# I'll never stop asking. CID for Tivo...



## Roveer (May 28, 2003)

4 months after installing Tivo I still miss not having CallerID on my TV screen like most of the other cable providers. It might not be the easiest thing to do and it might require a dongle and software update, but it IS a good feature regardless of what everyone says about ditching their land lines. I guess if Tivo is unwilling to consider it, than I have to ditch my land line as well. After all, I wouldn't want to be different. Or would I?

Roveer


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## 59er (Mar 27, 2008)

Roveer said:


> ... I still miss not having CallerID on my TV screen like most of the other cable providers.


Ah, but you can't say "other cable providers." TiVo is not a cable provider, and thus doesn't have anything to do with your cable-provided phone service.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

It's never coming back and why would they?

Landlines are dropping at a phenomenal rate and the units no longer have a telephone jack, that's lose lose to it ever being implemented and you can't implement with VOIP since there are a bazillion providers to deal with.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

As a third-party developer, this would be easy to do, and I'd find it useful, _except_ that the app APIs don't allow us to make something that would work the way you'd want, with a notice popping up on the screen in real time. Instead, all TiVo apps require that you navigate the menus and explicitly select them. By which time the call has surely gone to the answering machine voicemail.


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## tomhorsley (Jul 22, 2010)

Actually, it is clear that the TiVo itself has the ability to overlay pretty much anything it wants on the video. All we need is to convince TiVo to add a "Hey! Overlay this" message to their protocol for communicating over the network, and anyone could write apps that run on their laptops or phones or tablets to display irritating and annoying alerts on the screen from caller ID to "you've got mail" to text messages .

And just in case TiVo is actually listening, then for Gosh sakes provide a setting to disable all such external alerts when you add the new protocol support .


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

TiVo doesn't even have a phone jack any more. And their external modem peripheral is so rarely used that they actually broke it in the last software update and they didn't even notice until the software had been released to the public at large. So I seriously doubt they're going to develop a feature that requires that modem. (assuming the modem even supports CID)

What I'm surprised doesn't exist (just searched and couldn't find one) is a CID box that sits on the HDMI port and overlays the caller info. The HDMI spec allows overlay, even with HDCP protected content, so it seems like it would be simple for someone to design a little box that did this.


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## trip1eX (Apr 2, 2005)

What's a landline? 

I grew up with 1 black rotary phone and even I forget what a landline is.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

trip1eX said:


> What's a landline?
> 
> I grew up with 1 black rotary phone and even I forget what a landline is.


Exactly, I'm not a spring chicken and I haven't had a landline in 10 years now.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I still keep one using Ooma, but if I still had to pay $35/mo to AT&T I'd drop it in a heart beat.


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## Roveer (May 28, 2003)

Dan203 said:


> I still keep one using Ooma, but if I still had to pay $35/mo to AT&T I'd drop it in a heart beat.


yeah, well, with all the 'bundling' that goes on I tried to drop my LL last year and ended up paying more for my FIOS service. I mainly keep it because we have 4 kids and you don't want to mess around with 911 on a cell phone. I live in the corner of 3 towns.

Roveer


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Not sure how technical you are but I found a device called a NeTV that is basically a small Linux computer that does HDMI overlay. There is an open source project called NCID that can run on it and allow it to overlay caller ID info on to any HDMI connected device. It's a very "do it yourself" product though, so you have to be the techy type to use it.


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