Long suffering UK TiVo users have taken another blow, their units have stopped offering TiVo Suggestions. The UK users have operated for years without the availability of new hardware or even any software updates. Their Series1 units still run software release 2.5, behind even the US Series1 units. And now TiVo Suggestions has stopped working as well.

This appears to be linked to a changed in the format of the guide data, according to a post by TiVoPony over at TiVoCommunity. Apparently the data format ran out of room for new program IDs and TMS had to expand the format. The suggestions feature in the old 2.5 software is tied to the native TMS data format, and the change in the DB format has broken the feature. It would take a software update to fix, and according to TiVoPony “an update for those boxes is not in the cards.” So it sounds like this is a permanent loss.

Hopefully the rumors of TiVo re-launching in the UL with DVB-T hardware are true and the TiVo faithful will have another option soon. (It would be nice of TiVo to offer some kind of upgrade incentive discount for those who’ve stuck with the Series1 unit all this time.) And with Nero LiquidTV | TiVo PC launching in Europe in 2009, that may be another option for the TiVo faithful in the UK.

Picked up from BLORGE.

Smarthouse reports that Seven Network is ready to begin offering the 500GB eSATA add-on drive for the Australian TiVo. The description given in their report seems to imply that it may be more locked down than in the US:

“The storage device will be exclusive to the TiVo and will record HD Television. Consumers will not be able to attach the device to other computers or recorders. The TiVo software will automatically see the device and record to it when the storage built into the device is full”.

In the US, of course, it is a standard Western Digital 500GB eSATA My DVR Expander, and the same drive works with Scientific Atlanta cable DVRs as well as with any PC that supports eSATA. Now, this could simply be the ‘Seven Media insider’ who was talking to Smarthouse not knowing that they were talking about. It is true that once you attach a drive to the TiVo it is formatted for the TiVo and you cannot them connect it to another device without reformatting it. But eSATA is eSATA and the drive can be reformatted and reused. I tend to suspect that will actually be the case in Australia too.

Smarthouse also says Seven is set to roll out the TiVo to other retailers, now that Harvey Norman’s three month exclusive is up, including retailer Dick Smith. (What is it with Australian retailers and guys names?) Retailer JB Hi Fi CEO Richard Uechtritz says they still haven’t decided if they will stock TiVo.

Interestingly this story comes just one day after Smarthouse posted a rumor mongering story entitled “Is Seven Media Set To Dump Tivo?” In that story they claimed that ‘Seven Media insiders’ told them that sales through Harvey Norman failed to hit targets and that they were now ‘reviewing their options’. They also said it was “slammed by reviewers.” And pulled this bit from the Australian PC Magazine:

PC Magazine wrote “unlike its US counterpart, the Aussie TiVo is a crippled box. Shipping with a 160GB HD, the TiVo allows you to record up to a pathetic 32 hours of HD or 62 of SD television.

Having personally read a lot of reviews of the Australian TiVo, I have to wonder about the agenda behind this particular Smarthouse article. The reviews of the Australian TiVo have been overwhelmingly positive. Yes, there are issues, and probably the primary one is the hard drive size. But APC was also off base saying it was ‘crippled’ compared to the US box - it has the same 160GB drive. It has lacked the option for eSATA expansion available in the US, but, as above, that’s coming. And calling 32 hours of HD ‘pathetic’? A wee bit of hyperbole. That’s more recording time than the original TiVo models had at all. And more than the TiVo HD has in the US (we tend to have higher bitrates, apparently.) And most users are happy with it. I remember reading that APC ‘review’ when it first appeared, particularly because it was probably the single harshest review of the lot and the only one that I recall being wholly negative. It seemed like the author started out looking for reasons to slam the TiVo. It read more like a rant than a review.

Smarthouse goes on to say “A key problem for Seven Media is content and the emergence of IPTV which will allow consumers to download movies and other content to a HD TV screen.” Yet the author doesn’t say why this is a problem. This is odd, especially since Seven Network has stated that this is specifically not a problem, quite the opposite, since the TiVo will also server as their IPTV gateway into the home. It struck me as very strange that the author would lay this out as a problem with nothing to support the argument when Seven’s stated plans for TiVo include broadband content delivery and IPTV features.

Smarthouse then goes on to talk about Nero’s LiquidTV and declares it a threat to Seven’s TiVo offering. But while they mention it goes on sale October 15th, they fail to mention that’s only in the US, Canada, and Mexico. And really, those who will opt for an HTPC are mostly a different market from those who will opt for an STB. LiquidTV | TiVo PC is no more a thread to Seven’s TiVo box than it is a threat to standalone TiVos in the US - basically none. And that, of course, hinges on some future launch of a version for Australia. The North American version won’t do any good as you need an EPG feed to use it.

The whole article just seemed like sensationalism without any real evidence to back it up, just rumors and unfounded speculation.

The Nero LiquidTV site is now live, and it includes a little video demo of the product if you want to get a look at the features and UI. You can also check out all the features as well as the system requirements and compatibility. And if you have any questions, there is the FAQ.

I’m hoping to get a review copy of this soon to put through its paces.

Now that is how you make history.

[September 28th, 2008] 23:31 GMT (7:31 pm EDT): Falcon 1 has made history as the first privately developed liquid fueled launch vehicle to achieve earth orbit!

Congratulations SpaceX!

I’ve saved the best for last, not that Nero Move it and Nero 9 aren’t great products, but this is the one I’m most excited about - Nero LiquidTV | TiVo PC! LiquidTV | TiVo PC (henceforth just LiquidTV to keep it simple) is the culmination of the TiVo-Nero partnership announced last November, and reconfirmed this June. It brings the TiVo experience to your Windows XP or Windows Vista PC.

It turns your PC into a TiVo DVR with a user experience very similar to that of a standalone TiVo. Based on the web conference Nero held last Friday, and the press packet images, I suspect the software may be based on the codebase developed for the Comcast cable software. It has a similar look and feel and some of the features previously unique to the OCAP/tru2way software, such as PIP video in the menus. But it goes beyond the capabilities of the standalone TiVo, since it is on the PC, by allowing you to easily burn DVDs of the content or easily transcode and transfer content to your portable devices. Users familiar with the TiVo interface will have no trouble using LiquidTV, in fact the retail box comes with a TiVo peanut remote.

There are two versions of the product, a downloadable software-only version for $99.99, which includes one year of TiVo service. Or a retail box with hardware for $199.99, which also includes one year of TiVo service. The service is $99.99 per year after the first year, and you can try the download free for 30-days before buying. It will launch in the US, Canada, and Mexico on October 15, 2008. Availability in other areas of the world isn’t mentioned, but it must be coming - and that’s not just a guess, one of the images in the press kit was of a DVB-T antenna for the retail product. Only DVB-T isn’t used in the US, Canada, or Mexico, so I suspect that was a little ‘oops’ and it is for a version destined for other countries.

EDIT: Ah, here’s a confirmation from an article in the NZ Herald:

Joshua Danovitz, vice president and general manager of international business at TiVo, said the plan is to launch it in Europe next year, including in Nero’s home country, Germany. Britain is the only European country where TiVo currently has subscribers.

“It’s really part of a global TiVo strategy,” Danovitz said.

The hardware included in the retail box includes a TiVo peanut remote, an IR blaster transceiver, and a USB TV tuner card. The tuner is a Hauppauge HVR-950Q which supports NTSC analog and ATSC digital signals from antenna, analog cable, and clear QAM digital cable. Nero also says they support all USB, PCI, and PCIe TV Tuner cards and a list of all confirmed tested cards will be posted on their website. It will also work with capture cards fed by external cable boxes or satellite receivers, though it only supports one set-top box amongst the four tuners.

The remote, tuner card, IR blaster, and the mystery DVB-T antenna:

The remote looks like it is based off of the peanut that came with the Humax and Toshiba Series2 DVD-RW combo units, with DVD controls and a stop button in place of the DVR 1-2 slider found on non-DVD peanuts. Which makes sense as LiquidTV does have disc playback features. I do wish they offered some kind of remote-only hardware bundle for those who already have tuner cards but would like the remote to use with the product.

LiquidTV goes beyond standalone TiVo units in other ways as well. It supports up to four tuners, twice as many as an existing TiVo, and recording time is limited only by your hard drive capacity. Want more time? Just add more capacity to the PC. CableCARD support has not been tested, but on the conference with Nero Friday they said it should probably work if installed on a Windows Media Center PC with CableCARD support. I’d love to hear from anyone who tries that as to how it goes.

LiquidTV has all of the features you’d expect from a TiVo product - Season Passes, WishLists, TiVo Suggestions, Trick Play, and KidZone. Online scheduling is also available, just as with with standalone units. Being on a PC there are options from within the program menus to save a show to a portable device like an iPod or PSP, to burn it to DVD, or to save it to an archive format (H.264) to save space.

There are also some new additions to the Now Playing list - category folders. Standalone TiVo users are probably familiar with the TiVo Suggestions folder, and perhaps the HD Recordings folder, but LiquidTV also adds folders for Movies, Sports, and Kids content.

But LiquidTV has another fantastic trick up its sleeve. Avoiding one of the worst mistakes ReplayTV made with their PC software, LiquidTV | TiVo PC will communicate with standalone TiVo units on your network! You can transfer content between a PC running LiquidTV and a standalone TiVo using Multi-Room Viewing, just as you can between standalone units on a network. The TiVos show up in LiquidTV’s Now Playing List, and vice-versa. So it really is like having another TiVo on your network.

There are a number of official screenshots from the press kit:

I also took a few screen captures of my own during the web conference Friday:

I’m hoping to get a review copy to try on my new laptop to give you some first hand impressions. From what I’ve seen in the press packet and the presentation last Friday, I think Nero and TiVo have done a great job creating a first rate PC DVR software package. And the iconic TiVo remote is a nice touch. It is a nice alternative to MCE, SageTV, or BeyondTV. The one thing I’m not that happy with is the subscription pricing of $99.99 a year. That’s the same as yearly MSD for a standalone TiVo, but the standalone units have features, such as TiVoCast and HME, not to mention official CableCARD support, which LiquidTV lacks. And there is clearly no hardware subsidy to cover. $100 for the software the first year seems fair to me, but for additional years I’d like to see them drop the fees a bit. But that’s a minor issue I think. This could really open up global markets for TiVo, as users bring their own PC and all that’s really required is an EPG source for a new territory.

EDIT: TiVo has also issued a press release now.

Press release:
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The second big announcement from Nero today is Nero 9, the new version of their flagship software most often thought of in the context of CD/DVD burning. But it does so much more - ripping, burning, editing, backing up, playing, and uploading music, photos, and video. The Nero StartSmart interface provides a convenient one-stop interface to all of the product features.

Nero 9 adds GraceNote integration for automated metadata retrieval and improved experiences in Nero ShowTime for playback and Nero Vision for editing. And Nero Live for Vista MCE and the Nero Vista Sidebar Gadget add more features for users of Windows Vista. For backups the Rescue Agent has been completely revised

The revised Nero ShowTime has an all-new UI, GraceNote metadata support, and shuffle for playlists and audio CD tracks. But perhaps most interesting is support for new formats. encrypted AVCREC is supported for HDTV on DVD in Japan. The Matroska Video (.mkv) video format is supported. And FLAC is supported for lossless audio playback.

Nero Vision supports AVCHD, the format used by HD camcorders. And it has a ‘tape scan’ feature where it can transfer the contents of the tape at high speed to preview it, allowing you to select just the sections you want to transfer at full quality. It is similar to have most scanners allow you to do a preview scan and then select only the parts you want to scan fully. A big time saver.

It also includes Ad Spotter, an automated commercial recognition system. This makes it easier to cut the commercials out of recorded content before burning it to disc. It will flag what it thinks are commercials, allowing you to remove those sections. It also has an interesting Music Grabber function, designed to allow you to pull just the audio out of a video and save it as MP3. So if you record a music video you can rip the audio out and take the song with you on your iPod, etc.

And, of course, it still has the usual features - templates to ease media creation, wizards, special transition effects, DVD menu creation, etc. Just expanded and improved.

The one thing I was surprised by on the call is that Nero 9 apparently does not support .tivo files - the files created by TiVoToGo. This surprised me because TiVo and Nero announced a partnership last November, and Roxio, who is also partnered with TiVo, supports .tivo files in their Creator product on Windows and Toast on Mac. So it would’ve seemed to be a no-brainer for Nero to incorporate native .tivo support in Nero 9. Now, that’s the official word from the call last Friday. It is possible that Nero 9 does recognize .tivo files, just not officially. I wasn’t given a preview of the software to check for myself. If anyone grabs Nero 9 and tries it, leave a comment.

A Blu-ray authoring plug-in is also available for Nero 9, allowing you to author Blu-ray video discs for playback in any Blu-ray deck, PS3, etc. Perfect for archiving or distributing copies of the high-definition content from your HD camcorder.

Nero 9 is available today for for Windows PCs with an MSRP of $99.99, and the Blu-ray plug-in is available for just $9.99. Existing Nero users can upgrade online.

After seeing the presentation on Friday, and looking through the press materials, I just may pick this up for my new laptop. (Which arrived last Thursday.)

Press release:
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