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Set-top box maker TiVo exploring options, could go private
- MBCook 9y agoIt’s too bad they’re destorying themselves. I say this as a LONG time subscriber (over 15 years) who only has cable to keep my TiVo working. The new software update they released last year that overhauled the UI completely is a total disaster. Change for the sake of change. It takes more button presses on different/additional buttons to navigate the menus. You can’t just use the d-pad and select. The menus aren’t hierarchies anymore, they’re just a mess you have to memorize. Fitts law doesn’t work as there are things at the top of some menus you don’t want to select so you can’t wuickly get to the top without then pressing down two or three times. Their fantastic guide has been replaced by a generic one and a new... thing... that’s confusing as hell and worse than the old and new options. Also, the guide data has been getting noticeably worse in the last two years or so. I can’t go back to the old interface, and even if I could I imagine I’d be shoved forward again at some point. I’m really questioning why I’m paying so much for cable and TiVo if my TiVo keeps making me mad and they’ve shown ZERO sign they actually understand the issues. Sunk cost fallacy. Time to give it up guys and course correct. You pissed off all the loyal fans and aren’t drawing anyone new in.
- syntheticnature 9y agoYou can downgrade if you want, actually, though the price is wiping your recordings: https://www.tivocommunity.com/community/index.php?threads/how-to-rollback-hydra-from-roamio-and-minis-v1.554653/ https://www.tivocommunity.com/community/index.php?threads/ho... (Also you can't use the voice button on the new VOX remote) I know this because I'm in a similar boat, but turned down the "upgrade" to the UI.
- MBCook 9y agoYeah, I know, but I have a lot of stuff recorded and don’t want to lose it yet again (as often happens when upgrading between boxes). But again, I figure that after having to basically re-do everything after a downgrade I’d just be forced back up again.
- syntheticnature 9y agoHaven't been forced yet, though if you say "give it a few months" I'll nod sadly in agreement.
- wefj82321a 9y agoThis is just bizarre to me at this point. There's so much content available elsewhere, with no commercials, for less hassle. But you're putting up with the frustration of a box and paying for legacy services (you want some story with your ads, I guess), just because? Capitalism and neoliberalism have taken human propensity for mass delusion and turned it on ourselves. Its outcome, in terms of human psychology, is no less abusive than religion. At religion didn't also have us destroying the environment.
- chmaynard 9y ago> I’m really questioning why I’m paying so much for cable and TiVo A while back I plunked down a few hundred dollars for a lifetime Tivo subscription -- I'm surprised you didn't do the same. I'm paying Verizon $10/month for cable access to local TV stations, ESPN, and the weather channel. Yes, cable is slowly being displaced, but that's what happens to all technologies eventually. Why worry? Enjoy your Tivo and stop complaining.
- __david__ 9y agoWell, you still have to pay for the cable subscription. If I didn't watch so many cable shows, I'd love to go TiVo lifetime+terrestrial.
- __david__ 9y agoI haven't tried the new UI yet. I saw the preview on their site and I wasn't impressed. The guide data is bad now because Rovi bought them and switched to using their guide data. They broke "push to tivo" functionality for their TiVo Desktop software and haven't fixed it for almost 2 years (if you trace the network traffic you'll see it tries to login at mind.tivo.com and gets a memcache error—sigh). This breaks my favorite usage of pyTivo, where I can ship stuff up to the TiVo that I've downloaded elsewhere. Which leads me to… This month I spent a solid week researching every option I could find to replace my TiVo+Cable and none of them were very attractive. Pretty much every legit streaming service has unskippable commercials (IE, every iOS network app). And they also tend to get episodes the day after they air (I could live with that but some, like DirecTVNow on-demand, get episodes weeks after they air). And the services that do get it right (Netflix, Amazon, maybe Hulu) only have a small subset of the TV shows that I watch. I came away very frustrated that the only solution I could find that was a better experience than my TiVo+Cable was piracy. Torrents of practically every TV show exist, come out quickly, have the commercials pre-stripped, and don't have restrictive DRM. I don't understand how people cut the cord. They must either not care about unskippable commercials, or they don't watch as much TV as I do, or they pirate (I was trying to avoid it, but man it's enticing).
- haikuginger 9y agoLook into a SiliconDust HDHomeRun Prime. CableCARD support, and compatible with a variety of DVR software backends.
- maxaf 9y agoI've been pirating everything I can for as long as I've been watching TV. My wife and I still have a box of CD-R's labeled in marker with our favorite late 90s - early 00s movies on them. Back in the day we've leeched off private FTP servers. Now we run a torrent box in EC2. Weirdly enough, AWS neglected to send us warnings in almost a decade. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
- koolba 9y agoDoes Amazon not respond to torrent notices for illegal downloads? Do you periodically rebuild the instance to get a new IP? I’ve considered setting up a torrent box but ruled out EC2 before even looking further into it. Figured it would need to be something overseas.
- datguacdoh 9y agoI was also a long time TiVo user (3 units in 3 rooms for about 10 years) and gave up on them this year. Now I'm just using YouTube TV which has an unlimited DVR, and with a couple Chromecast and Roku devices under displays now, I don't miss it one bit. I get access to everything I need, anywhere I am, and don't have to clean up the disk constantly or pay extra on top of the TV service.
- syntheticnature 9y agoIt is worth noting that guide data/patent company Rovi (not Roku or Rovio) bought Tivo in the summer of 2016, then took their name.
- chaoticmass 9y agoConsidering the general shift among TV watchers to increasingly popular VoD services which are ad-free and do not need time shifting I'm surprised TiVo is even still around.
- orev 9y agoTiVo provides access to these VoD services as well through apps, so it makes a very nice one stop shop for accessing all of your media sources.
- karpodiem 9y agoI love my TiVo HD 652160! I have five of them (stockpiled) on lifetime subscription with the 2TB hard drive upgrade. My provider (WideOpenWest) fortunately has dodged the MPEG-4 low bitrate bullet that Comcast fired (which I was I left Comcast) on its subscribers. I'll keep riding these TiVo's into the sunset, then I'll probably get YouTube TV.
- jerf 9y agoBe aware YouYube TV plays unskippable commercials. Someone used to a TiVo will probably find it intolerable.
- karpodiem 9y agoI really only watch live sports anymore, I torrent everything else.
- fendmark 9y agoI have a TiVo HD with a lifetime subscription as well and they are going to have to pry it from my cold dead hands. There is nothing better I've found out there for skipping commercials. That said TiVo really needs to evolve their business, I'd love to see them to shift to a cloud based DVR that works with FireTV, Chromecast etc.. I highly doubt I'll ever buy another TiVo DVR as they currently are. Every year we use it less as streaming becomes a better option.
- brightball 9y agoMy TiVo Roamio plus Minis is such an awesome setup though. I have cable because of Tivo at this point. Such a great system.
- pathartl 9y agoI disagree. The hardware is extremely underpowered for the price and the interface is clunky.
- __david__ 9y agoIf you know of anything that even remotely compares to a TiVo, I'm all ears.
- pathartl 9y agoI usually roll my own solution with Kodi + tvheadend + HDHomerun. Though HDHR is working on a DVR server that integrates directly with Kodi so it's gonna get even easier. Should work on any device that supports Kodi.
- EpicEng 9y agoEvery computer I own demolishes a TiVo.
- jcater 9y agoAnd that does what for a wife, the kids, visiting parents, etc?
- EpicEng 9y agoThey all use it. My son has been able to mostly-sorta-kinda work the wireless keyboard since he was two and my wife has no issues using her laptop or our theater PC which remains hooked up to the TV. Visiting parents? Sure, I have to remind my Mom how to use it every time. That happens once a year, not a real concern given the thousands of dollars I have saved. Also, you may find that you watch less TV with a setup like this assuming your someone who typically has it on in the background nearly all of the time.
- ghaff 9y agoI have a lifetime subscription and somewhat reluctantly got a Weaknees replacement drive after a failure near the end of last year. It was mostly to avoid making various decisions/changes related to cable service. I don't get OTA where I live so decisions weren't all that straightforward even though I watch very little live TV. However, I can't imagine ever buying a new TiVo and subscribing to the service.
- GeekyBear 9y agoTivo's decision to require a large up front purchase in addition to requiring a large recurring monthly fee was always the thing that kept my friends from buying one after hearing me rave about mine. They could have been much more successful than they were.
- craftyguy 9y agoHuh. TIL TiVo was still a thing. Are they just relying on past subscribers to stay alive? I don't recall seeing any advertising, news, or otherwise about TiVo in probably 10 years.
- sp332 9y agoAtlantic Broadband offers them as set-top boxes to customers.
- syntheticnature 9y agoReally, their big source of money is licensing, both software and patents on DVR technology. Well, now that Rovi bought them (and took the name) it's also selling guide data.
- natecavanaugh 9y agoCan someone explain the big appeal of TiVo to me, or at least what their appeal was? The set top boxes I've gotten from different providers are always a bit hit or miss, but never so bad I felt a need to purchase external equipment. It's been "good enough" and I never heard of a good enough reason to invest in TiVo. Was it the UX? For example, I purchased an Apple Extreme to use as my interface for my routers because there was a convenience to keeping all of my devices on the same wifi credentials, and only having to switch the ISPs hardware to bridge mode. But I could never see the value proposition with TiVo hardware, though everyone who had it seems to have adored it.
- oppositelock 9y agoI bought the first Tivo when it came out, and bought most of them over the years - currently I use an OTA box to record local TV over the air and stream everything else. The original Tivo was miles ahead of any other alternative, and it pioneered the ability to skip commercials, which was HUGE at the time. The notion of time-shifting was somewhat new as well, it changed how people watch TV before streaming existed by allowing you to watch it whenever you want. Other recorders existed at the time, but programming them and setting them up was an enormous pain in the butt, while Tivo had a friendly UI. Over time, the competition has caught up, and Tivo doesn't have that much value over anyone else. CableTV is on the decline, so there's not too much reason to innovate into a shrinking market.
- perplex 9y agoI’m a fairly new TiVo user and have never experienced any other DVRs. The appeal of TiVo for me is a few things: - skip mode: while watching certain shows that were previosly recorded(mostly prime time) you can skip commercials at push of a button - ability to stream or download shows onto mobile device. We download kid shows onto the iPad and they’ll play offline, and you can even delete the original off the TiVo - ability to manage recordings and setup one pass from mobile device. (One pass is a feature that lets you record all episodes of a particular show) - user interface: I never used the old interface, and have not used other DVRs, but the latest interface is really nice. I rarely use it to manage recordings but when I do it works quite well. I’m probably an outlier in that I never had cable my entire life. I recently got cable and watch quite a few shows regularly. I never watch commercials and get to enjoy TV on own own schedule. Long form TV, like sports, or live shows, and things like the olympics olympics are great to speed through the boring parts and watch what you want.
- uptown 9y agoI’ve used TiVo’s since their Series 2 devices (started with a second-hand Sony TiVo which I replaced the HD) and have always had the lifetime subscriptions. Easily worth the cost. However my current HD TiVo with cable card is starting to get flaky. Changeless will go black even though they should show a broadcast. Weird UI glitches. A reboot fixes it so I’m hoping it’s the cable card and not the TiVo but cable companies seem hostile to cable card users so I’m not sure how to diagnose the origin of the problem. Unless things have changed I’m not sure they’ll let me return and replace my own cable card and I’m reluctant to schedule a service call if the problem is my hardware since they’ll charge me. Anyone with an HD TiVo experience similar behavior before and know how to resolve?
- syntheticnature 9y agoIf you haven't already asked over at http://www.tivocommunity.com/ http://www.tivocommunity.com/ in the Help Center forum, I would.
- uptown 9y agoThanks. Had forgotten about that site.
- orev 9y agoIt can take a few rounds of getting the CableCard replaced, and also making sure your signal levels are good. Stick with it and once you get it settled the issues will be gone. An advantage now with CC having been around for a long time is that cable companies usually have a pretty experienced staff on hand who know how to troubleshoot the problems (phone support, not onsite techs). I’ve had good results with both Comcast and Time Warner.
- dboreham 9y agoIt would be nice if they made their online (browser-based) streaming service actually work. Or at least work for more than a few days before they break it again.
- nasalgoat 9y agoI recall the fun of hacking the cheap TiVos (the Sony branded ones especially for some reason) to get a shell, upgrading the disks and so on. This was long before they had Canadian guide support, so that was the only way to hack in guide data. But, once HD TV became the norm, the writing was on the wall for them. Frankly I'm amazed it lasted as long as it did.