# TiVoShanan, say it ain't so. Roku is cool though.



## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

For those of you that know and love TiVoShanan or maybe it's RokuShanan now.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHKRNcs1B90&sns=em[/media]


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## daveak (Mar 23, 2009)

I've always thought a collaboration between Roku and TiVo would be rather cool.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

daveak said:


> I've always thought a collaboration between Roku and TiVo would be rather cool.


Same here. I'm hoping that they do something with the new stream box that will allow you to watch your recorded shows on a Roku.


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## SullyND (Dec 30, 2004)

Wasn't Roku founded by the guy who started ReplayTV?


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

The sad part is that Tivo could've killed Roku (app-wise) if they actually gave a crap about the apps that run on their boxes. Cost-wise, not so much.

So much for the 'one box' to handle everything, Tivo.


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## stevel (Aug 23, 2000)

Saw that in my FB feed this morning - she does have a nice voice.


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## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

She's been doing work with Roku for a while.


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## daveak (Mar 23, 2009)

Of course a collaboration between Apple and Roku (Though I doubt it ever would happen) could be fun just for the name - The iRoku. The set-top device that will rock your world.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

daveak said:


> Of course a collaboration between Apple and Roku (Though I doubt it ever would happen) could be fun just for the name - The iRoku. The set-top device that will rock your world.


 The ATV 3 is a superior device to the Roku so i don't think so.


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

tenthplanet said:


> The ATV 3 is a superior device to the Roku so i don't think so.


Not to start an argument, but in what sense? It streams a handful of services versus the Roku's hundreds and outputs basic DD from Netflix rather than DD+. IMO it's severely compromised by the fact that its manufacturer sells and rents media, giving them little motive to maximize competition. Whether or not it can be considered "superior" depends on what you want and need from your little streaming box.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

mikeyts said:


> Not to start an argument, but in what sense? It streams a handful of services versus the Roku's hundreds and outputs basic DD from Netflix rather than DD+. IMO it's severely compromised by the fact that its manufacturer sells and rents media, giving them little motive to maximize competition. Whether or not it can be considered "superior" depends on what you want and need from your little streaming box.


 From an electronic design standpoint and they don't run hot. iTunes program for windows and Mac's more reliable than DLNA for moving things from the computer to the device. It's possible to have one of these things and never buy or rent a thing from Apple. What competition, the cards are the with content owners not the device builders.


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

tenthplanet said:


> From an electronic design standpoint and they don't run hot.


My Roku XS is warm to the touch but does not run what I'd call "hot". And why should its operating temperature matter to me? By spec it draws less than 2 watts of power; many plug-in night-lights burn more.


> What competition, the cards are the with content owners not the device builders.


I'm sorry--I don't understand this statement. What "cards"?

Through iTunes, Apple is a content seller and renter. I don't think that they will ever feature players for things like Amazon Instant Video, an alternate source of recent release rental content. If you're want to rent or purchase a streaming title they're not going to give you any choice but to get it from iTunes. So if renting (or purchasing) video is something that you want do, the ATV is inferior.

If you need something to stream content from PCs on your LAN, the ATV may well be a better choice. There are some things that you can get for Roku which will give you that functionality (Plex is one of them, I think), but they don't build it in. It does have a built-in player for media from USB storage devices.

I just don't see where ATV3 can honestly be called a generally "superior" device, though it may well suit your purposes better.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

I have a Roku in the garage and it's been out there in the summer heat. There is no problem with it running hot... I don't touch it. 

Also, it's better in most respects than ATV for me because it has so many different channels to chose from. I especially like the Amazon channel and wish Tivo would add the steaming capability for it.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

I have two Roku 2 boxes. They have never been hot and are barely even a little warm.
I've seen the ATV in use and I would certainly not call it superior to the Roku box. The Roku box certainly has more options than the ATV box.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

tenthplanet said:


> From an electronic design standpoint ...


While deserving of a fanboi alert- does have merit. Tivo (because of their mini), Roku, and the new googletv entrants, are all likely to be sued out of existence next week anyway. Apple probably patented the "design" of a square box that connects to a tv and now that they ilawyers are done with samsung...

(I know the samsung think is a lot more than that but couldn't resist- tongue firmly in cheek)


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## Schmye Bubbula (Oct 14, 2004)

magnus said:


> ...I'm hoping that they do something with the new stream box that will allow you to watch your recorded shows on a Roku.


There is a *TiVo plug-in for Plex*, which in turn has a channel for Roku.


> The TiVo plugin lets Plex play shows directly off your TiVo. Requires an activated Series 2, Series 3, or Tivo HD.
> You provide your Media Access Key, it lists the shows on your tivo, you pick one and watch it.


...but it looks like they're having *some* *problems* with it on Roku right now. Stay tuned, the plug-in author says it's on his to-do list.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

Schmye Bubbula said:


> There is a *TiVo plug-in for Plex*, which in turn has a channel for Roku.
> 
> ...but it looks like they're having *some* *problems* with it on Roku right now. Stay tuned, the plug-in author says it's on his to-do list.


If it really works, you could turn any google TV device into a Tivo streaming device. Have you tried it? Does it really work on Tivo?


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## Schmye Bubbula (Oct 14, 2004)

^ I never tried it before now because I got Plex just for my Roku, and as I said, it isn't working on Roku right now. But because you ask, I installed it on my Plex Media Server and tried it from the Plex client on my Mac. The plug-in loads & runs, but it keeps asking for my Media Access Key, no matter how many times I enter it. So I left an *inquiry on the Plex forums*, and will keep you apprised.


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## Scyber (Apr 25, 2002)

First of all, I'm not the author of the original Plugin, I merely inherited it b/c the original author is MIA. Changes were needed to get it to work for Plex9 and I jumped in and fixed it. I really haven't done much else to it since then. My next priority is to get it working on Windows & (in theory) linux. My local copy of the plugin is basically doing that. I just need to clean it up before providing a copy for people to test. Unfortunately real life has caught up to me this year (job issues, new baby, etc.) and it hasn't given me much time to finish it off.

As for streaming to the Roku, the issue appears to be that the streaming from the Tivo (TivoHD in my case) takes far too long to start up, and by the time it has started up, the Roku has timed out. But fortunately I also happen to be one of the authors of the Plex Roku channel, so I'm going to play around a bit and confirm that theory.


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## Schmye Bubbula (Oct 14, 2004)

A big thanks and tip o' the hat to *Scyber *for bringing us up to speed on the progress of this promising Plex plug-in!


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## swinca (Jun 19, 2003)

Schmye Bubbula said:


> There is a *TiVo plug-in for Plex*, which in turn has a channel for Roku.


This looks awesome! Two things I love working together. I will be tracking the progress of this.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

Yep, I love Plex but the plugin for Tivo always asks me for my MAK. So, I have not been able to use it.


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## Scyber (Apr 25, 2002)

magnus said:


> Yep, I love Plex but the plugin for Tivo always asks me for my MAK. So, I have not been able to use it.


Yeah, I saw those recent posts in the channel thread. My current local copy of the plugin is so diverged from the production copy that I'm not going to look into that. I hope to have the updated version available for testing sometime in the next two weeks. If that issue still happens with my new version, then I'll address it there.

Next Wednesday is the last big event of the summer in my personal life, so hopefully after that things should calm down. I managed to work on the channel a few hours last weekend, but I crashed my Tivo during the process so I had to abandon that approach


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## Stormspace (Apr 13, 2004)

tenthplanet said:


> From an electronic design standpoint and they don't run hot. iTunes program for windows and Mac's more reliable than DLNA for moving things from the computer to the device. It's possible to have one of these things and never buy or rent a thing from Apple. What competition, the cards are the with content owners not the device builders.


I'm curious. Do you have to reencode video from third parties to get it to play on the ATV? I know I have to with most video I can get online, but I just convert it to mpeg2 and move it to a TiVo with PyTiVo. Going the other way is just as easy using Kmttg to copy the show from the TiVo, strip out the commericials, and reencode it for the device I need to play it back on. Both are one step processes once I have the recording.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

Stormspace said:


> I'm curious. Do you have to reencode video from third parties to get it to play on the ATV? I know I have to with most video I can get online, but I just convert it to mpeg2 and move it to a TiVo with PyTiVo. Going the other way is just as easy using Kmttg to copy the show from the TiVo, strip out the commericials, and reencode it for the device I need to play it back on. Both are one step processes once I have the recording.


 Similar process take your video and convert it mpeg4 copy the file into iTunes and the atv will pull it off your computer. There are a number of programs that can do the conversion. A number of sites now have videos in mpeg4 and so no conversion is needed.


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## takeshi (Jul 22, 2010)

tenthplanet said:


> The ATV 3 is a superior device to the Roku so i don't think so.


Subjective -- just as any use of the word superior/best/better/etc is on any topic. If you're going to use the word in a conversation then at least qualify what you mean. How is it superior? Using what criteria?


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## mikeyts (Jul 10, 2004)

takeshi said:


> Subjective -- just as any use of the word superior/best/better/etc is on any topic. If you're going to use the word in a conversation then at least qualify what you mean. How is it superior? Using what criteria?


Did you read any more of the thread before posting that response ? I asked the same thing and he responded here.


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## DocNo (Oct 10, 2001)

mikeyts said:


> If you're want to rent or purchase a streaming title they're not going to give you any choice but to get it from iTunes. So if renting (or purchasing) video is something that you want do, the ATV is inferior.


Er, that whole Netflix app on my ATV must be a mirage then 

News flash - Apple makes money on the hardware, not on the media. Having Amazon, HBO and whoever else they can on their devices is a BENEFIT - not a hindrance. People who suggest Apple is the one blocking are just woefully ignorant about what really motivates Apple.

By your reasoning the Amazon instant video app on the iPad was a colossal mistake...



> I just don't see where ATV3 can honestly be called a generally "superior" device, though it may well suit your purposes better.


Unfortunately, until the big media players pull their collective heads out of their butts, we aren't going to have a "one size fits all" solution. I have both generations of ATV and a Roku. For the few things like Amazon that the ATV doesn't do, it works - but the UI is ugly and cumbersome. Adding channels was... interesting until I discovered the "secret handshake". It's OK now that I have things configured, but I certainly wouldn't use polished to describe the experience.

Both devices smoke my Tivo for performance and I have no problem using either of them for Netflix even though I vastly prefer Tivo's remote 

If you look at the Amazon and HBO apps that have AirPlay disabled, I think we are seeing a repeat of the music industry. When Apple first got their record deals, they were a small bit player that looked like a stiff breeze my cause them to fold up - they saw it as a low risk endevor. Much to their horror, Apple took over the portable MP3 player market and became the proverbial 200lb gorilla. And made them a ton of $$$ too - but they lost "control" so the mere fact they were also in trouble often gets overlooked (ironically). The video content providers seem determined to screw their fans over even more than the music providers - I dunno what it will take to break the log-jam and bring some sanity to all this.

So this isn't a deficiency of Apple, per se. The content providers still haven't come to terms that cable and shiny plastic disks from walmart are on the way out - it will be interesting ("May you live in interesting times" interesting unfortunately  ) to see how much longer they can stumble and flail around stupidly. Neither Apple, Amazon, Netflix, HBO or others own the content - it's all about the deals they can wrangle. Want to change things? Support independent, new content like what Amazon and Netflix are doing in producing their own content in house. That's the only thing that's going to accelerate change, unfortunately.


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## dugbug (Dec 29, 2003)

AirPlay is what makes the atv so cool


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## Stormspace (Apr 13, 2004)

DocNo said:


> Er, that whole Netflix app on my ATV must be a mirage then
> 
> News flash - Apple makes money on the hardware, not on the media. Having Amazon, HBO and whoever else they can on their devices is a BENEFIT - not a hindrance. People who suggest Apple is the one blocking are just woefully ignorant about what really motivates Apple.


Really? Because maybe it's my imagination but Apple wants a 30% cut of all in-app purchases and that is the reason Amazon removed the book store from the Kindle app. Other App vendors did the same.


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## DocNo (Oct 10, 2001)

Stormspace said:


> Really? Because maybe it's my imagination but Apple wants a 30% cut of all in-app purchases and that is the reason Amazon removed the book store from the Kindle app. Other App vendors did the same.


Yup - but that 30% cut is still a pittance of Apple's overall profit - it's not this huge driver for evil that many try to make it out to be. And if Apple was really interested in ruling with an iron fist over iOS, then they are really sucking at it by maintaining the most capable mobile browser in webkit/safari 

And why shouldn't Apple get a cut? It's well documented iOS users spend more money than then users of other platforms. They have millions of registered users with credit cards *on file* that are one click away from purchasing. You want tell me there's no value in that? Amazon is one of a few where the market presence Apple brings isn't as critical - so Amazon used an Apple provided mechanism - you can buy on the web instead of an in-app purchase. The trade off is convenience, but as I pointed out Amazon's presence is such that it's not as much an issue for them.

Indeed, all they removed is the ability to in app purchase. Amazon still has the Kindle and numerous other apps for consuming and using Amazon content and services. Yup, Apple's restrictions sure are crippling 

As for publishers - the 30% "cut" (as many crudely like to refer to it) wasn't the issue. The issue is Apple does not share purchaser data detail - details that are more valuable to publishers than your measly subscription fee because they then sell that purchaser data as part of their advertising. Your the product! Notice despite all the initial hubbub, most publishers have reversed their earlier protesting and offer in app purchases for subscriptions. Huh - it must have made fiscal sense to play in Apple's sandbox after all.

Once you get past the religious arguments, as with everything in life it comes down to economics.

And while all of the above is interesting, it still doesn't address they key point - the content providers, whom companies like Apple, Netflix and Amazon have to negotiate with, are the real problem here. Whether the 30% is an issue for Amazon or not (after all, they know how to "get around" that as they have demonstrated with the Kindle), I doubt they can offer their content on the AppleTV due to restrictions with the content providers. You don't think the Amazon streaming app on the iPad would be much more interesting and compelling if it could stream to the ATV? Do you really think *Amazon* is the one restricting output over AirPlay?


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## westside_guy (Mar 13, 2005)

dugbug said:


> AirPlay is what makes the atv so cool


This. EXACTLY this. I thought Airplay was a gimmick at first... but we've found it to be extremely fun and useful. Even just the iPad mirroring bits are great - but additionally there some apps that take specific advantage of the feature to do really fun stuff. And now that OS X 10.8 has it built-in as well (as long as you have reasonably current hardware), it's even better.

For people that haven't bought into the Apple universe, though - the Roku is a great box too. It seems a bit silly to argue one is better or worse than the other, really. Hard to argue against a $49 box that does so much.


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## jollygrunt777 (Feb 28, 2012)

MichaelK said:


> While deserving of a fanboi alert- does have merit. Tivo (because of their mini), Roku, and the new googletv entrants, are all likely to be sued out of existence next week anyway. Apple probably patented the "design" of a square box that connects to a tv and now that they ilawyers are done with samsung...
> 
> (I know the samsung think is a lot more than that but couldn't resist- tongue firmly in cheek)


 lmao. Funny and sadly true.


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