
Set-top box maker TiVo exploring options, could go private - uptown
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tivo-restructuring/set-top-box-maker-tivo-exploring-options-could-go-private-idUSKCN1GB314
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MBCook
It’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Their fantastic guide has been replaced by a generic one and a new...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.

~~~
__david__
I 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).

~~~
maxaf
I'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.

~~~
chocolatebunny
How much does it cost you to use an EC2 instance for torrenting? Doesn't that
eat up a lot of bandwidth? Any guides you recommend following?

...I am asking for a friend.

~~~
maxaf
At the minimum, you would need a t2.micro instance with enough disk to store
files before you've copied them to wherever you're going to do the watching.
I've tried doing this with a t2.nano, but the memory there simply isn't
enough.

There are dedicated torrent box packages out there, but I have no personal
experience with them, as for me tmux + rtorrent + nginx has been sufficient
for years. It used to be that only certain versions of rtorrent supported
magnet links, but the latest Debian stable ships with one that works just
fine, so there's no longer any need to compile anything from source.

I do recommend reading through rtorrent's configuration file because the
settings can make a difference in how long it takes to download something.
Also, be sure to adjust your security to allow BitTorrent traffic.

As for cost, it's never been a problem: I haven't seen an AWS bill above $60,
which includes a bunch of EBS volumes, the instance, the bandwidth, and my
various encrypted long term backups in S3.

~~~
EpicEng
What's the advantage in using an EC2 instance as opposed to a box sitting in
your house behind a VPN? VPN services cost about $6 / month or less.

~~~
maxaf
I can (and do) use the EC2 instance for other things. It often pulls quadruple
duty. The available bandwidth also allows me crank up rtorrent to aggressively
seek other peers, such that a typical 45 minute episode takes about 15 minutes
to download in 1080p. I then feed the https URL to VLC and watch the file.
Torrenting directly here always takes longer. I've never tried a VPN, but it
wouldn't make the bits travel any faster.

Additionally, in my household everything with a CPU and a network interface
ends up getting cannibalized for some project or another. There must be a name
for this phenomenon.

~~~
EpicEng
>I've never tried a VPN, but it wouldn't make the bits travel any faster.

No, definitely not; its purpose is only to hide your true IP. Fair enough, if
I had other things running in EC2 I'd probably consider this as well.

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syntheticnature
It is worth noting that guide data/patent company Rovi (not Roku or Rovio)
bought Tivo in the summer of 2016, then took their name.

~~~
lillesvin
As a former employee at Rovi EMEA before the TiVo acquisition. I can't imagine
any company improving from being acquired by Rovi...

~~~
__david__
Well, the guide data has only gotten worse since the acquisition.

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GeekyBear
Tivo'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.

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natecavanaugh
Can 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.

~~~
perplex
I’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.

~~~
natecavanaugh
This is a bit late, but re-reading your post gave me some thoughts.

> skip mode: while watching certain shows that were previosly recorded(mostly
> prime time) you can skip commercials at push of a button

This to me it's nice, but most DVR's now a days will do the same in 1-3 button
presses, which is not the ideal experience, it's an inconvenience that does
have a financial value attached to it.

> 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

This is amazing, and if my dog needed access on his iPad (he's my only
roommate, ATM), I'd subscribe just for that.

> 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)

This one is tempting me in spite of the status of this article.

> I’m probably an outlier in that I never had cable my entire life.

I would say an insanely valuable outlier. You lacked biases of DVR experience,
whick is crazy hard to find. Thank you for sharing your viewpoint :)

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chaoticmass
Considering 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
TiVo 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.

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ghaff
I 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.

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brightball
My TiVo Roamio plus Minis is such an awesome setup though. I have cable
because of Tivo at this point. Such a great system.

~~~
pathartl
I disagree. The hardware is extremely underpowered for the price and the
interface is clunky.

~~~
__david__
If you know of anything that even remotely compares to a TiVo, I'm all ears.

~~~
EpicEng
Every computer I own demolishes a TiVo.

~~~
jcater
And that does what for a wife, the kids, visiting parents, etc?

~~~
EpicEng
They 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.

------
uptown
I’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
If you haven't already asked over at
[http://www.tivocommunity.com/](http://www.tivocommunity.com/) in the Help
Center forum, I would.

~~~
uptown
Thanks. Had forgotten about that site.

------
nasalgoat
I 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.

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karpodiem
I 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
Be aware YouYube TV plays unskippable commercials. Someone used to a TiVo will
probably find it intolerable.

~~~
karpodiem
I really only watch live sports anymore, I torrent everything else.

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craftyguy
Huh. 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.

~~~
syntheticnature
Really, 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.

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dboreham
It 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.

