# Everybody Swivel!



## TiVoPony (May 12, 2002)

It's my priviledge to unveil a cool new feature from TiVo:

Universal Swivel Search.

It's launching in the morning, and there's an article live on USA Today right now.

What is it? It's the coolest search tool you'll find on any DVR, anywhere. It merges broadband and broadcast content all into one set of results. Including TiVoCast and Amazon Unbox downloads. Every scrap of the best television to watch, regardless of where it comes from. You'll find it. That's the 'universal' part. 

And then...you 'swivel'. Pick a favorite actor from the show to swivel. You'll see all of the other programs coming up with that actor. Choose one of those programs, pick a different actor...and swivel again. Everything in the database is linked...you can follow your own random path through all of the guide data. From Buffy to Alyson Hannigan to How I Met Your Mother to Neal Patrick Harris to that White Castle movie...the path you choose is all your own. And when you find something you like, click and record it. Easy. Well...ok, Amazon ordering from the couch isn't quite ready yet, but you'll see it's coming soon. 

Swiveling on actors isn't the only thing you can do. You'll find a list of 'similar' shows...things that TiVo subscribers say are most like the show you've chosen. And you can swivel on those shows. There are tags to swivel on too...we've been busy tagging all of the most popular shows. Tags are micro slices into lots of new genres, all interconnected. You won't find another DVR with a 'Dark Hero' genre. Or 'Base Jumping'. Weeeeeee.

Swivel Search is for all of our broadband-connected customers. You need to have your Series2 or Series3 box hooked up to broadband in order to get this feature.

Like the article says, we'll be rolling this out over the next six weeks to all of our broadband customers. For those of you that just have to have it right now...we'll post a priority page in the morning. 

[edit: The priority page is live ]

[edit: And video clips of Swivel Search in action are here ]

There is so much technology behind this feature, and we all hope you don't notice a bit of it. Just enjoy it - it's the coolest thing to come down the pike since...well, I guess since last month. Lots of new stuff coming out of TiVo these days.

And if you like it, be sure to let the team know. 

Enjoy!
Pony


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## Hippster (Nov 28, 2001)

:up:


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## ah30k (Jan 9, 2006)

Its all about content. If TiVo can get the content it might work. I just finished watching 'The Black Donnellys' on the POS NBC web site because the only other way to get it was iTunes. It would have been sweet if I could have UnBoxed it (especially in HD), but they don't offer NBC shows.

Good luck!


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## Einselen (Apr 25, 2006)

/subscribed

Gotta wait until the morning for my priority list? Come on Pony... just kidding. Thanks!


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## supasta (May 6, 2006)

Will this be added via a software update?


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## TiVoPony (May 12, 2002)

supasta said:


> Will this be added via a software update?


No new software required. The feature lives on the service, and is accessed via your broadband connection.

Of course the hooks for it were built into the Spring release - you'll see. 

Pony


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## supasta (May 6, 2006)

How will it be "launching" in the morning? 

Man Pony, you and your dang secretive emoticons!


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## mtchamp (May 15, 2001)

Since its a web feature, you probably need the latest software version and TiVo connects your box to the new feature via your broadband connection. The priority list will be up tomorrow because I guess they don't want to make it available to all boxes at once so they can more easily handle any issues that might come up. Same as with most of their new stuff, we get special treatment.


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## ah30k (Jan 9, 2006)

The TiVos must be polling home every 15 minutes or so because Amazon Unbox downloads kickoff near real time. I know Amazon is not calling inbound.

One of the phone-home polls must be slowly enabling something starting tomorrow.


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## kangolo (Sep 14, 2002)

Very cool!

MCE has a similar feature (without the Amazon part), that allows drill downs on writer/director/cast - showing movies, along with times for any that are upcoming (and the the option to record them).

I always thought that was one of the coolest features of MCE, and I'm glad it's coming to my shiny new S3.

:up: :up: :up:


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## gargoyle999 (Oct 28, 2006)

The priority page is available now! www.tivo.com/priority


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## TiVoPony (May 12, 2002)

gargoyle999 said:


> The priority page is available now! www.tivo.com/priority


Yes, it is. Wow, you guys are quick. Beat me by two minutes. 

Pony


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## Einselen (Apr 25, 2006)

TiVoPony said:


> Yes, it is. Wow, you guys are quick. Beat me by two minutes.
> 
> Pony


Don't we usually? Glad to see it is up now and I don't have to worry about it when I wake up in the morning.


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## Einselen (Apr 25, 2006)

I am guessing we will get a message after we get the swivel feature, correct?


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## rdrrepair (Nov 24, 2006)

Looks like they did it right this time, it even works with the Series 3 TiVo.

Thanks Pony for the heads up.

New and innovative. Where's that poster that wanted to know why "TiVo can't innovate like it's 1999"?

We want more!!!


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## LifeIsABeach (Feb 28, 2001)

Is it okay to use this feature to cheat at "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"?


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## gonzotek (Sep 24, 2004)

Sounds excellent, good work Pony, et al.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

LifeIsABeach said:


> Is it okay to use this feature to cheat at "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"?


thunder stolen - but yes sounds like a good fun house thread to me. or better yet link from Alias or whatever to Kevin Bacon in the fewest swivels


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## Rebate_King (Nov 10, 2004)

the demo looks very cool!

http://www.tivo.com/4.9.27.asp


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## Solver (Feb 17, 2005)

:up: :up: This looks very good. More reasons to have the TiVo service instead of one of those other DVR boxes.

Just wait for the new TiVo ads on this to appear.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

rdrrepair said:


> New and innovative. Where's that poster that wanted to know why "TiVo can't innovate like it's 1999"?


My very first thought!

Thanks Pony and to all of the folks at TiVo. Now we know why it's been so quiet over there.


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## CharlesH (Aug 29, 2002)

ah30k said:


> The TiVos must be polling home every 15 minutes or so because Amazon Unbox downloads kickoff near real time. I know Amazon is not calling inbound.


Networked TiVo boxes have done the 'check home every 15 minutes' ever since remote scheduling of recordings over the Internet ("TiVo Central Online") was put in. It gets around firewall issues, since the TiVo is doing an outbound connection.

Now what would be nice is if they used this mechanism to push last-minute programming changes to your TiVo.


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## Rebate_King (Nov 10, 2004)

TiVoPony said:


> Well...ok, Amazon ordering from the couch isn't quite ready yet, but you'll see it's coming soon.


How soon?


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## TiVoPony (May 12, 2002)

Everyone who signed up for the priority list so far...you should have the feature very, very soon. Much sooner than I usually mean when I say that. 

15...
14...
13...

Pony


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## jchapman (Mar 29, 2005)

So when I look for shows on my Tivo that should be available based only on what channels I receive, I'm now going to see crap from Amazon.com? No thanks. I hope the visibility of downloads is configurable.


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## TiivoDog (Feb 14, 2007)

I just used the Swivel Search tool and it is really utile!! Initially, I thought this might be a 'fluffy' enhancement, but they have done a really good job with this feature and what is nice is they have integrated it with Amazon Unbox (AU). While I am currently not a fan of AU due to the lack of true widescreen support, lack of Dolby, etc..., it allows you to see movies that are available. Also, it advises that soon you will be able to subsequently order the AU movies (Purchases & Rentals) via the Tivo.

Anyways, my first take is well done Tivo!!!


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

jchapman said:


> So when I look for shows on my Tivo that should be available based only on what channels I receive, I'm now going to see crap from Amazon.com? No thanks. I hope the visibility of downloads is configurable.


the point is universal will let one search find everything. Plus the search narrows just as fast as it does in find by title. The TiVocast and Amazon stuff is clearly marked by icons as well. But if you really just wnat to search only your guide data - then the find by title or browse by time and channel is just as good as it always was.


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## Bai Shen (Dec 17, 2004)

ah30k said:


> The TiVos must be polling home every 15 minutes or so because Amazon Unbox downloads kickoff near real time. I know Amazon is not calling inbound.
> 
> One of the phone-home polls must be slowly enabling something starting tomorrow.


Networked tivo's check in every 15 minutes. Phone connected tivo's are once a day.

Anyways, this feature looks neat. I'll have to check it out.


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## supasta (May 6, 2006)

Just got it on my TiVo. Very innovative!
I cannot see myself using this very much(at all), but it sure is a neat idea!


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## mikesay98 (Aug 26, 2006)

supasta said:


> Just got it on my TiVo. Very innovative!
> I cannot see myself using this very much(at all), but it sure is a neat idea!


Ditto.


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## krypdo (Sep 13, 2001)

Just tried it too. Very cool indeed. It took my box almost 10 minutes to get into the option the first time around though.


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## djlock (Aug 5, 2005)

As one of the very first people to adopt TiVo nearly a decade ago, and evangelizing your product for hours on end to anyone I could get to listen, I take a small amount of credit for where TiVo is today and how it got there.

I cannot help but feel utterly betrayed by the friendly TiVo guy with the announcement of TiVos latest enhancement, the Swivel Search upgrade.

Once again, another upgrade comes for TiVo, and once again your locking out the people who took a chance on your unknown company and product and spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a TiVo Series 1 DVR.

Ive long since upgraded my TiVoadding hard drive capacity and adding a network card to give it broadband capability making my TiVo Series 1 no longer reliant on the telephone line for its daily call or software updates.

Ive sat back and watched as the Series 2 and Series 3 owners have enjoyed broadband fueled advancements like 

Network Scheduling

Sharing of media between TiVos and home computers

Ability to order movies through Amazon and have them downloaded to TiVo


Im sure TiVo has come to regret their early adopters who took the plunge and gave the unproven company hundreds of extra dollars at the time of purchase to secure a lifetime subscription to their service. Dangling tantalizing new features in front of our faces and keeping them from your Series 1 customers is probably seen as a way to push and nudge those customers up your product pipeline to more expensive and lucrative TiVo offerings. Historically, Ive given TiVo a pass on not implementing the above features for those who have upgraded their Series 1s with network capabilitybecause it wasnt an official upgrade--even though I know it would be easy to tell by polling the dialing string from the TiVo and using that to determine if it was networked or not. Whatever.

This latest enhancement from TiVo though is different. Updating the searching capabilities of the TiVo program database does not require broadband capability to implement on any TiVo. There is no reason why it could not also be made available to Series 1 owners. 

I urge TiVo to quickly reconsider this decision and offer this to Series 1 users as wellas a sign of good faith that you recognize the leap of faith your early adopters took on your startup companyrather than a stab in the back of those who took a chance on your company and helped you get to where you are today.

By turning your back on your earlier customers you begin to set a precedent that TiVo will ultimately look for ways to force users to scrap their old hardware and purchase pricier new hardwaresometimes for legitimate reasons (like HDTV)but also for artificial reasons (Swivel). Today its the Series 1 in the crosshairs, but if I buy a Series 2 or Series 3, how long will it be until those are targeted in a similar way? Certainly your market research has indicated that your customers arent stupidthey are more than aware of such betrayalsand, more importantly for your company, they are more than aware of the many alternatives to TiVo there are out there in the world as well.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

djlock said:


> By turning your back on your earlier customers you begin to set a precedent that TiVo will ultimately look for ways to force users to scrap their old hardware and purchase pricier new hardwaresometimes for legitimate reasons (like HDTV)but also for artificial reasons (Swivel).


wow, just wow. Swivel search uses the broadband connection to get the data such as the TiVocast and UnBOX data that is not on your local DVR. To use a broadband app to complain about no support for the fature on S1 just misses the mark by a long stretch.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

djlock said:


> This latest enhancement from TiVo though is different. Updating the searching capabilities of the TiVo program database does not require broadband capability to implement on any TiVo. There is no reason why it could not also be made available to Series 1 owners.
> 
> I urge TiVo to quickly reconsider this decision and offer this to Series 1 users as wellas a sign of good faith that you recognize the leap of faith your early adopters took on your startup companyrather than a stab in the back of those who took a chance on your company and helped you get to where you are today.


 My understanding is that this feature does require a broadband connection because it's using TiVo's servers to deliver the information. Otherwise all of the data ever available would have to be continually downloaded and updated on individual units.

You obviously spent a lot of time and put a lot of thought into your posting, but I think most would agree your logic isn't, well, logical.

With regard to updating products I'll bet you have a color (not black and white) TV, a telephone and not a telegraph, a car and not a horse and buggy?  You probably have a computer since you were able to share your thoughts. Do you own one of those rare machines that has free upgrades for life? Finding support for a vax machine or an Atari is pretty rare I would imagine. That's the nature of the beast. We still have two S1's, a couple of S2's and an S3. I'll probably buy an S6 one day. 

If you want a Porsche, you'll have to buy one. If you expect VW to upgrade your bug to a 911 you'll be disappointed.

To be fair your Series 1 TiVo still does everything it was advertised to do when you bought it...and then some. If you amortize how much you paid for it over however many years, it likely comes out to a few cents a day. Cheap by any standard for what you had and are enjoying now. IMHO you've received your money's worth and haven't much room to complain. But that's just my POV of course.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

:up: Oh...woo hoo...just got it on one of our S2's and it works brilliantly! C'mon S3!


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## riddick21 (Dec 12, 2006)

Nice feature but one small quick I've noticed is that this along with the home movie feature does not have as nice of a background as the rest of the menu's. I really think a picture in the back or something going on in the background makes the menus a lot nicer. Just my 2 cents.


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## Stu_Bee (Jan 15, 2002)

My first attempt worked well...
I record a Music Video VH1 top hits show (season pass), but it gets kinda stale, since it tends to have 90% of the same videos from week to week.
I used my current VH1 recording in my Now Playing list to Swivel and find other programs of the same type....it offered a few and I've setup a 11am MTV recording.
----------------------
My second attempt was a test on Heroes recording in Now Playing
I selected the swivel tag of "Cliff Hanger", and it offered a few shows including "24". 
Choosing 24 lists both the series available on Cable, and those available for Download from Amazon. Very cool.
----------------------
Surprisingly the GUI is pretty snappy too (unless this is going to change with a higher volume of user requests)


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## supasta (May 6, 2006)

Ok, just selected Swivel Search from the menu to give er another go... PLEASE WAIT up on the screen fro 5+ minutes now...TiVo button gets me out, luckily.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

supasta said:


> Ok, just selected Swivel Search from the menu to give er another go... PLEASE WAIT up on the screen fro 5+ minutes now...TiVo button gets me out, luckily.


 Hmmm...it works very quickly on our S2 which is actually a wi-fi setup. (Our S3 has Ethernet and should be even quicker once it shows up.  )

Did you check your broadband connection? Did you try it from other menu entry points? Always the same problem?

Anyway, I'd have a look at your Internet connection/speed to start. :up:


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## supasta (May 6, 2006)

It works blazing fast earlier this morning the first few times I tried it... 
My connection speeds remain the same and all else is well.

EDIT: Tried it a few more times and I got right in this last time...hmm..fluke I guess?


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

supasta said:


> It works blazing fast earlier this morning the first few times I tried it...
> My connection speeds remain the same and all else is well.
> 
> EDIT: Tried it a few more times and I got right in this last time...hmm..fluke I guess?


 Wonder if it has something to do with TiVo's servers? Or maybe it's sun spots?  Good that it's working now though.

Cheerz!


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## JacksTiVo (Jan 7, 2006)

It is a nice application and have already used it to schedule the recording of a movie.

Thanks TiVo. Can we expect any additional applications during the Blue Moon this month?


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## wdwms (Jan 10, 2003)

thought i had a bug.. nevermind..

but I'd think the default settin in swivel search would be for Channels You Receive, not everything.. 

-t


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

TiVoPony said:


> And if you like it, be sure to let the team know.
> 
> Enjoy!
> Pony


LOVE it.


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## ChuckyBox (Oct 3, 2005)

wdwms said:


> but I'd think the default settin in swivel search would be for Channels You Receive, not everything..


I think you would have to have your status be "opt in" in order for your box to send that info back to the TiVo mothership (which is where the application lives). Otherwise it just has to assume you get everything. TiVo really does try to conform to your privacy designations.


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## TiVoPony (May 12, 2002)

Oh yeah, I want to point out that the Swivel team here read this thread a few weeks ago with great delight.

Especially post #13.

We all wore tinfoil hats for a day or two after that, until we were certain the forum couldn't really read our minds. 

Pony


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## ChuckyBox (Oct 3, 2005)

tivoupgrade said:


> LOVE it.


Ditto. It's fantastic -- one of the best features you've added in a long time. It's well thought-out, the interface is simple, powerful and intuitive, and it is fun to use. It is exactly the kind of thing TiVo is good at.

I can see this becoming really powerful as more online video becomes available and you incorporate community tagging. Hell, you could probably put the app up on your web site for the public to use for free and it would become the standard search interface for online video content. (Hmm, Google is doing pretty well with not much more than a search engine...)


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## fareal (Feb 16, 2004)

I got the Swivel today. But also noticed today that the Live365 feature in my S3 is missing. Not sure when Live365 disappeared though, before or after the Swivel? Does Swivel eliminate Live365?

Another related post..
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5155621


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## Test (Dec 8, 2004)

TiVoPony said:


> Oh yeah, I want to point out that the Swivel team here read this thread a few weeks ago with great delight.
> 
> Especially post #13.
> 
> ...


haha Thats great, I read this thread at work today and thought this is exactly what I was looking for, signed up but still waiting to actually try it out...

hope its as good as it sounds/looks...


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## peteypete (Feb 3, 2004)

When I read the press release, at first I was skeptical, thinking that Tivo had better things to shore up on than work on their search capabilities. Furthermore, wasn't that what recommendations was supposed to do? (Ie, make search irrelevant?)

But upon trying the swivel, I can see it's pretty cool, and may be extremely useful once downloadable content gets intermingled with broadcast/cable.

And you can get an inkling of where it will go. One button purchase of unbox movies, maybe personal channels. ect, you tube content(?)

I wonder how much human intervention is needed to "tag" the swivels (and eventually put in photos), because that could become cumbersome. Ideally, you'd want to have some sort of schema to do it or leverage some kind of wiki?

But this certainly is "innovative" ala Tivo style. Lets hope you guys can sell it. 

I'm also glad at the reduced time between announcement and release. Expectations really have to be managed with the Tivo crowd!!

Good job!


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## Nalez (Mar 1, 2002)

supasta said:


> Ok, just selected Swivel Search from the menu to give er another go... PLEASE WAIT up on the screen fro 5+ minutes now...TiVo button gets me out, luckily.


One thing I noticed when playing with it, is that it seems that the swivel is a app that goes to the tivo severs for all of the data, so the faster the pipe to the Internet, the better the response time with application. I must say, this is a nice feature, I would have never thought of it


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## mtchamp (May 15, 2001)

Swivel Search is working. All of a sudden, there it was on the menu. So far I like the idea of finding a movie you like even if it's a download that I wouldn't purchase and then from there see more movies by the same actor on the channels I receive.

This search is everything on TiVo and it's a huge amount of programs, but I find it works very fast and I can move along quickly. I've had TiVo for so long now and have been so spoiled having what I want when I want it that I became really picky. This new Swivel Search feature makes it easy to see a huge amount of new programing choices while being fun at the same time as you can branch off to find more content by an actor or director and similar programs. There is an awful lot of valuable data involved. It's very interesting.

I actually did make quite a few recordings very easily during the hour I played around with it. I began to anticipate what would be displayed as I searched, so it's very easy to find more of what you like once you get going.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Just played with this on my S3 - very, very cool.

Well done, Tivo team.


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## TiivoDog (Feb 14, 2007)

TiVoPony said:


> Oh yeah, I want to point out that the Swivel team here read this thread a few weeks ago with great delight.
> 
> Especially post #13.
> 
> ...


TivoPony - this might be another one and while it isn't related to Swivel Search, which I do really like, it relates to something different. Why doesn't Tivo develop a methodology for sending signals back via broadband connection to support On Demand? The signals could either be sent directly to the Cable Provider or to Tivo as an intermdiary, where they would be passed to the appropriate Cable Provider via Secure Connectivity.

This platform might also be a plausible solution to the SDV concern, if there are not already plans to have that covered by some sort of USB port solution. Anyways, they both would continue to keep the Tivo Community very happy


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## rdrrepair (Nov 24, 2006)

djlock said:


> As one of the very first people to adopt TiVo nearly a decade ago....


Cross post x 3 :down:

This one that we're in

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5154364#post5154364

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5154354#post5154354


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## cwoody222 (Nov 13, 1999)

djlock said:


> Once again, another upgrade comes for TiVo, and once again your locking out the people who took a chance on your unknown company and product and spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a TiVo Series 1 DVR.


The S1 came out almost 10 years ago. The S2 came out - what? - 3-4 years ago?

It's time to upgrade. You cannot reasonably expect brand-new features to work on your 10 year old box.

Seriously.


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## Rebate_King (Nov 10, 2004)

cwoody222 said:


> The S1 came out almost 10 years ago. The S2 came out - what? - 3-4 years ago?
> 
> It's time to upgrade. You cannot reasonably expect brand-new features to work on your 10 year old box.
> 
> Seriously.


+1


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## Stu_Bee (Jan 15, 2002)

TiVoPony said:


> It merges broadband and broadcast content all into one set of results. Including TiVoCast and Amazon Unbox downloads. Every scrap of the best television to watch, regardless of where it comes from. You'll find it. That's the 'universal' part.


I guess the Amazon Unbox conduit of "Swivel" hasn't been completed yet....You cannot yet order a movie directly from the results. There's a "feature coming soon" type of disclaimer when attempting such.


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## Joe3 (Dec 12, 2006)

Can you access a Swivel Search from the now playing list under options?


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## ewilts (Feb 26, 2002)

djlock said:


> Ive long since upgraded my TiVoadding hard drive capacity and adding a network card to give it broadband capability making my TiVo Series 1 no longer reliant on the telephone line for its daily call or software updates.
> 
> Ive sat back and watched as the Series 2 and Series 3 owners have enjoyed broadband fueled advancements like
> 
> ...


All 3 of these require a network connection which the Series 1 has never supported. Just because you managed to hack one in doesn't mean that TiVo should now support it. TiVo developed new models that include a network interface - if you want that functionality to be supported, you'll need to upgrade.

Incidentally, the Series 3 does not support sharing of media between TiVos and home computers, but that's another discussion that's been well beaten on these forums.

.../Ed


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

cwoody222 said:


> The S1 came out almost 10 years ago. The S2 came out - what? - 3-4 years ago?
> 
> It's time to upgrade. You cannot reasonably expect brand-new features to work on your 10 year old box.
> 
> Seriously.


 he could just install Media Center on his 486 PC and use its search features


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## pedz (May 13, 2007)

Very impressed with this feature. Very responsive and much more useful than i would have thought. it is amazing how many movies are on that i didn't know about.

Two requests though. Have it filter for the channels you receive and when doing a swivel from scratch (typing in search criteria) have it search all possible content. It looks like it won't find a name unless it is in your guide. I typed in dicaprio and it didn't find any names, but if you search for dicaprio on amazon unbox you get several of his movies. it would be nice if the search covered tags from all sources, not just the guide.

But overall a great feature! thanks.


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## rdrrepair (Nov 24, 2006)

TiVoPony said:


> And if you like it, be sure to let the team know.
> 
> Enjoy!
> Pony


I don't like it! 

I love it. Great work guys. Keep them coming!!!


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## Einselen (Apr 25, 2006)

I like it and when the Amazon Unbox order from Tivo box comes out then I think the Swivel Universal Search will be even more of a benefit as it will be a very very large collection of On-Demand/PPV available to anyone (with broadband) regardless of provider.


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## Joe3 (Dec 12, 2006)

A great job on Swivel Search.

Very fast after you, spend your time punching in letters on the remote. Nevertheless, maybe I did not spend enough time with actual interface because of all the punching and scrolling for letters. 

I was wonder if I could save time by going into the Swivel Search interface from say off one of the lists or user guide. I have not been able to see a tag for Swivel Search from any other TiVo interface. I just do not want waste time punching out letters and editing mistakes when I could be highlighting and clicking an existing name somewhere. 


Anybody


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## TiVoPony (May 12, 2002)

Joe3 said:


> A great job on Swivel Search.
> 
> Very fast after you, spend your time punching in letters on the remote. Nevertheless, maybe I did not spend enough time with actual interface because of all the punching and scrolling for letters.
> 
> ...


You can do exactly this. Go to any program in your Now Playing List and select 'More Options'. You'll see Swivel Search listed, and when you click, Swivel will skip the keyboard and start with that show already loaded. 

Pony


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## Joe3 (Dec 12, 2006)

TiVoPony said:


> You can do exactly this. Go to any program in your Now Playing List and select 'More Options'. You'll see Swivel Search listed, and when you click, Swivel will skip the keyboard and start with that show already loaded.
> 
> Pony


Thanks much!

Joe


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## fareal (Feb 16, 2004)

TiVoPony said:


> You can do exactly this. Go to any program in your Now Playing List and select 'More Options'. You'll see Swivel Search listed, and when you click, Swivel will skip the keyboard and start with that show already loaded.
> 
> Pony


Cool, I'll have to keep that in mind.


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## dylanemcgregor (Jan 31, 2003)

So can this be integrated with ARWLs? It sounds like a really cool feature, but since I only get about 20 channels I imagine I'd be a bit frustrated to have everything I swivel for be something I can't watch.

Dylan


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## Stu_Bee (Jan 15, 2002)

dylanemcgregor said:


> since I only get about 20 channels I imagine I'd be a bit frustrated to have everything I swivel for be something I can't watch.
> Dylan


So you got results for channels you don't receive?


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

I found that hitting the *up or down page * (channel) on the remote jumps you from the keyboard to the top/bottom of the list of shows, so you don't have to burn the right arrow to get there.

You can back (left) arrow back through your searches, but if you get to a program record screen and back out of that to the swivel app it puts you in your last swivel screen, but loses the path, sending you to the keyboard if you back up further.


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## fareal (Feb 16, 2004)

Stu_Bee said:


> So you got results for channels you don't receive?


You shouldn't if you "Opt In" while setting up Swivel.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

USS looks like a good foundation to build on for the future. Its well presented and easy to use (if you already know this type of TiVo interface). The new square keyboard makes typing easier.

Its going to need more search criteria than just title for one thing.


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## jkovach (Feb 17, 2000)

A couple of UI issues:

1) If you go into the program details screen for something listed under "If You Like This...", when you arrow back you end up back 2 screens, at the alphabet input screen, and even worse the cursor is way over on the far left side of the alphabet instead of being on the screen that listed the "If You LIke This..." programs. So if you want to check out more programs under "If You Like This...", you have to arrow right a half dozen or more times, reselect the correct program choice, go back to "If You Like This...", etc.

2) Some of the Amazon Unbox content isn't displaying any description on the Program Synopsis screen, yet when you arrow down to Available Downloads a description is shown but can be so long it gets cut off. Example: Yellow River Fighter


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## lcann44 (Apr 15, 2007)

I don't know when I got it but I got it. I noticed when I was looking at my now playing list there was an "other" category. I didn't think about it then I came back here. So I swivled on "The Shield" and then Michael Chilkis. Came up with "The Three Stooges" of which I know nothing about (the movie) but I thought it might be interesting to see how he plays Curly.


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## jhimmel (Dec 27, 2002)

fareal said:


> You shouldn't if you "Opt In" while setting up Swivel.


I did opt in, and I set swivel search to "channels I receive", and it still insists on offering results that include channels I have un-selected from my channel list.

For instance - I have un-selected channels 51 and 501 (which are duplicate TNT network channels on my FiOS system) because I get TNTHD on 825 which has the same programming as the other two, but offers HD. However, results on Swivel Search include all three channels. A bug???

Other than that, I like it.

Jim H.


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## Test (Dec 8, 2004)

What gives, I submitted all of my #'s and still nothing...don't have the swivel feature. I know it says 3 days, but how did everyone get it so fast?


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## Welshdog (Jan 4, 2005)

TiVoPony said:


> Oh yeah, I want to point out that the Swivel team here read this thread a few weeks ago with great delight.
> 
> Especially post #13.
> 
> ...


I started that thread because I am able to read the minds of Tivo employees while they sleep, so you guys had better move your beds inside giant Faraday cages if you don't want me to spill anything else. Or make some RF shielded pajamas from this stuff: shield fabric. Much more chic than tinfoil.

Hey can I apply for a job at Tivo? Great minds . . . right?


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## aus1ander (Sep 17, 2004)

Test said:


> What gives, I submitted all of my #'s and still nothing...don't have the swivel feature. I know it says 3 days, but how did everyone get it so fast?


Me too. Still waiting.


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## Tuckrat (Feb 4, 2004)

Test said:


> What gives, I submitted all of my #'s and still nothing...don't have the swivel feature. I know it says 3 days, but how did everyone get it so fast?


Force a network connection...


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## TiVoPony (May 12, 2002)

jhimmel said:


> I did opt in, and I set swivel search to "channels I receive", and it still insists on offering results that include channels I have un-selected from my channel list.
> 
> For instance - I have un-selected channels 51 and 501 (which are duplicate TNT network channels on my FiOS system) because I get TNTHD on 825 which has the same programming as the other two, but offers HD. However, results on Swivel Search include all three channels. A bug???
> 
> ...


Once you select 'opt-in', it can take up to 38 hours before your DVR is aware of the change. In the meantime, the DVR is not aware that you have changed your status, and will not share your 'Channels I Receive' list with the service (per our privacy policy).

Hope that helps explain what you're seeing...with a little time that option will work fine for you.

Pony


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## TiVoPony (May 12, 2002)

Test said:


> What gives, I submitted all of my #'s and still nothing...don't have the swivel feature. I know it says 3 days, but how did everyone get it so fast?


It came down fast because I went and begged a favor from the operations team yesterday morning. If you were in yesterday morning, you should have received it by now. 

They'll be processing the new requests, if yours doesn't show up in a day or two go ahead and resubmit the TSN.

Cheers,
Pony


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## nirisahn (Nov 19, 2005)

:up: :up: :up: 
I just tried it. Very cool. Everybody Swivel!!!


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## jjberger2134 (Nov 20, 2002)

TiVoPony said:


> It came down fast because I went and begged a favor from the operations team yesterday morning. If you were in yesterday morning, you should have received it by now.
> 
> They'll be processing the new requests, if yours doesn't show up in a day or two go ahead and resubmit the TSN.
> 
> ...


I received it on one of my two units and did *NOT* sign up for the priority list. It seems to be a really cool feature, although I have yet to really fool with it. Thanks for sending it out this quickly to those not on the priority list.


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## TiVoPony (May 12, 2002)

jjberger2134 said:


> I received it on one of my two units and did *NOT* sign up for the priority list. It seems to be a really cool feature, although I have yet to really fool with it. Thanks for sending it out this quickly to those not on the priority list.


You just got lucky...we're rolling it out over the next few weeks to all of our broadband customers. It's a random distribution, and you just happened to get it the first day. 

Pony


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## Turtleboy (Mar 24, 2001)

This may be smeeking but can I opt in online, on the website, instead of having to do it on my tivo? Typing in the password on the tivo is a pain.


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## nirisahn (Nov 19, 2005)

Turtleboy said:


> This may be smeeking but can I opt in online, on the website, instead of having to do it on my tivo? Typing in the password on the tivo is a pain.


Smeek!  
Read post #11. It has a link to the priority list.


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## fred2 (Jan 20, 2006)

Okay, I see that to use Swivel effectly I have to OPT-IN. 

My question is looking through the various settings and Tivo Screens, I don't see where one can reverse that decision and opt-OUT if I want to change my mind??

Is this a setting that can be changed on the Tivo or does it require ONLINE settings?

(I did try a search but the results were less than rewarding)

Any help appreciated.


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## Turtleboy (Mar 24, 2001)

nirisahn said:


> Smeek!
> Read post #11. It has a link to the priority list.


You misunderstood. I signed up for the priority list. I got the update. When I go to swivel it asks me to type in my PW (on the tivo) in order to opt into the priviacy thingy. I don't want to type it in on the tivo. I want to type it in online.


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## Einselen (Apr 25, 2006)

Turtleboy said:


> You misunderstood. I signed up for the priority list. I got the update. When I go to swivel it asks me to type in my PW (on the tivo) in order to opt into the priviacy thingy. I don't want to type it in on the tivo. I want to type it in online.


I was not asked for my password, but I opted in to the privacy policy back when I did Tivocast I believe. I think it all goes back to all those services, so setup Tivocast season pass online and then you should be set, or so I would think.


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## TiVoPony (May 12, 2002)

Turtleboy said:


> You misunderstood. I signed up for the priority list. I got the update. When I go to swivel it asks me to type in my PW (on the tivo) in order to opt into the priviacy thingy. I don't want to type it in on the tivo. I want to type it in online.


Turtleboy,

I do not believe you can currently change your privacy setting via the website. From our privacy policy, if you want to change your status: you may (a) send TiVo a signed written request at the address set forth in Section 8.3, or (b) call us at 1-877-367-8486 to request a change.

The option does exist to opt-in via some of the online features on your DVR (such as Swivel Search). These are secure (SSL) connections directly to TiVo - they would be as secure as using the website (if that were an option), you're not actually storing any password on the DVR itself. You also need only enter this password once. It can take up to 38 hours for the updated status to take effect, but you won't have to enter your password again and again.

Hope this information is helpful -

Cheers,
Pony


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## Turtleboy (Mar 24, 2001)

Yeah, I just typed it in using the remote. Not a big deal. I was just being lazy before.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

It's an interesting feature and I like how it links everything together, but I'm not sure how often I'll use it. Like most of TiVo's non-DVR features, I'll probably play with it for a while and then kind of forget about it. I kind of think of it as [URL="http://www.imdb.com]IMDB[/URL] for your TiVo and since I don't spend much time randomly clicking links on IMDB I don't see myself doing that on my TiVo either. 

It might be more useful when the Amazon downloads are enabled, but for now it's more of a novelty than anything else. As it is I have too much stuff being recorded and not enough time to watch it anyway, I don't need another distraction at this time.


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## lcann44 (Apr 15, 2007)

morac said:


> It's an interesting feature and I like how it links everything together, but I'mIt might be more useful when the Amazon downloads are enabled, but for now it's more of a novelty than anything else.


Huh? Amazon downloads are enabled. I swiveled to the tags, clicked on one and it took me to the one click spot on Amazon. Appears to work just fine.


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## Stu_Bee (Jan 15, 2002)

lcann44 said:


> Huh? Amazon downloads are enabled. I swiveled to the tags, clicked on one and it took me to the one click spot on Amazon. Appears to work just fine.


So you don't get this screen after choosing an available download from swivel? (see attachment)


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

I just got this update and find it quite useful.

Seems, though, it needs a few tweaks here and there.
For instance, while playing around, I wound up searching William Shatner. Twilight Zone was one of the shows listed.
When I clicked on TZ, it showed 11 upcoming episodes. Seems USS needs to get a little smarter, because only 1 of those episodes starred WS.

I also noticed the bug (?) where the search goes back 2 pages instead of 1 (as mentioned above), but only once. I wish I could remember how I was using the search at the time for possible diagnosis.

Lastly, as far as I could tell, the USS did not bring up any programs on channels I don't recieve.
I would also like to be able to filter out the Amazon results as I don't plan on using the Amazon feature.

So _please_ tell me there is going to be some ''fine tuning'' done on this.


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## jhimmel (Dec 27, 2002)

TiVoPony said:


> Once you select 'opt-in', it can take up to 38 hours before your DVR is aware of the change. In the meantime, the DVR is not aware that you have changed your status, and will not share your 'Channels I Receive' list with the service (per our privacy policy).
> 
> Hope that helps explain what you're seeing...with a little time that option will work fine for you.
> 
> Pony


Thanks.

Jim H.


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## Test (Dec 8, 2004)

Got it and I'm playing around with it, so far so good...



steve614 said:


> I just got this update and find it quite useful.
> 
> Seems, though, it needs a few tweaks here and there.
> For instance, while playing around, I wound up searching William Shatner. Twilight Zone was one of the shows listed.
> When I clicked on TZ, it showed 11 upcoming episodes. Seems USS needs to get a little smarter, because only 1 of those episodes starred WS.


About that, I'm trying it now and when I get to Star Trek and scroll down to William Shatner then go to the right and select The Twilight Zone, after the TZ screen comes up there is an option to the right to "Record this program" that should record only the one that Shatner is in, if you go down to upcoming showings it of course will display all shows...is that it? btw I did that and it is displaying the TZ episode with Leonard Nimoy instead of Shatner...hmmmm

A nice touch for this app, would be to put an option in the info screen for when you are watching a program, a uss button under the record button or clickable text in the actual information...

edit: Checked the Star Trek thing again and it looks like TZ shows up for 4 out of the 8 cast members displayed, BUT the only one that is airing near me and has a connection to ST actors, is the Nimoy one and that is the one USS displays and asks if I want to record...


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

Test said:


> Got it and I'm playing around with it, so far so good...
> 
> About that, I'm trying it now and when I get to Star Trek and scroll down to William Shatner then go to the right and select The Twilight Zone, after the TZ screen comes up there is an option to the right to "Record this program" that should record only the one that Shatner is in, if you go down to upcoming showings it of course will display all shows...is that it? btw I did that and it is displaying the TZ episode with Leonard Nimoy instead of Shatner...hmmmm
> 
> ...


I knew about Doohan, but did not remember Takei.

Anyway you guys are a bit screwded, 'cause USS can't do what you want.

Contest: Find TZ ep with Takei...


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## TiVoPony (May 12, 2002)

Test said:


> ...when I get to Star Trek and scroll down to William Shatner then go to the right and select The Twilight Zone, after the TZ screen comes up there is an option to the right to "Record this program" that should record only the one that Shatner is in, if you go down to upcoming showings it of course will display all shows...is that it?


Yep, the search doesn't tell you which of the episodes has Shatner in it. It's a limitation for finding a specific episode with a specific guest star of some programs. It's just not something the current version of the app supports.

Pony


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Stu_Bee said:


> So you don't get this screen after choosing an available download from swivel? (see attachment)


 That's the screen I get when I try to download an Unbox program too.

Is anyone else able to order Amazon Unbox programing via Swivel?


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

TiVoPony said:


> Yep, the search doesn't tell you which of the episodes has Shatner in it. It's a limitation for finding a specific episode with a specific guest star of some programs. It's just not something the current version of the app supports.
> 
> Pony


I see. It's accurate enough for me to scroll through and find the particular episode. I can live with that.

About this...


steve614 said:


> I also noticed the bug (?) where the search goes back 2 pages instead of 1 (as mentioned above), but only once. I wish I could remember how I was using the search at the time for possible diagnosis.


This was refering to when you go forward through pages of different shows/actors/genres, etc., and instead of backtracking through ALL the pages you visited, you just get returned to the initial search screen.
The more I played around with this feature, that may not be a bug, but rather another limitation (or intentional for performance reasons). No big deal.

Again, great feature, Tivo.


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## smak (Feb 11, 2000)

TiVoPony said:


> Yep, the search doesn't tell you which of the episodes has Shatner in it. It's a limitation for finding a specific episode with a specific guest star of some programs. It's just not something the current version of the app supports.
> 
> Pony


Hmmm, I wonder if you could have a link go to a wishlist with that actor already entered. That would get you your individual episode. And also even be able to add a wishlist with that actor.

On the demo, under Seinfeld I noticed only the 4 main stars as being able to swivel. I guess that also has to do with with swivel not seeing the individual guest stars of an episode that was the problem with Shatner.

This would be a very big addition, because it's not usually the main stars of a show or movie you want to go check out, but a secondary or guest star that you don't know much about that you might want to see what else he's in.

-smak-


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## BlackBetty (Nov 6, 2004)

richsadams said:


> That's the screen I get when I try to download an Unbox program too.
> 
> Is anyone else able to order Amazon Unbox programing via Swivel?


Yes, I'm able.


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## rdrrepair (Nov 24, 2006)

TiVoPony said:


> Universal Swivel Search.
> 
> What is it? It's the coolest search tool you'll find on any DVR, anywhere. It merges broadband and broadcast content all into one set of results. Including TiVoCast and Amazon Unbox downloads. Every scrap of the best television to watch, regardless of where it comes from. You'll find it. That's the 'universal' part.


Will I be able, anytime soon, to swivel from my "Season Pass Manager" and from my "Keyword Wishlist"?

Let's say I have Monty Python as a "Must Record Wishlist". When will I be able to view if UnBox has anything for me? As it stands now, I would have to wait until TiVo finds this wishlist hit before I can Swivel Search.

Let me Swivel some more Pops!


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

BlackBetty said:


> Yes, I'm able.


 That's really interesting that some people can order downloads from Amazon Unbox directly from their TiVo and others (like me  ) can't. We have an Amazon account and have ordered programs from Unbox on line previously...we're pretty happy with the service. :up:

So Pony...what's up with that? Will the rest of us be blessed with another update soon?


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

rdrrepair said:


> Let's say I have Monty Python as a "Must Record Wishlist".


 :up: :up: :up:


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## Fraser+Dief (Nov 18, 2005)

Is this going to work for us Canucks who can't get Unbox?


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## eric23 (Jan 15, 2002)

TiVo has been saying "swivel" to us UK users for many years now. The only new 'feature' we want in the UK is for TiVo to start selling new boxes to us.

Come on, what is the problem?! Huge potential market here. Sky have done the hard work of educating users on the benefits of a PVR. Now we're just waiting for the real PVR player to come back to the market!


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

I am dang proud of Tivo and the Swivel team. And equally proud of the folks that looked at the strategic picture. This is precisely is where the traditional video distributors cannot go. And it is killer because ultimately the best navigation mechanism trumps even content. Google proved that.

I am curious of course what the target coverage is- The Tool Time Tim in me wants to know how much can this puppy can scale but I guess that falls under the category of "We could tell you that, but then we'd have to kill you."

In practical terms though I wonder if I were to TTG a .tivo back from my Server if it would/ will later be able to swivel on that metadata, or if the database only has stuff from what is currently upcoming from Tribune/Amazon etc sources. Is that just the starting point, or is the intent to grow this to IMDB proportions.

Nice that you can access from the info page on a show in the now playing, but hey- in this day and age, can't we just bury the Save to VCR in the "more options" and hoist swivel up out of "more options"?

Ok- so I swiveled around the Tigger movie, (because their tails are made out of springs)- I requested a show, and of course the swivel server doesn't know what my channel list is and warned me to check as with Tivo Central online... but wait. Why not. Of course every moron that has dabbled in databases thinks he has a brilliant idea but what the heck. How about bitmap mask representation of the channel list. They are super fast to evaluate, and extremely compact to transmit. After all, it's only 128 Bytes to transmit the bits on or off if they recieve particular channels. And when you get your hitlist back, masking off false positives is super super fast. Just a rotate to get the Byte offset, then an AND on the bit remainder.

I also noticed the Universal Swivel did not index HDTivo's channel. He is funny about that sort of thing and is liable to harp on this serious mistep.


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## kharder (Jan 12, 2007)

Is there anyone else that signed up on the priority list 3 days ago that has not received Swivel yet?


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## TiivoDog (Feb 14, 2007)

Fraser+Dief said:


> Is this going to work for us Canucks who can't get Unbox?


Until AU improves the picture quality/aspect ration, as well as lack of Dolby/Surround Sound, you are not a missing a thing other than dissapointment in that product..... It could be a real winner, however at the end of the day one can say I have transportation, rather than a BMW (or whatever is your favorite car).

Additionally, when that launched, I among many of my comrades in these forums identified these material areas of improvement and we were told that they were already or 'soon to be' actively working on it, but we have not yet seen a damn improvement on any of those two fronts!!


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## miller890 (Feb 15, 2002)

Why wasn't the Swivel Search option added to the individual show/program listing pages? For example when you select a show or a movie out of the guide, I usually want to look for something similar or with the same actors; it seems like a logical place to have the swivel search option.


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## thenightfly42 (Mar 5, 2002)

supasta said:


> Ok, just selected Swivel Search from the menu to give er another go... PLEASE WAIT up on the screen fro 5+ minutes now...TiVo button gets me out, luckily.


I had the same thing happen to me the first time I tried Swivel, except I waited 10 minutes with no further response on the TiVo (I was Swiveling on "Planet Earth", if that helps). The TiVo button got me out, fortunately, and my next attempt ("Mythbusters") worked smoothly and quickly.

Love it!


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## lcann44 (Apr 15, 2007)

Stu_Bee said:


> So you don't get this screen after choosing an available download from swivel? (see attachment)


 Upon Further Review, that is exactly what I got.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

lcann44 said:


> Upon Further Review, that is exactly what I got.


 Okay, I feel better now...well sort of. 

Soooo, BlackBetty are you saying you can actually order and download Amazon Unbox programming from Swivel? Are you _sure_?

Oh, and my wife and I agree with TivoDog (well, mostly me)...Unbox material could be much better picture and sound-wise. But when we don't feel like hitting the video store (read: lazy, not dressed for the ocassion, don't want to deal with the general public), we can order a movie and enjoy it. If it's a "chick flick" it doesn't bother me too much that I can't see one of the stars shoes in HD.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

A few random thoughts, much of which has already been said in this thread...

* I love this new feature. Very cool! :up:

* Swivel should be available from the info banner, just like captions.

* I would like to see guest stars swiveled.

* The little pictures of each actor in a show is blank; this would be very helpful if it worked, as I often don't know which person is which.

* Is there a way to swivel a live show (not being recorded)? I haven't figured out how if there is.

* If I understand swivel correctly, when I swivel on an actor, it shows me other programs he/she is in that are *currently* in the guide. There should be a <more> line that has access to *all* the movies/shows that person is in, regardless of whether it is available in the next 14 days. Then if you want it, basically offer one-click creation of a WL for that item.

And totally unrelated: Captions on/off should be available from a single toggle button on the remote; the current method is just a butt-ugly UI.


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## kharder (Jan 12, 2007)

TiVoPony,

I added my TiVo's to the list 3 days ago and still no Swivel search. Does the addition of this feature get added during a calling to TiVo Service?

Anxiously waiting.


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## TydalForce (Feb 9, 2006)

I ran into an interesting hiccup with the Swivel Search last night...

I did a search for "24" since I'm trying to catch up (just got into it a couple months ago). Since it's being rerun on a few stations, I had a list of maybe 20-30 episodes come up.

As I scrolled through the list, in the upper right it has the Episode Title (Day 5: 6:00AM - 7:00AM) in orange, and below that the episode summary. 

Sometimes the Episode Title wouldn't show up. But if I scrolled around and up and down and back to the same episode it might show up correctly. Not sure what's going on, but there's some kind of retrieval/display glitch for the episode titles.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Nevermind.


Justin Thyme said:


> Just a rotate to get the Byte offset, then an AND on the bit remainder.


Oops. I forgot. Evaluation was much simpler. What I was mentioning last night was that if you have a bitmap with each bit representing a retrieval unit, you wind up with super sparse arrays representing features- eg all stations that are HD in an area, or all channels that the user recieves. It allows you to do super fast evaluation- no need to walk trees and compare retrieval lists. All you are doing is applying bitwise ANDs, XORs, or IORs. Anyhow- referencing and dereferencing uses simple pointer arithmetic I described, but the evaluation is wicked fast.

It can be an attractive approach for a domain such as this with a restricted vocabulary of terms, but this excels at multiple boolean operations- something not demanded here.

Anyway, so much for me trying to be helpful while in my usual daze before going to eyelid theater.


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## TiVoPony (May 12, 2002)

kharder said:


> TiVoPony,
> 
> I added my TiVo's to the list 3 days ago and still no Swivel search. Does the addition of this feature get added during a calling to TiVo Service?
> 
> Anxiously waiting.


I'd re-enter your TSN into the form. It may well be that there was something lost in the translation from your DVR's screen to the database back here.

The simplest approach is to give it another try.

Pony


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## TiVoPony (May 12, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> Ok- so I swiveled around the Tigger movie, (because their tails are made out of springs)- I requested a show, and of course the swivel server doesn't know what my channel list is and warned me to check as with Tivo Central online...


That's odd. It should know your channel list.

Although it may not know your 'Channels I Receive' list right away (it can take up to 38 hours after you opt-in...ok, 37.25 hours, but I'm rounding up to 38). Is that what you mean?

Pony


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## TiVoPony (May 12, 2002)

miller890 said:


> Why wasn't the Swivel Search option added to the individual show/program listing pages? For example when you select a show or a movie out of the guide, I usually want to look for something similar or with the same actors; it seems like a logical place to have the swivel search option.


I've read a few suggestions regarding various ways to enter Swivel Search. Glad you all like the feature, we agree it would be great to integrate it into even more of the TiVo UI.

Patience, grasshoppa's. Patience.

In terms of expectation setting...We tend not to put updates out on a weekly or even monthly basis. And some things require more technology than others. It just does. But it's good to know that your suggestions are in line with some of the things we've been discussing here at TiVo. 

Pony


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## Steve_W (May 12, 2007)

kharder said:


> Is there anyone else that signed up on the priority list 3 days ago that has not received Swivel yet?


Yes, me. -Steve


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

astrohip said:


> * If I understand swivel correctly, when I swivel on an actor, it shows me other programs he/she is in that are *currently* in the guide. There should be a <more> line that has access to *all* the movies/shows that person is in, regardless of whether it is available in the next 14 days.


This is the coverage question that keeps coming up. While driving through rush hour, it became clear to me that big coverage has a downside. The upside of course is that you have a lot of exemplars- sources of a search. EG- who's that guy with the moustache in Gone with the Wind- really famous in the 30's and 40's... Are there any upcoming films with him (Clark Gable)? But the downside they want to avoid is- ok the actor was in these 30 movies, but only 4 of them are available via Unbox or from your cableco. So the user perception is- this service is a desert- most of the stuff isn't there. It's a perception thing- rather than let them think their glass is half empty (as HDTivo is fond of doing), you give them a smaller glass and it is always full/overflowing. May sound deceptive, but this is stage art, not science/ engineering realities. Your job as a product manager is manage the customer's perceptions the best you can so customers are always forming good ones.

Anyway maybe there is a good way to have exemplars but not present them as targets in a UI that makes sense. It didn't occur to me immediately how to do that gracefully.


astrohip said:


> * The little pictures of each actor in a show is blank; this would be very helpful if it worked, as I often don't know which person is which.


Although they would be postage stamp size, there are probably huge rights acquisition problem on the actor images/ promotion posters for movies. IMDB can get away with fair use, but I am not so sure swivel would be in the same boat, because the pictures adds value to a paid service. It's not that the rights would be expensive- it is more that the acquisition of them is painful- multiple suppliers, separate contracts, just a pain in the neck for a few lousy images at a time...



astrohip said:


> offer one-click creation of a WL for that item.


Hear Hear. I would be great to have checkboxes on all features, then the wishlist is generated in the background at some later time and I can keep cruising in swivel. EG. I am in Blue Velvet, I checkbox David lynch, the actor who plays the bad guy, and one for the guy who plays the protaganist (forget his name- the twin peaks/ dune guy.. . where is swivel when you need it?). Then I can continue on, I jump over to Lynch's stuff, order a download of Dune, etc etc.

If you stick a big wait in there for the WL interaction, and ask if I want all upcoming shows etc., then it disrupts the ambience of navigation within swivel.


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## TiVoPony (May 12, 2002)

astrohip said:


> * I would like to see guest stars swiveled.


Guest stars are valuable, but also remarkably tricky. Do you have any idea how many guest stars there were on a long running series like Seinfeld or MASH? I know I was surprised.

And then there's determining whether any of the upcoming episodes are the particular episode with that guest star.

It would require quite a different UI design. And work on queries and backend performance. Not impossible, and something to consider in the future. But not today.

Cheers,
Pony


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

TiVoPony said:


> Although it may not know your 'Channels I Receive' list right away (it can take up to 38 hours after you opt-in...ok, 37.25 hours, but I'm rounding up to 38). Is that what you mean?


That was it. The show no longer is offerred.


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## kharder (Jan 12, 2007)

TiVoPony said:


> I'd re-enter your TSN into the form. It may well be that there was something lost in the translation from your DVR's screen to the database back here.
> 
> The simplest approach is to give it another try.
> 
> Pony


Thanks I will add them again. I did copy the 3 TSID's from my manage account screen but who knows.

Thanks anyway. By the way, does the TiVo have to call home to get this new feature?


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Justin Thyme said:


> Anyway maybe there is a good way to have exemplars but not present them as targets in a UI that makes sense.


Nevermind- they already do this- at least partly. Take a show recorded last week sometime. Select it out of now playing, go to More options..Swivel..If you like this. Now look at the "If you like this from the POV of any of those shows, and you will not find your source show because it is not upcoming. EG- I recorded the Tigger Movie. It's see also's include Mulan II, Three Musketeers, etc. none of which's "If you like this..." lists mention the Tigger Movie.

So you can get there from here, but you maybe can't get back if the "here" example show is not available for viewing.

Interestingly though, I don't have a solution for my "Find out Clark Gable's name from knowing the movie name Gone with the Wind" problem. Though the data for The Tigger Movie and quite possibly Gone with the Wind is there in the database, I can't get to the information from Swivel phrase search.

Other thing- it is really a lot of fun surfing inside of Swivel and maintaining a fast back list set of screens is key to that. I notice there is an information starvation problem on many shows, and though that will fill out with time for the common programs- there is always going to be non mainstream content which may actually be a significant percentage if the the long tail effect materializes. Anyhow, I am suggesting it is may be a generic problem, where you have a screen that has everything empty- no starring list, a single line description. Suggestion- Don't disrupt the UI Hypertext surfing rhythm by making them click "If you liked this" item- or Worse- make them think that this show is a dead end. FILL with your rich see also's- take the most popular items and fill the lower quarter screen below descriptions for such sparse data shows, and put a "more shows" entry to extend. And default the highlight to that list so they can keep on surfing swivel.

Kudo- Thanks very much for attending to the problem with entering text and going left to a previous screen, and then when you re-enter the text is lost. This drove me nuts on Toshiba recording when I accidently fumbled on a record live video text entry screen for the name of the video. Swivel very thankfully does not have that problem- not that I have to enter much text anyway due to word wheel.

Oh- another suggestion- word wheels have a problem with the surprisingly huge number of folks who never were much good at spelling bees. You can do pseudo phonetic word wheels by adding common mispellings (try last name of the main actor of Mask) but this can also be done algorithmically for non word wheels. Henry Kucera came up with the soundex algorithm- I think he assigned rights to Houghton Mifflin but that was so long ago the patent is probably unencumbered by now. I think you are doing straight word wheel, but if someone is determined to type in Perl, you can ask "did you mean 'Pearl'", and insert them into that word wheel point.


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## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

TiVoPony said:


> No new software required. The feature lives on the service, and is accessed via your broadband connection.
> 
> Of course the hooks for it were built into the Spring release - you'll see.
> 
> Pony


Pony,

Just use it today and just fun to use, almost as fun as watching TV.  
Is this going to be added to the Comcast/Cox service?


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## Fraser+Dief (Nov 18, 2005)

Looks like I got my answer to "will it work for us Canucks?"

I've got the announcement message, but no sign anywhere of swivel.

Really sucks that since one component (Unbox) isn't available, that none of it is.


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## kharder (Jan 12, 2007)

TiVoPony,

I received a message indicating the I now have the new Swivel Search feature but it does not appear anywhere. I am in Canada but I would hope that this is not the reason why it won't work. It appears that Fraser+Dief has the same issue.

Please help!


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## kharder (Jan 12, 2007)

Any Canadian TiVo subscribers out there that have received Swivel Search and can see the option in Find Programs and in now playing list under more options and use the search function?


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## Martin Tupper (Dec 18, 2003)

Pony,

Is there (will there be) a menu shortcut that will take us directly to swivel search. Or perhaps a backdoor code that will toggle the TiVo+4 shortcut from "Search by Title" to "Swivel Search"


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## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

I signed up for the swivel list, and got the TiVo message about it today. Unfortunately, no other sign of it exists. I assume that's because I haven't been updated to 8.3 yet - I see the notes about spring update. So now a real reason for me to urge TiVo to finish up the 8.3 release!

(I received my replacement S3 on Monday morning, but it has only updated to 8.1 since then).


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## kharder (Jan 12, 2007)

CrispyCritter said:


> I signed up for the swivel list, and got the TiVo message about it today. Unfortunately, no other sign of it exists. I assume that's because I haven't been updated to 8.3 yet - I see the notes about spring update. So now a real reason for me to urge TiVo to finish up the 8.3 release!
> 
> (I received my replacement S3 on Monday morning, but it has only updated to 8.1 since then).


CrispyCritter,

By chance are you from Canada?


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Justin Thyme said:


> Henry Kucera came up with the soundex algorithm- I think he assigned rights to Houghton Mifflin but that was so long ago the patent is probably unencumbered by now.


Oops. He didn't do Soundex. Henry did this great spell checker in the 80's that he said he used Soundex on. I guess I mistook his strong advocacy of wider use of soundex with authorship- which was unfair- he was an enthusiast of great ideas regardless whether they were is own or not.

Anyway, Soundex used in indexers is really old, so there shouldn't be any patent issue on the basic idea- the great thing is that it works on Proper Names- you encode the variant possible pronunciations of a name in phoneme equivalents. Then when someone types in a possible spelling, you do your word wheel thing, but also you are encoding as possible phonemes.


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## Stu_Bee (Jan 15, 2002)

I guess one thing inaccurate about the Tivo Message recently received on our Tivo, is the statement that Universal Swivel enables you to "Schedule on-time recordings, download specific content, or get a season pass to a series".

As far as I understand, currently you cannot "download" specific content from the Swivel feature. Sounds like something they hope to add in the future...I'm a little surprised they left the amazon results in prior to the enabling the feature. Although, if nothing else, it makes people aware that the Amazon unboxed downloads exist.


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## BlackBetty (Nov 6, 2004)

richsadams said:


> Okay, I feel better now...well sort of.
> 
> Soooo, BlackBetty are you saying you can actually order and download Amazon Unbox programming from Swivel? Are you _sure_?


Yep you're right. I was mistaken. No Amazon unbox programming from Swivel yet.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Stu_Bee said:


> I guess one thing inaccurate about the Tivo Message recently received on our Tivo, is the statement that Universal Swivel enables you to "Schedule on-time recordings, download specific content, or get a season pass to a series".
> 
> As far as I understand, currently you cannot "download" specific content from the Swivel feature. Sounds like something they hope to add in the future...I'm a little surprised they left the amazon results in prior to the enabling the feature. Although, if nothing else, it makes people aware that the Amazon unboxed downloads exist.


You can download TiVoCast episodes from Swivel (it jumps to the TiVoCast application) so technically the description is accurate.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

BlackBetty said:


> Yep you're right. I was mistaken. No Amazon unbox programming from Swivel yet.


 Phew! Thought we were being "left behind" again.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

There are many mysteries to life- one of them being whether the information in the database is truly infinite. It was interesting to learn that there is latent info in there. ( EG the Tigger movie was in the database and could be accessed by doing a more info..Swivel on it, though you could not directly search on it.) So I wonderred how much more latent information from the Tribune data (or wherever) is actually in the master matrix. 

I reloaded a .tivo from the vast Thyme archives and learned that the database is indeed not infinite. At least not an obscure russian film recorded two years ago. 

When you more info...Swivel on it, what it does is leave you at the query input screen. 

Maybe someone has some .tivo's from a mainstream movie from a year or so ago and see if they get the same. Unfortunately, I nuked all of the original .tivo files for those and only have super obscure things in original .tivo format.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

Stu_Bee said:


> I guess one thing inaccurate about the Tivo Message recently received on our Tivo, is the statement that Universal Swivel enables you to "Schedule on-time recordings, download specific content, or get a season pass to a series".
> 
> As far as I understand, currently you cannot "download" specific content from the Swivel feature. Sounds like something they hope to add in the future...I'm a little surprised they left the amazon results in prior to the enabling the feature. Although, if nothing else, it makes people aware that the Amazon unboxed downloads exist.


You can if it is TiVoCast and since TiVo needs UNBOX orders to come directly from a TiVo in order to get a piece of the action, you can bet that ordering and downlaoding from Swivel will be coming fairly soon.


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## pvanb (May 21, 2007)

Fraser+Dief, kharder:

I too am a Canadian subscriber who received the "New Feature" message, but no new feature.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

In swivel, I saw a menu visual effect that maybe folks have seen before. I just don't recall it in any menu before.

When you jump from the left hand pane to the right hand pane, say from an actor to one of the upcoming movies the actor stars in- the movie name highlights as a normal Tivo instant highlight. But when you jump back to the left hand pane, it is a fade in highlight.

It's subtle, but it's like one of those details where you expect Ricardo Montabon to step in from the side and say knowingly- "Yes, that *is* fresh Corinthian Leather", and then Mrs. Olsen steps in from the other side... "Yah Yah, it's the richest kind..."

Games like Skulls and Bones use fade in at the beginning an end. It's just a nice touch for menu navigation.


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

May be a smeek, but would love to see a hook into Youtube videos......


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

You and me brother.

Another thing I'd like to see is hooks into en.wikipedia.org articles on the actors and movies. After all, commercial use is allowed. Most of the photos there are fair use though, so probably those could not be displayed.


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## ChuckyBox (Oct 3, 2005)

pvanb said:


> I too am a Canadian subscriber who received the "New Feature" message, but no new feature.


Just accept the inevitable and have your provence become a U.S. state. Then you'll get all the goodness TiVo has to offer, and lower taxes to boot.


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## clovis8 (Nov 23, 2005)

ChuckyBox said:


> Just accept the inevitable and have your provence become a U.S. state. Then you'll get all the goodness TiVo has to offer, and lower taxes to boot.


wow are you an arrogant ass....aka american.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

clovis8 said:


> wow are you an arrogant ass....aka american.


 Hey, if you don't like how things are going, buy a Canadian TiVo. Oh wait...

It was a joke, eh?


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## sbiller (May 10, 2002)

Both My S3's have service numbers starting with 000. When can I expect them to be eligible for swivel search? I've tried to enter the number but it does not validate. 

Thanks,
Sam


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## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

sbiller said:


> Both My S3's have service numbers starting with 000.


No, they don't. Service numbers of 000 are original Philips Series 1 boxes. Either you are reading things wrong, or you didn't notice that the names of your TIVos got switched when you did a lifetime transfer between S1 and S3 boxes (an unfortuante side-effect of the way TiVo did the lifetime transfers.) The S3 boxes start with 648.


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## sbiller (May 10, 2002)

CrispyCritter said:


> No, they don't. Service numbers of 000 are original Philips Series 1 boxes. Either you are reading things wrong, or you didn't notice that the names of your TIVos got switched when you did a lifetime transfer between S1 and S3 boxes (an unfortuante side-effect of the way TiVo did the lifetime transfers.) The S3 boxes start with 648.


Thanks for clearing that up. Somehow my labels are messed up.

-Sam


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## stehac (May 19, 2007)

fareal said:


> I got the Swivel today. But also noticed today that the Live365 feature in my S3 is missing. Not sure when Live365 disappeared though, before or after the Swivel? Does Swivel eliminate Live365?


I'm not sure it is the swivel doing it.

I too have lost games, live365, etc., but I still have version 8.1.1 software and no swivel.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> It's a perception thing- rather than let them think their glass is half empty (as HDTivo is fond of doing), you give them a smaller glass and it is always full/overflowing. May sound deceptive, but this is stage art, not science/ engineering realities. Your job as a product manager is manage the customer's perceptions the best you can so customers are always forming good ones.


I don't know why you keep speaking negatively about my comments and then go on to say the same thing. Perhaps you don't realize it. Anyway, after you look at it carefully, you realize how limited Swivel is right now - as in your small glass - which you have come up to speed on. Typically TiVo adds funtionality slowly and rarely. You have it from the HorsesButt that major feature updates are more likely measured in months than anything else. So despite the fact that HME is well suited to doing more frequent updates, you can't look for much new in the near term (which I have not said myself anyway.)

I don't take a new feature and _complain _ that it doesn't do this and doesn't do that. I say what it can and can't do, whether what it can do is any good, and comment more on what's missing later if it doesn't come through.


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## annenoe (Oct 19, 2003)

richsadams said:


> My very first thought!
> 
> Thanks Pony and to all of the folks at TiVo. Now we know why it's been so quiet over there.


Sorry off topic - but just noticed and had to say - ALL BLACKS RULE!! Hubby was second row in his younger years - watch hours and hours via Setanta on DTV. Looking forward to Worlds.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Actually, I don't think Swivel is that limited right now. I use it a lot, and see a lot of potential so naturally I wonder about the particulars of that further potential. I ask for more stuff like creating wish lists by checking items because I think it would be cool. 

With the glass full comment, my point was to focus on what Tivo is adding. A universal guide puts alternative sources of video on an equal par with Cable and Satcos, just as Google put small blogs at an equal level to the major internet news and opinion sites. That's a tidal shift, and there is no point in belittling it. The positive here is that thousands of unbox videos will be available via swivel search. That's good stuff. Better would be if they were true HD (20mbps) quality, because it would be a feature that cable companies could not match due to their bandwidth limitations.

They could portray Cableco and Satco HD as nothing of the sort. The pitch would be- if you want true HD, you won't get it from your MSO stb. The only choice is to buy a Tivo (s3).


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

annenoe said:


> Sorry off topic - but just noticed and had to say - ALL BLACKS RULE!! Hubby was second row in his younger years - watch hours and hours via Setanta on DTV. Looking forward to Worlds.


 Second row for the AB's? Cool!  My wife swoons for Daniel Carter.  Super 14 just finished and it's almost time for the All Blacks! Woo hoo! :up: We have to download the games via The Rugby Channel. Wish we could get Setanta on cable.  Go the All Blacks!


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> Actually, I don't think Swivel is that limited right now. I use it a lot, and see a lot of potential so naturally I wonder about the particulars of that further potential. I ask for more stuff like creating wish lists by checking items because I think it would be cool.
> 
> With the glass full comment, my point was to focus on what Tivo is adding. A universal guide puts alternative sources of video on an equal par with Cable and Satcos, just as Google put small blogs at an equal level to the major internet news and opinion sites. That's a tidal shift, and there is no point in belittling it. The positive here is that thousands of unbox videos will be available via swivel search. That's good stuff. Better would be if they were true HD (20mbps) quality, because it would be a feature that cable companies could not match due to their bandwidth limitations.
> 
> They could portray Cableco and Satco HD as nothing of the sort. The pitch would be- if you want true HD, you won't get it from your MSO stb. The only choice is to buy a Tivo (s3).


You are right about that, except for several reasons getting any edge in content is still a huge hurdle for TiVo.

My overall comments when I wrote about it  were:



> USS is a necessary addition to program search features to keep TiVo competitive. It could be a platform for the future of TiVo searching if the application is extended properly.





> USS is good for a first release, but needs much more development to keep TiVo in the running.


also,



> USS also isnt fully integrated into the TiVo DVR interface yet. While it is accessible from a program in the Now Playing List, you cant get at it from a Program Record screen. Thus, you cant leverage off things you might find with a Wishlist, an important shortcoming.


And I wrote in detail examples of searches like what you are talking about.

See, we are looking at similar things.

And the bottom line is that while I am focused in the present on what TiVo is adding, I am just as focused on what TiVo needs to do in the future for its own sake.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

BTW, I also wrote on 11/14  when the strategy was announced:



> Most notably, the one potentially valuable aspect - Unified Search is left without a Press Release of its own. It sounds like the one that is farthest off, which is a disappointment.


Which meant I considered the then so called Unified Search the most important on the list, although now I might also consider autotranscode up there as well.

I wish they had kept the name Unified Search over USS. Also seeing TiVo referring to comments linking IMDB and the current USS is a bad sign. Goofy names and over exburance are the kind of bad mojo you see when an organization is going to fall short later on. No one wants to see more of that.


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## KurtisFish (Jan 22, 2007)

Can't Wait!


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

clovis8 said:


> wow are you an arrogant ass....aka american.


well that was decidely not neighborly. one thing to come down on the poster but then to dump on all Americans as if we are all the same... well that is like deciding that all Canadians say Eh and drink too much beer.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> well that was decidely not neighborly. one thing to come down on the poster but then to dump on all Americans as if we are all the same... well that is like deciding that all Canadians say Eh and drink too much beer.


 They don't? You mean to tell me that Bob and Doug McKenzie weren't typical Canadians? Um, like the folks in the current administration aren't typical Americans?


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Or that all Kiwi girls don't look like Helen Clark?


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

Justin Thyme said:


> Or that all Kiwi girls don't look like Helen Clark?


 Ha! Good one (and thank God they don't)! We're Americans but we lived in New Zealand for several years (awesome place). I can safely say that in general you couldn't tell a Kiwi from an American (or Canadian)...until they speak. They say we have "funny accents".


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

HDTiVo said:


> And the bottom line is that while I am focused in the present on what TiVo is adding, I am just as focused on what TiVo needs to do in the future for its own sake.


Well, of course I too would like things to move along faster. It took MS with its thousands of developers and billions of bucks- what- nearly a decade to bring us a secure system that was cracked in about 6 months.

I would have liked to have seen that happen a little faster.

But I am a little confused about your dire tone. It's not like the cableco's couldn't compete with Unbox. They can host and distribute content to dvrs via the slow drip method possible with dvrs. They just can't because they are inept at technology. They are used to buying solutions from other companies.

This is not a zero sum game. Much as I dislike the cable and Satco's, USS could be made to work with Tivo-Lite on Moto boxes, or on DTivo's.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> I would have liked to have seen that happen a little faster.


The cracking or the product? 



Justin Thyme said:


> But I am a little confused about your dire tone. It's not like the cableco's couldn't compete with Unbox. They can host and distribute content to dvrs via the slow drip method possible with dvrs. They just can't because they are inept at technology. They are used to buying solutions from other companies.


I didn't understand what you are saying.



Justin Thyme said:


> This is not a zero sum game. Much as I dislike the cable and Satco's, USS could be made to work with Tivo-Lite on Moto boxes, or on DTivo's.


Definitely not zero sum. Take a close to home example. Across the entire population the existence of both Netflix and Unbox is additive to the entire video business.

I imagine a version of USS could be created for cable boxes. I don't know enough about the DTiVoes.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

HDTiVo said:


> The cracking or the product?
> .


ambiguity intentional for levity.


HDTiVo said:


> I didn't understand what you are saying.


you seem to understand the part about Cable being able to buy an unbox solution from Tivo- that's the only important part. I imagine they might use a proprietary transport, but moto probably has that taken care of.


HDTiVo said:


> Definitely not zero sum. Take a close to home example. Across the entire population the existence of both Netflix and Unbox is additive to the entire video business.


I think many cable and satco execs view online video distribution as subtractive to their bottom line. I was just saying that they can use Tivo to help them compete, since the video server farm could be their own. (Or hosted by Tivo). Will they realize the advantage of buying versus building? Some might. Others may go the way of Compuserve and A-Hole. They undoubtedly have great engineering staffs- the best that their kind of money can buy. My charge of ineptness had to do with their management of technology- the habit of large companies to eat their young. Then when the barbarians inevitably arrive at the gate, they attempt to buy their way out of the grave they were solipsistically digging, as the Romans did, and as A-Hole did with Netscape. It is rather a sorry site to watch good US companies go down like this, but maybe one day Harvard Business School will figure it out and start turning out execs that stop doing this pattern.


HDTiVo said:


> I imagine a version of USS could be created for cable boxes. I don't know enough about the DTiVoes.


 I don't know why not. They just have to enable an internet connection.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> ambiguity intentional for levity.


Question about ambiguity intentional for levity.

Against what would cable be using TiVo to help them compete?

What would cable be buying instead of building?


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Should have said leasing rather than buying (edit- mispoke, earlier wrote "leasing rather than building"- Not buying because Tivo would not sell- anyway...). Cable could certainly attempt to replicate Unbox and TivoCast downloads- begining by putting all of Blockbuster's videos on servers for slow download to DVRs. This would be a totally different infrastructure and expensive investment for Cable and so they could do a toe in the water and be realistic about how slow it would be to roll out into all their plant in the country and just punt. They say- Ok- let's defer building it ourselves. Let's contract with Tivo deliver the functionality for us, and if it is wildly popular and Tivo is charging us too much, or we want to offer to non Tivo-lite consumers, we can just build it ourselves and cut Tivo out of it.

What competitors would profit if Cable refuses to offer large video libraries? Well if you believe there never will be any significant alternative sources of video other than that from MSO's, then no one. But if you are a Cableco Exec and want to hedge your bets then you are follow Andy Grove's maxim that only the paranoid survive. You look at practically everyone who is trying to do IPTV in one form or another as a competitor who would benefit if MSOs staying out- As well as more traditional video distributors- Blockbusters and Netflix.


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## highwire (Jan 14, 2001)

ZeoTiVo said:


> ...well that is like deciding that all Canadians say Eh and drink too much beer.


Unfortunately it's all too true! And we don't pronounce "about" as "a-boot" it's more like "a-boat". If South Park is gonna dis Canadians about their funny accents (eh), get it right!

Speaking of funny accents, I was in Boston recently...


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

JT-

What is slow download to DVRs? I can think of realtime download by recording an actual broadcast or VOD session, and a multi-megabit download using current cable data service.

I think a large portion of the cable industry has decided to make the infrastructure investment regardless; bringing 30mbit service and large video library choices as part of that.

Now you have Unbox vs VOD. But not literally; TiVo itself is too small to swing cable's thinking in any direction. But ok, the comparison - everything from Unbox costs money. Some VOD is free and in the future there will be much more free (like network episodes) and a big choice. Maybe Unbox will keep the biggest choice, maybe not. Maybe VOD will have superior formats, maybe not. Maybe Unbox will have better prices, maybe not. People will be buying from both of them, which reinforces cable's desire to invest.

Then take TiVoCast. TC is far too insignificant in the entire picture to take any notice of, and I don't see a path to significance. Is there a technology there for TiVo to sell? I don't see much. What do you do, pay TiVo to develop it further?

So what does TiVo have to sell or lease or develop for cable? Obviously the DVR UI already; that is pretty basic within TiVo's purview. But what else? Pay TiVo to develop some things. How do you get TiVo to do it? There's not much there; TiVo is pretty small in scope. How does cable get TiVo from here to there as a vendor for cable, even if it wants to?

Next, TiVo shuts down E* DVRs through patent litigation. Thanks TiVo, now a big ***** of our competition is fried, now f*ck off while we clean up - we don't infringe. 200-300 million isn't going to tickle anyone. Shareholders won't see much if any of that. What's TiVo going to do with it - expand development? Sure, but it takes time and meanwhile the world is moving on (or already moved on because its 2009 by now.)

Now the first two million cable UI subs replace the $$ evaporating from the DTV business. DTV worked pretty hard selling their TiVo service. Is cable going to do that? Long shot. What's a big success - 5M cUIses. How much money is that? Not enough to pay for the $20Mish each QTR in G&A and R&D.

So what does it all add up to? A hell of a lot has to happen.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Really. I don't like the cable and satco's and hope they make the same mistakes as AOL and compuserve did. A big part of the wave that killed them was that they underestimated the volume of free information and the demand for it. They thought they had a handle on high value content (compuserve forums and AOL access to premium content like Sport Illustrated and People). 

VOD? VOD? Are you joking? Am I going to have 75K titles available on VOD anything this century? And even if they did get around to it in 15 years, is that all we will be looking at? Today, today- YouTube users upload 65K videos in a DAY. Is that going to be available on VOD? Listen. You want to know the future, look at the past. The same thing is going to happen with video as happenned with precious text and the infrastructure that deliverred it. Compuserve in its day was the definitive place to find answers to tough problems. It had the content and it had the infrastructure. I could fly into some crazy city in the former east bloc and there would be a compuserve access number. 

Are the cableco's really building the kind of infrastructure to handly 75K titles let alone 65K/day video snippets? Not hardly. They can't concieve that anyone would want such "junk content" because there is no precedent for it. And this is exactly how the text publishers scoffed about stackware (in hypercard days), and later "shovelware" when scanners came out. They thought the only stuff people would want to watch was the stuff that was ripped off. And this is the central failing of entrenched businesses. Internal visionaries may see the potential, but they get eaten alive in internal political fights because they have nothing on which to prove the vision will prevail.

When I mention TivoCast or USS, I am talking about technical fundamentals. For example, contrasting VOD with TC, producing realtime streams with negligible latency from time of request is an entirely different engineering challenge than transmitting files at optimum bandwidth availability times in a packet-loss tolerant fashion. You don't adapt one technology to do the other, and there is not some AquaCar version that does both optimally. 

But your thinking exactly reflects why Cable and Satco's will make the wrong decision. Even though it will cost them peanuts now, they will dismiss their chances at survival at every turn.

Just as well. Good riddance.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

* footnote- the significance of the 75K number is that it is Netflix's current holdings. Somehow I neglected to mention the connection.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> * footnote- the significance of the 75K number is that it is Netflix's current holdings. Somehow I neglected to mention the connection.


I realized that, although the relevant examples right now are Unbox, and maybe Netflix streaming and iTunes and XBox and such.

Cable is traditionally a mechanism for delivering content. So I think what is relevant is that they continue to offer an up to date mechanism to deliver content from whatever sources become available. As such building mechanisms to enable 65K uploads a day is not the relevant issue, but rather building the mechanism that allows people to access those 65K videos (ie. from YouTube) in the millions is what is at stake.

Installing mechanisms that offer 75K or whatever relevant number of VOD is the relevant issue, and realistically the ability to offer it is not at question at all, but the UI/user experience challenge is.

Now these big conglomerates have divisions that also have business interests in content, but that is a separate thing to talk about, except where owning the toll bridge produces advantages to those content businesses.



> contrasting VOD with TC, producing realtime streams with negligible latency from time of request is an entirely different engineering challenge than transmitting files at optimum bandwidth availability times in a packet-loss tolerant fashion


Obviously, but who wants to select their evening viewing the TC way over the VOD way? Certainly the bulk of the market will prefer VOD method. The complete download and decrypt requirement for a TiVoCast (or Unbox on TiVo) is a disadvantage that I've pointed out from day one.



> But your thinking exactly reflects why Cable and Satco's will make the wrong decision.


How so?

You've had some experience or involvement in the local cable regulatory process I think? What was it?


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Coincidentally, Engagement just put out an article today about buying TV shows online and the conclusion was that VOD is the cheapest method of doing so.

That is more about TV than movies though.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

morac said:


> Coincidentally, Engagement just put out an article today about buying TV shows online and the conclusion was that VOD is the cheapest method of doing so.
> 
> That is more about TV than movies though.


I thought watching network episodes streamed free on your PC screen was the cheapest per episode method. 

How does this guy figure AppleTV is already one of the two biggest platforms when TiVo has over 600K BB connected users with access to unbox?


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

HDTiVo said:


> I thought watching network episodes streamed free on your PC screen was the cheapest per episode method.
> 
> How does this guy figure AppleTV is already one of the two biggest platforms when TiVo has over 600K BB connected users with access to unbox?


also he goes on to say "Oh yah if you watch any sports live, that might be a problem - or watch the news or perhaps try a variety of different shows out to see which you like etc...

basically his premise is - if you have specific episodic series as your only viewing then yah buying just them is cheaper, but if you use TV for entertainment like a normal person does well...................


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

No experience in Cable dinosaur companies, a lot of experience in a high technology dinosaur company with very similar reasoning concerning destabilizing technologies from small competitors who later on became very large competitors.



HDTiVo said:


> Installing mechanisms that offer 75K or whatever relevant number of VOD is the relevant issue, and realistically the ability to offer it is not at question at all, but the UI/user experience challenge is.
> 
> .... Certainly the bulk of the market will prefer VOD method.


 My premise was that Cable will not be delivering large libraries via VOD anytime soon. Not a library fed by 65K uploads per day, not even a static 75K library.

Sure, the bulk of the market would prefer the VOD method but IFF they could access the 75K or larger library. But what if the choice is between VOD with 1000 titles, as opposed to a Tivo or Vista or iCu2Tv dowloaded way that offers 75K DVD titles plus fresh content from 65K uploads per day?

If thems were the choices, do you still think the bulk of the market would choose VOD?


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> My premise was that Cable will not be delivering large libraries via VOD anytime soon. Not a library fed by 65K uploads per day, not even a static 75K library.
> 
> Sure, the bulk of the market would prefer the VOD method but IFF they could access the 75K or larger library. But what if the choice is between VOD with 1000 titles, as opposed to a Tivo or Vista or iCu2Tv dowloaded way that offers 75K DVD titles plus fresh content from 65K uploads per day?
> 
> If thems were the choices, do you still think the bulk of the market would choose VOD?


No, but I can't agree to assume that cable's library is going to be significantly smaller. I don't know of any reason to think so.


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## Joey Bagadonuts (Mar 13, 2006)

I thought this thread was about the new Swivel option.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

Right Joey. Hang on. This is about search.

OK HD, let's start at the high end.

Content acquisition. Are people going to be enthusiastically uploading their videos to Cable's YouTube servers? If Cableco's get a licensing deal for rebroadcast from YouTube, what do they do about coverage of video from small web sites? Surely you don't think YouTube will be the only source of video on the net.

Data flow- Is Cable going to be moving 65K videos to the edges of their network every day just to keep pace with the new content? Are they really going to buy enough servers to replicate this volume everywhere so that they get the VOD experience of no latency?

Scaling- Do we expect the 65K number to be constant over time? What happens when a person's audience is not just folks with PCs, but anyone with a TV and a network connection? What happens when it is as common to post videos as it is text?

Is the cableco really going to be able to replicate the entire web of video?

You're kidding, right?

So Joey. How do you suppose folks find which of the 75,000 shows they want to see. There better be some sort of affinity group thing- "if you liked this video...".

Same thing in spades for YouTube like content, because there is virtually no metadata go on (actors, directors, etc associations).


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## scrutman (Mar 15, 2006)

I am so frustrated as a Canadian subscriber of Tivo service. We subscribe exactly the same as US subscribers however I don't know if it's a software glitch that denies new updates (web featured) based on postal codes or what, but it is frustrating altogether.

First it was with the Tivocast. I have phoned many times regarding the Tivocast subscription manager programmable thru the actual tivo box. I can subscribe to TivoCast's through the website (Tivo Central) however if you want to unsubscribe, we have no way because the small little tivocast program is not located under the "Find Programs" heading. It's supposed to be under "To Do List" but it's not. Tivo has tried many things in trying to remedy it however nothing has worked.

Second is now "Tivo Swivel Search". I have received the same issues as many Canadians on this thread. Got the message pumping up this great feature but the actual feature is nowhere to be found. Tried restarting several times however same thing. It has now been 3-4 days since submitting and re-submitting my service tag.

TivoPony, can u please look into this. I have had Tivo for a bit now and I really want to enjoy Tivo. Each time I weigh out my options in going to the cable companies DVR or staying with Tivo, I just can't leave Tivo. But now with a second feature being rolled out and I can't see anything being fixed soon about this, I thought that maybe Canadian subscribers are receiving some small error or glitch or hopefully it's not, but some sort of denial based on borders.

Please help, I do want to continue being excited about my Tivo.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> Content acquisition. Are people going to be enthusiastically uploading their videos to Cable's YouTube servers? If Cableco's get a licensing deal for rebroadcast from YouTube, what do they do about coverage of video from small web sites? Surely you don't think YouTube will be the only source of video on the net.
> 
> Data flow- Is Cable going to be moving 65K videos to the edges of their network every day just to keep pace with the new content? Are they really going to buy enough servers to replicate this volume everywhere so that they get the VOD experience of no latency?
> 
> ...


Why should a cable company care about doing any of this?


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

I dunno. Why should folks read TCF happy hour when they could be reading Arthur Clarke? Why should Encyclopedia Britannica have cared about Microsoft putting Funk and Wagnalls on CDRoms, or lay people typing articles into internet based encylcopedias. Laughable! After all- they were Britannica.

Say you are Compuserve in 1989. You have the best online content- people pay $6-$8 per hour just to read your text. You own email- no one else comes close. You have a global packet switching network. You've got millions of very highly educated individuals creating more content on your forums, and paying you for the privilege.

Why should you care about free email, free text, unmoderated forums on the internet? After all- it is all created by amateurs- its all junk, right?

But say you know all you know about how the internet is going to destroy Compuserve's business. You going to make the same moves they did?

It's 1989 and some kid comes into your office and tells you how they spent all last night surfing the arpanet for free and how some of the university sites were much cooler than Compuserve's content. The kid talks to you about graphical hypertext browsers that surf a world wide web of interlinked pages, about it all being searchable, about how advertisers will pay a fortune for the access to the eyeballs. And how Compuserve can be first on the block to implement all of this due to their head start.

Do you ask the kid, why should Compuserve care about doing any of this?

Or do you just fire him?


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> Or do you just fire him?


Does the kid work at Compuserve? 



> Is Cable going to be moving 65K videos to the edges of their network every day just to keep pace with the new content? Are they really going to buy enough servers to replicate this volume everywhere so that they get the VOD experience of no latency?


Why does cable need to replicate every video on the internet thousands of times over? Who is going to create the above that cable has to worry about competing with?

Cable is a carrier of content. Aren't you really worried about content creators/owners/controllers here?


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## mtchamp (May 15, 2001)

Do we need a "TiVo Canada" forum because just like in the UK, they can use TiVo, but it's not the same models or features as in the US?


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

mtchamp said:


> Do we need a "TiVo Canada" forum because just like in the UK, they can use TiVo, but it's not the same models or features as in the US?


We need a TiVo Can_not_ada Forum


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

mtchamp said:


> Do we need a "TiVo Canada" forum because just like in the UK, they can use TiVo, but it's not the same models or features as in the US?


 From personal experience we can feel your pain.  A forum for Canadian TiVo users is probably not a bad idea. When we lived in New Zealand we worked with local TiVo enthusiasts that had set up their own support and guide system (using SKYTV content). It wasn't very robust but it did work. They've been doing the same in Australia for many years.

The TiVo folks down under have been very industrious and have a pretty large following. There might be something to be learned from them. If anyone would like to know more, here are a couple of links to their forums:

OZ TiVo

NZ TiVo

Even if you don't want to go down that road you can see how hard some will work and how far they will go to make TiVo an option in places it was _never _ supported.  They are a very dedicated community! BTW they are still working with S1's as hacks for S2's (and of course S3's) haven't been accomplished to date. The only difference between a UK TiVo and a U.S. TiVo is the tuner...PAL Vs NTSC. The auto-switching power supply (110V/220V) was standard on S1's.

Hopefully our cousins in the great white north will get the support they deserve if TiVo can turn a profit and be able to overcome governmental laws and regulations one of these days. In the meantime you may have to rally the folks there to come up with some answers. Best of luck! :up:


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

HDTiVo said:


> Why does cable need to replicate every video on the internet thousands of times over? Who is going to create the above that cable has to worry about competing with?
> 
> Cable is a carrier of content. Aren't you really worried about content creators/owners/controllers here?


They need to replicate the content to the edges of their net due to the performance demands of VOD. Why not replicate to a single server? Think about what happens to a network backbone when that many streams go across it. Even if they try to sychronize users so they can use the same streams (so it's not VOD, but 75K channels) you still have to have the bandwidth capacity to handle that massive number of channels. This graph shows why they are fundamentally screwed as VOD attempts to compete with large library stores. And look at the numbers. You don't need to be handling no 65K video additions to your library to day. You are screwed if you even attempt to compete with a fraction of Netflix's 75,000 titles. 








The problem this illustrates is another facet of the long tail. People don't want to watch the same damn thing that the Jones down the street are watching at the same time they are. I'm not saying folks are more individualistic in their neighborhoods than they are. They may have similar tastes, but they just may not be in the mood.


HDTivo said:


> Certainly the bulk of the market will prefer VOD method. The complete download and decrypt requirement for a TiVoCast (or Unbox on TiVo) is a disadvantage that I've pointed out from day one.


What you don't realize is that the VOD scheme doesn't scale very well. The Tivo scheme does.

With huge investment maybe someday cableco's could get up to Netflix's library size. Not this century, given their lack of vigour as evidenced by their pathetic progress with OpenCable over the last 15 years. Anyway, it is a loser strategy because it is chasing the trailing edge of technology waves.

So there you are. Content volume has a huge effect on network delivery mechanisms. And that is Cable's business. If they are smart, they will hedge the bad bet they are making on VOD.

They give every indication of being a WordPerfect, a Compuserve, an Imsai, without the fluidity in adaptation of Intel, MS or Apple. Unable to adapt, they will get their lunch eaten by others. Their choice. Good riddance.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

> What you don't realize is that the VOD scheme doesn't scale very well. The Tivo scheme does.


What is the context around that graph? It doesn't tell me anything as is.

It looks to me like in your model YouTube is what is screwed because they won't be able to get their content to the viewer.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

I began at the high end with the YouTube example. You needn't trouble yourself with wondering if video in the living room will really go that way. Consider this. VOD doesn't even scale to Netflix's size.

The graph demonstrates system demand for streams as charted against the number of available VOD choices available. It was from an article advocating the centralization of VOD ingest servers, but the text associated with the chart is is intended to illustrate that the problem is not stable- both the number of titles and number of simultaneous streams is growing and presenting serious technical obstacles.


> With original VOD services, the content variable was limited to the top 100 hit titlesrequiring perhaps 250 hours of storage. As VOD technologies proved themselves, new services such as subscription VOD were added and the total number of storage hours grew from a few hundred to 800 hours. With the increase in the number of subscription services and recent new services such as free-on-demand, music-on-demand, and niche programming such as real estate-on-demand, storage requirements have quickly grown to thousands of hours. Content storage requirements are also multiplying as high definition-on-demand rolls out. [source]


Hokey dokey. So fine. In VOD nirvana, everyone is doing their own thing on the 75K titles. Say households are watching an average of 2 channels at the time of network peak around Prime time. Ok, so that is say 1HD and 1SD so about 4Mhz. That means with switched video, even if everyone was VOD, worst case a service group would be 180 users to eat up the 860MHz RF most cable plants have, and still have some left over for internet and telephony. That doesn't seem too awful. The capability of the copper in the last mile is not where I see the problem.

Step back and look at what the network is being asked to do. If a cableco has 500K households, they are supporting 1 million channels on their network. Ok. No big deal if you have 10 VOD channels- its a many to few problem as in the chart. What happens as you move to the many to many problem as the chart portrays? Laws of physics state that a disk head can't be in two places at the same time, so what happens if some starlet OD's that day and everyone wants to see her last big movie? The system has to madly replicate copies of the movie to distribute the load to multiple servers at multiple locations on the edges of the net, because by the way- fiber is not fairy dust and does not make network congestion go away. From several issues- net congestion, server swamping, the demand for instanteous response and zero dropped signals, VOD is going to bite it.

Sure, any engineering problem can be solved and CableCo's are flush with cash to it's only a matter of time, right? Right, but now consider this- does the above mechanism strike you as a commodity technology like that for IP networking that the Tivo solution runs on, or does it sound like a highly proprietary solution that locks a particular cableco into a particular vendor? Once the cableco is locked in, how flexible does that make them to adapt to further technology shocks? Any way you cut it, the cable companies' VOD plans make me believe they have a death wish.

Like I said, Cableco's could hedge their bets for by contracting with Tivo for a different approach.

I don't have VOD and I see no reason for it. I have a hundred or so movies sitting on my 1.5 Terabyte dual tuner Tivo today, and several hundred on a Tivo to Go server if I want a look in the archives. It's all there instantly. So I really don't see this huge appeal of VOD that you see.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

The HDTiVo Channel is posting a video reflecting the current conversation taken from TCM. While the video is documentary it is also part advertisment.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

AT&T seems pretty confident about being able to scale:
http://telephonyonline.com/fttp/news/att_hd_streams_031907/

Acquired via discussion with Mari on Zatz Blog.

What I've heard about cable co plans sounds like they will be able to take care of these crazy demands. Vendors like Sun are providing open systems based IPTV solutions too.



> I don't have VOD and I see no reason for it.


The system you have is reason enough for most people to use VOD instead. I know what it took for me to build less than half of what you have. If you are going to depend on downloads and massive storage you are in for lots of work and capital spending. A mix of DVR/smallish servers and VOD is more optimal.

And come on, you don't watch streamed video in your Web browser sometimes? That's VOD.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

HDTiVo said:


> AT&T seems pretty confident about being able to scale:
> http://telephonyonline.com/fttp/news/att_hd_streams_031907/
> 
> Acquired via discussion with Mari on Zatz Blog.
> ...


Hey- a 2TB DT Tivo is possible for anyone with a screwdriver. Sure it's pricey. Today. But the hardware trend is in Tivo's favour on this. Is the current high cost a constant? Not hardly. Sure folks don't like modifying products. But what happens when there are 2Terabyte Tivos available for the cost of an 80GB Tivo? Think it will never happen? I used to drool over the 10MB SCSI external drives because I thought of the wonders I could do with my Mac II. That was 1987 or so. 20 years later, we are talking about a a drive that is 100,000 times the capacity.

Do I look at online streaming video? No, but I admit I may be unusual in my aversion to it. YouTube is like video games (fun but a huge time sink and I hate news on video because it take too much time and usually delivers only superficial treatments.

Anyway, I told Tivo the actors and directors I like (note- Importance of Search) and I have a ton of great movies to watch on Demand now. Using a Tivo. Given my tastes, it would take a VOD library of at least 10K titles to put together what I have available today just to find what enough interesting titles comparable to what I have sitting on my Dual Tuner Tivo today. And that is only a fraction of what is on the server available via PyTivo. Not even Netflix with it's 75K titles has the kind of stuff that is on there.

Thanks for thoe references. There is a lot of depth here, and I should do some more reading. Besides AT&T, I've got a lot of questions about what is FIOS doing. They are IP based and I thought they were not using the cable spectrum for VOD. I'd like to know more about this- it's kind of an opaque field. DT_DC knows a lot about these mechanisms and trends.

Regardless whether it is VOD or TivoCast download feeding the video, search is crucial to finding the titles that are available. To the extent that the search relationships can be discovered by any grandmother, from the comfort of the couch, that product value will be percieved by the consumer. If it is a weak search, then you could have a half million titles and some pipsqueek with 10K titles could blow past you. The question is whether the volume of choice is opaque or not.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> But the hardware trend is in Tivo's favour on this.


The hardware trend is in everybody's favor.



> Do I look at online streaming video? No, but I admit I may be unusual in my aversion to it.


You are the target audience of the HDTiVo Channel - which by the way you can More Option > USS from and see a nice "blank record." When will they give 1true publishers access to the data fields?



> Anyway, I told Tivo the actors and directors I like (note- Importance of Search) and I have a ton of great movies to watch on Demand now. Using a Tivo. Given my tastes, it would take a VOD library of at least 10K titles to put together what I have available today just to find what enough interesting titles comparable to what I have sitting on my Dual Tuner Tivo today. And that is only a fraction of what is on the server available via PyTivo. Not even Netflix with it's 75K titles has the kind of stuff that is on there.


These Sun servers are supposed to have associated storage units that can hold 75K titles all in a 6 foot tall rack.



> They are IP based and I thought they were not using the cable spectrum for VOD.


Its all spectrum.



> Regardless whether it is VOD or TivoCast download feeding the video, search is crucial to finding the titles that are available. To the extent that the search relationships can be discovered by any grandmother, from the comfort of the couch, that product value will be percieved by the consumer. If it is a weak search, then you could have a half million titles and some pipsqueek with 10K titles could blow past you. The question is whether the volume of choice is opaque or not.


You'd have to put TiVo towards the bottom of technology. This is no IMDB or Goggle (video) search. These guys don't even let you put your library into folders and they don't make PyTiVo, etal. When was the last time TiVo offered a new way to sort the Now Playing list?

Remember the article about SF Giants _TiVo_ing every  MLB game? OK, the coolness didn't stop there. They are adding metadata (by hand) almost as fast as events occur to the video and chopping it up into specialized/individualized pieces for the players and coaches all to access promptly. That's something.


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## Ubipa (Apr 22, 2007)

Is there a trick to get this to work?

I signed up online and after a couple of days the menu features showed up on my S3, but when I click on the feature it just stalls on loading. Once I got to the privacy menu asking me to opt in, but it completely locked up. I've restarted the box but to no avail. I have tried to access the swivel search through different method with no luck.

My S3 is connected to my router via ethernet and I have FIOS (internet). Audiofaucet runs flawless on the connection and everything else seems to work ok. What's up?


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

HDTiVo said:


> The hardware trend is in everybody's favor.


Huh. I guess IBM's Mini divisions and any number of dead microcomputer manufacturing companies need to be let in on that secret. The ones that chose proprietary busses and peripherals had to swim upstream. Nearly all with the exception of Apple died. Hardware trends do not work in your favour unless your hardware strategy is designed to use them to maximum advantage.

It's all spectrum??? No, not really. FIOS segmented their spectrum and video channels are delivered with very little difference than traditional cable. They take traditional Cable RF, modulate it over a fiber transport, then poop it back out onto Coax at the home. That is quite different than the rest of the spectrum use which is all IP. IP is how they intend to deliver all two way stuff including VOD.

By the way, FIOS's search, like Universal Swivel Search, demotes traditional TV channels and puts it on an equal level as other content. There is a demo of fios which has some brief screenshots of their interface. The main thing is that the search hits could be from online vod libraries, games etc. Not just hits on shows playing on traditional video channels.

It looks familiar for Tivo users, but I imagine that it is server side software. Can anyone verify this? Is anything client side? For example does a right left up down keyclick go to the server in the text entry screen, or is this sort of thing run on the DVR?

I wonder how that compares to how USS chopped up the tasks.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> Huh. I guess IBM's Mini divisions and any number of dead microcomputer manufacturing companies need to be let in on that secret.


Well, AMEX didn't go out of business by being a _former _ user of those systems. The important thing is for cable to migrate to new platforms that ultimately work, which they seem to think they are doing for seemingly good reason.



> It's all spectrum??? No, not really. FIOS segmented their spectrum and video channels are delivered with very little difference than traditional cable. They take traditional Cable RF, modulate it over a fiber transport, then poop it back out onto Coax at the home. That is quite different than the rest of the spectrum use which is all IP. IP is how they intend to deliver all two way stuff including VOD.


Its all spectrum. FIOS just has maybe several times as much to the premises.



> I wonder how that compares to how USS chopped up the tasks.


Well, its a little nuts running a universal video database off every DVR (Even just 13 days of future broadcast plus the set of downloadable-streamable things) USS is an HME App, virtually nothing happens on the DVR, although info is passed to other parts of the DVR like which program record screen to jump to...

The AT&T search options look like they blow away USS. It also looks highly integrated with the Guide, DVR and VOD functions. Content available about the found items - like playing previews - blows away USS. Maybe they have snapshots of the actors too.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

HDTiVo said:


> Its all spectrum.


That's a non response response. We could have gone a couple directions, but you don't appear to be interested. Ok.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

Justin Thyme said:


> That's a non response response. We could have gone a couple directions, but you don't appear to be interested. Ok.


What it means is FIOS appears to have I think 4 "sets" of spectrum (don't know if each "set" is equal to cable's one) and FIOS uses one for broadcast cable type service and the other 3 are available for other things.

Meanwhile, cable believes that there is technology to put in place over the next two years that can extend their existing more limited spectrum to the point where they can accomplish everything they need to over the next several years.

In other words, cable believes that FIOS's extra spectrum capacity is superfluous until much farther out in the future, and is comparing their upgrade to FIOS's buildout as costing about 10% as much. If you want to talk about 2012 and beyond, maybe cable needs to do a FIOS Generation 2 buildout around then.


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## Justin Thyme (Mar 29, 2005)

The search service I linked to is IP based, and besides all other such interactive applications, is using the other 3/4 of their fiber spectrum for VOD and everything else besides traditional video. It is the thing that dave zatz was talking about being rolled out in Fort Wayne. No surprizes here, for Verizon gasoline you must also buy a Verizon car. I suppose only Verizon approved air fresheners are next for the full vertical market effect.

So they are leveraging their extra spectrum already, and the way they are doing it is not through a proprietary transport for 2 way as cable is doing. Cable may well decide to counter the extra spectrum advantage of Verizon by extending their glass from the service group nodes out in the last mile to the homes, but they will do it using their own transport that has the disadvantage of being proprietary, but the advantage of being homogeneous use of spectrum for all their services. This has regulatory implications for net neutrality. If it is all IP, then it could be argued that a vendor is favoring their Video IP packets over those of a competitors IPTV packets. But if it is on a Cableco proprietary network, then they can stand back and say- "hey- the customer bought 2 MHZ of bandwidth without QOS just as we always have provided. We build out some glass to the home for our proprietary network's load needs. You can't force us to provide more spectrum for IP." Verizon has a hard time making that Net Neutrality pitch. My guess is that this is the reason Cablecos suddenly dropped their demand that industry develop a standard for IP delivery of video and unilaterally decided to go proprietary. 

Anyway, no of course the Verizon thing won't run on a third party device available from unaffiliated sources as required by the 1996 Telecom act, nor is there a mechanism for standards. It will only run on the Verizon supplied Motorola QIP6416 DVR.

My comment that triggered this was that FIOS is not doing VOD (or any interactivity features) within the spectrum devoted to traditional cable digital video. Your response was that it didn't matter- It is all just spectrum. Well- no, whether VOD uses IP spectrum or whether it uses OpenCable defined utilizaiton of spectrum for interactivity matters a great deal. The utilization of spectrum for a transport with well developed open standards for interactivity and interoperability is a big deal. 

Should we care if searchs work over IP as does Tivo's Swivel Search and Verizon's Interactive Media Guide (IMG)? Does it matter if you connect to a monopoly's network that you are forced to use their search that hides content available from competitor video distributors?

It does. That is why Tivo's Swivel search is important. That's why spectrum devoted to IP is important. And that is why net neutrality must take into consideration the game that cableco's would like to play: that Verizon is consigned to a level playing field, while cableco's are excepted.


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## Fraser+Dief (Nov 18, 2005)

Can we get an official comment as to why Swivel isn't available to Canadians? I get why Unbox isn't available, rights issues and all that.

Searching doesn't entail anything like that.

And howabout taking the off topic stuff elsewhere?


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## jhimmel (Dec 27, 2002)

I wish I could start my swivel searches by actors name.

If I start a swivel search by title, I can then swivel my way through actors - but I can't START a search by actor. This would make the feature more useful to me.

Jim H.


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## HDTiVo (Nov 27, 2002)

jhimmel said:


> I wish I could start my swivel searches by actors name.
> 
> If I start a swivel search by title, I can then swivel my way through actors - but I can't START a search by actor. This would make the feature more useful to me.
> 
> Jim H.


Try figuring out which movie Marlon Brando directed.


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## alansh (Jan 3, 2003)

I finally got around to trying it and... it crashes back to the Find Programs screen when I try to pick anything on the ouija board. I tried restarting the TiVo, and still get the same thing. Oh well.


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

I still haven't gotten this on my Series 3. I signed both the Series 2 and the Series 3 up on the priority list at the same time, 6 days ago. I got the Series 2 swivel search activated the next day, but nothing on the Series 3 yet.

Anyone know why that might be?


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

Bumping this up again... still no swivel search. What do I need to do to get it working?


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

MickeS said:


> Bumping this up again... still no swivel search. What do I need to do to get it working?


 Agreed that it seems like it should have taken place by now. It was set up on our S3 the same day that we entered the ID on the TiVo website. Our S2's got it within days.

Have you tried simply rebooting TiVo? Sometimes that will cause an update to occur.

I also read a post (somewhere  ) where someone else had the same problem and ended up calling TiVo. I can't recall if they activated it right away, but I think they said it was taken care of.


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

I will try rebooting. Worth a shot at least.


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

I tried rebooting on Friday, I also re-submitted a request for the update. Still no swivel search. Seems odd.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

MickeS said:


> I tried rebooting on Friday, I also re-submitted a request for the update. Still no swivel search. Seems odd.


 Perhaps you're not holding your mouth just right?


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

Woohoo... I got a message when I looked at the TiVo right now... informing me that I can use WishLists to save search criteria. 

Wow, that's something I need to be told in a special TiVo-message.


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## BlackBetty (Nov 6, 2004)

TiVoPony said:


> Well...ok, Amazon ordering from the couch isn't quite ready yet, but you'll see it's coming soon.


Its been almost 6 weeks now. Any word from TiVo on when ordering directly from your TiVo will be ready?


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

MickeS said:


> Woohoo... I got a message when I looked at the TiVo right now... informing me that I can use WishLists to save search criteria.
> 
> Wow, that's something I need to be told in a special TiVo-message.


Is that on a new TiVo? New TiVos spit out messages like this every few days for the first few weeks.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

MickeS said:


> I tried rebooting on Friday, I also re-submitted a request for the update. Still no swivel search. Seems odd.


 Forgive me for asking a really dumb/obvious question after all of this...but the TiVo that hasn't received the Swivel Search feature _is _ hooked up to your home network for the requisite Internet connection correct? I know that's one of those "Is it plugged in?" questions, but I just thought I'd ask. 

Or maybe you have it by now? :up:


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

BlackBetty said:


> Its been almost 6 weeks now. Any word from TiVo on when ordering directly from your TiVo will be ready?


 +1 :up:


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

morac said:


> Is that on a new TiVo? New TiVos spit out messages like this every few days for the first few weeks.


Yep, I've only had it for 10 days.

And yes, rich, it is connected.


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## TiVoStephen (Jun 27, 2000)

MickeS, can you e-mail me ([email protected]) with your 15-digit TiVo Service Number?


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

I sure can


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

TiVoStephen said:


> MickeS, can you e-mail me ([email protected]) with your 15-digit TiVo Service Number?


 Now _that's _ what I call service! :up: :up:


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

richsadams said:


> Now _that's _ what I call service! :up: :up:


Yep, very nice. 

And now it works.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

MickeS said:


> Yep, very nice.
> 
> And now it works.


 Woo hoo!


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## proactix (Jun 11, 2007)

for the "Swivel Search" feature, how long does it take to download to the Tivo box? when I requested it from the web site, it said that it could take up to 3 business days, but that was over a week ago. I know that I have the lastest software, and I have rebooted tivo a couple of times, but still no swivel. On average, how long did it take you guys to get this feature?

Tim


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

No software download is necessary for the Swivel search feature. TiVo just needs to flip some bits on the server so the next daily connection your TiVo makes turns it on.

I think it took about a day for me back when I did it around a month ago (approximately). You should have it by now.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

morac said:


> No software download is necessary for the Swivel search feature. TiVo just needs to flip some bits on the server so the next daily connection your TiVo makes turns it on.
> 
> I think it took about a day for me back when I did it around a month ago (approximately). You should have it by now.


 Yes, the same for us. We actually received it the same day we entered our serial number on TiVo's Priority Request Page

Others have noted here though that they had to do handstands before they received it for some unknown reason. If it doesn't appear after a while I'd contact TiVo...they seem to be able to activate it almost immediately.

Also note from the Priority Page:


> **It may take up to three business days for the Swivel Feature to appear under TiVo Central -> Find Programs. We appreciate your patience.
> 
> *** Please note: In order to enjoy the full functionality of Swivel Search you'll be asked to update the privacy settings for your TiVo Account. You may do this via Swivel Search on your DVR. It may take up to 28 hours for the new settings to take effect.


 Best of luck!


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

proactix said:


> for the "Swivel Search" feature, how long does it take to download to the Tivo box? when I requested it from the web site, it said that it could take up to 3 business days, but that was over a week ago. I know that I have the lastest software, and I have rebooted tivo a couple of times, but still no swivel. On average, how long did it take you guys to get this feature?
> 
> Tim


I had the same problem as you, as you can see above. 

After TiVoStephen here did something, it was activated for me right away. See his message and email a few posts up, and try and contact him.

Seems like there's some kind of bug regarding the activation of this feature.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

MickeS said:


> Seems like there's some kind of bug regarding the activation of this feature.


the page that collects the TSNs is not tied to the system that sends the updates to the TiVo (at least not when the last few OS upgrades had a priority list) so it most likely is human error eitehr in entering the TSN on the page or in getting the TSN's from the page loaded into the system to send out updates.
Trying again or contacting someone is good advice


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Wow, I just read this thread for the first time (but only skimmed through it.) I take it that Universal Swivel Search is available for all series 2's and 3's? I have a series 1 and a series 2, so I'm assuming I can get this on my series 2.

It is not broadband connected though, but I do have broadband DSL service coming into my house. So if I understand correctly, all I need to do is hook my series 2 up to broadband, and then I'll have the Universal Swivel Search on my menus?


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## Solver (Feb 17, 2005)

timckelley said:


> Wow, I just read this thread for the first time (but only skimmed through it.) I take it that Universal Swivel Search is available for all series 2's and 3's? I have a series 1 and a series 2, so I'm assuming I can get this on my series 2.
> 
> It is not broadband connected though, but I do have broadband DSL service coming into my house. So if I understand correctly, all I need to do is hook my series 2 up to broadband, and then I'll have the Universal Swivel Search on my menus?


 That's pretty much how it works (After maybe about 48 hours)


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Well, I'm disillusioned. I went over to the Help forum to figure out how to hook up my series 2 to our broadband network, to use this new feature, and was all set to order a wireless USB adapter for my Series 2 ST that I've got, and my wife told me to hold my horses, because she has no interest in the Universal Swivel Search.

To clarify, the S2 is my wife's TiVo, and my TiVo is an S1. (We have 2 TiVos.) So only my wife has the potential to take advantage of this feature, and she said the $60 adapter would be money flushed down the toilet because she doesn't care about the new feature.

I thought she'd like it. In fact, she seems to always be so well versed in Hollywood trivia, which is why I thought she'd appreciate the feature.


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

Sounds like you guys need to switch TiVos.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

MickeS said:


> Sounds like you guys need to switch TiVos.


The funny thing is, my TiVo is in a room with an ethernet port, so if I had an S2, I wouldn't need a wireless adapter. I could just order a $30 ethernet adapter. (Or maybe with the new S2 DT, you don't even need that - I'm not sure... I think I heard you can plug them right into your network.) But my wife's TiVo is in a room with no ethernet ports in it.

Too bad my S1 was lifetimed too recently to qualify for the lifetime-to-S2DT transfer offer.

Oh, I should mention switching TiVos most probably won't work. My wife wouldn't want to move all her SPs over, plus she's got more space than I do, and she likes the folders feature, and the recently deleted folder feature, and she'd lose all that if we switched.


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## richsadams (Jan 4, 2003)

timckelley said:


> Well, I'm disillusioned. I went over to the Help forum to figure out how to hook up my series 2 to our broadband network, to use this new feature, and was all set to order a wireless USB adapter for my Series 2 ST that I've got, and my wife told me to hold my horses, because she has no interest in the Universal Swivel Search.
> 
> To clarify, the S2 is my wife's TiVo, and my TiVo is an S1. (We have 2 TiVos.) So only my wife has the potential to take advantage of this feature, and she said the $60 adapter would be money flushed down the toilet because she doesn't care about the new feature.
> 
> I thought she'd like it. In fact, she seems to always be so well versed in Hollywood trivia, which is why I thought she'd appreciate the feature.


 Convincing the wife to go with these things is tough, I know.  Have you mentioned all of the other features that a broadband connection will get you besides SwivelSearch? Such as:

	Viewing all of your digital photos currently residing on your computer(s).
	Listening to your computer's music library.
	Sharing photos and home movies with family and friends that also have TiVo.
	Yahoo weather
	Yahoo Traffic
	Live365 Radio Network broadcasts (heaps of radio stations)
	Fandango - Find out where movies are showing locally and buy tickets right from TiVo
	Many, many, many Podcasts
	Multi-room viewing (if you get another S2)
	Nearly instant movie and TV show downloads from Amazon Unbox - rent some new releases for 99 cents!
	Special TiVo Shows on TiVoCast
	Online scheduling from any computer in the world  never miss a recording!
	Watch your favorite shows anywhere...save TiVo shows to your computer and watch them on iPods, Playstations or your laptop. Burn them to DVD's too.

The list goes onhave her look here for more info.

So it's not just for SwivelSearch...that's just the latest feature and there are more on the way.

You can get a TiVo network adapter from the TiVo Community Store for $49.99 right now. 

My missus thinks a lot of this techno stuff is, well, just stuff...but I've heard the many "boo-boops" that happen while I'm out of the room! Prying the remote from her hands while she searches for her favorite actors and programs is risky these days.

Trying to describe all of these added features is kind of like trying to describe a TiVo to someone. Until they see it...and use it, it's just a fancy VCR right? We ALL know better.


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## timckelley (Oct 15, 2002)

Wow, I didn't know the list was that extensive. One item you mention, Yahoo weather, may sound trivial, but that could be a big selling point, just by itself, with my wife. She is all the time switching the channel to the local weather channel here in Austin, and she always has to wade through the big spiel by the weatherman to get to the meat of the forecast. Yahoo weather sounds like it cuts through all that.

Yes, she could do it on our computer, but she doesn't like using the computer much, and if she can get to Yahoo weather through the TiVo menus, I think she'd do it.


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## proactix (Jun 11, 2007)

woot, i finally got Swivel, I guess it just takes time for it to filter down. I having been playing with it and I really do love it...it's funny tho, I had made some selections for tivo cast, and the guide gurus, and I did have to opt in online for those, I wonder if that made a difference...


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## JTYoung1 (Aug 13, 2006)

I am glad TiVoPony posted this, I had Swivel on my S3 that got damaged this weekend in a lightning strike and had to get it replaced, BB actually swapped me out instead of making me wait while they had it repaired. I was really missing the swivel search.


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