# TiVo planning "whole-home" DVR



## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/05/29/tivo.whole.home.dvr/



> TiVo is prepping a digital video recorder that would serve as a hub for an entire house, company chief Tom Rogers confirms at the D6 Conference. He notes that current TiVos are essentially limited and can't record or offer content to more than one TV set in the home; the Wi-Fi adapter that lets the TiVo work remotely is only a part solution to the problem, Rogers says. Instead, TiVo is working to produce a version of its self-titled hubs that could give "whole-home" access, though the executive doesn't provide more details.


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

Cooperative scheduling!


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Actually it sounds more like they are working on something similar to Motorola's QIP6416 Multi-room DVR with one main DVR and a bunch of satellites (that don't have tuners or large hard drives).

The satellite boxes would interface with the master TiVo (maybe any TiVo) in the house to bring up the TiVo's main menu allowing for full functionality (scheduling recordings, playlist management, etc). The only difference would be that playback is then streamed/downloaded to the box instead of playing directly.

The only problem I see with the above, is that you couldn't have multiple users manipulating things on the TiVo at the same time. For example the remote user tries to play a video another (local or remote) user deletes the video. A work around to this would be a locking mechanism to prevent more than one remote user from making changes to the TiVo for resources that are in use.

It would probably be functionality that could be added to existing TiVos if they wanted to do so.


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## TiivoDog (Feb 14, 2007)

I also started a link on this over at the HDTV Forum Thread, where I raised this point back in Oct-07!!! They should already have a proto-type out on something like this by now closely resembling the features/approach I suggested....

TC Thread
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=6332441#post6332441

Suggestion Link (Oct-07)
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5646933#post5646933


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## MediaLivingRoom (Dec 10, 2002)

if the toilet backs up can we go back 30 mins?


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

MediaLivingRoom said:


> if the toilet backs up can we go back 30 mins?


I think that's where the external plumbing attachment for additional storage will come into play.


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## rodalpho (Sep 12, 2006)

My fairly unrealistic hopes for what this means. Due to hardware restrictions most of this is likely impossible currently, so would have to go in a next-gen TiVo:

1) The ability to play essentially all videofiles from SMB mounts and uPNP shares with no conversion or transcoding necessary, including divx/xvid, h.264, WMV, mpeg-2, etc, like the popcornhour and XBMC.

2) Built-in slingplayer functionality with windows, OSX, linux, iphone, windows portable, and blackberry clients. Ideally this would actually be in partnership with slingmedia.

3) Cooperative scheduling between multiple DVRs.

4) Low-cost HD-capable extenders with built-in wifi. 

5) Streaming MRV via both uPNP and SMB rather than TiVo's proprietary protocols.

Any more pie in the sky "predictions"?


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Cool. very early stages so let the speculation have fun. 

It sounds to me like a main media collector somewhere and then hubs off that. The ycan easily make the current DVRs we all have as hub "capable" and protect our investment in them while allowing us to not have to buy and put a TiVo full fledged DVR on each TV in the house.

Questions I have are around how the main collector looks and works. 6 tuners? RAID of hard drives? do we get to put our onw media on it like songs and pictures and home moviews and make use of its storgae, etc?


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## HiDefGator (Oct 12, 2004)

I would love to have one of these babies. One of my biggest annoyances today is having to record all the same shows on 3 DVR's because with wife and kids I never know which TV I will get to watch.

I think Directv has been talking about the same thing for a while now too.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

HiDefGator said:


> I would love to have one of these babies. One of my biggest annoyances today is having to record all the same shows on 3 DVR's because with wife and kids I never know which TV I will get to watch.
> 
> I think Directv has been talking about the same thing for a while now too.


Along with FIOS I think.
I think TiVo is just looking to take MRV to the next level and make it more integrated and hopefully will integrate scheduling of recordings as well.

We currently do not care so much what time and channel a show is on - hopefully with this we will also not have to know, worry about what TiVo it is on or scheduled by either.


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## DrewTivo (Mar 30, 2005)

HiDefGator said:


> I would love to have one of these babies. One of my biggest annoyances today is having to record all the same shows on 3 DVR's because with wife and kids I never know which TV I will get to watch.


Why doesn't MRV solve this? Slow transfer times? The real key is being able to use the disk space of all DVRs to record regardless of which Tivo you have it scheduled on.

Of course, having some additional unit that could accept the streaming without being a full-fleged tivo would be great.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

DrewTivo said:


> Why doesn't MRV solve this? Slow transfer times? ....


4 characters

0x02

in other words copy protection flags on digital cable channels which block tivo's current incarnation of MRV.

tivo could get around this like MS and others have by streaming content (MRV currently copies it).

So a whole house dvr could have a big monster dvr (I'm guessing maybe 6 tuners as a cable M-Card can decode up to 6 streams) and then that box could stream to think clients.

I'd have to go back and read some old posts- but if I recall tivo (or at least it's founders) even at the very beginning said they thought that a master box with cheap think client slaves was the best plan but the hardware availible back when they started just couldn't handle it.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

TiivoDog said:


> I also started a link on this over at the HDTV Forum Thread, where I raised this point back in Oct-07!!! They should already have a proto-type out on something like this by now closely resembling the features/approach I suggested....


Don't hurt yourself patting yourself on the back. MANY of us have came up with the same idea (and I wouldn't doubt I posted about it *years* before that date).

The logical idea is "big tivo with lots of storage space as the server, and 'client' Tivos with small hard drives [to deal with network slowness or outages] that would then copy the files to the main server for everyone to see", along with cooperative scheduling.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

mattack said:


> Don't hurt yourself patting yourself on the back. MANY of us have came up with the same idea (and I wouldn't doubt I posted about it *years* before that date).
> 
> The logical idea is "big tivo with lots of storage space as the server, and 'client' Tivos with small hard drives [to deal with network slowness or outages] that would then copy the files to the main server for everyone to see", along with cooperative scheduling.


not sure you even need a hardrive with current wifi technology.

I recently replaced my G router with an N as the G died and I already had N built into my laptop. And I can't believe the strength and stability of the Standard. If you just built N into all the boxes you could probably get by without the hard drive. (unless N gets messy with many devices on the same network?)


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## TiivoDog (Feb 14, 2007)

mattack said:


> Don't hurt yourself patting yourself on the back. MANY of us have came up with the same idea (and I wouldn't doubt I posted about it *years* before that date).
> 
> The logical idea is "big tivo with lots of storage space as the server, and 'client' Tivos with small hard drives [to deal with network slowness or outages] that would then copy the files to the main server for everyone to see", along with cooperative scheduling.


Back patting wasn't the intent of my original post, but rather the point with why Tivo is taking this long to speak openly about the development of their next gen platform - this should have been in play quite some time ago.....


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## kb7sei (Oct 4, 2001)

MichaelK said:


> not sure you even need a hardrive with current wifi technology.
> 
> I recently replaced my G router with an N as the G died and I already had N built into my laptop. And I can't believe the strength and stability of the Standard. If you just built N into all the boxes you could probably get by without the hard drive. (unless N gets messy with many devices on the same network?)


I doubt even N can handle multiple HD streams perfectly. G can't even handle 1 full HD stream (MPEG2/ATSC) without dropping any frames if even one other wifi device is active. wifi has a critical limitation, it can only allow one station to talk at a time. Wired ethernet can allow for simultaneous bi-directional streams.

This isn't as big a problem with MPEG4/h264. But HD MPEG2 can easily saturate the real capacity of a wireless G network. The radios might link up at 54Mbps, but you simply can't get that kind of speed out of them because of the overhead. You might get 2-3 streams on an N network, but that would be pushing it for MPEG2 HD. Gigabit Ethernet could do it without breaking a sweat. The hard drives are needed to buffer some data to make sure wireless can keep up. Even then, I can see a lot of problems with the thin client approach with wireless.

People give wifi WAY too much credit. For huge HD video files (or even large SD video files) it sucks hard compared to even 100Mbps wired ethernet. Throw in multiple client machines, or a neighbor with wifi, and wifi quickly becomes useless. Don't even get into going from a wifi box to another wifi box (you're now 1/2 speed). It's great for surfing the net or copying smallish files around. But for unbuffered multi-GB video files in real time? Hell no. With local buffering, it could probably be done reasonably well, but I can see pauses if the network gets busy.

Unless the main box is beefy enough to transcode for slow networks.........


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## ah30k (Jan 9, 2006)

The problem is that to be a significant central unit you would need something like six fully parallel tuners, a terabyte of storage and easy home networking (ie MoCA or Powerline) which would make this a pretty expensive unit. Then you'd need to buy client boxes. Certainly a market for this in the serious home theater user segment but not likely a high volume BestBuy type of thing. Also you need to solve the copy protection issues.

I hope that after a TiVo business case review they decide to proceed with the project.


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## shady (May 31, 2002)

ah30k said:


> Certainly a market for this in the serious home theater user segment but not likely a high volume BestBuy type of thing.


I disagree, I don't think this will be aimed at serious home theater users, but more towards families, or anyone with more than one TV in the house.

It's something that differentiates TiVo from the current cable offerings (no reason why the cable companies can't do this, and maybe they are, which is why TiVo has to follow)

The challenge will be setting the price such that TiVo makes money from this and "families" can afford to buy it.


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## rodalpho (Sep 12, 2006)

Nah. You wouldn't do it that way, because the market isn't large enough. All you need is two SKUs, a TiVO HD and a TiVO HD Extender. If you want more tuners, buy another TiVo HD.

Copy protection is simple to work around, just stream the video instead of copying it.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

kb7sei said:


> I doubt even N can handle multiple HD streams perfectly. G can't even handle 1 full HD stream (MPEG2/ATSC) without dropping any frames if even one other wifi device is active. wifi has a critical limitation, it can only allow one station to talk at a time. Wired ethernet can allow for simultaneous bi-directional streams.
> 
> This isn't as big a problem with MPEG4/h264. But HD MPEG2 can easily saturate the real capacity of a wireless G network. The radios might link up at 54Mbps, but you simply can't get that kind of speed out of them because of the overhead. You might get 2-3 streams on an N network, but that would be pushing it for MPEG2 HD. Gigabit Ethernet could do it without breaking a sweat. The hard drives are needed to buffer some data to make sure wireless can keep up. Even then, I can see a lot of problems with the thin client approach with wireless.
> 
> ...


interesting-

I guess they could just add a few gig of memory though and skip the hard drive and still make it a single board?

Didn't know wifi had those limits- Not sure of the real world throughput (as I dont know how to test- i hard wired all 3 tivos and hte PC that does TTG to them) but I get 300Mbs link on my wireless N network at home. it's pretty amazing in my mind- but maybe that's normal- I live in a townhouse and have 3-5 other wifi networks all around me that I can see if i search. (I'm actually kind of puzzled- I set the router to "auto" to pick it's channel and it picks 6 just like 2 of my other neighbors are doing. Why wouldn't it aim for a "clean" channel? and how does it max out if there's other networks on the same channel). But again- no idea what it really is moving.


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## ah30k (Jan 9, 2006)

rodalpho said:


> Nah. You wouldn't do it that way [..six tuners..], because the market isn't large enough. All you need is two SKUs, a TiVO HD and a TiVO HD Extender. If you want more tuners, buy another TiVo HD.


Then it isn't whole home then. Whole home, to me, implies a central server with clients. Unless your concept is strapping x TiVoHDs together and making them look like a monolithic unit.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

MichaelK said:


> not sure you even need a hardrive with current wifi technology.


You'd want the hard drive for temporary buffering. Wifi can get interference, of course. Having a hard drive, then upload to the server, prevents brief network outages. (Thing downloading vs streaming).



ah30k said:


> The problem is that to be a significant central unit you would need something like six fully parallel tuners, a terabyte of storage and easy home networking (ie MoCA or Powerline) which would make this a pretty expensive unit.


Why would you need six parallel tuners?

Think multiple existing dual tuner Tivos, that then simply talk to the server. The server would need to be able to handle multiple streams simultaneously (if you didn't want to make some people wait), but itself wouldn't need any tuners.


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## chedlin (Apr 13, 2003)

kb7sei said:


> I doubt even N can handle multiple HD streams perfectly. G can't even handle 1 full HD stream (MPEG2/ATSC) without dropping any frames if even one other wifi device is active. wifi has a critical limitation, it can only allow one station to talk at a time. Wired ethernet can allow for simultaneous bi-directional streams.
> 
> This isn't as big a problem with MPEG4/h264. But HD MPEG2 can easily saturate the real capacity of a wireless G network. The radios might link up at 54Mbps, but you simply can't get that kind of speed out of them because of the overhead. You might get 2-3 streams on an N network, but that would be pushing it for MPEG2 HD. Gigabit Ethernet could do it without breaking a sweat. The hard drives are needed to buffer some data to make sure wireless can keep up. Even then, I can see a lot of problems with the thin client approach with wireless.
> 
> ...


I used to work in the wireless industry. There are overhead limits to 802.11b and 802.11g that prevent you from getting anywhere close to the advertised speeds.

There are mandatory delays between packets, headers that have to be transmitted at lower rates, etc. The VERY best speed that 802.11b could get (in the lab, perfect conditions, no protocol overhead) was 6mbps. 802.11g could get 27-28.

That makes me think 802.11n would get about 150mbps. That is still enough to do 5 mpegII hd streams if the head end were wired (half if both halves are wired).

wired 100mbit beats 802.11n in the case of all wireless, but 802.11n to gigE beats 100mbit wireless in the 1 client scenario.


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## benh57 (Nov 15, 2007)

morac said:


> http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/05/29/tivo.whole.home.dvr/


This sounds kinda like what my ReplayTV did 8 years ago. (and still does, if i had more than one of them


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## ah30k (Jan 9, 2006)

mattack said:


> Why would you need six parallel tuners?


I want to watch one show and record another. My first child wants to watch Nick in his bedroom and my second wants to watch Disney in the basement. That is four right there. Once you talk whole home, you need to consider worst case.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

TiivoDog said:


> Back patting wasn't the intent of my original post, but rather the point with why Tivo is taking this long to speak openly about the development of their next gen platform - this should have been in play quite some time ago.....


actually a large central server TiVo makes little business sense as many people balk at 250$ for a DVR already. I think such beasts would sell in limited quantity. Not to mention the folks who have posted for years about such a beast most likley already have enough tuners in the house.
All those tuners needs is some type of easier scheduling so I can do it all from any one full TiVo DVR in the house. The elusive cooperative scheduling.

What TiVo really needs is a way for a show to be able to be viewed on any TiVo device in the hosue despite copy flags. Streaming fits that bill nicely and also fits into the business case for more ways to offer IPTV as Netflix comes to the table.
Add in a nice little device that will accept the streaming and maybe some HME apps (but no tuners or recording) for a one time upfront fee and viola- whole home:up:


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## CuriousMark (Jan 13, 2005)

This may actually fit into the Comcast deal somehow. Right now the Comcast OCAP TiVo needs to be near the edge of the home cable network, not deep into it due to the need for high speed modem communication back to the head end. This requirement is the same as for a DOCSIS modem. Perhaps the thinner clients will just be TiVoized OCAP cable boxes that sit deeper into the home behind more splitters and talk back only to the TiVo near the edge via something like traditional cable boxes now use, a lower bandwidth link. It wouldn't be much of a whole house solution like is being discussed so far in this thread, but from a marketer's perspective it could be sold as such.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

CuriousMark said:


> Perhaps the thinner clients will just be TiVoized OCAP cable boxes that sit deeper into the home behind more splitters and talk back only to the TiVo near the edge via something like traditional cable boxes now use, a lower bandwidth link. It wouldn't be much of a whole house solution like is being discussed so far in this thread, but from a marketer's perspective it could be sold as such.


ah - good point - make the TiVo thin client work like a set top box as well as stream shows from other TiVo DVRs or partnerslike NetFlix.


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## CuriousMark (Jan 13, 2005)

ZeoTiVo said:


> ah - good point - make the TiVo thin client work like a set top box as well as stream shows from other TiVo DVRs or partnerslike NetFlix.


If they do that they will need a higher bandwidth connection, something like MoCA


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## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

Motorola, Scientific Atlanta, and others added MoCA to their next-generation DVRs. I'm not sure why TiVo would be any different.

As I suggested last year, TiVo could add MoCA to the Series4 and then offer $99-$149 MoCA video clients based on a Sigma chipset. The Series4 would simultaneously stream SD and HD video [recordings] to 1-2 of these devices located elsewhere in the home without the need for wireless or any other cabling beyond the existing coax in the home.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

CuriousMark said:


> If they do that they will need a higher bandwidth connection, something like MoCA


no - the idea is the thin client could just change/display channels on the TV and of course provide a live TV buffer - which would be a tuner and cable card I guess. But the alternative is no tuner on the client and cable card goes in the TV or else a cable box from cable company. keep the bandwidth light and no interactive stuff. buy a full TiVo DVR if you wnat that.

And I would point out that bkdtv has pointed out a simple networking solution for the clients that would make streaming as easy as hooking up the COAX.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

ah30k said:


> I want to watch one show and record another. My first child wants to watch Nick in his bedroom and my second wants to watch Disney in the basement. That is four right there. Once you talk whole home, you need to consider worst case.


No, I know, but my point was that you wouldn't need the tuners *in the single server/master device*. I think the idea of using "current" (or at least analogous to current) Tivos that just talked to a server would make a MUCH simpler/more cost effective device.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

rodalpho said:


> 1) The ability to play essentially all videofiles from SMB mounts and uPNP shares with no conversion or transcoding necessary, including divx/xvid, h.264, WMV, mpeg-2, etc, like the popcornhour and XBMC.


I doubt Cable Labs would ever even come close to buying off on this. Even if they would, I doubt TiVo would. They have a pretty good thing going with MFS and I doubt they would consider junking it just to be able to provide SMB support for the programs. Note there is no hardware limitation here. Current TiVos can run SAMBA with no problem - but you won't get videos off the box by doing so.



rodalpho said:


> 2) Built-in slingplayer functionality with windows, OSX, linux, iphone, windows portable, and blackberry clients. Ideally this would actually be in partnership with slingmedia.


Cable Labs would have a coronary. I don't think TiVo would stand a snowball's chance of getting CableCard certification with features like this in place.



rodalpho said:


> 3) Cooperative scheduling between multiple DVRs.


Much requested, but not yet implemented. Current generation hardware would have no problem with this.



rodalpho said:


> 4) Low-cost HD-capable extenders with built-in wifi.


See the other responses. Real-time 1080i HD, especially with multiple clients, and wifi are not good bed partners. Even a 1G wireless protocol could have issues with multiple clients requesting streams that may exceed 20Mbps in bursts. Remember, copper Ethernet is switched (unless you have an ancient Ethernet hub in your network), while wireless is essentially hubbed (sort of). Of course with a central server, this won't make as much difference as in the case of lots of MRV to and from peer clients.



rodalpho said:


> 5) Streaming MRV via both uPNP and SMB rather than TiVo's proprietary protocols.


I don't think it's all that proprietary. In fact, it may not be at all. Of course, I could be wrong (I haven't sniffed the packets), but TTG certainly is not. I certainly would not have used a separate protocol from MRV, if I were the engineer. Neither of these present any hardware issues for the current platform, either way.



rodalpho said:


> Any more pie in the sky "predictions"?


I predict that most predictions are not going to be very accurate.

I also predict that no matter what affords, some people are going to be unhappy and quite vocal about the fact.


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## ah30k (Jan 9, 2006)

mattack said:


> No, I know, but my point was that you wouldn't need the tuners *in the single server/master device*. I think the idea of using "current" (or at least analogous to current) Tivos that just talked to a server would make a MUCH simpler/more cost effective device.


I am with you 100%. Further, I don't even think you need a server if you just implement a seamless unified user experience that behind the scenes did cooperative scheduling, sharing of shows and hard disk management.

But... I would not consider your or my solutions a "*Whole-home DVR*" which is what kicked off this thread.

edit - on further reflection, I guess I could view yours and mine as whole-home dvr.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

lrhorer said:


> Cable Labs would have a coronary. I don't think TiVo would stand a snowball's chance of getting CableCard certification with features like this in place.


what can cablelabs say about streaming content to a certified for that TiVo account device? TiVo can easily put a cap on it if they tried to say people would farm out the content.
Nope, I say streaming is the exact way TiVo can tell Cablelabs to take a hike and get back to easy time/place shifting. Of course streams outside the network would not be pristine HD anyway so the content providers will not be all that worried.

In house it can be HD if the bandwidth is there or not if the bandwidth is not enough. Want HD at some TV - then get the full DVR.

PS - you can be sure DISH is working on some kind of streaming DVR along with the sling engineers.


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## ah30k (Jan 9, 2006)

ZeoTiVo said:


> what can cablelabs say about streaming content to a certified for that TiVo account device?


If you want digital versions of encrypted content then you need to play by CableLabs rules. Period. Not saying I like it, but that is how it is. That being said, CableLabs has been more accepting of streaming than copying. You'll need to encrypt the steam, I believe, with an approved encryption method.


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## DrewTivo (Mar 30, 2005)

mattack said:


> I think the idea of using "current" (or at least analogous to current) Tivos that just talked to a server would make a MUCH simpler/more cost effective device.


Agree. Couldn't it be a software change? Shared programming wouldn't need any new hardware, just improved communication between Tivos. Streaming is going to be dependent on network speed. And any copy protection issues aren't really solved anyway (you can stream from another Tivo, but you have lag no matter where the tuners are).

The only thing Tivo needs to do is have a "light" (but not "thin") tivo and a lower-priced MRV plan to make this more attractive (say a box with only 5 hours recording time and MRV for $4.95) so you could add them all over the house.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

DrewTivo said:


> The only thing Tivo needs to do is have a "light" (but not "thin") tivo and a lower-priced MRV plan to make this more attractive (say a box with only 5 hours recording time and MRV for $4.95) so you could add them all over the house.


the other missing piece besides a thin client that can just stream video from another in home source is the place to store the other media that is not a PC.
I would love a simple media server appliance on which I could place my music, photos and home videos. The PC way we have now with desktop is alright (but I admin the whole thing, so I assume many light PC users would just not bother with desktop) but a dedicated appliance would be much better. Also think of the possible revenue to TiVo as it made deals to allow the purchase of songs via the TV - or you can get your non-digital pictures back electronically from walgreens or where-ever. make the appliance a hub you can add printer capability to along with ability to hook up digital cameras for those wanting to just pull the pictures off via simple menu options. A simple media server appliance has a lot of possibility.

Of course this could be done with a standard TiVo DVR as we know it but the MFS partition would waste major sapce on many smaller files - something would have to be done about that.


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## bigray327 (Apr 14, 2000)

A whole-home solution would be good, but IMHO TiVo really needs to concentrate on making what their current lineup work. My TiVoHD, for one, is a mess.


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## nmiller855 (Sep 26, 2000)

My dad currently has the AT&T Uverse system. They have been promising a whole house DVR since he had it installed almost a year ago. The only change so far is that there are 2 HD streams now instead of 1. Doesn't Dish have a system that does this? I used to have my TiVo set up with the RCA remote extenders so I could watch what was recorded on 1 on 3 different TVs.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

on cooperative scheduling



lrhorer said:


> ...
> 
> Much requested, but not yet implemented. Current generation hardware would have no problem with this.
> 
> ....


in fact the hacking community has a plugin that looks at the todo every half hour or so and it it finds a conflict the app asks other connected boxes if they can schedule.

If Tivo would just open up the HMO/HME sdk for dvr functionality I'm sure someone could make an app to run on a local pc that does the above in a matter of days.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

ZeoTiVo said:


> what can cablelabs say about streaming content to a certified for that TiVo account device? TiVo can easily put a cap on it if they tried to say people would farm out the content.
> Nope, I say streaming is the exact way TiVo can tell Cablelabs to take a hike and get back to easy time/place shifting. Of course streams outside the network would not be pristine HD anyway so the content providers will not be all that worried.
> 
> In house it can be HD if the bandwidth is there or not if the bandwidth is not enough. Want HD at some TV - then get the full DVR.
> ...


actually some content providers do have a cow about "place shifting"- see the NFL when tivo applied to get Tivoguard blessed by the FCC.

In fact, personally i beleive that is why MRV was specifically made to prohibit movement of stuff currently recording just to make the NFL happy.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

MichaelK said:


> actually some content providers do have a cow about "place shifting"- see the NFL when tivo applied to get Tivoguard blessed by the FCC.
> 
> In fact, personally i beleive that is why MRV was specifically made to prohibit movement of stuff currently recording just to make the NFL happy.


Yes, I recall that. The NFL did get directly involved in that. It seems though that was copying, not streaming. Slingbox has not had even a whisper of legal hassle I have heard though.

Streaming seems to be getting by everyone so far, it probably gets complicated very fast if anyone delves into the legality of it so the laws will most likely be years behind the Tech even more so on this one


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

good point that for whatever illogical reason streaming is fine.

now that you mention it, I can't for the life of me figure why the NFL hasn't had a cow on sling just yet. You could put a sling box in 10 markets and get every nfl game for free without having to bother with directv's sunday ticket.


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

bigray327 said:


> A whole-home solution would be good, but IMHO TiVo really needs to concentrate on making what their current lineup work. My TiVoHD, for one, is a mess.


*YES! YES! YES!*

Someone else reminds us of this overriding issue. I raised this same issue in the other thread in the Series3 forum.

I don't want the same TiVo company that can't get their current products to work reliably to be diverting resources to a grandiose new project.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Phantom Gremlin said:


> I don't want the same TiVo company that can't get their current products to work reliably to be diverting resources to a grandiose new project.


For a lot of us (myself included) the tiVo products I directly own are working. We see a lot of problems/issues in this forum as this is a good place to post feedback and look for help. Still I see the great majority of TiVo DVRs are working just fine.

Bringon the next generation of TiVo goodness :up:


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## DrewTivo (Mar 30, 2005)

MichaelK said:


> good point that for whatever illogical reason streaming is fine.


It's because you're not making a copy of anything. What content providers fear is that any mechanism to record something once means a mechanism to record it 1 million times. They're not really concerned about someone copying from one tivo to another, until that copy is on a removable hard drive and moved elsewhere. Or just networked into a central server that automatically uploads to bittorrent or something.


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## Phantom Gremlin (Jun 20, 2002)

ZeoTiVo said:


> For a lot of us (myself included) the tiVo products I directly own are working.


Okay, I'm curious about this.

I'd characterize my TiVo HDs as "mostly working". They require a reboot (due to one or another of the myriad problems discussed in these forums) about once every few months.

Are you saying that your TiVos have NEVER exhibited any of the problems discussed ad nauseum in these threads? Or does your definition of "working" mean it's OK for them to lock up and to need to be rebooted every once in a while?


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Yes -- "mostly working" seems like a good characterization.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Phantom Gremlin said:


> Okay, I'm curious about this.
> 
> I'd characterize my TiVo HDs as "mostly working". They require a reboot (due to one or another of the myriad problems discussed in these forums) about once every few months.
> 
> Are you saying that your TiVos have NEVER exhibited any of the problems discussed ad nauseum in these threads? Or does your definition of "working" mean it's OK for them to lock up and to need to be rebooted every once in a while?


have not had to reboot a TiVo from a lockup
had the double doing of remote commands for a while way back and the patch stopped that for me.
any bad recording spots I have verified are from the cable signal

I have had some minor issues with MRV but have also had issues with linksys equipment on my home network.
Of course any of the UI glitches (like highlight on wrong spot) I do have but none have been showstoppers and only annoying for me

I do not tend to buy when a new model first come out so I usually end up buying off a later run of the assembly line.

so all in all No, and I still think you operate under the mistaken impression that this forum reflects all TiVo DVRs out there when it in fact is a very small subset and not even close to a random sampling.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> had the double doing of remote commands for a while way back and the patch stopped that for me.


Which patch was that. This is one of the few problems I have with the glow remote that came with my S3 (doubles remote commands on my S3 and S2).


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## BlackBetty (Nov 6, 2004)

I wonder if TiVo's whole home solution will take advantage of Wireless N standard built into the server unit, and the receiving units. That would be pretty sweet. no dongles, no wireless adapters. Everything you need built right into the box.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

morac said:


> Which patch was that. This is one of the few problems I have with the glow remote that came with my S3 (doubles remote commands on my S3 and S2).


that was way back before glo remotes. there was also trouble with some assembly line runs of the peanut remote for the DT modles (I think) way back as well.

If it is just that one remote and other peanuts work I would call TiVo about that remote


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

BlackBetty said:


> I wonder if TiVo's whole home solution will take advantage of Wireless N standard built into the server unit, and the receiving units. That would be pretty sweet. no dongles, no wireless adapters. Everything you need built right into the box.


but if I was in a wired home I would not want to pay for built in wireless. Now it would be nice to see a wireless N TiVo adapter hit the street with the series 4 and this whole home stuff


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

DrewTivo said:


> It's because you're not making a copy of anything. What content providers fear is that any mechanism to record something once means a mechanism to record it 1 million times. They're not really concerned about someone copying from one tivo to another, until that copy is on a removable hard drive and moved elsewhere. Or just networked into a central server that automatically uploads to bittorrent or something.


what's it matter if it's streamed or copied- in terms of ability to pirate?

if the encryption sucks or the platform isn't secure then either way can get copied a million times. There's plenty of streamed content in the world that gets pirated.

the NFL's beef has nothing to do with copies but rather place-shifting- they speicifcally had a beef with Tivo about pace shifting- not copying at all- they just didn't want tivo to be able to send out of market football games to other locals. Yet they allow sling to exist? How is that?


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

ZeoTiVo said:


> but if I was in a wired home I would not want to pay for built in wireless. Now it would be nice to see a wireless N TiVo adapter hit the street with the series 4 and this whole home stuff


serious question- but how much does a wireless network chip and related bits cost to toss in now a days? If it's 20 bucks now and only going to drop over time then it would be sort of silly not to include it- no?

At some point wireless networking just might be the default and wired will be the oddball out. It's Sort of like cordless phones are becoming more and more the norm and something with a wire seems odd. I wired my house with ethernet, phone, and cable home runs all over back to the wiring closet. But I wonder if a moved if I would take the effort to do that next time. Could just buy a multi handset cordless phone, toss in a wireless n router and be done. Might need a second line for a fax someplace. But it would be simplier/easier to just buy a wireless N bridge then run a fresh ethernet cable in most cases.

(assuming N was "fast enough" - which seems isn't a given from the rest of the conversation above)

For now cable/sat needs a wire- but i was just reading about the new wireless HDMI plans in popular mechanics. How knows- maybe in 5-7 years you get a whole home dvr that uses some wireless HDMI to shoot the signal to your tv's. Instead of a box at the tv you just need a wireless reciever dongle. Sony apparently is planning to include the an HDMI receiver in products in the next year.


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## TiVoPony (May 12, 2002)

Hey there all, this thread is an interesting read. I do feel that I should clarify for you all - Tom said that whole home is something we're 'looking into'. We're all excited that once a customer has a TiVo, they want one on every single TV. But there's no product announcement here. Sorry. 

But it is an interesting topic. Do continue!

Pony


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## DrewTivo (Mar 30, 2005)

MichaelK said:


> what's it matter if it's streamed or copied- in terms of ability to pirate?


streaming means no recording. The NFL's issue *is* different because of their regionalized coverage. I don't think NBC cares if you're watching Scrubs in your home or on your laptop via slingbox--it's all the same to them (although local advertisers may disagree).

I agree-I don't see what issue the NFL would have with Tivo unless someone decided to hack the box so that they had a really big subnet stretched across the country.


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## DrewTivo (Mar 30, 2005)

MichaelK said:


> At some point wireless networking just might be the default and wired will be the oddball out.


I think that's true, but the reason for it is that the installation costs of wired in existing homes is just too great. Even with walls open it costs $100+ per "drop", which is as much or more as a wireless card/adapter. That said, I'd much rather have wired--more secure and still faster than N (I know-the tivo can't keep up)*

*But, wow, on my new gigabit network the S2 transfers *scream*.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

MichaelK said:


> serious question- but how much does a wireless network chip and related bits cost to toss in now a days? If it's 20 bucks now and only going to drop over time then it would be sort of silly not to include it- no?.


well the TiVo Adapter costs 50$ with profit thrown in and a nice casing.

But built in wireless has one very serious limitation in this dawn of wireless connections. What if the serie 2 had built in wireless G and since the N is not a real compelte standard yet, TiVo Had built in G instead.

Right - we would all be clamoring for a wireless N adapter to deal with HD content or just wiring them up for those trying to move HD around. Plus TiVo DVRs are not in the PC power range and the wirless stuff needs to be offloaded to chips oran adapter.

Basically, an adapter provides flexibility in dealing with new wireless standards as they come along. And if you upgrade the TiVo DVR itself then you just unplug the adpapter and plug it into the new one. Nice long cord also lets you search for the spot with the best signal - which typically is not on the shelf and surrounding the TiVo DVR


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

DrewTivo said:


> streaming means no recording. The NFL's issue *is* different because of their regionalized coverage. I don't think NBC cares if you're watching Scrubs in your home or on your laptop via slingbox--it's all the same to them (although local advertisers may disagree).
> 
> I agree-I don't see what issue the NFL would have with Tivo unless someone decided to hack the box so that they had a really big subnet stretched across the country.


the old issue came up when TiVo proposed a circle of friends - you put in TiVo DVRs that can see yours and they could share shows and so forth - 
at FCC hearings on it - NFL brought up sharing games to blackout locations that were trying to sell more tickets, etc..

the NFL issue in this thread came up when I said the number one new feature in my mind was ability to send/accept streaming content. Then make the existing DVRs able to work cooperatvely on scheduling recordings, etc.. and present a now playing that is not one DVR centric but does not care where you are or what device as long as it is registered to your TiVo account.

but if Slingbox can do it then TiVo has a precedent they can work with.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

DrewTivo said:


> streaming means no recording. The NFL's issue *is* different because of their regionalized coverage. I don't think NBC cares if you're watching Scrubs in your home or on your laptop via slingbox--it's all the same to them (although local advertisers may disagree).
> 
> I agree-I don't see what issue the NFL would have with Tivo unless someone decided to hack the box so that they had a really big subnet stretched across the country.


there's ways to record a stream. There's programs that intercept the output streams of things and record them. So streaming doesn't mean you cant copy it. A secure streaming system means that- but so does a secure single copy system.


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## 1003 (Jul 14, 2000)

*Couldn't*
wait for TiVo. Brewed up "Whole House HDTV" from a Neothings Avalon and the Channel Plus that already served the IR functions throughout the house.

Lives in the garage to provide a noise free solution that works very well. Since I change hardware so often, the chome rack suggested by a good friend works so much better than any AV rack could have. Wheels underneath make it easy to swing out for rear access when needed...









*Top to bottom:*
JVC receiver for living room/XBOX
Three Smart Displays/confidence monitor
Blue cube PC's for smart displays (space available for HDPC-20s!)
TiVoHD/Neothings Avalon/Dish VIP622 (2)
Media Center PC's (5)
Bunch of UPS units


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> but if Slingbox can do it then TiVo has a precedent they can work with.


Slingbox got bit early on because they sent unencrypted streams and someone came up with a method of recording the streams. They quickly released an update which encrypted the video streams.

As for how Slingbox can get away with streaming NFL games. I'm guessing that the NFL isn't too concerned with one person watching a place-shifted game. Slingbox only allows one stream per box which presumably would be watched by the owner of the box. TiVo's plan was to allow sending recorded video to multiple other people who presumably would not be the same person who recorded the video. That's the difference.

That's not to say someone with a Slingbox couldn't set up a movie theater with a digital project and stream local games (they could even charge admission), but it's probably not all that common.


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## DrewTivo (Mar 30, 2005)

morac said:


> That's not to say someone with a Slingbox couldn't set up a movie theater with a digital project and stream local games (they could even charge admission), but it's probably not all that common.


Plus, if you were going to that trouble, you'd get direct tv, which would provide a decent picture.

I guess this is like early iTunes, which basically allowed anyone to share their entire music collection with the world on a streaming basis. Got shut down pretty fast. I miss those days.


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