U.S. personnel stationed at Yokota Air Base in Japan are getting a time-shifting server system that will broadcast U.S. television programs at the right time of day--meaning that prime-time shows will be on at the appropriate hour, despite the time difference.
The hardware and software acts as a computerized container, holding a show for nine hours before it's rebroadcast. One is required for each of the 33 channels available on the base.
"The time-shift servers work much like a very large TiVo," Keith Southard, chief executive of San Jose, Calif.-based Allied Telesis Capital, wrote in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes. "They take content in, store it on large hard drives, and then replay the content at the designated time--nine hours later in a continuous stream."
I wonder if there is a way to use a combination of TiVo and Slingbox to get the same effect--though clearly, you couldn't do it on the same scale as you would need to in order to support a large amount of people.
Invision TV launched at Demo and aims to bring order to the chaos of Internet video. I've been playing with the service for a half hour or so and it's actually quite good. The service lets you watch videos in your browser window and lets you search for other videos at the same time.
This approach may limit the volume of items likely to be returned on YouTube, but it parses everything down to a more consumable set of content. And you don't have to open multiple browser windows like you do with YouTube.
YouTube does have a fantastic array of content, but it also has an enormous array of crap. And the interface essentially forces you to search for anything--the navigation between categories is weird and the user-generated tagging just complicates matter.
Invision brings a Tivo style lineup to the browser (and theoretically to set-top boxes in the future) allowing for more efficient viewing.
I think about TiVo the same way I do about RSS: it gives me the option to get as much as I want, but I can easily set up the things I like and have the information ready to go when I am ready. Invision TV looks to be a great step toward making Internet video more accessible.
Via VentureBeat
Replay Solutions launched a new tool for enterprise Java applications in June. I recently discussed the product and concepts around "TiVo for software" with CEO and co-founder Jonathan Lindo.
Q: Where did the "replaying software" concept come from?
Lindo: In 2000, co-founder Jeff Daudel and I were helping to build a company in Silicon Valley with a very complex and ambitious networked application supporting up to millions of users. We had a large group of software testers and an army of beta testers who were great at finding issues. Lots of issues.
As we got closer to our ship date, we found ourselves drowning in a sea of software bugs. We quickly realized that we were spending over half of our time simply trying to reproduce the issues that were being reported. Often, we couldn't even reproduce the bugs that we knew were there. The conditions in which the bugs occurred were simply too random or unique.
... Read moreI always think about hacking my Tivo then realize that I would be devastated if I screwed it all up. In the video Dave Zatz shows us how to issue commands to your Tivo via his iPhone. This looks like a fun little trick to play on your loved ones.
Zatz Not Funny via Engadget
As it happens, HBO encoded the program with DRM--a dated self-destruct mechanism and when Tivo ran it's nightly update and the clock turned over the program was deleted without any interaction from Tivo.
(Side note: Tivo support is really good and very nice. I can't fault the company or the support team for any of this.)
I was trying to think about this a bit and figure out what HBO had to gain by removing a kids show from my Tivo without telling me and making it difficult for my baby to go to sleep. The answer is really nothing.
HBO, like all DRM obsessed companies find it necessary to "control" the content. It's especially odd in this case as HBO owns the content (meaning they wouldn't be paying royalties) and I would think they would want us locked into their service and their content.
And as far as I can tell the terms that one agrees to with HBO (or any other network) are outside the control of Tivo and Comcast, and there is no clear explanation of what might happen when, or under what circumstances when you sign up for HBO through a cable provider.
Was it wrong for me to rely on the program to be in the Tivo? I don't think so. There was no warning, or meta-data or other information that said the program would be deleted. The whole thing is just rude and an effrontery to the consumer.
Last night I ordered the DVD overnight from Amazon so that the blessed child can go to sleep. I am pretty sure that I am going to cancel my HBO subscription but I'm not sure if I am taking this too personally.
My biggest realization is that I now realize that I need to continue to own physical media as I have no idea what these scumbag companies might try to pull over on consumers.
It's pathetic that as the software world opens up, the media world continues to be an evil dark overlord.
For those of you who have young children you know that you need some kind of bedtime ritual to get the kid to go to sleep.
At our house we watch the Goodnight Moon show that we Tivo'd from HBO. I should have bought the DVD a few months back instead of just now but we figured it would always be in the Tivo!
This 30 minute masterpiece does an amazing job calming the savage beast. But today we got quite a surprise when the Tivo deleted the show on it's own and doesn't show it in "Recently Deleted Items" or offer a way to search for deleted items. So now the damn thing is just gone and we had to wrangle the kid to sleep after reading her a book. (Yes, I know we should probably do that anyway, but the video is magic.)
So, who's to blame? I don't know. I checked the Tivo forums and read that HBO is now expiring programs from people's Tivo boxes, and I don't trust Comcast a whole lot so I am sure there is collusion in there somewhere.
I am incredibly annoyed and honestly feel like my rights as a consumer (especially one who has owned 3 Tivos and pays a whopping cable bill) have been trampled. I am sure there is some explanation but it's infuriating. There is nothing in my contract with Tivo (or Comcast) that says they can delete material on my Tivo that I continue to pay a subscription for.
Having been a *very* happy Tivo owner for about 7 years this is the first time where I have been so pissed that I want to throw the thing out the window. I guess I will go check out MythTv.
As someone who had hoped that Tivo and the internet were going to raise my child, I have to say that I am disappointed by this SF Gate article that says kids today are dumber than ever and may in fact be getting dumber as we go on.
As for the rest, well, the dystopian evidence seems overwhelming indeed, to the point where it might be no stretch at all to say the biggest threat facing America is perhaps not global warming, not perpetual warmongering, not garbage food or low-level radiation or way too much Lindsay Lohan, but a populace far too ignorant to know how to properly manage any of it, much less change it all for the better.
Now I feel even more pressure to make money so my kid isn't a moron. The thing that throws me is that when I grew video gamers weren't as obsessive as they are now and yet lots of kids I knew were completely stupid.
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