# Amazon Unbox from your TiVo receiver...



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

I hope to release the first version of this HME app this week. It's basically done, but I have a short list of things to polish up. And, of course, I need to write at least a short bit about how to get it installed and working.  You can order all the downloadable video content from Amazon Unbox directly from your TiVo receiver with this Home Media Engine application. I'll attach some screen shots; things are subject to change a bit... but you'll get the jist of it all.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)




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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Oh... and Series 3 owners... no need to get all worried. It supports HD, too.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)




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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

(Pardon the dust)
http://www.unboxondemand.com/


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## rdrrepair (Nov 24, 2006)

Sign me up! Looks great!! I want one!!!

Yeah! way to go!! Good job!!!


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Wow looks awesome! I'm surprised that TiVo hasn't released something like this themselves. It would be a lot more effective if the user could just access it from their server instead of having to install something on their home PC. However as soon as you're ready let me know, I have no problem testing this out. 

Dan

P.S. nice use of the default Windows Vista background


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## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

Dan203 said:


> Wow looks awesome! I'm surprised that TiVo hasn't released something like this themselves.


No doubt they were all busy researching all possible S1 DST solutions...

Good work, Doug.


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## ZombiE (Dec 17, 2005)

Awesome, just awesome.

Thanks for working on this, we all know that Tivo was going to release something like this but on their Winter 2009 software update release..........  


Again thanks,

Any timeframe when you'll be posting the DL link?

Z


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Looks very polished :up: 

There must be a considerable amount of Data to go through but
any chance of a search by title feature?


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

ZeoTiVo said:


> Looks very polished :up:
> 
> There must be a considerable amount of Data to go through but
> any chance of a search by title feature?


There were some difficult restrictions in the amount of data that can be received from Amazon ECS such that to retrieve a full set of titles and do the search like I wanted to do (much like the TiVo's search through the program lists) wasn't practical (10 titles max returned per request, no more than one request per second from each IP). I'd decided on another approach that requires I compile the full list regularly and let the HME clients obtain it from my server in a far more compact form all at once. So once I get the current version out I'll be pursuing that approach.

I could offer some keyword style searching now, but it was really just a pain in the way Amazon returns data and how poor the searching capabilities really are for the web interfaces. It was just a bit awkward from a users point of view, too. And I didn't really want to have any more screen scraping than I absolutely have to have, so figured the keyword searching could also wait till I can send a full database of everything to the client. I've expressed my issues with all these sorts of limitations to Amazon's developer group and have had resounding silence by way of reply so far. Go figure. 

It wouldn't have been so bad, but there's limited ways I can filter content that's actually available to the TiVo receivers vs. all other Unbox content, and that then restricts what else I can do to search. My planned solution above also lets me handle titles in both rental and purchase forms much more efficiently; right now it's two separate screen scrapes each time you select a title to get more info and I can't pre-filter the list of titles to get rid of both instances since at the point that info is returned, there's nothing relating the two forms to each other or even identifying which is which.


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## RoyK (Oct 22, 2004)

While I personally have no inclination to use Unbox at least in the near future I can't help admiring the splendid piece of work you've done here. Nice job!


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## W Auggie H (Oct 11, 2001)

Cool, and since Amazon Associates are eligible to earn 10%, on all Unbox referrals (up to $1.50 per item) you should be able to recoup some funds for your development efforts. Sounds good to me. The UI is just what I have been waiting for... Keep it going.


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## rdrrepair (Nov 24, 2006)

W Auggie H said:


> Cool, and since Amazon Associates are eligible to earn 10%, on all Unbox referrals (up to $1.50 per item) you should be able to recoup some funds for your development efforts.


You mean, he's going to make money on us?   

I think it's a great job - I would like to know why TiVo and Amazon can't get together to figure this out - TiVo must still be working on the DST update! 

Let me know when I can start sending you some of my money via referrals. :up:


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## danieljanderson (Nov 19, 2002)

Under TiVo / Comcast, we know that "Find Programs" will also seek out PPV (don't we?).
I wonder if it will also handle Amazon downloads the same way?


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## W Auggie H (Oct 11, 2001)

Yes, I assume he would be using his Associates ID so he could generate referral revenue for each movie or show purchased using the interface. That is what I would do. His hard work should be rewarded somehow. Seems like a nice way to do it.


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## 20TIL6 (Sep 7, 2006)

This stuff looks GREAT! I think I remember hearing that TiVo is working on this, just that they will be monetizing purchases that come through their interface. I'm guessing it takes longer to figure out those issues than actual development. In the meantime, it's amazing to see what has been done by Doug already.


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## Abneo (Aug 19, 2004)

This looks awesome!


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Kudos--great piece of work!

Just curious--how is this set up? I'm imagining that you have to give it your Amazon account log-in and that you have to enable One-Click purchasing on Amazon.


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## acvthree (Jan 17, 2004)

Doug,

This looks great! An amazing piece of work.

A feature I would like to see would be that if Amazon ever support widescreen content to be able to search just for those versions.

Al


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## Popasmurf (Jun 10, 2002)

I second, third, and fourth this! It looks totally cool!



Abneo said:


> This looks awesome!


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## markp99 (Mar 21, 2002)

Doug,

This is definitely something I would use.

Just curious, did you need to get prior approval to use the Amazon badging?


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

markp99 said:


> Doug,
> 
> This is definitely something I would use.
> 
> Just curious, did you need to get prior approval to use the Amazon badging?


Amazon's pretty loose with such things when used in their associate-related pursuits. Though I think there's something I have to include someplace to properly identify everything... gotta go find those agreements and check.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

rdrrepair said:


> I think it's a great job - I would like to know why TiVo and Amazon can't get together to figure this out -


well they probably are, assuming they have not just dropped the idea of an on TiVo interface. I asked the question about search by title and Doug's detailed response showed that there is clearly work to be done on the UNBOX side with the web interfaces in order to put the kind of features I would think TiVo would want to include such as tying it into the search by title widget.

Doug has made good use of the existing web services but does not seem to quite have the pull to get the UNBOX developers to add more/better functionality


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

Great Work!!!

I like how you put in a "cancel purchase" button.........sort of a "watch out, after this it's one-click....."


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

jlb said:


> Great Work!!!
> 
> I like how you put in a "cancel purchase" button.........sort of a "watch out, after this it's one-click....."


Yeah, and it's the default when you get to that page... I was thinking, for fun, to have some options... 3 thumbs-up + ENTER, or a PIN code entry.


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## IJustLikeTivo (Oct 3, 2001)

It looks pretty cool. I'm not sure how I feel about the whole Idea of video download but if I unbox, this looks like a pretty cool way to do it.


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## jstrazz (Jan 21, 2007)

I would like to get High Definition movies from Amazon Unbox on my Tivo Series 3. Does anybody have any idea when that might happen?


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

:up: 

This looks great, dswallow. Direct subscription to the HME app via the TiVo box, I'm hoping?


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

jstrazz said:


> I would like to get High Definition movies from Amazon Unbox on my Tivo Series 3. Does anybody have any idea when that might happen?


Nobody here does, but there have been lots of posts/complaints about this in more appropriate threads. All Amazon has said is "they're working on it."


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## PJO1966 (Mar 5, 2002)

I have HME enabled on my HR10-250. Will this work with that?


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Fofer said:


> Direct subscription to the HME app via the TiVo box, I'm hoping?


I don't quite follow what you mean. The HME app has to run on a local computer. It's all Java, so basically anything should work. I could probably do something on a central server, but then you get into a lot more complex situations, especially privacy issues, since the Amazon email/password has to be configured as part of it. Though it'd open a door to letting me cache all the necessary data so it'd be more responsive with item lookups.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

PJO1966 said:


> I have HME enabled on my HR10-250. Will this work with that?


It probably would... if Unbox worked with the HR10-250. Though you probably won't have trouble running this app on the HR10-250 to order things destined for other TiVo receivers.


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

dswallow said:


> I don't quite follow what you mean. The HME app has to run on a local computer. It's all Java, so basically anything should work. I could probably do something on a central server, but then you get into a lot more complex situations, especially privacy issues, since the Amazon email/password has to be configured as part of it. Though it'd open a door to letting me cache all the necessary data so it'd be more responsive with item lookups.


I was thinking more along the lines of the easy HME app subscriptions, like the ones offerred here:

http://apps.tv/apps.php

But if it's a simple (cross-platform) Java app, yeah, that's just as good. And quelling any privacy concerns is probably a fine idea, too.


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## ajayabb (Jan 12, 2007)

Will this app be supported by Galleon ?


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

ajayabb said:


> Will this app be supported by Galleon ?


Probably not the first time around, though I've seen some examples of how to provide Galleon support to it so will eventually take that on, if not for the first release, shortly thereafter. I probably really need some feedback from different sorts of users before focusing on aspects like that, though, just to ensure the basic engine is solid.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Dan203 said:


> Wow looks awesome! I'm surprised that TiVo hasn't released something like this themselves. *It would be a lot more effective if the user could just access it from their server instead of having to install something on their home PC.* However as soon as you're ready let me know, I have no problem testing this out.
> 
> Dan
> 
> P.S. nice use of the default Windows Vista background


What has to be installed on the home PC? You can download Unbox titles from your PC without any special app on the PC. As I understand it, Doug is just making it so you can order directly from the TiVo.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

devdogaz said:


> What has to be installed on the home PC? You can download Unbox titles from your PC without any special app on the PC. As I understand it, Doug is just making it so you can order directly from the TiVo.


HME apps run somewhere else; that could be on a distant internet-connected server, or on a local network-connected computer. The nature of this app is that it requres your Amazon account email address and password in order to complete your orders; it also requires a substantial amount of data traffic between Amazon's servers and wherever you run this.

Initially I'm only providing software that you can run on your local computer to provide the HME app interface on your TiVo; running it on a central server someplace introduces issues I just am not really ready to deal with, and since it should be really rare someone has broadband access without a local computer, this seems like it'll cover the majority of potential users.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

This is a tremendous addition to the Unbox on TiVo service.


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## bsnelson (Oct 30, 1999)

Very cool, Doug!

Brad


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## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

can you do the same thing for AppleTV?


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

Doug, I assume that you've thought out the security implications of this? The Amazon account information is kept and transferred in a secure fashion? If someone got that information, though they couldn't steal anything without leaving a trail to the address that they sent it to, they _could_ do considerable nuisance damage. Random expensive stuff ordered to be delivered at his or her home could adversely effect the user's personal finances.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

mikeyts said:


> Doug, I assume that you've thought out the security implications of this? The Amazon account information is kept and transferred in a secure fashion? If someone got that information, though they couldn't steal anything without leaving a trail to the address that they sent it to, they _could_ do considerable nuisance damage. Random expensive stuff ordered to be delivered at his or her home could adversely effect the user's personal finances.


That's why it's run from a local computer; all that info remains on your personal computer and is transmitted to Amazon.com directly using the same SSL protocol used in your browser when you make a purchase.

There might be some confusion caused a little earlier when we began discussing the idea of providing this service running on a central server instead of on a local computer... and the security/privacy aspect is specifically why I didn't want to deal with that aspect, at least initially.


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

mikeyts said:


> Doug, I assume that you've thought out the security implications of this? The Amazon account information is kept and transferred in a secure fashion? If someone got that information, though they couldn't steal anything without leaving a trail to the address that they sent it to, they _could_ do considerable nuisance damage. Random expensive stuff ordered to be delivered at his or her home could adversely effect the user's personal finances.


From what I can tell, the interface is just for Unbox downloads... and more importantly, the settings and software live on each individual's home PC (as mentioned in this thread.) So it's as "secure" as the cookies in your own computer's web browser...

EDIT: er, as dswallow reiterated above.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

Doug's my hero!


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Wow! Looking forward to this with great anticipation.

Great job Doug!


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## LooseWiring (Jan 6, 2003)

Very cool, Doug. This is something that Tivo/Amazon should have had set up from the beginning.


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## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

Doug:

On second examination, I think it would be valuable for the Rent/Buy fork to be placed as early in the search as possible. For the time being (at least) I'm really only interested in renting TiVo content through Amazon, so I'd prefer to be shown only rental titles.


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

pdhenry said:


> Doug:
> 
> On second examination, I think it would be valuable for the Rent/Buy fork to be placed as early in the search as possible. For the time being (at least) I'm really only interested in renting TiVo content through Amazon, so I'd prefer to be shown only rental titles.


Excellent suggestion, I agree.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

A nice thing about this software for those people who want to use it is, they have fairly easy access to the software author through these boards.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

pdhenry said:


> Doug:
> 
> On second examination, I think it would be valuable for the Rent/Buy fork to be placed as early in the search as possible. For the time being (at least) I'm really only interested in renting TiVo content through Amazon, so I'd prefer to be shown only rental titles.


That'll probably have to wait until I provide a full database at once to start with.

The reason is because during the traversal of what Amazon calls "browse nodes" there's no Rental vs. Purchase information provided at all; the only time I get it is when actually retrieving the detail for a specific ASIN, a comparatively costly process because of the round trip time for the request being once per item.

In fact, the only way I get that info at all now is that on the detail page for any given ASIN is some info that'll identify if it's also available for the other option (rent vs buy). And at that point I now have the matching ASIN for that other version and have to do a full detail request for it in order to ensure it is also available for TiVo usage and to get the pricing.

Now all that said, there is possibly some hope... there's what Amazon calls "search bins" which are returned for certain types of inquiries, and it's those search bins where there's potential to be able to follow a subset based on purchase or rental. But in my first attempt to use them, I ended up with content including more than just the tivo-limited titles. And that was a problem. I may have just been doing something wrong on my end of the search, or just may need to live with doing 2 or more different searches simultaneously to get that necessary info... it's something I can explore.

But since I really wanted to correlate the variations of purchase and rental early enough to be able to display while browsing the list (and thus not have duplicate titles), the ultimate solution seemed to be my providing the full database as a compact single download to seed things on the local computer. And that offers a lot more flexibility once I get there.

If I can actually get the search bin request to function as I thought it would earlier, it'll probably be an easy addition now. I'll look into it.


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

Just as a data point, and I'm sure this isn't news to dswallow, but when I go to the Amazon Unbox link, there's a quick and easy way to filter based on "rentable" or "buyable" content:










They're doing narrowed search results... which can be expanded after a choice is made, too.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Fofer said:


> Just as a data point, and I'm sure this isn't news to dswallow, but when I go to the Amazon Unbox link, there's a quick and easy way to filter based on "rentable" or "buyable" content:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yeah, I looked at that, too... I'll look more into it... it's definitely the search bin capability, but Amazon's ECommerceWebServices doesn't always match up 100% with what you can do on their regular web site. It may be just that I didn't know enough at the time I first began looking into it to realize what to do with it. 

Actually, trying to remember back, I think it was that at the top level I start at the search bins were... well, stupid. So I didn't explore them as much as I probably should have. There were about 5 or 6 categories of bins, all with all the stuff in one category, as I recall.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Amazon, how about giving Doug unlimitted free movie rentals.

Oh, ok- you want him coding not watching.


Hmmm... Seems to me a good deed requires a spectacular and public reward of some sort- you know- so that other innovators know that Amazon values the contributions of rugged individualists.


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## danieljanderson (Nov 19, 2002)

So where is it already??????
You've had all day to work on it!!!


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Doug also did good work on the Now Playing bookmark page he created.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

danieljanderson said:


> So where is it already??????
> You've had all day to work on it!!!


A tweak here, a tweak there. I just finished removing code that Amazon provides as part of their API. It was just a big huge waste of space, and I already had essentially the same sort of code in my app already for the screen scraping/order page side, and to top it off, their code occasionally just spit out socket errors on me, so I wanted it out of my app. (I prefer if I get any errors, they be my errors.) 

(The real truth is deciding how to package the whole thing up is more my delay right now, and to keep putting that off, I work on the code.)


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## Rebate_King (Nov 10, 2004)

nice work! How much will amazon give you for each referral?


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Rebate_King said:


> nice work! How much will amazon give you for each referral?


For the time being it's 10% of any purchase/rental made. No idea if that'll last; normally it's a graduated rate between 4% and 8.5% based on monthly volume -- higher volume, higher commission.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Fofer said:


> They're doing narrowed search results... which can be expanded after a choice is made, too.


Here's the explanation -- just went through figuring all this out for the second time, because once I noticed, I remembered that was what I'd found the first time I looked!

Anyway, the whole Narrow By scheme is a generic thing they call "Search Bins". Every categorized grouping of things is a different "Browse Node"; you query a particular browse node to retrieve specific items. Along with that data, you can get a list of search bins that further divide that data up if you want -- they provide various parameters to update the browse node request with to get the new subset. In the case of most of the categorical items, you get a new browse node for each subset, and can follow that sort of thing on and on until there's no more subgroups for a search.

But the Narrow by Purchase Type option is done outside of the whole search bin and browse node scheme. If you look at the URL that you send by clicking on those links, you'll see reference to a field entitled "drm_rights" allowing them to select by "Rental" or "Purchase" values.

There's no equivalent way to make that search via Amazon's ECommerce Web Service API. At least for now (I posted a question on their forum asking about it and if provision could be made to get to that as a search item).

The alternative is just to stop using their web services and scrape the public pages. But that's trading one set of limitations and problems for another. The proper answer will come either by my providing a full database download to the app myself where I can pre-process data I scrape from the public web pages, or by Amazon actually properly adding support for it like they should. Since the former is as much work as changing it to scrape the web pages directly, there's other advantages to the database I want to take advantage of so that'll be how I deal with it, unless Amazon comes through with allowing ECS to filter by digital rights management types.


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## Rebate_King (Nov 10, 2004)

dswallow said:


> For the time being it's 10% of any purchase/rental made. No idea if that'll last; normally it's a graduated rate between 4% and 8.5% based on monthly volume -- higher volume, higher commission.


I wonder how closely TiVo is watching this thread. I'm sure they are going to want the referrals.


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

Rebate_King said:


> I wonder how closely TiVo is watching this thread. I'm sure they are going to want the referrals.


If so, they should have been the ones to offer up this functionality first.


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## s2kdave (Jan 28, 2005)

Nice work


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## mportuesi (Nov 11, 2002)

Fofer said:


> If so, they should have been the ones to offer up this functionality first.


TiVo should simply make an offer to Doug to buy his app, then host it on their own servers. Or maybe they should just hire Doug and his software


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## ZombiE (Dec 17, 2005)

I would not be surprised if the higher ups at Tivo are watching this thread wondering why a guy that already has a job (Just assuming Doug) and can code this in his spare time while Tivo is probably paying some software engineer 50, 60, or 70 thousand dollars a year to come up with this while at work 

But Tivo could be further along than Doug is right now  

Z


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

ZombiE said:


> [...] watching this thread wondering why a guy that already has a job (Just assuming Doug) [...]


I guess you missed http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=345852 

Hint. TiVo. Hint. Hint.


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## tase2 (Sep 27, 2004)

dswallow said:


> I guess you missed http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=345852
> 
> Hint. TiVo. Hint. Hint.


Can you say Karma?


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## smak (Feb 11, 2000)

timckelley said:


> A nice thing about this software for those people who want to use it is, they have fairly easy access to the software author through these boards.


Yah, but how do you ever get ahold of the guy? he's never around 

Very nice job Doug, Looks fantastic.

-smak-


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

ZombiE said:


> I would not be surprised if the higher ups at Tivo are watching this thread wondering why a guy that already has a job (Just assuming Doug) and can code this in his spare time while Tivo is probably paying some software engineer 50, 60, or 70 thousand dollars a year to come up with this while at work


There has been plenty of innovative third parties that have stepped in to fill TiVo's gaps... if it weren't for them I think I would have chosen a different DVR long ago. Other Mac users know what I'm talking about.

Still, TiVo could do worse than to hire Doug (based on this work alone.) I think the hiring party in this case would be Amazon (and their Unbox division) though.

I'd rather Doug land at TiVo though... that would mean more HME goodies for us to play with.


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## ZombiE (Dec 17, 2005)

dswallow said:


> I guess you missed http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=345852
> 
> Hint. TiVo. Hint. Hint.


Wow, yes I did Doug. Sorry to hear that.

Anyway sent you a PM.

Z


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## JC Hollywood FL (May 17, 2004)

Doug,
I've done some work with "screen scraping" from Internet pages to gather data I can use in an application. Just curious about whether your use of this data is legal, as many sites have a disclaimer about redistribution.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

JC Hollywood FL said:


> Doug,
> I've done some work with "screen scraping" from Internet pages to gather data I can use in an application. Just curious about whether your use of this data is legal, as many sites have a disclaimer about redistribution.


I'd like the think Amazon would be thankful for the increased business they're likely to get.


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

ZombiE said:


> I would not be surprised if the higher ups at Tivo are watching this thread wondering why a guy that already has a job (Just assuming Doug) and can code this in his spare time while Tivo is probably paying some software engineer 50, 60, or 70 thousand dollars a year to come up with this while at work


In Santa Clara County? Think more like 80 to 130 or so . Even with those sort of salaries, buying a home there is difficult.


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## JC Hollywood FL (May 17, 2004)

timckelley said:


> I'd like the think Amazon would be thankful for the increased business they're likely to get.


I'd like to think a lot of things, but I'm wondering if since Amazon provides a specific API for programmers to interface with their application, they may not be so accepting of someone working around the system to come up with their own solution. Perhaps Amazon (with or without third party partners) is already working on an application that will provide additional functionality such as Doug is trying to develop. If he's bypassing the agreed protocols for communicating with Amazon to present the data they are offering through the API so that he can provide additional features, his software may be a threat to their profitability. Especially if they're paying him 10% for his sales.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

JC Hollywood FL said:


> I'd like to think a lot of things, but I'm wondering if since Amazon provides a specific API for programmers to interface with their application, they may not be so accepting of someone working around the system to come up with their own solution. Perhaps Amazon (with or without third party partners) is already working on an application that will provide additional functionality such as Doug is trying to develop. If he's bypassing the agreed protocols for communicating with Amazon to present the data they are offering through the API so that he can provide additional features, his software may be a threat to their profitability. Especially if they're paying him 10% for his sales.


Amazon provides numerous different tools for associates including info about how to make links, obtaining all sorts of info about how to present site elements such as pictures, as well as several different iterations of their XML-based web services. And the only restriction about obtaining and using data is that they want to ensure it's fresh, and there are some specific restrictions about mixing data from other sources with it (i.e., competitor sites for instance, or slipping in items from other sources along with what you present as items from Amazon without being real clear about the differentiation); there are certain limitations, depending on the type of data... generally 24 hours on anything, but 1 hour on pricing, except that pricing can also be little older as long as it's presented as it being "as of" a specific date/time.

Anyway, it's all there to be read if anybody cares to. I've read through it a few times in the past. It's not really restrictive at all, compared to the "typical web site." They're intent is to sell merchandise. And they provide a myriad of ways to get others to help them do that.


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

Yeah, I've been very impressed with Amazon's openness in this regard... their Web Services and API and Associates program give lots of leeway to third parties to develop all sorts of ways to allow customers more access to Amazon's service.

As a customer, I have tinkered with no less than 10 or so different applications (and web sites) that leverage these tools. This is the sort of thing Amazon actively encourages, and they are smart to do so.

http://www.amazon.com/E-Commerce-Service-AWS-home-page/b?ie=UTF8&node=12738641&me=A36L942TSJ2AJA


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## BlackBetty (Nov 6, 2004)

will there be a way to scroll through new releases? Also how about scrolling through the "rent top movies" option that is available on the website.

a coming soon with dates would be cool to scroll through as well. Obviously you wouldn't be able to order because they aren't available.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

BlackBetty said:


> will there be a way to scroll through new releases? Also how about scrolling through the "rent top movies" option that is available on the website.
> 
> a coming soon with dates would be cool to scroll through as well. Obviously you wouldn't be able to order because they aren't available.


The only sort options I have are pretty stupifying:

*relevance*
A weird ranking system that's useless because it's pretty keyword search oriented which isn't that flexible, plus sicne I have to put "tivo" in that field, it's not helping the relevance rank much.

*sales rank*
The default and current order I'm using. Most popular to least popular. So it inherently is the "top movies" you asked for, though does include purchase-only items among them.

*price (low to high)
price (high to low)*
These are useless as there's probably 5 total different prices among all couple of thousand items.

*launchdate*
Somewhat useful to find new-to-Unbox content.

*sale-flag*
What's on sale... also pretty useless it seems.

---

I am looking at providing access to "your recommendations," which are based on your ratings of things, as well as providing ways to show and save your ratings of movies/shows. But that's for later. 

Is there a coming soon list for Unbox?


----------



## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

Fofer said:


> There has been plenty of innovative third parties that have stepped in to fill TiVo's gaps... if it weren't for them I think I would have chosen a different DVR long ago. Other Mac users know what I'm talking about.
> 
> Still, TiVo could do worse than to hire Doug (based on this work alone.) I think the hiring party in this case would be Amazon (and their Unbox division) though.
> 
> I'd rather Doug land at TiVo though... that would mean more HME goodies for us to play with.


Why would TiVo hire someone competent? It would ruin the corporate culture.


----------



## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

timckelley said:


> I'd like the think Amazon would be thankful for the increased business they're likely to get.


Yes. I'm interested in how the ability of others to do this will affect TiVo's hopes for generating revenues in the future.

It is fantastic and enjoyable reading all Doug's thoughts and descriptions as he works on this.


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## Rebate_King (Nov 10, 2004)

HDTiVo said:


> Why would TiVo hire someone competent? It would ruin the corporate culture.


 :down: uncalled for.


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## ZombiE (Dec 17, 2005)

Rebate_King said:


> :down: uncalled for.


Have you been around for the last three software updates? 

Competence and Tivo software updates do not go hand in hand. So I for one don't think it was "uncalled for".

Z


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

ZombiE said:


> Have you been around for the last three software updates?
> 
> Competence and Tivo software updates do not go hand in hand. So I for one don't think it was "uncalled for".
> 
> Z


 the last three software updates worked fine on myboxes and a lot of others. TiVo is just working with a lot of hardware that is directly attributeable only to TiVo so the bugs of a random nature get a huge amount of attention. How many of those bugs are still around?

Edit To Add - I will not pull Doug's thread off topic. suffice it to say that the vast majority of Tivo's are running fine and full of great features. The folks at Tivo are responsible for coming up with HME which lets Doug cereate a 3rd party app linking a major online player with the TiVo DVR. Fi that is not a sign of major competence for both Doug and TiVo, then what is?


----------



## ZombiE (Dec 17, 2005)

Ummm, don't have time to add them all up, but I'm sure you do.... 

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=327802&highlight=bugs



ZeoTivo said:


> TiVo is just working with a lot of hardware that is directly attributeable only to TiVo


What does that mean? If I am understanding it correctly you want to show that Tivo can't even code for Tivo hardware? 

I do appoligize to dwallow for pulling this thread off topic. 

Z


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

ZombiE said:


> Have you been around for the last three software updates?
> 
> Competence and Tivo software updates do not go hand in hand. So I for one don't think it was "uncalled for".
> 
> Z


I like to think that the first poster was joking, but you have no idea what you're talking about. I interviewed TiVo once (a close friend works there) and I assure you that they're a highly competent group of people. The ages of their engineers skews much higher than most companies because they value experience and accomplishment and they are willing to pay more for it.

Apologies, Doug.


----------



## ScottNY845 (Feb 4, 2002)

When can we expect to see a link for download?


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

not to wander off track too much- But I think tivo maybe should pay bounties or something to get the code bits they want. Doug has basically written the unbox hme app in what seems to be a matter of days. Pipakin basically whipped out the auto transcode feature of tivo desktop 2.4 in a matter of days with tons more abilities then the tivo version. There's the mac "hack" that does what tivo took years to pay roxio to do. I dont understand....

If You're looking for Beta testers please let us know....


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

ScottNY845 said:


> When can we expect to see a link for download?


I've got everything almost prepared and am just doing a couple simple final tests/refinements of some things I made today and it'll be up. I'd normally say "minutes" but that'll not be the case.  Probably within an hour, though.


----------



## Rebate_King (Nov 10, 2004)

dswallow said:


> Probably within an hour, though.


OK its been 36 minutes, whats taking so long????


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Sorry... kept finding little things I wanted to take care of before the first release.

Here it is. Please, everyone, watch everything closely and if anything seems odd please let me know about it. And I'd really suggest if you're a complete novice that you refrain from trying this release right now. Let's let a bunch of people with some technical expertise experience it first so we can make it go easier for you. Of course, if you want to try it anyway... 

I'm going to create a thread in the proper area for support issues, so once you're downloading it and running it, look over there for discussion.

(Pardon the dust)
http://www.unboxondemand.com/


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

PJO1966 said:


> I have HME enabled on my HR10-250. Will this work with that?


I just tried it myself (silly me, I forgot all about them); the app does run on the HR10-250... only in 640x480 mode.

Of course, it won't download Amazon Unbox material so it's only useful as an ordering station. But it will at least let you order for downloading to a supported TiVo device on your Amazon account.


----------



## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

Can any Mac users tell me how to get the .bat file to run?


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

cwoody222 said:


> Can any Mac users tell me how to get the .bat file to run?


Since this uses the standard framework TiVo provides there might be instructions with some other standalone HME app out there... I'll have a look around. Maybe a Mac guru will help with it in the meantime.


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

cwoody222 said:


> Can any Mac users tell me how to get the .bat file to run?


See http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5006217&&#post5006217


----------



## MMG (Dec 11, 1999)

Is the DOS window supposed to stay open on the P.C. when the program is run on the TiVo?

It looks very nice! Thanks.


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

MMG said:


> Is the DOS window supposed to stay open on the P.C. when the program is run on the TiVo?
> 
> It looks very nice! Thanks.


Yes, though if you prefer, edit "run.bat" with notepad and change "java.exe" to "start javaw.exe" and leave the rest of the line intact. That'll start it off without an associated window. But the only way to stop it is to kill the process with Task Manager or reboot the computer (or make the app crash ).


----------



## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

dswallow said:


> (Pardon the dust)
> http://www.unboxondemand.com/


have you let Dave Zatz or engadget know about this. I think it would be worth some of their bytes in the databse to write this app up


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

ZeoTiVo said:


> have you let Dave Zatz or engadget know about this. I think it would be worth some of their bytes in the databse to write this app up


I've not done anything like that. I really wanted a small round first so I can fix obvious bugs that crop up before it garners too much attention. So I'll probably do that stuff tomorrow sometime.


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## Jabo4 (Feb 18, 2007)

Hey, Love it!

The logo is cut off by the way  not to be picky. The A in Amazon is off the screen but I haven't bought anything yet but even browsing is great! I'll buy one tonight for sure.


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## LooseWiring (Jan 6, 2003)

Julie and I have already tried it out and purchased a movie. Worked very well but the lack of sorting is a bit of a pain.


----------



## 20TIL6 (Sep 7, 2006)

dswallow said:


> Sorry... kept finding little things I wanted to take care of before the first release.
> 
> Here it is. Please, everyone, watch everything closely and if anything seems odd please let me know about it. And I'd really suggest if you're a complete novice that you refrain from trying this release right now. Let's let a bunch of people with some technical expertise experience it first so we can make it go easier for you. Of course, if you want to try it anyway...
> 
> ...


 Hey Doug,

Do you have to have TiVo desktop installed on the PC, or any other software installed on the PC in addition to what you have produced? Or is this the only program you need? I have read some posts about something called Galleon? I don't really know what that is. I can search for an explanation I guess.

Stuff like this just goes to show how talented and smart many of this community's members are.


----------



## peteypete (Feb 3, 2004)

Doug, you rock.

I always believed that if Tivo devoted ONE good programmer to this job, they could have done something like this real fast. After all, they know HME inside and out and have the server power. 

I'd like to cut out the computer completely. Don't want to leave it on all the time and don't want to have yet another service running on it. 

Have you thought of hosting the listing via apps.tv thus bypassing the local computer usage. 

I hope you at least make some money off this app. (before tivo gets their act together at least!)


----------



## tase2 (Sep 27, 2004)

Thanks Doug

This is awesome!! :up: :up: 

Can't wait until they start offering HD content.


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

20TIL6 said:


> Hey Doug,
> 
> Do you have to have TiVo desktop installed on the PC, or any other software installed on the PC in addition to what you have produced? Or is this the only program you need? I have read some posts about something called Galleon? I don't really know what that is. I can search for an explanation I guess.
> 
> Stuff like this just goes to show how talented and smart many of this community's members are.


I don't have either installed. I've tried Galleon before, but at the time was only playing with HME on hacked HR10-250's, and about half of Galleons apps didn't work (presuming they work normally). So I dropped it. I was asked recently about supporting this app to run under Galleon and went to look at what was involved and noticed it seems development was abandoned on it. So I'm not sure what's going on -- I haven't asked anywhere specifically yet (been busy!).

The main reason to want it under Galleon is to keep it running as a service so it's not a desktop window and can run on system boot without requiring a user log in. I will one way or another offer that capability in the reasonably near future, be it with Galleon, or standalone, or both.

But this is the only program you need for the Unbox On Demand app to function.


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

LooseWiring said:


> Julie and I have already tried it out and purchased a movie. Worked very well but the lack of sorting is a bit of a pain.


Yeah, when you know specifically what you want, that's very true. I'm going to offer a way to sort the list once the entire thing is downloaded; that'll at least be one step in the right direction, until I can get something done properly to work like the TiVo alpha search.


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

peteypete said:


> Have you thought of hosting the listing via apps.tv thus bypassing the local computer usage.


There's discussion about that early on in this thread. I don't think it's a practical solution for many reasons. The ideal way is to have it supported on Amazon's servers -- that's much closer to where the info it needs is located, and any number of efficiencies are gained. Plus it keeps privacy concerns to an absolute minimum since Amazon has all the info already... no 3rd party becomes involved in holding onto account/password info on your behalf.


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## Joules1111 (Jul 21, 2005)

When Jason called me in to show it to me I was very impressed. This is very neat. I can't believe that TiVo didn't think of this.


----------



## BlackBetty (Nov 6, 2004)

dswallow said:


> The ideal way is to have it supported on Amazon's servers


Have you talked with Amazon about this? Do you think they might go for it? That would be huge. You need to take the PC out of the equation for the everyday casual TiVo person. I know my folks would never use it if they had to install something and edit a file on he PC.


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

BlackBetty said:


> Have you talked with Amazon about this? Do you think they might go for it? That would be huge. You need to take the PC out of the equation for the everyday casual TiVo person. I know my folks would never use it if they had to install something and edit a file on he PC.


I'd planned to have configuration screen on the TiVo itself for everything so no editing would be required, just install/run. And that'll eventually be pretty one-step once I figure out what's needed on each platform.


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## jon01 (Jan 4, 2005)

awesome to see its available now. i will download it tonight when i get home.

- Jon


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## jjarmoc (Sep 15, 2006)

First off, nice application... It seems to work pretty well.

My one minor gripe / enhancement request - can you make the font size user definable? It's a bit small and despite HD helping the clarity is still difficult to read..


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## Tuckrat (Feb 4, 2004)

dswallow said:


> I will one way or another offer that capability in the reasonably near future, be it with Galleon, or standalone, or both.


Do you, or does anyone else looking at this thread, know if your application can co-exist on a computer that is already running Galleon? I understand that it does not yet integrate with Galleon (and perhaps may not ever). What I'm asking is if I already have Galleon running on my system, can I run your current program alongside it, or will they interfere with each other (using the same port to listen on, etc.)

Thanks,
Mike


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Tuckrat said:


> Do you, or does anyone else looking at this thread, know if your application can co-exist on a computer that is already running Galleon? I understand that it does not yet integrate with Galleon (and perhaps may not ever). What I'm asking is if I already have Galleon running on my system, can I run your current program alongside it, or will they interfere with each other (using the same port to listen on, etc.


If Galleon behaves like I expect, they'll run side by side with no conflicts -- both apps should sort that stuff out themselves when one sees the other already running on the default port.


----------



## s2kdave (Jan 28, 2005)

Hi Doug,
Nice application. I haven't tried a purchase yet, but it looks nice. Where can I download the source code for the application? Seeing that it is a derivative of my movierentals work, it needs to be contributed back into source forge because it's LGPL. You also need to include the license in your zip file which I didn't see in there.

Thanks,
David


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## BlackBetty (Nov 6, 2004)

hey doug,
not sure if this has been discussed already. 

Any thoughts or plans of linking previews to the movies and or TV shows? I have an xbox that runs Xbox Media Center. It has a movie preview function, it works really great. It links to some database somewhere and you run the previews from there.

Would be very cool to see a preview of a movie to help decide if you want to rent or purchase it.

just my two cents.


----------



## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

Tuckrat said:


> Do you, or does anyone else looking at this thread, know if your application can co-exist on a computer that is already running Galleon?


I was able to get the app to run "through" Gallleon using Galleon's ability to run other HME apps. But I'm still getting crashes when I select an item in a list (i.e., from my Media Library or browsing).

But at a high level, yeah, it'll run with Galleon.

Now ... if I could get Galleon to use the HD HME that Doug's using, that would be cool.


----------



## s2kdave (Jan 28, 2005)

windracer said:


> Now ... if I could get Galleon to use the HD HME that Doug's using, that would be cool.


Windracer, the only way to get galleon to support HD is if each app was recoded against the HDApplication I made or another api that does something similar. There isn't a way to get the galleon apps to do HD without some recoding for each application.

David


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

I figured it wouldn't be as easy as switching .jars ... I was just saying it would be cool.

You've done nice work, that's for sure! :up:


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

s2kdave said:


> Hi Doug,
> Nice application. I haven't tried a purchase yet, but it looks nice. Where can I download the source code for the application? Seeing that it is a derivative of my movierentals work, it needs to be contributed back into source forge because it's LGPL. You also need to include the license in your zip file which I didn't see in there.


I will be taking care of that. I mentioned that in the readme. Once things settle a bit and I feel confident that I'm not facing any insurmountable issues or changes in the architecture that I followed with the libraries I'm using, then I'll figure out what I am using and go from there. Yeah, a little ass-backwards, I know. But in a lot of cases, as my first major Java app, I'm also learning about what sources have good stuff, and what sources have almost good stuff.

Heck, it'll probably take me longer to read through and sort all that out than it did to write the thing. Of course, what with suddenly not having a real job anymore, I also have more time to do that stuff.


----------



## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

Jabo4 said:


> HThe logo is cut off by the way  not to be picky. The A in Amazon is off the screen


Maybe this is an overscan issue? I see the cutoff "A" on my S2 TiVo, but on the S3, the whole logo is visible.


----------



## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

BlackBetty said:


> hey doug,
> not sure if this has been discussed already.
> 
> Any thoughts or plans of linking previews to the movies and or TV shows? I have an xbox that runs Xbox Media Center. It has a movie preview function, it works really great. It links to some database somewhere and you run the previews from there.
> ...


TiVo inc is working on a TiVoCast of UNBOX previews but had some problem after the first ones went out. They think in a couple of weeks it will be ready. Check out the tivocast feature on your TiVo and then go right into Doug's app to order!


----------



## s2kdave (Jan 28, 2005)

yeah, I wish it were as easy as switching jars. I use Galleon too and would like the other apps to be HD. Unfortunately the TiVo HME api wasn't coded very well. There were static values for the safe frame and screen size was hardcoded to 640 x 480 along with the coding style of hardcoding just about every pixel offset for everything drawn on the screen. So even if there was a way to make the screen resolution HD, most likely the application would be drawn in the upper left corner at 640 x 480.

I don't think anyone is working on Galleon at the moment. If they are, I'd be glad to teach them how to make the apps HD.

David


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

windracer said:


> Maybe this is an overscan issue? I see the cutoff "A" on my S2 TiVo, but on the S3, the whole logo is visible.


I pushed the limits, for sure, but to have it cut into the "a" really makes me feel like there's some major overscan that could be adjusted for too... See more picture. Good picture. 

I've been making the effort to try to modularize how I work with screen elements and am going to take the approach of allowing that to be chosen by the end user on a device-specific basis. At least having two choices... the current "push the extreme limits" and one for the more "play it as safe as possible" requirements.

I'll get there eventually, but there's a lot of different issues to deal with.

Right now I'm just trying to figure out why my little arrow channel-up/channel-down hints on everything scrollable don't display until the first keypress, and it's just maddening not being able to figure it out!


----------



## s2kdave (Jan 28, 2005)

dswallow said:


> I will be taking care of that. I mentioned that in the readme. Once things settle a bit and I feel confident that I'm not facing any insurmountable issues or changes in the architecture that I followed with the libraries I'm using, then I'll figure out what I am using and go from there. Yeah, a little ass-backwards, I know. But in a lot of cases, as my first major Java app, I'm also learning about what sources have good stuff, and what sources have almost good stuff.


Just to be clear, the only source you are obligated to give me is all the files in hme-hd-01.jar (only if you modified anything) and all the files in unboxOnDemand.jar. Don't worry about making it work with the movierentals app again. I can retrofit it back in. I can wait a couple days for some bugs to get ironed out though. Especially that BScrollPane bug. I have the same issue with my movie rentals app. I think it isn't sending a resource update event when you initialize the state before the resource is drawn on screen. That's why it doesn't draw the scroll up/down arrows until then next resource update event is fired by a button press. It's been driving me nuts, too.

Thanks,
David


----------



## BlackBetty (Nov 6, 2004)

ZeoTiVo said:


> TiVo inc is working on a TiVoCast of UNBOX previews but had some problem after the first ones went out. They think in a couple of weeks it will be ready. Check out the tivocast feature on your TiVo and then go right into Doug's app to order!


I'll check that out.

But would be even better to have movie previews linked into Dougs app. Not sure about the legalities of such a thing (copy right laws etc.)


----------



## BlackBetty (Nov 6, 2004)

Doug,
Can you please edit the first post in this thread to include a link to your website where the download is located. It will help the folks who stumble upon this thread later on.

Thanks


----------



## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

BlackBetty said:


> I'll check that out.
> 
> But would be even better to have movie previews linked into Dougs app. Not sure about the legalities of such a thing (copy right laws etc.)


HME can't do video.

Bummer, that... because if it did... I'd have some other ideas for Doug's next project.


----------



## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

BlackBetty said:


> Doug,
> Can you please edit the first post in this thread to include a link to your website where the download is located. It will help the folks who stumble upon this thread later on.
> 
> Thanks


It's in the 2nd post. There's also another thread in the more appropriate sub-forum.


----------



## BlackBetty (Nov 6, 2004)

Fofer said:


> HME can't do video.
> 
> Bummer, that... because if it did... I'd have some other ideas for Doug's next project.


Dang,
Wasn't there talk a while back about HME eventually being able to handle video? Or am I having a brain fart?


----------



## BlackBetty (Nov 6, 2004)

Doug,
I hope you make enough money on referrals to get you a 2nd nipple for your avatar.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

BlackBetty said:


> Doug,
> I hope you make enough money on referrals to get you a 2nd nipple for your avatar.


There's really a second nipple already there in the actual photo, just cropped out to make the avatar family-friendly.


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

So, wait. Cropping out a nipple is all it takes to make a topless shot family-friendly?

_This changes everything!_


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Fofer said:


> So, wait. Cropping out a nipple is all it takes to make a topless shot family-friendly?
> 
> _This changes everything!_


Who said it was a topless shot?


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

s2kdave said:


> Especially that BScrollPane bug. I have the same issue with my movie rentals app. I think it isn't sending a resource update event when you initialize the state before the resource is drawn on screen. That's why it doesn't draw the scroll up/down arrows until then next resource update event is fired by a button press. It's been driving me nuts, too.


Add a call to "validate();" at the top of the "refreshHighlights()" function in BScrollPane.java; and make sure you call "refresh()" after you populate the scroll pane or make any changes to sizes of widgets placed on it. The totalHeight value was 0 until it performs the validate() process on the children of the scroll pane. The call's in most of the other functions, like processing the button presses, which is why that's when they would appear. Otherwise the highlights were being set invisible because totalHeight was 0.

Problem solved.


----------



## supasta (May 6, 2006)

Would it be unreasonable to ask that one of the 2 threads on this topic get closed? I am really trying to keep a close eye on your work here Doug, but 2 threads is making it hard to keep up.


----------



## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Everything fine up until pressing the buy button- it wedges.

java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.unboxondemand.hme.app.PurchaseSelectScreen.<init>(PurchaseSelectS
creen.java:53)
at com.unboxondemand.hme.app.ItemScreen$3.tick(ItemScreen.java:311)
at com.tivo.hme.sdk.util.Ticker.run(Ticker.java:143)

Running J2SE 5.0 update 9 on an XP box. Ok okay, I admit I skimmed the setup, but I suppose I probably loused something up. It correctly accessed the list of already purchased unbox items so it is access my account alright and I configured that right.


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Justin Thyme said:


> Everything fine up until pressing the buy button- it wedges.
> 
> java.lang.NullPointerException
> at com.unboxondemand.hme.app.PurchaseSelectScreen.<init>(PurchaseSelectS
> ...


That was something I screwed up in 0.02, I believe. Download 0.03 that's at www.unboxondemand.com and that should take care of it.


----------



## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

supasta said:


> Would it be unreasonable to ask that one of the 2 threads on this topic get closed? I am really trying to keep a close eye on your work here Doug, but 2 threads is making it hard to keep up.


It's not that hard--subscribe to both threads and use your User CP to watch for new posts.


----------



## bpurcell (Mar 16, 2005)

Nice job Doug! I just tested version 0.3 buying a tv show. The download began in just one minute. :up: 

I haven't looked over EVERY post here, but I saw that when you look at the TV category some of the movies are listed there as well. Not sure that's anything you can fix since that's probably an Amazon-side issue.


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

bpurcell said:


> Nice job Doug! I just tested version 0.3 buying a tv show. The download began in just one minute. :up:
> 
> I haven't looked over EVERY post here, but I saw that when you look at the TV category some of the movies are listed there as well. Not sure that's anything you can fix since that's probably an Amazon-side issue.


Yeah, they eventually do clean up things like that. But it's a server-side thing I can't control.


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## peteypete (Feb 3, 2004)

Pretty cool doug. 

I particularly like the your library section where you can redownload your stuff.

Keep up the good work!
Pete


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

peteypete said:


> I particularly like the your library section where you can redownload your stuff.


"Your Media Library" is also a feature of the Unbox pages at Amazon's site. If you go to unbox.amazon.com, it's in the line of links right under the tabs. It is nice to see it in this app, though.


----------



## ebeckhusen (Feb 15, 2007)

DSwallow---
I was wondering if you could add a notice somewhere telling people who are having problems getting the app to recognize their purchase that if they haven't already done a purchase online they should do that first? I spent forever trying to figure out why unboxondemand wasn't working for me, and finally decided to try ordering online, and that fixed the problem.


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

ebeckhusen said:


> DSwallow---
> I was wondering if you could add a notice somewhere telling people who are having problems getting the app to recognize their purchase that if they haven't already done a purchase online they should do that first? I spent forever trying to figure out why unboxondemand wasn't working for me, and finally decided to try ordering online, and that fixed the problem.


Was there anything special about your ordering online that you recall happening? I guess the way I mean it is once you had the video you wanted, you clicked on the button to buy or rent it and what happened next? The "normal" thing if everything is configured right is that you get a page saying you bought it with a few links on it to do things, like maybe looking at the invoice for it.

If you get any sort of screen about payment, then that's in the basic instructions now... that you need to have one-click payments set up for Unbox video. Is there something more that you think should be described explicitly in detail?

Ultimately that's also probably the simple way to tell people how to get it working, of course. What I need is for Amazon to let me create virgin accounts to test with.


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## jwreiner (Aug 19, 2003)

I have one-click turned off (and always have). My first Unbox order, I got a page asking me to enter a credit card number, and then I think there was another page that said all future Unbox orders would be of the one-click variety charged to the same credit card.

I still have one-click turned off on my Amazon preferences, and for everything except Unbox purchases, that is the way Amazon works for me.


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## Steverino (Nov 28, 2003)

This is probably a dumb question. Will it be possible to run this on a Series 1? I have a Phillips SA that is networked via a Cache Card.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Steverino said:


> This is probably a dumb question. Will it be possible to run this on a Series 1? I have a Phillips SA that is networked via a Cache Card.


No, the Series 1 doesn't have the software necessary to support access HME applications.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

Doug,

Could you make a hosted version without the commerce functions as a demo/promo for the other features to those that might want to try it?


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

Maybe he could put it up on apps.tv? I see it's already listed there on the downloads page.


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## moxie1617 (Jan 5, 2004)

dswallow said:


> Was there anything special about your ordering online that you recall happening?


My online experience was the first unbox order did not allow one-click ordering. It then notified me that all future unbox orders would be one-click orders.


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## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

Ditto Moxie1617.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

HDTiVo said:


> Could you make a hosted version without the commerce functions as a demo/promo for the other features to those that might want to try it?


An interesting idea, I suppose. But it's really so straightforward for most to try it out with their own computer, I'm not sure there's that much benefit involved for the work that'd probably be required to strip out some of the things the account is required for. Just how much effort is it really to download one file, unzip it, and double-click on a program? Most people will already have had Java installed by now, and that'd be the only other thing. But... something for me to think about doing if I get bored, I suppose.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

dswallow said:


> An interesting idea, I suppose. But it's really so straightforward for most to try it out with their own computer, I'm not sure there's that much benefit involved for the work that'd probably be required to strip out some of the things the account is required for. Just how much effort is it really to download one file, unzip it, and double-click on a program? Most people will already have had Java installed by now, and that'd be the only other thing. But... something for me to think about doing if I get bored, I suppose.


You'll be surprised how many more people out there you can hook with a "free taste" . Don't overestimate the percentage of people willing to make even a small effort until they've been "turned on."

I could, for example, email dozens of people and say 'point your TiVo at this HME app and check out what it can do,' whereas saying 'download this thing...' or attaching it to the email... would work with only a few of those people.

I'm talking about business here as opposed to technical/engineering.

What does it take to host an app? Do you have the resources?


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

HDTiVo said:


> You'll be surprised how many more people out there you can hook with a "free taste" . Don't overestimate the percentage of people willing to make even a small effort until they've been "turned on."
> 
> What does it take to host an app? Do you have the resources?


Yeah, I've got a dual 3GHz Xeon/2GB server located at a huge data center in north NJ. No bandwidth problems whatsoever. I may play with the idea and just see what happens.


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

jwreiner said:


> I have one-click turned off (and always have). My first Unbox order, I got a page asking me to enter a credit card number, and then I think there was another page that said all future Unbox orders would be of the one-click variety charged to the same credit card.
> 
> I still have one-click turned off on my Amazon preferences, and for everything except Unbox purchases, that is the way Amazon works for me.


Good to know! In the other thread I requested the ability to keep one-click OFF... but still be able to use this application. (I ship from Amazon to lots of different addresses and one-click makes that a bit more complicated.)

I think I'll give it a shot and see if I can do it thataway already.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

RoyK said:


> While I personally have no inclination to use Unbox at least in the near future I can't help admiring the splendid piece of work you've done here. Nice job!


Ditto...when UB supports HD and DD5.1 sound, I'll be on board. Not interested in downloading SD content.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Fofer said:


> (I ship from Amazon to lots of different addresses and one-click makes that a bit more complicated.)


You know you can have any number of addresses to ship to and they all appear in a drop down box under the 1-click button. One you choose as default, but they're all always there to choose from... turns 1-click into 3-click, but it's real easy to pick where things get shipped.


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## gonzotek (Sep 24, 2004)

HDTiVo said:


> You'll be surprised how many more people out there you can hook with a "free taste" . Don't overestimate the percentage of people willing to make even a small effort until they've been "turned on."
> 
> I could, for example, email dozens of people and say 'point your TiVo at this HME app and check out what it can do,' whereas saying 'download this thing...' or attaching it to the email... would work with only a few of those people.
> 
> ...


You make a good point. I know I'm just thinking out loud about Doug's program, but following up on the idea of the teaser app, it should be easy to send people a download link along with instructions for installing, right from the hosted demo. The Amazon product browser by Carl Haynes does it for the amazon product pages, for example.

Actually, Doug, have you thought about eventually making this a Quick Start app? If I understand the various technologies correctly, it should be possible to initiate an email from the hosted app that will send people a link that will download, install, and execute (after asking for user permission, of course). If you request that they use the same email address as they'll use for Amazon, then you could potentially even pre-fill in that info in the local version(I'm not at all aware if its possible to pass the Quick Start app any data on its first run). Even if you weren't sending out emails or even hosting the app, a quick start type install would be more friendly if it can support all of the core functionality your code requires.


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## Fofer (Oct 29, 2000)

dswallow said:


> You know you can have any number of addresses to ship to and they all appear in a drop down box under the 1-click button. One you choose as default, but they're all always there to choose from... turns 1-click into 3-click, but it's real easy to pick where things get shipped.


Yes, I discovered that today... they have enhanced 1-click quite a bit since it's introduction. Back when it first was introduced, it really *was* 1-click (!) without many options.

I think I had one mis-delivered package as a result, which caused me to swear off 1-clicking from that point forward. I never bothered to see Amazon if had enhanced it any over the years.

Now that I see it's a bit more flexible, I'm not (as) opposed to activating it for myself. I do know quite a few folks who still don't like it... it scares them for some reason... maybe they think they'll be less disciplined with their purchases, or that bad guys will steal their computers and 1-click their bank account down to zero. -shrug-


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Fofer said:


> I do know quite a few folks who still don't like it... it scares them for some reason... maybe they think they'll be less disciplined with their purchases, or that bad guys will steal their computers and 1-click their bank account down to zero. -shrug-


The only thing bad about Unbox and 1-click is you have no chance to undo it. With everything else, 1-click isn't final, it basically still has about an a hour or so where you can change or cancel an order, at least. Amazon knows if an entire video file was received OK since the TiVo acknowledges it; it'd have been pretty straightforward to let you cancel up until the majority is downloaded. It's unwatchable without 100% of it anyway. Maybe they'll eventually provide that capability if they get enough complaints, or maybe it's just getting comfortable the technology is working.


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## ebeckhusen (Feb 15, 2007)

dswallow said:


> Was there anything special about your ordering online that you recall happening? I guess the way I mean it is once you had the video you wanted, you clicked on the button to buy or rent it and what happened next? The "normal" thing if everything is configured right is that you get a page saying you bought it with a few links on it to do things, like maybe looking at the invoice for it.
> 
> If you get any sort of screen about payment, then that's in the basic instructions now... that you need to have one-click payments set up for Unbox video. Is there something more that you think should be described explicitly in detail?
> 
> Ultimately that's also probably the simple way to tell people how to get it working, of course. What I need is for Amazon to let me create virgin accounts to test with.


Well, my online order went through perfectly, in the "normal" way. For some reason I could not order through the app until I had placed an online order, though, despite the fact that one-click was turned on. I'm not sure if this is only a problem with me or not, though, so I guess unless you see someone else with this problem, forget I said anything


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## BlackBetty (Nov 6, 2004)

doug will you have a version that runs in the system tray instead of a dos window that is open?


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## hornblowercat (Mar 4, 2007)

Stupid here. I can't get this thing to work. I have one click with Amazon set up. I ran both the update and the full app. No changes on my menu (Music photos extras etc).

What am I not understanding?  Oh I have the S3.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

hornblowercat said:


> Stupid here. I can't get this thing to work. I have one click with Amazon set up. I ran both the update and the full app. No changes on my menu (Music photos extras etc).
> 
> What am I not understanding?  Oh I have the S3.


Did you run the program after unzipping it? There's a "run.bat" file in the "bin" subdirectory that you should run, either double-click on it or run it from a command prompt window by going to that directory and typing "run".

It'll display in the window what IP address it is binding to. That IP address needs to be on the same network as your TiVo receivers. If it isn't, you'll need to add a couple things to the command line that's running the program. Some people configure their system with more than one IP address, or have different physical networks and multiple network adapters. Buit if you could at least check that the IP address it grabs and the IP address of your TiVo receiver(s) are on the same subnet that'd be the first step. (Well, the second step after making sure you're actually running the program. )


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

BlackBetty said:


> doug will you have a version that runs in the system tray instead of a dos window that is open?


That's the plan. But there is a batch file provided that'll at least get it running completely in the background for now. It's the "run_background.bat" that's in the same directory as "run.bat". No system tray icon with it -- you'd have to find it in Task Manager and kill it directly to stop it, but at least it's not a window.


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## hornblowercat (Mar 4, 2007)

dswallow said:


> That's the plan. But there is a batch file provided that'll at least get it running completely in the background for now. It's the "run_background.bat" that's in the same directory as "run.bat". No system tray icon with it -- you'd have to find it in Task Manager and kill it directly to stop it, but at least it's not a window.


I'm still stupid. But it's working. 

I noticed everytime I clicked on the run_background.bat a dos screen was popping up with nothing on it.

So I just tried it again and this time I see the ip address. I go out to check TiVo. Nothing there for Amazon.

I come back here. I look at the IP address. I see an extra ip address that's on the TiVo and I said remove. I do that then I see Amazon Unbox. 

Bottom line now is appears to be working. Thanks Doug.


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## hornblowercat (Mar 4, 2007)

Well...I don't quite have it. I'm getting a message saying it doesn't have my amazon info. I see somewhere in the install notes that may be needed to be put in there but I'm not sure how to go about doing that.


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

hornblowercat said:


> Well...I don't quite have it. I'm getting a message saying it doesn't have my amazon info. I see somewhere in the install notes that may be needed to be put in there but I'm not sure how to go about doing that.


Read the readme file. You have to edit one of the files in a text editor and insert your email address and password that Amazon has on file.


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## hornblowercat (Mar 4, 2007)

cwoody222 said:


> Read the readme file. You have to edit one of the files in a text editor and insert your email address and password that Amazon has on file.


Yep, I got that one now. But I still have one problem. In playing around with this thing trying to get it to stay on the menu I have somehow succeded but now I have two Amazon unbox on my menu.  

I couldn't get one to stay. Then I had three. Now I have two. What the heck did I do?

By the way both are working perfectly. I just don't need two on the menu.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

hornblowercat said:


> Yep, I got that one now. But I still have one problem. In playing around with this thing trying to get it to stay on the menu I have somehow succeded but now I have two Amazon unbox on my menu.
> 
> I couldn't get one to stay. Then I had three. Now I have two. What the heck did I do?
> 
> By the way both are working perfectly. I just don't need two on the menu.


Were you playing around with the "run_background" batch file to start them? If so, you'll find there's multiple copies running now. To stop one or more of them you need to use Task Manager and kill the occurrences of "javaw.exe" among the process list. If you have other java programs running, there may be other entries and there's not really an easy way to tell them apart with Task Manager.

If you reboot your computer and make sure you run "run_background" only once, you should then only have a single occurrence in the TiVo menu.

I'm trying to find a solution to make this process easier, so hopefully in the near future i t won't be such a pain.


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## hornblowercat (Mar 4, 2007)

dswallow said:


> Were you playing around with the "run_background" batch file to start them? If so, you'll find there's multiple copies running now. To stop one or more of them you need to use Task Manager and kill the occurrences of "javaw.exe" among the process list. If you have other java programs running, there may be other entries and there's not really an easy way to tell them apart with Task Manager.
> 
> If you reboot your computer and make sure you run "run_background" only once, you should then only have a single occurrence in the TiVo menu.
> 
> I'm trying to find a solution to make this process easier, so hopefully in the near future i t won't be such a pain.


Yep, that's what I ended up doing and I only have one running now. Mission accomplished. Yeah, it would be nice if it was a bit easier to use but if I had followed instructions from the start I wouldn't have had half the problems. I don't think the "run_background" was easy to understand, I kind of figured it out on my own. I don't recall anything specific to that in the readme instructions.

Still thanks for your hard work on this Doug. I'm sure this will make using Amazon Unbox for me much nicer.


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## andyf (Feb 23, 2000)

Just tried it. It's fantastic and looks great in HD. If you're looking for suggestions I'd like to see a rental filter.

So View All and sub-category of rental. I'm really not going to purchase anything unless it's a TV show I missed.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

I just tried this and I have a few issues on my S3 (running on the S2 looks fine):

*1*. In the Main Menu I can't page down and the text goes off the bottom of the screen.
*2*. Most of the text is fuzzy, jagged and hard to read. It's really bad in show description pages where the text is impossible to read.

This is probably because I don't have my S3 hooked up to a HDTV at the moment and it isn't widescreen either. There should be an option for S3's not hooked up to a HDTV.

*3*. When going to try to download past programs I've downloaded, when I get to the download screen I get the message, "This TiVo receiver, [name], was not found among the selectable destinations in your Amazon account...."
It then says it will queue it on the first TiVo receiver listed. It does this for all my TiVos, including the first one listed, which is somewhat strange since it said it couldn't find it. This also shows up in some show title names. See attachments (unbox 001.jpg from S2 and unbox 003.jpg from S3); sorry for the glare.

The possible reason for this is that there is a rectangular box character at the end of the name of the TiVo it says it will download to. Ie: My TiVo's name is "Living Room S2" and it says it will download to "Living Room S2"

If I go to actually rent/purchase a program for the first time, it correctly identifies my TiVo without issue. It's only when looking in the Media Library that this is an issue. See unbox 002.jpg.

*4*. When I downloaded and installed version 0.5 just now, it said version 0.4a on start up and the unboxOnDemand.jar file is dated 3/29/07. Is this actually 0.5?


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

morac said:


> I just tried this and I have a few issues on my S3 (running on the S2 looks fine):
> 
> *1*. In the Main Menu I can't page down and the text goes off the bottom of the screen.
> *2*. Most of the text is fuzzy, jagged and hard to read. It's really bad in show description pages where the text is impossible to read.
> ...


*Oops. I forgot to actually put the new jar file into the proper place before creating the distribution zip file.  It's fixed now. Everybody, if you downloaded 0.05 before this posting, go do it again. You only got a 0.04a version which was pretty old in the scheme of what I added -- 0.04a was just a private release to one person to test a fix.*

That's a good find with the S3 on a non-HD device; I didn't anticipate that. It must be running in the higher resolution mode and down-ressing to SD, and I can see that'd be a problem. I'll work out a fix.

I've been trying to get someone reporting the square-box problem on TiVo names to send me a copy of their log file.

If you could close the program, delete the log files, then run the program, go to a TiVo and open the app, then from the main menu pres 5 5 6 9 ENTER. Then zip up the unboxLog.txt file you have and email that to me, I should be able to fix it. It's also possible the 5569-ENTER process will fix it if it is somehow related to corrupted display data info on the Amazon side (5569 ENTER refreshes Amazon's connection with your TiVo account and retrieves the names again).


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

morac said:


> *2*. Most of the text is fuzzy, jagged and hard to read. It's really bad in show description pages where the text is impossible to read.
> 
> This is probably because I don't have my S3 hooked up to a HDTV at the moment and it isn't widescreen either. There should be an option for S3's not hooked up to a HDTV.


For those with a Series 3 hooked up to a non-HD display, check out version 0.06 of Unbox On Demand... from the main menu, press 4 2 0 1 ENTER. This will toggle the configuration between the normal high resolution mode and forcing it to be 640x480. You have to exit the app and reenter it from the TiVo receiver for it to take effect. The setting is stored per-receiver, so it'll only affect those receivers you perform this step from.


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## hornblowercat (Mar 4, 2007)

dswallow said:


> For those with a Series 3 hooked up to a non-HD display, check out version 0.06 of Unbox On Demand... from the main menu, press 4 2 0 1 ENTER. This will toggle the configuration between the normal high resolution mode and forcing it to be 640x480. You have to exit the app and reenter it from the TiVo receiver for it to take effect. The setting is stored per-receiver, so it'll only affect those receivers you perform this step from.


I misread what you said about for Non HD displays only and entered thr 4 2 0 1 enter. Now I can't see anything when I pull up an item, like "the illustionist" I don't have any buttons to select or purchase or even a cover.

I tried to remove the app and re install but it still is not working. Anything I can do to reverse this?


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## davew723 (Sep 28, 2006)

How can I specify the interface to be used for the HME Unbox application. I have multiple interfaces on my system and the first one is not the right one. Typically this is done by specifying -intf <interface> although that doesn't seem to work in this case. Ideas?


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## davew723 (Sep 28, 2006)

davew723 said:


> How can I specify the interface to be used for the HME Unbox application. I have multiple interfaces on my system and the first one is not the right one. Typically this is done by specifying -intf <interface> although that doesn't seem to work in this case. Ideas?


Nevermind. I was missint a -. Its --intf


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

hornblowercat said:


> I misread what you said about for Non HD displays only and entered thr 4 2 0 1 enter. Now I can't see anything when I pull up an item, like "the illustionist" I don't have any buttons to select or purchase or even a cover.
> 
> I tried to remove the app and re install but it still is not working. Anything I can do to reverse this?


The 4201 ENTER process affects one line that's stored in the unboxOnDemand.properties file. Just open it with a text editor and remove the line that includes the words ".resolutionPreferred". It'll begin with the name you gave your receiver. Then restart the application on your computer.

But that really shouldn't have caused what you describe. It'd just be formatted for the smaller SD display layout, with large fonts. Even on an HD display it'd just be a coarser looking version of the HD menus.

If it persists, zip up the unboxLog.txt file and email it to me so I can see what else is going on.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

dswallow said:


> [That's a good find with the S3 on a non-HD device; I didn't anticipate that. It must be running in the higher resolution mode and down-ressing to SD, and I can see that'd be a problem. I'll work out a fix.
> 
> I've been trying to get someone reporting the square-box problem on TiVo names to send me a copy of their log file.
> 
> If you could close the program, delete the log files, then run the program, go to a TiVo and open the app, then from the main menu pres 5 5 6 9 ENTER. Then zip up the unboxLog.txt file you have and email that to me, I should be able to fix it. It's also possible the 5569-ENTER process will fix it if it is somehow related to corrupted display data info on the Amazon side (5569 ENTER refreshes Amazon's connection with your TiVo account and retrieves the names again).


Okay I ran with 0.7 and entered the 4201 enter command and exited and went back into the application, but the text was still all weird on my S3. I even tried restarting the application. I also tried increasing the FONT size. This worked for "itemSynopsisFontSize=larger", but not for itemDetailsFontSize=larger. I'm not sure the 4201 fix took since the screen doesn't look any different at all (buttons still kind of go off the right side of the screen). The images I attach really were pretty poor so it's hard to see, but the S3's text just looks weird, as if it isn't being anti-aliased or something. The text on the menu buttons looks okay though.

I also did the 5569 and got log data for you regarding the box issue. This issue only affects the "Your Media Library" when trying to redownload an already downloaded program. Browsing for a new download works so I think the TiVo names are correct, but something is being appended to them in the YML screen. I think I found the problem in the log file. It looks like there is a " " at the end of my TiVo's name in certain places. Since " " is just a space, you might want to trim all spaces from the end of TiVo Names since I don't think a TiVo name can end in a space anyway.

I'm sending you my log files.


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## hornblowercat (Mar 4, 2007)

dswallow said:


> The 4201 ENTER process affects one line that's stored in the unboxOnDemand.properties file. Just open it with a text editor and remove the line that includes the words ".resolutionPreferred". It'll begin with the name you gave your receiver. Then restart the application on your computer.
> 
> But that really shouldn't have caused what you describe. It'd just be formatted for the smaller SD display layout, with large fonts. Even on an HD display it'd just be a coarser looking version of the HD menus.
> 
> If it persists, zip up the unboxLog.txt file and email it to me so I can see what else is going on.


Doug, I tried to email that file to you last night. I got a message saying it was an exacutiable file and my mail wouldn't send it. My wife changed the ending of the file and it appeared to go but this morning I got a message saying I was blacklisted from your email address. I did a follow up email similiar to what I'm writing now. So can you tell me if you received the file or not?


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

hornblowercat said:


> Doug, I tried to email that file to you last night. I got a message saying it was an exacutiable file and my mail wouldn't send it. My wife changed the ending of the file and it appeared to go but this morning I got a message saying I was blacklisted from your email address. I did a follow up email similiar to what I'm writing now. So can you tell me if you received the file or not?


You emailed me the distribution of UnboxOnDemand version 0.05, not the logs.


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## hornblowercat (Mar 4, 2007)

dswallow said:


> You emailed me the distribution of UnboxOnDemand version 0.05, not the logs.


Yes, that was the first time. Since then I've attempted to send you the correct file several times. So I guess you haven't received it. 

I will try again, I may have to change the ending a bit to get it to go through my server. If so just erase that part and the log should be ready to unzip.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

I have two separate Tivo/Amazon accounts on the same network. Is there a way to run two seperate versions of that ap, one that knows about one account and one that knows about the other?

(I realize this is a somewhat unusual configuration)


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

jfh3 said:


> I have two separate Tivo/Amazon accounts on the same network. Is there a way to run two seperate versions of that ap, one that knows about one account and one that knows about the other?
> 
> (I realize this is a somewhat unusual configuration)


Yes there's a way you can manage it... just install the whole thing into 2 different directories and run them both separately. You'll see both instances on all TiVo's; but as long as you start them up in the same order each time, they'll always be identified the same way (the second instance will have a [1] on the end of the title on the TiVo menu).

I can work out a way to make things more seamless in a future release, so that you won't have to run it twice or have two copies. But for now that'll work.


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