I haven't bought stock in about three years after getting boosted and burned in the dotcom craze, but driving home from the airport with Rachel last Sunday I said "I think I should buy some TiVo stock." It recently took a bit of a dive (40% or so) and while everyone's manning the 'TiVo death watch' it's not the first time, and the first rule of investing is to buy things that are undervalued.

The market was closed Monday and on Tuesday I forgot about it until after the markets closed at 1pm Pacific time. Wednesday morning I wake to find that TiVo is up 25%. Drat.

At first I thought it was just a market correction, things finally adjusting to reality after a hard Tuesday market, but it seems that the 'Apple buys TiVo' rumor again resurfaced. Like two flames brought closer together burning brighter, the Apple buzz around iPods to be released today and the TiVo buzz about being in dire straits -- yet bagging their three millionth subscriber, combined to reignite the Apple-TiVo buyout rumor mill.

A couple mainstream venues reported the rumors and suddenly the stock is in play and, as these things do, it fed upon itself; increased volume and boyancy only giving credibility to the rumor.

I've no idea if the rumor's true or not, though if you've been here for a couple years then you know my take on it. Either way I hope the stock noses down a little bit so I can get in after all. Heck, maybe tomorrow Microsoft will announce that the X-box 360 will have a PVR built in, conjoined to a Blu-ray disc burner.

Anyhow, rah rah Apple, rah rah TiVo.

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Ever get the urge to search on ebay using your tivo? Say thank you to both of them. It's just a 'demonstration' but it's fully functional.

Now if only TiVo would finish the required 7.1 system upgrade for my Humax TiVo so I could play with this stuff...

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Questions Frequently Asked About TiVo, Answered by Someone Who Loves TiVo Too Much

I'd try to write some witty synopsis here but all I can say is I laughed 'till I cried.

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I've got a bunch of coverage about TiVo's givaway this morning. The lowdown is that Comcast has been promising their subscribers that they're coming out with a DVR box for about a year now, but they keep delaying and frustrating their customers, so TiVo stepped in and told Bay Area Comcast subscribers to bring a copy of their Comcast bill and a toy for charity and TiVo will give them a new 40-hour Series2 TiVo (service fees are still required).

They told people the line wouldn't form until 9am, and the giveaway would last from 11am to 1pm, or when they ran out of TiVos.

This morning I went to Flickr and searched for the 'tivo' tag and found a moblogger's on-site post. Since then folks have pointed me to a TiVo Giveaway Webcam and a photo album of the event.

At 1pm they'd given away more than 800 TiVos and at 2pm the line is still hours long. Justine is still waiting patiently in line, and hopefully they'll run out of would-be TiVotees before they run out of boxes.

Having given four TiVos to people as gifts over the last few years I'm familiar with the joy they can bring. I'm glad TiVo's spreading the cheer. With luck these folks will have their boxes set up in time to record 'It's a Wonderful Life' while they're across the country visiting with family.

Update: All the TiVos are gone, and some people left unfulfilled. For those who didn't get them, or didn't make it out to Alviso, TiVo's offering the Series2 boxes for $49 ($50 instant discount, plus $100 rebate) if you order before midnight tonight. If you don't have a TiVo, today's probably the best time to get one.

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Did anyone out there see the series premiere episode of Stargate: Atlantis? Cause I didn't. Tivo messed up changing the channels so I got 120 minutes of MSNBC instead.

Anyone have a tape? A DVD? A bittorrent or a local PVR where Rachel and I could watch the ep? We were looking forward to it all week.

Ugh. Thanks! If you do, please drop me a line at hi at fury.com.

Take care!

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Everyone's been posting Jim Louderback's premonition of TiVo's death like it's the Gospel, and so I feel compelled to tell you exactly why Jim (a reporter who's been naysaying the TiVo for years) is wrong, and that punchy three-word headlines don't equate to a balanced market analysis.

The simple reason TiVo will live is because TV is intimate. People want ownership of their experience, and they want ownership of the resulting media. This is exactly the opposite of what cable and satellite companies want.

Of course TiVo as a standalone appliance will fade away as Decoder-PVRs become common, but they'll grow into three other markets: The referenced cable/satellite set-top boxes, DVD-R burning hybrids, and as an integrated component of television sets. Two of these hybrids are already on the market (DirecTiVo and two different DVDiVos) and the third, Toshiba and Phillips TVs with integrated free 'tivo lite' will be here by Christmas.

Saying that Cable-PVRs will squash TiVo is like saying that cable squashed the VCR, when in reality it made it much stronger. For all the benefits that a cable PVR has (that it seems cheaper because the cost is built into your monthly charge), there's no content provider in the world who would ship a device that would record to DVD, and no network that would deign to be included in a service that did.

Recording to a DVD isn't as easy as recording to a tape, and this is where an integrated 'export this show to that disc' solution really shines. If you're going to buy a DVD anyhow, the incremental cost of adding PVR functionality is a gimmie. And yes, within the next 4 years it will be an incremental cost.

TiVo is source independent. Cable, satellite, bunny ears or closed-circuit TV, TiVo is your box. As each content provider has their own proprietary system, if you change providers, you have to change systems, a shift as big as switching from Mac to Windows. Oh yeah, and your shows are gone, too. It's content lock-in, and it's one of the big reasons Dish Networks wants you to use their box, so leaving their fold is more painful, even when they suddenly drop CBS, MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon because of a contract dispute.

As long as content providers carry copyrighted material on their networds, they'll be hobbled by the demands of organizations like the MPAA and Viacom who will use all the leverage they have to inhibit the end user's ability to export to any portable digital media. Standalone PVRs and in-TV PVRs are farther outside their control, and as that control is flexed, PVR customers will flock to these options.

TiVo-in-TV, which Sony plans to market later this year, is another gimmie. It will provide a free 3-day window to the future, with an inexpensive up-sell to season pass functionality. The TV-TiVo-DVR box is probably about 24 months away.

Jim's main point is that TiVo will fail because the costs of enteing the market and delivering product are dropping rapidly, but this is likely why they'll succeed. TiVo will never be a Yahoo or other conglomorate, but they will become a platform standard with a steady revenue stream. When prices fall uniformly, users flock to the best solution, not the cheapest. Getting PVRs into peoples hands cheaply, on the backs of other products is exactly why the market will succeed, and when the market succeeds, TiVo will likely be at the top of it, based on product quality.

True, you won't have to buy a $299 box for your parents to bring them the light, but when you see the glow in their eyes, talking about the magic recording TV they bought at Best Buy last month, you can bet it'll have a little guy with two antennae and no arms stickered onto the remote.

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The recent launch of Apple's Music Store is clear evidence of their continuing focus on media acquisition and management. The iApps (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD) and iPod all focus on integrating media into Apple owners' daily lifestyle. Could Apple do for TV portability what it's done for music portability?

Business 2.0 thinks maybe. I feel the same way.

Apple and TiVo have been working together heavily on streaming media over the last six months, TiVo's Home Media Option is the first 'entertainment appliance' to take advantage of Rendezvous, Apple's implementation of a simplified network discovery and sharing protocol. TiVo 'gets it' as far as Apple technology goes. To use media sharing of music and photos from a Windows box to a TiVo requires a 16 megabyte application specifically for organizing music into playlists and photos into albums that can be shared over the network to the TiVo. The Mac download is a 288k control panel that just creates a bridge from the TiVo to the user's iTunes and iPhoto library, whether iTunes or iPhoto are running or not.

The Apple/TiVo relationship has brought Apple content onto the TiVo, and an Apple acquisition of TiVo could push data the other way as well. A couple weeks ago Apple unveiled new iPods in 10, 15, and 30 gigabytes. 30 gigabytes is enough storage for 20 days of uninterrupted, unrepeated music. Perhaps a bit excessive. On the other hand, 30 gigs is enough to store 120 hours of high-quality video compressed for an iPod-sized screen (320x240) using a realtime compressing codec (it could be smaller in MPEG-4, but it wouldn't be able to compress video on-the-fly). An iPod with an on-board MPEG2 decoder could synch small-screen versions of TiVo shows on to your iPod for watching anywhere. Perhaps full-screen files could also be saved for display on a regular TV via an S-Video port (after all, the line-out sound port is already there).

Would it make sense for TiVo to be bought by Apple? It probably makes more sense than the Apple/Universal Music rumors, since technology is what Apple's all about, not the creation of content or the managing of artists, and TiVo follows that line completely. Personally, I don't know whether the buyout would happen, and what that could mean for TiVo's existing partners, Sony, Phillips, and Toshiba, but the current ties between the companies give me hope for a Video iPod.

It makes a certain sense: Video is the next logical step in the iPod's evolution, and nobody has nailed the scheduling, acquisition, and presentation of video broadcasts like TiVo has. A strategic partnership here could really go a long way.

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From the 'didn't we know that already?' dept, CNN confirms that people connected to the show say that Gellar told Joss that she's leaving after this season. So now we have our definitive(??) answer.

The high point from the blurb was:

"Her departure also likely means "Buffy," at least in its current incarnation, will wrap in May, something that's also not much of a shocker, given the show's apocalyptic storylines this season."

Yeah, and the folks that taught us that the plural of 'apocalypse' is 'apocali' have never seen that before....

Apparently the fate of the show is still up in the air: Will it continue with a new Slayer? Will it be rebranded as a spinoff after the absence of the title character?

The only question that doesn't get much ink is whether Angel will continue on next season. It might, or it might not. No big diff. The paperclip of Angel's tortured life broke long ago.

Me, I'm secretly hoping for a crossover spinoff from Buffy and Enterprise, where a new slayer named Gargravarr rises up in The Fray's post-slayer universe, and travels by starship from world to world to (and this part's key) alphabetically insult, and then slay, every demon in the known universe.

Things get interesting in the series's two-hour pilot (which happens to also be it's season finale) when she crosses paths with, and consequently teams up with, Malcolm Reynolds and crew. The finale (aired in week two) centers around a final confrontation with the Big Bad: the mysterious yet ugly Reavers.

If only TiVo made new shows based on the ones I like...

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What with TiVo's added features in Series2 boxes, including scheduling from the web, and music streaming from my mac with Rendezvous, I was getting really close to buying a series 2 box, buying lifetime service, and selling my existing box with lifetime service.

Now I don't have to. Today my TiVo, ever proactive, let me know that they're doing what they said they never would: let you move lifetime service to a new box.

Of course there are conditions, and they stress that this is a one-time-only deal, but now I can buy an 80-hour Series2 TiVo before March 10th, and transfer the lifetime service (which, incidentally would otherwise cost $250 otherwise and next month will cost $300) from my 30-hour Sony TiVo to the new box.

Now the only question is what to do with my existing cherished TiVo.

Anyhow, I just wrote this up for my friends who I know have TiVo with lifetime service, and might be itching for a new box. If you have any questions, give TiVo a call at 1-877-806-0883.

I love my TiVo.

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For the interested, I updated my resume design last semester, and finalized the design and content in a hurried session in Berkeley's Crépe de Vine last Thursday morning with Ali, before running down to my TiVo and eBay interviews in the afternoon.

I think it's pretty.

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Not just my TiVo, but the company.

I'm interviewing right now, between my first and second, just chillin' and bloggin'...

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A small but important note on the competition between SonicBlue's ReplayTV and TiVo's, err, TiVo: This summer SonicBlue will stop including lifetime service with ReplayTV purchases, and will move to the monthly subscription model.

This is an important factor, considering the lack of service fees was one of the (few) reasons somepeople prefer ReplayTV to TiVo. This is a sort of vindication for TiVo, and also helps the consumer, since it will help to continue lowering the entry costs for digital video recorders.

Meanwhile, Newsforge has a good first look at the TiVo 2 players, and an interview with TiVo's chief evangelist. This article gives a good peek at where TiVo is headed for the rest of the year.

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If I do (heaven forfend) decide I want to watch live TV, wouldn't it be nice if, as an alternative to seeing channel-by-channel listings (as every day of being a TiVo owner means not having to even know what channels you ge, much less where they are... "huh? Olympics are where?"), you could get a listing of everything currently on, sorted by the degree to which TiVo's predictive modelling thinks you'll want to see it.

Optionally grouped by start times, so you don't have to get your hopes up for the last 18 minutes of "A Philadelphia Story".

If you hold the evil marketing power of consumer taste information, you may as well wield it for good.

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The Open Source TiVo Webserver Project lets you view what shows are in your TiVo's to-do list, season pass list, now playing list, and more, all via an ethernet interface you can hack on to your TiVo.

A web interface for choosing shows to record is still forthcoming.

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I was watching TV this morning and I realized I still had some unwatched shows in my TiVo from Sunday and Monday (all the shows it recorded after that were, unbeknownst to my TiVo, actually continuing news coverage).

I sat down and watched Futurama, the Simpsons, and Angel, prizing each (and especially the newsbreaks during the commercials) as little gems of nostalgia, reminders of 'the way things were' just five long days ago.

I don't want to delete them.

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I'm working on trying to finish Metacookie before Fray Day 5, as well as working on a big ol' headache and some other issues, but I wanted to share an interview with Joss Whedon from this week's Onion (The A/V club part (the part that's not all about fake news)).

The interview was trimmed from 9500 words down to 5500, but the link is to the unedited source, for your reading pleasure. It's quite a long read, so wait till you have time to sit down.

Only a few more weeks 'till things start up again in TV land. I'm thinking about upping my TiVo from 30 hours to 108 by way of a cheap $125 60 gig drive and the glorious TiVo FAQ.

Oh, and I've also let one more show into my television pantheon. I gave Gilmore Girls a try and I'm completely taken with it. I feel like these people have been in my life for ages, though I'm not sure why. But I have a life! Really! Now, to bed, for tomorrow we code.

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Since I got the 2.0.1 TiVo OS upgrade, it's been making some interesting choices on what it thinks I want to watch.

Sometimes it gets it right on the nose. Though I wouldn't have thought so, I'm enjoying watching Northern Exposure in syndication, and old ERs are also entertaining. Other times it's not even close. A few weeks ago it thought I might enjoy Korean music videos, and it thought I might want to be a member of the PTL club.

Today takes the cake. I don't know how TiVo's predictive modeling system works, but last night it recorded "To Be Announced..." And this wasn't just a humorous name for a show. TiVo just thought I might like to see a random show when even TiVo didn't know what it would consist of!

Far be it from me to question our computer overlords. I think I'll go see what it's about. Maybe I'll get to see what Suzanne Summers is up to nowadays...

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Wow. Okay, I'll admit that two entries in tonight's Tuesday TV Trinity I'm only interested in because they're brand new 'car-accident-esque' shows.

At 8pm tonight we have: Chains of Love on UPN, Weakest Link on NBC, and Buffy: TVS on the WB.

Luckily, I'm catsitting Kisa for Emily tonight, so I can record Chains of Love on my TiVo, leave her TiVo as it is to record Buffy, and watch Weakest Link live. Then of course there's Angel and Dark Angel, which the twin tivos can handle as usual...

I don't even have to touch a VCR. I'm riding a techno-high.

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Anyone else catch the show?

I'm amazed at how easily 8 contestants will put themselves into an antagonistic mode, trying to think up witty mean things to say in order to show up (or play along with) the host. It reminds me of the time I saw a stage hypnotist and I volunteered to go on stage. I wasn't hypnotized at all, but I went along as if I were because I didn't want to be embarrassed or embarrass the hypnotist. I remember thinking maybe that's all it was. People would quack or run around like a dog because nobody wanted to be that guy who wrecked it for everyone else.

Anyhow, I enjoyed the show, though I'm glad I can TiVo it, so I can cut out the whiny 'they kicked me off because they were threatened by my intellectual prowess' speeches.

I'm really looking forward to Ernie (of SurvivorBlog and SurvivorBlog 2 fame) taking a break from his job search to put on The Weakest Blog.

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I wanted to give a big thanks to the three people who responded to my plea a couple weeks ago for a tape of the West Wing season premiere, especially one anonymous reader from New York who mailed his copy out to me! Thank you!

Now don't I feel like an ass. My TiVo didn't record it this week either, because it wasn't listed either in TiVo's memory or in the TV Guide. Very, very frustrating.

So: As a thank you to Mr NY who sent me his tape, I'm sending back two Cameo cameras along with his tape. I'd like to do the same for anyone who happened to record last night's ep and is willing to let me borrow it. I'll pay postage. Anyone in the bay area record West Wing last night? Anyone anywhere? Taunt me.

I feel like such a schmoe... Hey, at least it gets Cameo cameras out there!

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No, not the Underground, the other one. My cable's been on the fritz for six weeks and it finally came on crystal clear sometime yesterday. Now my TiVo is once again more than a personal space heater.

It's funny, because I don't have time to watch TV in the first place, but now I can be a little happier knowing that the shows I won't have time to watch are being recorded anyhow. Somewhere deep down I know that my TV doesn't feel neglected. (Yeah, so the TiVo grabs the signal before it even gets to TV, but the more basic problem here is that I'm anthropomorphizing an electron gun encased in melted sand.)

Do a search on the phrase "I love my TiVo", then go buy TiVo stock. It's about to hit the tipping point...

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Now that my TiVo records everything I like, I'm not really tied to network schedules or thier primetime hours (which happen to by my prime-time productivity hours, unlike the first thing in the morning, which is when I elect to watch Babylon 5).

The only problem (aside from when the cable goes out, as it has been for the past several days, argh! And come to think of it, my severe abuse of parenthetical remarks (really.)) is when there's more than one thing I want to see. Then I have to bring the VCR in to play. Sometimes though, there's just too much, even for that.

Like planets that only align once every 28 years, there's just too much TV that I need to see this particular Sunday night, and this from someone who's pretty much weaned himself off from shows I 'need' to see.

First off, there's the Daria Movie. That's right, the two-hour season opener which looks to be only the second ever 'serious' Daria (the season finale being the first). Time: 7-9pm, Place: MTV.

Next, there's Witchblade. Though it looks like a rip off of both Mercedes Lackey's Oathbound series and a questionable episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I'm curious how well they can spin Matrix-era special effects, a policewoman and a big mythic gauntlet into an actual series. Call it a fetish. Time: 8pm-10pm (and 10pm-12pm. Gotta love TNT), Place: TNT.

Finally there's the La Femme Nikita Series Finale. That's it. No more. Unless they make a rumored made-for-cable movie based on the series... which was based on a movie... Time: Two episodes, first from 8-9pm, second from 10-11pm. I guess it's so hot we need an hour intermission. Place: USA.

Then of course, throw in the old standbys of Simpsons and X-Files (reruns. skippem!) and there's just too much fun. Stay up late, shed a tear for the close of a great show, and wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the first day of classes on Monday!

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Okay, so I feel bad for coming back with an advertisement after being gone for a couple days, but this is for you guys, not for me.

If you buy a TiVo before June 30th, and pay for activation, you can get $50 off if you enter my serial number as a referer code. It's 000-1349-3017-5337. (read about it here).

Anyhow, you get $50 off the subscription, and if two or more people do it, what do I get? A nifty TiVo shirt and three (3) tivo dolls, so this is really your win.

If you do it, drop me a line so I know, and enjoy!

BTW, the new Sony TiVos are in stock at Crutchfield.

If you could care less about TvVos, don't worry, this is the last time I'll gab about it for a while. New functionality coming to the site this weekend. Don't miss it!

-Kev

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Next on my list of nifty gadgets to own? A Sony Tivo. They should be out in about a week and a half, but if you want the latest, as always, turn to usenet (in this case, a link to 'sony and tivo' search results on Deja.com.

Also in the land of nifty, check out IMbot. It lets you send email or web messages to people's telephones, where it's read to them, whether they're signed up for the service or not. (thanks peter).

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