TiVo® Thoughts

Updated:
3 December, 2000

The remote is very well designed, buttons are in good locations
The remote can be configured to have the volume and mute buttons control a receiver instead of a TV. Best yet, the power button can be set to control both the TV and receiver, so that one press of the "power" button tuns on both devices!
Being able to get to a system information screen make this programmer very happy. I like being able to see the software version, phone call times, and especially the box's internal temperature ;-).
The "thumb's up" and "thumb's down" buttons are neat. The software behind these seems to do a surprisingly good job of guessing at shows it "thinks" I might like. These are then recorded in the background, but won't conflict with or delete something I explicitly said to record.
Every cable you could possibly want is in the box with the unit.
The list of what it plans to record, both what I've told it and what it "suggests".
The indications of which shows are in danger of deletion.

TiVo Buglist

As with ReplayTV, the functionality that is implemented seems quite solid, but no software product is perfect..
This list is generated from bugs I've noticed as well as that others contribute. Note that in most cases I have not attempted to verify these bugs. Email me at donm@sgsw.com with changes or additions to this list.

Date Reported & Source	Description	Status
5-Oct-1999 Mike I.	When advancing the fame in reverse, it skips approximately 9 frames, not "one frame" as claimed in the manual.	This is probably a quirk of the MPEG compression, and one most people don't care much about.
5-Oct-1999 Mike I.	Press "Clear", "Enter, "Clear", "Enter" and you get 3 drum beats and no action
5-Oct-1999 Mike I.	After pausing and advancing the frame forward, reversing the direction skips forward one frame before going back. Same problem exists in reverse.
5-Oct-1999 Mike I.	This may be a feature, but if you record a program, TiVo automatically gives the show 1 thumbs up if there is no preference already set.	Confirmed as a feature - this is documented in the latest manual.
5-Oct-1999 Mike I.	TiVo cannot distinguish between different programs with the same name. "Early Edition" is both a CBS program and a CNN news show. TiVo cannot distinguish between the two. There are a few other examples of this that I have seen. "Highlander" is both the movie and the series. Some movies have the same name.	Reported as fixed in 1.3
23-Jun-1999 Don Meyer	Had the unit get into a state where the speech was out of sync with the video. This lasted for a few seconds and then self-corrected.	Still reported in versions as recent as 1.3
23-Jun-1999 Don Meyer	One show that was recorded could not be played back. This is a known bug which can apparently be caused if the signal drops out (there were thunderstorms in the area when this occured). I was able to delete the "bad" show with no ill effects. TiVo has implemented a very fail-safe file system and sounds like this bug is on their "hit list".	Fixed in 1.2.1? There have been additional reports of this in 1.3 software, but it's very rare, and I have not personally seen it.
23-Jun-1999 Don Meyer	On a couple of occcasions, I've turned on my TV and found that the video and audio were totally wierd. It's hard to explain the exact look, but it was very jerky, full of artifacts and disjointed blocks of video. he sounds was similar. Pause, FF and Rew did not fix it, but changing to a diferent channel and back did. I've reported it to TiVo and expect an answer in the near future as to if this is a software bug or a hardware problem. (software is my guess)	Fixed in 1.2.1

Little Things That I'd Like To See TiVo Change

Item What I'd Like Them To Do

Live TV Cache
The time available to "pause" or cache a live television show is fixed at 30 minutes. Make it configurable from 15 or 30 minutes up to 3 hours (free space allowing).

Record Quality
Once a show is set to record, there seems to be no way to change the quality mode it will be recorded in. Make it changeable at any time before a recording actually occurs.

Screen Usage
Some screens have a lot of space at the top that is essentially unused. It does look nice, so perhaps make this configurable? Make more use of the screen real-estate on some screens to display more information.

TiVo Showcases
These hilight the "best" of the upcoming shows on several channels. Don't show me what's on channels I don't subscribe to (i.e. HBO or Showtime).

Audio feedback
As you navigate through the menus and prompts, a pleasant tone confirms that the keypress was seen. A "sad" tone indicates you tried to do something impossible, like scroll past the end of a list. Make it possible to turn off the "happy" sound, but keep the "sad" sound enabled.

"Smart Search"
This is a very cool feature that takes your reaction time into account when you transition from fast-forward to play mode. It "rewinds" a little bit to compensate for the time it took for you to realize that you were where you wanted to fast-forward to and hit the "play" button.
Make the backup value (reaction time) adjustable.
Perhaps I'm slower than everyone else, but I need it to go back further than it does. Sort of like being able to set the difficulty in a video game... :-)

Never Delete
Once a show is recorded, you can set it to never be deleted until you do it manually. I'd like to be able to set this attribute when I set the show up to be recorded.

Fuzzy Choices

This is a great feature, and I see a lot of potential here.
A way to see which shows you have "rated" and edit this list would be neat. I'm not sure what data TiVo stores when you say you like or dislike a show, but I've played around with "teaching" it what I like to take advantage of the fact that those programs will be low priority (i.e. deleted if neccessary).

Status Icons
On the list of shows that have been recorded, an icon indicates their status as regards deletion. States such as "soon" and "very soon" are shown, as well as if the show was "suggested" by TiVo and therefore might be erased at any time.
*** This has been implemented in a software update***
Add a status icon to indicate "Will never be deleted" to show which programs the user has set up to be saved until manually deleted.

Item	What I'd Like Them To Do
Live TV Cache The time available to "pause" or cache a live television show is fixed at 30 minutes.	Make it configurable from 15 or 30 minutes up to 3 hours (free space allowing).
Record Quality Once a show is set to record, there seems to be no way to change the quality mode it will be recorded in.	Make it changeable at any time before a recording actually occurs.
Screen Usage Some screens have a lot of space at the top that is essentially unused. It does look nice, so perhaps make this configurable?	Make more use of the screen real-estate on some screens to display more information.
TiVo Showcases These hilight the "best" of the upcoming shows on several channels.	Don't show me what's on channels I don't subscribe to (i.e. HBO or Showtime).
Audio feedback As you navigate through the menus and prompts, a pleasant tone confirms that the keypress was seen. A "sad" tone indicates you tried to do something impossible, like scroll past the end of a list.	Make it possible to turn off the "happy" sound, but keep the "sad" sound enabled.
"Smart Search" This is a very cool feature that takes your reaction time into account when you transition from fast-forward to play mode. It "rewinds" a little bit to compensate for the time it took for you to realize that you were where you wanted to fast-forward to and hit the "play" button.	Make the backup value (reaction time) adjustable. Perhaps I'm slower than everyone else, but I need it to go back further than it does. Sort of like being able to set the difficulty in a video game... :-)
Never Delete Once a show is recorded, you can set it to never be deleted until you do it manually.	I'd like to be able to set this attribute when I set the show up to be recorded.
Fuzzy Choices This is a great feature, and I see a lot of potential here.	A way to see which shows you have "rated" and edit this list would be neat. I'm not sure what data TiVo stores when you say you like or dislike a show, but I've played around with "teaching" it what I like to take advantage of the fact that those programs will be low priority (i.e. deleted if neccessary).
Status Icons On the list of shows that have been recorded, an icon indicates their status as regards deletion. States such as "soon" and "very soon" are shown, as well as if the show was "suggested" by TiVo and therefore might be erased at any time.	* This has been implemented in a software update* Add a status icon to indicate "Will never be deleted" to show which programs the user has set up to be saved until manually deleted.

Features Wish-list - TiVo

Feature TiVo ReplayTV

Some way to "arm" the system to record things that are not in the program guide at the moment.

My wife informed me that "WKRP", an old sitcom about a radio station that we enjoyed in our college days, was going to start showing in the near future. I went to the TiVo guide and looked up shows starting with "W". Nope, not there yet. Can we set it up to record it when it does start to be shown?, she asked.
I think the answer for ReplayTV is yes, but not TiVo. It struck me that this is a neat idea that TiVo was lacking, and I hadn't realized it.

This capability could be used to set up "traps" for movies that might be shown at some point or TV shows that you'd like to know about if they appeared in syndication. I can come up with quite a list...
No. This sounds like it will be in a future release. Yes, by setting up a "Theme" channel that matched "WKRP". I'd still like a way to restrict the matching to just the title, but in this case it's not realy neded!

Retain the "live TV cache" when visiting another channel.

If you are watching channel 5 and change to channel 7, the stored video for channel 5 (previous 30 minutes perhaps) is erased.
It would be great if this was retained for a few minutes so that if you returned to it, you could still rewind and review. Obviously since there is one tuner, you'd miss whatever occurred while you were visiting channel 7.

Cache is cleared when you switch channels.

Cache is cleared when you switch channels.

Ability to get the digitized data out in a digital format.

Once you buy one of these devices, you obviously have a good video digitizer and MPEG-2 compressor. No, and no high-speed data port. Their website indicates that they may add this to future versions of the hardware.
No, although they do have a data port that would allow this in theory. (this port has been removed from recent models)

Control of the order in which channels appear in the program guide.

The numerical order is NOT how I want to see the guide. The old VideoGuide system used to "learn" what channels you watched and move those up to the top.
I just want to be able to specify the order manually. This really should not be tough to implement... No. You can set up a "favorite channels" group, as well as turn off ones you don't receive. No

Indication of how much of the capacity is currently used. No Shows a time available value that appears to be only valid in relation to "guaranteed" shows.

On-Screen Time Display (elapsed, not clock).

Just like a VCR, I'd like to be able to display the current time into the show, i.e. 0:34, 1:12 etc. while in Play, Fast-Forward or Rewind. This would allow rapid access to a segment of a recorded show based on time. This should also work when watching a delayed but non-recorded show as well. No No
(you can cause it to pop up as part of a banner at the top of the screen, but if fades in ~5 seconds)

Ability to save a fragment of a show.

Once you have video captured, it seems like a logical extension to be able to perform some very simple editing on it. Either deleting commercials, or saving snippets of video for later viewing. For example, we were watching one of the hockey playoff games when a great goal was scored. I really wanted to be able to save the clip to show my son, who had gone to bed.
A simple "from here" followed by a "to here" mark, and the video in between saved as something like "Clip 1" would have been great. It was quite frustrating to be unable to save that to show the next morning. No No

Support for Dolby AC-3 audio. No No

Feature	TiVo	ReplayTV
Some way to "arm" the system to record things that are not in the program guide at the moment. My wife informed me that "WKRP", an old sitcom about a radio station that we enjoyed in our college days, was going to start showing in the near future. I went to the TiVo guide and looked up shows starting with "W". Nope, not there yet. Can we set it up to record it when it does start to be shown?, she asked. I think the answer for ReplayTV is yes, but not TiVo. It struck me that this is a neat idea that TiVo was lacking, and I hadn't realized it. This capability could be used to set up "traps" for movies that might be shown at some point or TV shows that you'd like to know about if they appeared in syndication. I can come up with quite a list...	No. This sounds like it will be in a future release.	Yes, by setting up a "Theme" channel that matched "WKRP". I'd still like a way to restrict the matching to just the title, but in this case it's not realy neded!
Retain the "live TV cache" when visiting another channel. If you are watching channel 5 and change to channel 7, the stored video for channel 5 (previous 30 minutes perhaps) is erased. It would be great if this was retained for a few minutes so that if you returned to it, you could still rewind and review. Obviously since there is one tuner, you'd miss whatever occurred while you were visiting channel 7.	Cache is cleared when you switch channels.	Cache is cleared when you switch channels.
Ability to get the digitized data out in a digital format. Once you buy one of these devices, you obviously have a good video digitizer and MPEG-2 compressor.	No, and no high-speed data port. Their website indicates that they may add this to future versions of the hardware.	No, although they do have a data port that would allow this in theory. (this port has been removed from recent models)
Control of the order in which channels appear in the program guide. The numerical order is NOT how I want to see the guide. The old VideoGuide system used to "learn" what channels you watched and move those up to the top. I just want to be able to specify the order manually. This really should not be tough to implement...	No. You can set up a "favorite channels" group, as well as turn off ones you don't receive.	No
Indication of how much of the capacity is currently used.	No	Shows a time available value that appears to be only valid in relation to "guaranteed" shows.
On-Screen Time Display (elapsed, not clock). Just like a VCR, I'd like to be able to display the current time into the show, i.e. 0:34, 1:12 etc. while in Play, Fast-Forward or Rewind. This would allow rapid access to a segment of a recorded show based on time. This should also work when watching a delayed but non-recorded show as well.	No	No (you can cause it to pop up as part of a banner at the top of the screen, but if fades in ~5 seconds)
Ability to save a fragment of a show. Once you have video captured, it seems like a logical extension to be able to perform some very simple editing on it. Either deleting commercials, or saving snippets of video for later viewing. For example, we were watching one of the hockey playoff games when a great goal was scored. I really wanted to be able to save the clip to show my son, who had gone to bed. A simple "from here" followed by a "to here" mark, and the video in between saved as something like "Clip 1" would have been great. It was quite frustrating to be unable to save that to show the next morning.	No	No
Support for Dolby AC-3 audio.	No	No

Software Coming Attractions

These are some features announced on Jan 6, 2000 for an upcoming release (or releases, these features may not all be in the same release) of the TiVo software. They promise all features by the end of the year 2000.

The ability to search for television shows by "keyword". This sounds similar to ReplayTV's "themes".
Option to manually extend the recording time for a show. Great for sports.
Priority options for season passes.
Increased control over TiVo's "suggestions".
Filtering to prevent kids from viewing certain shows. Since I expect most people have their systems configured to allow watching a differrent channel while TiVo records something else, this may be pretty easy to bypass. It's not going to slow down the teenagers but it's a nice feature for those with smaller children.
The ability to be watching a preview for a television show or movie and easily tell TiVo "record this when it comes on". This will only be available for some channels, at least at first.

Software for the Palm OS® Platform
Please address any comments or questions to donm@sgsw.com Copyright © 1999, 2000 by Don Meyer

TiVo® Thoughts

Contents:

Things I Really Like

TiVo Buglist

Little Things That I'd Like To See TiVo Change

Features Wish-list - TiVo

Software Coming Attractions