# Enhanced TivoCast



## Veriander (Dec 3, 2006)

I want TiVoCast to be improved.

I was really excited when the TiVoCast feature was added. I used to watch Cranky Geeeks and DL.TV on my PC using the Juice Podcast receiver, but now I watch them on my TiVo powered big-screen TV. It's great!

The problem is, no new content has been added to TiVoCast for months!! There's lots of other content on the Internet. I wish that TiVoCast would let me subscribe to other vodcasts such as Neo-Fight TV or the GigaOm show.

Better yet, why can't I just enter the URL of any vodcast I want and have my TiVo download it for me the way Juice does?? After all TiVo is just a Linux PC and there are podcast receivers for Linux.

TiVo please unshackle TiVoCast!!


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## EvilMidniteBombr (May 25, 2006)

+1 I would love to watch Diggnation on my big screen.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

They are actually planning this -- the ability to enter an arbitrary URL -- for release fairly soon. However, the feature will rely on TiVo Desktop (mainly, I think, because it's needed to transcode).


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## Veriander (Dec 3, 2006)

wmcbrine said:


> They are actually planning this -- the ability to enter an arbitrary URL -- for release fairly soon. However, the feature will rely on TiVo Desktop (mainly, I think, because it's needed to transcode).


If they don't include this feature in the TiVo itself I hope they at least add the functionality to the TiVo Online Scheduler.


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## classicsat (Feb 18, 2004)

They cannot add it to the TiVo itself, the least of which is the TiVo needs specifically formated MPEG2, with most video podcasts in some form of MPEG4. A TiVo is not a PC, in that it requires its fixed MPEG2 hardware to play back media, where a PC can play back that media in software, and as such have the software changed/installed to support new codecs.

The next version of TiVo Desktop will make it easier to to view video podcasts on your TiVo, as it will download the MPEG4 video podcasts, and convert them to MPEG2 for the TiVo to play. I say easier, because as of now, you can link your video podcast folder to your TiVo recordings folder, and manually convert/transfer them through TiVo Desktop (Plus).


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## Veriander (Dec 3, 2006)

classicsat said:


> ...you can link your video podcast folder to your TiVo recordings folder, and manually convert/transfer them through TiVo Desktop (Plus).


I didn't realize is was that easy with TiVo Desktop Plus. I tried the original version when TiVo2Go came out and lost intrest in it. Thanks for the tip ! :up:


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

In principle, they could do the transcoding on the TiVo. It would just be agonizingly slow.


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## megazone (Mar 3, 2002)

wmcbrine said:


> In principle, they could do the transcoding on the TiVo. It would just be agonizingly slow.


Slow on a geologic time scale.


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## herfmonster (Jul 12, 2006)

Why are all these difficult "*hardware*" solutions the only thing that ever seems to be offered? Wouldn't a *software* solution be simpler?

Just add the codecs for .wmv .flv and divx to the playback software and don't worry about transcoding. Just *play* the file and *watch*. Besides, many of those codecs make the file smaller anyway.


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## herfmonster (Jul 12, 2006)

classicsat...

what do you mean the TiVo is not a PC?

My PC has a case so does my TiVo.
My PC has a power supply so does my TiVo.
My PC has a motherboard so does my TiVo.
My PC has a cpu so does my TiVo.
My PC has a hard drive so does my TiVo.
My PC has ram memory so does my TiVo.
My PC has a video card so does my TiVo.
My PC has a video capture card so does my TiVo.
My PC has a usb port so does my TiVo.
My PC has a DVD rom drive so does my TiVo.
and... 
My PC has an operating system (XP Pro) so does my TiVo (Linux).


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## megazone (Mar 3, 2002)

herfmonster said:


> classicsat...
> 
> what do you mean the TiVo is not a PC?


He mean's it is not a PC. And it isn't.



> My PC has a case so does my TiVo.
> My PC has a power supply so does my TiVo.
> My PC has a motherboard so does my TiVo.
> My PC has a cpu so does my TiVo.
> ...


That's nice - it still isn't a PC. And the TiVo does not have a video card in the PC-sense, nor a video capture card. It has dedicated hardware, but not PC-style. Substitute 'storage' for 'hard drive' and a lot of devices that description, such as any number of DVD recorders, and basically every DVR - non-TiVo included. The PS3 and Xbox 360 certainly fit as well.

Most smartphones have cases, power supplies, motherboards, CPUs, storage (not drives, but solid state - effectively the same), RAM, video chipsets, USB interfaces, and an OS - even Linux on many. Some even have video capture - though I haven't seen one with DVD (yet). And they're not PCs either.

Calling the TiVo a PC is a gross over generalization. It is highly specialized hardware and NOT general purpose hardware found in a PC. The TiVo is optimized to do specific tasks - cheaply. The CPU in most TiVos is WEAKER than the one in my Palm Treo, running at less than half the speed. Don't even think of comparing it to an x86 CPU in a PC, or Mac these days. The fastest TiVo CPU, in the S3 & TiVo HD, runs at 300Mhz. That's an order of magnitude slower than x86 CPUs these days. Not only is it slower, but it does much less work per clock cycle. It has a simple MIPS instruction set - RISC - not the relatively huge x86-64 CISC instruction set of today's CPU. It doesn't have the large pipelines, multi-threading, etc, either. It is very simple, and hence it is fairly cheap.

It really isn't even correct to call it a CPU - it is an SOC, System On a Chip. One chip in the TiVo HD contains the MIPS CPU core, the MPEG-2/MPEG-4/H.264/WMV/VC-1 decoder, the Ethernet controller, the SATA controller, the USB controller, the memory controller, and probably other things I'm forgetting. Most of the system is that one chip. The major components that aren't on that one chip are the tuners and encoding chips, well, and the RAM.

Why not use an x86 CPU and PC video hardware? Because then the TiVo would cost a lot more than it does. Sure, it would have a lot more power, but if you need all that power - then you don't want a TiVo, you want a PC.

Same reason they don't use PC hardware in DVD players, Blu-ray players, etc. It is overkill and it would greatly increase the costs. It is FAR, FAR more efficient to use a hardware MPEG decoder than to use a general purpose CPU and do it in software. The cost savings is immense!


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## megazone (Mar 3, 2002)

herfmonster said:


> Why are all these difficult "*hardware*" solutions the only thing that ever seems to be offered? Wouldn't a *software* solution be simpler?


No, actually, the software solution would be more complex. But, more importantly, it would be FAR more expensive and greatly increase the cost of the product. See my previous reply.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

megazone said:


> He mean's it is not a PC. And it isn't.


That depends on how one defines the term.



megazone said:


> That's nice - it still isn't a PC. And the TiVo does not have a video card in the PC-sense, nor a video capture card.


Neither do some of the PCs in my house. Neither my video server nor my file server have either one.



megazone said:


> It has dedicated hardware, but not PC-style. Substitute 'storage' for 'hard drive' and a lot of devices that description, such as any number of DVD recorders, and basically every DVR - non-TiVo included. The PS3 and Xbox 360 certainly fit as well.


True. I also have several PCs at work which don't have hard drives (or drives of any sort). Diskless workstations used to be quite popular.



megazone said:


> The CPU in most TiVos is WEAKER than the one in my Palm Treo, running at less than half the speed.


The clock rate of a CPU is not the end-all and be all of performance metrics. RISC implementations with properly optimized software have historically run circles around CISC implementations running at much higher clock rates. I have a brace of old HP C3600 workstations at work and they leave the Windows workstations sitting next to them in the dust, despite only running at 500 MHz, while the Windows workstations have 2.something GHz Pentium D processors.



megazone said:


> Not only is it slower, but it does much less work per clock cycle.


'Just the opposite. Aggressive RISC implementations will perform at least one instruction per processor-cycle, and heavily pipelined RISC implementations can manage two or more instructions per cycle. Historically almost all supercomputers were RISC after the very first RISC implementation, which was the CDC 6600. Most still are.



megazone said:


> It has a simple MIPS instruction set - RISC - not the relatively huge x86-64 CISC instruction set of today's CPU.


By definition a RISC implementation has a smaller instruction set. Microcode is very slow, and some x86 instructions performed in microcode take more than 100 cycles. Starting with the 486, Intel began to implement RISC-like pipelines in its processors for some of its instructions, which greatly reduced the number of cycles per instruction, but even now the Pentium line does not manage one instruction per CPU-cycle for every instruction. Multiple CPU cores can help a great deal, if the software is properly optimized to make use of the multiple cores.



megazone said:


> It doesn't have the large pipelines, multi-threading, etc, either. It is very simple, and hence it is fairly cheap.


CISC processors are not expensive, either, and yes a Pentium or Athlon implementation in the TiVo would be more expensive, but it would also be slower for any CPU with even close to the same clock speed as the MIPS processor used in the TiVo. It would also be inefficient.

It's true the contemporary CISC processors are much more heavily pipelined than the 486 and it's also true the distinction between RISC and CISC has blurred a lot over the last decade or so, but you will find most supercomputers and high powered servers still employ RISC based CPUs, although more and more one may see multi-core CISC implementations in these machines.

That's not to say the TiVo's processor is anything like a race horse, let alone a race car in the field of fast CPUs, but the reason it isn't is not because it is RISC.



megazone said:


> Why not use an x86 CPU and PC video hardware? Because then the TiVo would cost a lot more than it does.


And perform more poorly, which means there's no point at all in attempting it.



megazone said:


> Sure, it would have a lot more power, but if you need all that power - then you don't want a TiVo, you want a PC.


Certainly an 8 core 4GHz monster with 8G of dual port 800MHz memory will have much more horsepower than the TiVo, but an 800MHz Pentium III wouldn't by a long shot. Even when recording two 20 Mbps 1080i programs, watching a third, and uploading a fourth over the network, my TiVos rarely peak at much more than 80% CPU loading. The 2 GHz / 2 GB Dual core Pentium D from which I am typing this message bumps its head on the ceiling and hiccoughs and stutters no end, often barfing all over itself if I attempt even two modest HD videos. A single 1080i video runs it out between 70% and 100% CPU utilization. Of course the TiVo isn't burdened with Windows, either, I must admit.



megazone said:


> Same reason they don't use PC hardware in DVD players, Blu-ray players, etc. It is overkill and it would greatly increase the costs.


'Not so much. A barebones PC with a DVD drive (sans monitor and other peripherals) is cheaper than a lot of DVD players.



megazone said:


> It is FAR, FAR more efficient to use a hardware MPEG decoder than to use a general purpose CPU and do it in software.


That's the main reason, along with the fact performance is much better than with a general purpose PC for this application.



megazone said:


> The cost savings is immense!


That depends on what you mean by "immense". In OEM quantities, a manufacturer could probably put together a PC based DVD player for under $100, but there's little point.


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## EvilMidniteBombr (May 25, 2006)

GEEK FIGHT!!!


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## classicsat (Feb 18, 2004)

lrhorer said:


> That depends on how one defines the term.


PC, in the generic term, for the purposes of this argument, is a computer that is about 70% software, 30% hardware, where tasks are mostly executed in software, and has the flexibility to account for hardware differences in software.

A TiVo on the other hand, has its hardware/software ratio skewed the other way. Given that the CPU (or SOC) is busy as it is doing the TiVo thing, it has little room to spare to to do things in software which the hardware cannot do.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

I guess maybe I don't own or operate any PCs, then. [/sardonic mode]

I certainly wasn't arguing a desktop computer or even a high end workstation would make a good choice for a DVR. I'm also certainly not arguing anyone would be well served trying to turn their TiVo into a desktop machine. Nonetheless, it is much more powerful - if completely lacking in peripherals - than any desktop PC available in 1988. Though antiquated by contemporary industry standards, such a machine is still a "PC", and I have a couple of them still doing their thing at work.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

wmcbrine said:


> In principle, they could do the transcoding on the TiVo. It would just be agonizingly slow.





megazone said:


> Slow on a geologic time scale.


Apparently not. I'm given to understand the S3 has a Broadcom BCM7411 h.264 decoder on the motherboard and the THD also has an MPEG-4 decoder ASIC on board. It's just that neither one yet has any software which apparently uses them, or at least not any active software. I haven't opened either box to confirm this for myself, so my sources could be wrong, but they're pretty good sources.


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## classicsat (Feb 18, 2004)

lrhorer said:


> Nonetheless, it is much more powerful - if completely lacking in peripherals - than any desktop PC available in 1988.


You have that 1988 PC (likely a 12 Mhz 286 with a 1-4MB RAM, and EGA, or at best VGA, graphics, play full screen MP4 video flawlessly. That is about the position TiVo is in.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

classicsat said:


> You have that 1988 PC (likely a 12 Mhz 286 with a 1-4MB RAM, and EGA, or at best VGA, graphics, play full screen MP4 video flawlessly.


Oops! That was a typo. I meant 1998. They are 486 machines, basic VGA, about 4M of RAM. 'Maximum disk throughput of about 10Mbps. They couldn't even play a 360 x 240 .AVI file. Displaying a single 720 x 480 still picture would take the better part of a second.

OTOH, there were much more capable machines than the one you list in 1988. Indeed, I purchased my first IBM clone in 1985, and it was a 33MHz 80386. The 486 was introduced in 1989.



classicsat said:


> That is about the position TiVo is in.


I have no idea what you mean by that.


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## classicsat (Feb 18, 2004)

lrhorer said:


> Oops! That was a typo. I meant 1998. They are 486 machines, basic VGA, about 4M of RAM. 'Maximum disk throughput of about 10Mbps. They couldn't even play a 360 x 240 .AVI file. Displaying a single 720 x 480 still picture would take the better part of a second.


Exactly, they couldn't play video well in software, and neither can a TiVo, as well as it can with a hardware decoder.


> I have no idea what you mean by that.


TiVo is not in a position (on their Series 2 models anyways), to play video content in software on the overlay (the only place where the software has access to directly write pixels). The same might go for sound.


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