaving a laptop plugged in with a full battery is known to reduce the life. Asus for one recommends that you don't leave the charger plugged in all of the time even when shut down. And setting Windows to charge the battery to 85% instead of 100% increases life.
That's all I got.

dishstaller

Today at 10:36 AM

arlo said:
That's all I got.

That was quite enough....I definitely learned something from your post. Thanks

TRG

Pub Member / Supporter

Last reply Today at 10:27 AM · posted in Computers and Gadgets

Starlink Router question

I set up a music server for my brother a few years ago. It's basically a small headless computer but it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.

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b4pjoe

Saturday at 2:12 PM

TRG said:
I set up a music server for my brother a few years ago. It's basically a small headless computer but it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.

If you can't get into the router to reserve an IP address just don't use DHCP on the device that needs connected and assign it to a specific IP address in the network settings.

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HipKat

Saturday at 11:07 PM

TRG said:
I set up a music server for my brother a few years ago. It's basically a small headless computer but it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.

They are not. Your best bet is to set up a third-party router, attached to the Starlink for your server, that you can get into, like a Linksys, etc

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Foxbat

Sunday at 12:44 AM

TRG said:
…it needs to have a DHCP IP address reserved for it in the router settings. This was easy to do in his DSL router. He's switching to Starlink now and I was wondering if these setting are easily accessible in the Starlink router. I'm pretty sure he will be getting the latest V5 router.

The Starlink V5 Install Kit I just got comes with the Mini Router. It is pretty limited in what it can do. For example, it can provide only one IP subnet at a time, no Guest Network, but it does support the pass-thru to a third-party Router. You can also split the Wi-Fi into separate 5 GHz & 2.4 GHz SSIDs to help some IoT devices that don't support 5 GHz bands to work.

The larger Starlink Router that still comes with the V4 Kit does support a Guest Network with separate IPv4 Subnet, but it's $120 from Starlink. And it still won't do DHCP Reservations.

harshness

Sunday at 11:46 AM

If you can restrict the DHCP address space to assign addresses to one end of the subnet (i.e. x.x.x.50+), you can manually assign the IP address on pretty much any operating system. This is a default behavior on several popular routers. As the Router Mini only supports 235 devices, I expect that's already done.

Another option is to use a router that supports PoE to power the antenna. This article discusses that option (under PoE Power heading):

Starlink V5 Is Here: What RVers Need to Know

Overview of the new Starlink V5 model along with comparison to the previous V4 model along with a recommended setup for mobile internet users.

mobilemusthave.com

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Foxbat

Today at 10:27 AM

Now that I've had the v5 kit with the Mini Router, it's not as bad as I first thought. Yes, no DHCP reservations, but you can set up multiple SSIDs that have separate IPv4 subnets, and like the big brother, you can select from 192.168.x.0/24 or 10.x.0.0/16 (where "x" is 1-4).

You can also split a subnet and have different SSIDs for the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz channels to handle some IoT devices. I haven't discovered what subnet the 2nd NIC on the router assigns, I'm guessing it's the first subnet.

dishstaller

Pub Member / Supporter Lifetime Supporter

Last reply Today at 10:27 AM · posted in The Chit Chat Club

I think we could all use a laugh - Rodney Dangerfield on Carson

Good...simple humor. Enjoy

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E92AtfTLge4

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJy0WnejlF4

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Jimbo

Today at 12:37 AM

Not Rodney, but a laugh ...

View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WHEcmortfK0?feature=share

dishstaller

Today at 10:27 AM

Sorry for posting the wrong link. Just corrected it.

dishstaller

Pub Member / Supporter Lifetime Supporter

Last reply Today at 10:17 AM · posted in The Chit Chat Club

At least 64 dead in Spanish passenger train collision

Terrible tragedy. You would think that they would have safe guards in place that would prevent something like this from happening. I guess if you are going to ride in a passenger train it might be best to get a car near the rear.

At Least 64 Dead After Two High-Speed Trains Collide In Spain | ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

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Jimbo

Yesterday at 11:24 AM

dishstaller said:
Terrible tragedy. You would think that they would have safe guards in place that would prevent something like this from happening. I guess if you are going to ride in a passenger train it might be best to get a car near the rear.

At Least 64 Dead After Two High-Speed Trains Collide In Spain | ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

They will have to look at the switching sections to determine WHY 2 trains were on the same track ... at the same time.

dishstaller

Today at 10:17 AM

Thought this article might be of interest to some of you who might travel via train.

The safest seat to sit on in a train

Safety experts have shared top tips on train safety after a fatal railway crash in Spain killed 69 people, including where the safest place is in an emergency.

www.dailymail.com