Why I'm Leaving TiVo

25 February 2010 16:48

Where I started

I’ve been a devoted TiVo owner since shortly after the introduction of the Series2 units.  Over the last year or so, my annoyance with the units (and the company in general) has risen repeatedly.  First, the units have gotten slower and slower over time.  Fine.  They’re doing more and more, and I should come to expect that.  There has been advertising on the main menu for a very long time.  Fine, I can understand that—they’re trying to increase revenue.  Next came the advertising when I hit the pause button.  Fine, they’re trying to increase—WAIT A MINUTE.  Didn’t I pay for the unit to start with?  Don’t I pay an ongoing monthly fee for program guide information?  This is ridiculous.

About 18 months ago, my upstairs unit lost a hard drive.  Options?  Buy a new unit from them, or get a replacement ‘approved’ drive from someone else.  No good—I’m not spending what they want for a replacement 40 GB drive.  No way.  So I added a 500GB unit I picked up, and used the excellent Instant Cake program to build it as a new TiVo unit. Voila!  Now it’s a 600 hour TiVo.  Awesome. 

Awesome right up until the Spring update arrived, which totally ‘whacked’ the drive.  Lost all the programming, had to reinstall, etc.  Painful.  It’s still a 600 hour unit, but spring is right around the corner.  I’m going to have to do this again (read the forums, it’s pretty common).  I recently built a new PC, and went to reinstall the $25 TiVo Desktop Plus that I purchased.  No good.  Can’t find the file, and they can’t find any record of me buying it.

In addition, many people are unaware that the TiVo in their living rooms is actually just another computer.  But I’m completely aware that it’s proprietary hardware running a specific version of Linux.  Big deal—except that to ‘hack’ it breaks all the terms of service with them.

So what do I have?  I have a DVR that I have to rebuild once a year that’s slow, I have to pay for guide information, and get commercials splattered all over it.  Further, since it’s proprietary hardware, I can’t upgrade it.  Can’t add memory.  The best I can do is add storage.  Buying a new High-Def TiVo would mean that I could record HD programming, but due to most of the providers, not copy that from one TiVo to the other.  And the mechanisms to write my own add-ins are just painful. 

This is madness!

 

So what now?

Taking all of these things into consideration, and looking at both what I have and what I know, as well as other options on the market, I’ve decided to go with Windows Media Center.  With Windows 7, it’s ready for prime time.  Why this?  Well, consider this: It’s a Windows computer.  I’ve been working with them since about 1988.  I’m pretty accustomed to what it takes to build and upgrade them.  Want more memory?  Fine, add it.  Want more storage?  Fine, add it.  Want a better video experience?  Add a new card.  Faster computer?  Upgrade.  Pretty common stuff.

Now the fun part: With Media Center Extenders, I can record a program and watch it from anywhere there’s an extender.  The PC itself is in the basement.  An Xbox 360 acts as the extender in the living room, so it can either play games or watch TV—but I get to get rid of an extra box (the TiVo box itself).  Further, with extenders, you can start a program in one room, and immediately finish it in another.  Excellent!

And as I mentioned before, add-ins are another thing I’m interested in.  And there are tons of existing ones available now.  Internet TV lets me bring a variety of other programming into it as well.  TunerFreeMCE lets me stream things like BBC programming straight to the unit.  PlayOn plus PlayIt gives me even more content.  HeatWave gives me weather data.  While I steam Netflix to the Xbox directly, it’s also possible to stream Netflix to the Media Center. 

I’m a .Net developer by profession, so creating an add-in for other things I want simply means learning a few things about the API and markup language, and I’m good to go.  

 

Where am I currently at?

It’ll take a full blog post to explain how I got it all set up, so I’ll do that soon.  Presently, I have the living room TiVo replaced.  I have an ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner installed in a PC, with Comcast digital cable running to it.  At present, it’s got a 500GB drive, so it works out to be about 350 hours of SD / 52 hours HD programming storage available (I’ve to a slew of images & music on it, too)  An Xbox in the living room streams the programming directly from the Media Center.  Most of the add-ins I mentioned are up and running. 

We’ve started setting up the programming to record the shows we watch.

We’re live with Media Center.

Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.

© Copyright 2024 Jim Moore