TiVo's Jim Denney responds to Engadget!
By Nilay Patel 
posted April 29th 2009 1:00PM
posted April 29th 2009 1:00PM
We can't say we were expecting any sort of response to our state-of-TiVo piece yesterday, but we just got a note from VP of Product Marketing Jim Denney. It's not long, but he says that TiVo takes comments like ours "very seriously," and that TiVo's always looking to build on customer feedback. Sure, uh, we're glad to help, but we'll be even happier to write about a new TiVo that actually changes the game -- let us know, won't you? Full letter after the break. Hello Nilay and Engadget readers.
I wanted to quickly thank you and your readers for the input - it is vital in how we develop our offerings. Feedback like this was instrumental when we brought back product Lifetime service, when we developed TiVoToGo, and when we integrated Netflix into our library. Further, our TiVo Search beta is focused on explicitly asking for feedback. In short, we take commentary like this very seriously.
Frankly, TiVo has changed a lot in the past few years. TiVo has gone from being a time-shifting device to being a converged entertainment device. We've gone from being available only in the living room to now accessible from a PC or cell phone. We've gone increased capacity from 14 hours of SD to 150 hours of HD. And the whole time we've stayed true to our roots, bringing simple, easy to use, and elegant design to discerning entertainment lovers.
In the end, we just wanted you all to know we're listening and we appreciate your comments. Keep 'em coming.
Best –
Jim Denney & the TiVo team
I wanted to quickly thank you and your readers for the input - it is vital in how we develop our offerings. Feedback like this was instrumental when we brought back product Lifetime service, when we developed TiVoToGo, and when we integrated Netflix into our library. Further, our TiVo Search beta is focused on explicitly asking for feedback. In short, we take commentary like this very seriously.
Frankly, TiVo has changed a lot in the past few years. TiVo has gone from being a time-shifting device to being a converged entertainment device. We've gone from being available only in the living room to now accessible from a PC or cell phone. We've gone increased capacity from 14 hours of SD to 150 hours of HD. And the whole time we've stayed true to our roots, bringing simple, easy to use, and elegant design to discerning entertainment lovers.
In the end, we just wanted you all to know we're listening and we appreciate your comments. Keep 'em coming.
Best –
Jim Denney & the TiVo team
I bought a tivo series 2 and love it. I'd love to have another.
But when I buy a new tv down the road when one of my old ones die it will be an 1080p tv. At that time I'll want to get HD broadcasts from DirecTV. Only problem is, no TiVo will support recording this. I won't buy another TiVo if it doesn't have this AND if I can't get lifetime service.
So,
1) Put full HD support for DirecTV and Dish in the next TiVo.
2) Offer it with lifetime service.
I'll put up with your limited ads if you just provide this at no more than $600.
OK, on the off chance Tivo is still listening...
1. Integrate easy and DRM agnostic streaming seamlessly (think pyTivo, but better).
2. The boxes should be able to talk to each other better, more flexibility with recording on another box (if my living room tuners are occupied, etc.), and the transfer of shows never be a problem between boxes - (seriously? I have to fight with my cable company to let me transfer Countdown from one box to the other).
3. I think this is the game changer - convergence. Seemed to me to be what Denney was suggesting. What I mean is web/net convergence. Check the weather, update facebook, check my email, Check imdb to see what show that guy I just saw on 24 was on befroe, etc. etc. This space is still developing and nobody has a good solution yet. That's why netbooks are so popular - people are giving up on convergence and sitting in front of the TV with a laptop.
4. Probably some other stuff too.
Best of luck Tivo (or as my three year old calls you "Daddy's friend, Tivo")
I'm sure I'll be pilloried for this, but Windows Media Center as part of Vista Home Premium, is doing a great job for me. I'll admit I have an advantage as I bought my refurb machine for only $250, and included a dual digital and analog tuner card and 400gb HD. It works great through the Xbox 360, no ads in the tv recording portion, and can even use the media center remote that came with the computer on the Xbox as well. They have a great program guide, and something similar to a season pass. The skip forward length is configurable with a registry hack, but the default is 30 sec, so 6 presses forward gets you through most commercial blocks. I also can record 2 shows at once if one is analog cable and the other is digital antenna. It also record the digital stuff in HD if it is an HD signal. No fees either.
Ever try to cancel Tivo? Even though you can sign up online, you can't cancel online. You have to call and sit through endless back and forth about why you want to cancel and they'll offer you everything to stay. Once you do cancel, they'll keep billing you anyway. When you call back to get your money refunded they'll promise to refund it, not cancel your service again, then rinse, repeat.
It's like that crazy ex girlfriend you can't get rid of.
i just have to give the utmost in kudos to jim/tivo for responding directly to this! i'm not a tivo user, nor have i ever been, but for ANY company to respond directly to, be aware of, and implement the ideas of 'the common people', deserves high praise. i'm a reluctant comcast subscriber who's had nothing but problems with them in the past week and i can't even get the info from those assholes as to where their corporate office is, much less who to contact. at least jim has the balls to step out in front of a moving vehicle and take it head-on! now if he could only get me the direct number to the ceo of comcast's office.........
I have DirecTV and have 3 different Tivo boxes, 2 SD and one the old HD Tivo boxes. I look forward to the new DirecTV HD Tivo that is suppose to be coming out later this year. I have been waiting on upgrading all my units to the newer HD DVR's from DirecTV because I really don't want their DVR's. This is even though the older HD Tivo model gets very few of the current HD channels.
I really hope they don't make you pay a big premium for these new units though or an extra monthly fee. I will not do that! I love the Tivos, but currently do not pay a subscription fee on them, only the additional receiver box fee that you would pay regardless for each additional receiver which I think is $5. I would never pay a extra subscription fee for it. This is from someone that loves the Tivo and has been holding out on the wait for the new units, so please don't disappoint guys. I hear DirecTV's DVR's are actually getting pretty good now..
Also, hope they don't limit the units and that they allow all the regular Tivo features unlike now. I agree with the comments also that the Tivo should be open and support all media formats so that you can easily play xvid, divx, wmv, H.64, mkv, mp4, avc, and allow pass-through of DVD & Blu-ray, etc... It should be very well net connected and allow playing all the video sites and even handle some RSS, news, weather, etc. There should be no reason if you have a Tivo to need another media playing box on your TV. USB flash drive support for playing stuff should be added, and perhaps the ability to reformat and output to a device directly from the unit.
It is obvious that the pay subscription model will never work and the company will soon die with this model. Also you can't both charge customers a sub and then also hit them with commercials. Tivo needs to license their system to all the cable and sat providers. I'm sure this would have to be at a rate lower than they would like, but all the millions of customers they gain would add up to a lot of long-lasting revenue and make for a very profitable company. It's either that or fade away as people go to cheaper or free solutions that or getting better all the time and seem to already be outdoing Tivo in some ways. It's time to step up management and innovate and make the tough decisions on your business model.
Tivo, if you are listening then you don't listen well. If you are progressing, then it is so slow as to barely be noticeable. The media center PCs were once far behind Tivo, but a good Windows media center or Mac Mini with Plex and EyeTV now blow you away. I still have a Tivo, but its days are numbered if there is not a significant step forward for Tivo. What Nilay is asking for is the better direction and you need to get there quickly or become irrelevant. TivoToGo, the mobile app, and the new search are just too little. My request are bit more modest than Nilay's.
1) Gigabit ethernet for Tivo transfers and streaming video from the Tivo to your PC. For the love of God, speed up the Tivo transfers - it is absurdly slow.
2) Streaming online video beside YouTube (Hulu, and others). If you make it a plug-in api model than you don't have to fight with the cable companies.
3) Real audio streaming, not mp3 only. You have to have full codec support including ALAC, FLAC, and WAV. You have to display album art, make playlists, and stream internet radio (like everything on radiotime, pandora, last.fm).
4) A real media center type interface. Just look at Windows Media Center, XBMC, or even better Plex (or just team up with Plex to put Plex on Tivo). Put ToDo list and season pass manager on the front page or allow us to change the menus.
5) Your mobile app should allow remote control of the Tivo (with full keyboard), allow selection starting playback of items in Now Playing, list your ToDo list, and manage season passes. Just looking up your program guide and sending a request to record to your Tivo is not sufficient. You can keep the Tivo remote simple, but give us control options.
6) When you update again, Macs cannot be an afterthought. I have both Windows and Macs and I am far from alone. Tivo software for Mac can't keep missing features and coming a year later than the Windows version.
The Amazon downloads and Netflix streaming are great. I'm glad the Tivo HD has cable cards, digital audio out and ethernet. I'm glad there are TivoDesktop and at least the limited streaming of photos, video, and mp3s (though an awful interface). However these are really the only big changes you've had for many years. Others are catching up and passing. Come on Tivo, I'm rooting for you.
I'm done with Tivo. I'll be switching to something else as soon as my 3 year subscription (in it's last year now) expires.
Yeah, they brought back life time subscriptions, but only after I bought an HD Tivo for $700 + paid $300 for a 3 year plan. I know early adopters pay a premium and I expect HW price drops, but to offer a lifetime shortly after charging the same price as the 3 year you charged the early adopters? That's just a slap in the face. Then they add banner ads and other stuff. Forget it.
Either make the service free, or ditch the ads. You don't get it both ways.
There is no way I'm going to pony up $12.95 a month or $300 for a lifetime sub when my current one is done....
I have a Series 2 DirecTiVo. Still. I refuse to upgrade to HD service until DirecTV offers a new HD TiVo powered DVR. So get a move on guys, I'm waiting.
I have used Tivo since the earliest days. I stopped for a while once my DirecTivo HD was made obsoletely not long after I bought it for $999. I finally convinced myself to buy a TiVo HD Series 3 recently and even though I'm no fan of the $12.95 a month service fee I am happy to have the TiVo again.
But I agree with others regarding advertising. I'm not at all happy about paying for a service and having to see the ads at the same time. All this on a box I already paid $300 to buy. Either go 100% ad driven or accept the $12.95 subscribtion as the only money you'll make off of me after the initial sale of the box. If you see the TiVo as an endless supply of opportunities to make money off of me through various new schemes you will lose.
I do enjoy watching Netflix through my TiVo and would welcome Hulu gladly. But other services like the rather pricey Amazon video store won't be drawing any money from me.
Perhaps TiVo can publish an advise for engadget to remove that carousel, to show they can be nice and helpful too :)
I would like to start my comment with a little bit of background information on myself. I first saw the TiVo DVR at CES in Las Vegas in 1997. I was amazed at what I had seen. I thought that TiVo was going to have an enormous impact on the entire cable industry. I am still shocked and amazed to this day that more people dont have TiVos. I have been a loyal TiVo user since 2001 when I had a phillips TiVo box. I currently have a TiVo HD and couldnt be more pleased with it. I agree with some of the comments that people have made about the interface needing updating, or the TiVo itself being a little slow, but at the end of the day it is an amazing product that I can't live without. I have a Cisco HDDVR box from Comcast in my living room and it is the biggest piece of trash I have ever used. You have to aim the remote from 3 feet away from this thing to get it to do anything, let alone pause rewind and fast foward. All you people that bitch about TiVo not having more interactivity shoud do what i do, get a mac buy or download VisualHub so that you can re-encode any video into a Tivo formated MPEG, and with the TiVo Desktop preference pane you can stream anything to your TiVo. I could give a shit about watching Hulu on my TiVo. The ENTIRE POINT of having a TiVo is so that it cant RECORD all of your FAVORITE shows so that there is always something NEW and FRESH for you to watch when you use it. Why do you need Hulu and other garbage when all of the shows on Hulu are on tv. Take 30 seconds out of your life and get a season pass to a show instead of thinking about how if your TiVo had Hulu you could watch the office from three weeks ago. If you had a season pass you could do the same thing. In closing I just want to remind everyone on this message board that the TiVo is an amazing product. You cant even compare any garbage cable company DVR to TiVo. It just works, its controls in-terms of manipulating a recorded or live show are top notch. Its intuitive selection of shows it thinks you might watch gets better and better with time. While not perfect the TiVo has reigned as the supreme PVR since that fateful day in Las Vegas in 1997.
Yo Tivo Jim,
The ability to copy Tivo recordings to my computer is worthless as I spent $25 for the addon software only to find that 99% of the Tivo recordings as copy protected and can't be transferred to the computer. Nice try.
Hey Tivo, I know you make a good portion of your operating income from having ads on the system, and that's fine I understand, however lately I have noticed MORE ads than usual. I don't mind having a little ad on the bottom of Tivo Central, but when I pause a show I don't need more ads to come up. I hit pause and it brings up the menu to find out more about "x" show. Yet what is selected, an ad. Get rid of that. You should still be able to operate without incorporating more ads than have been in the past.
Well that's your fault. Anything you record off TV obviously can be transferred. Obviously anything you download is copy protected. Think about that one for a second.
I still don't have a clue what a TiVo is. I guess it's only avaliable in the US?
US and Australia I think.
You can stil get the old Series 1s on ebay in the UK and they still work way better than anything else available here in the UK (which is shocking given that they've not been updated for 10 years).
The EPG is really what makes the Tivo so great.. it can record alternative showings, work if the episodes have different names, even record if the programme hasn't been on for 6 months! Nothing else out there comes close, yet.. although the latest Freeview DVRs are getting a lot closer they don't have suggestions or wishlists so are still playing catchup. Sky's 'new' EPG is still behind the 10 year old Tivo in usability, features, reliability, and just about everything else except it can record HD, which the Tivo can't.
Now if only Tivo could come back to this country with something that could record directly off the data stream rather than capturing it.. obviously they couldn't do it for Satellite (Sky have an absolute monopoly on Channels, Encryption and Hardware) but for terrestrial it's definately doable - the question is only whether they could get people to pay for something that's everyone else gets for free, given that hardly anyone remembers what Tivo is any more.
I don't understand the comments about removing ads for those that pay for the subscription. Who has a functioning Tivo that DOESN'T pay for the service?! Removing ads for subscribers would apply to 100% of the Tivo owners, rendering the whole concept of additional revenue from advertisers a failure. Unless of course the advertisers are morons and would want to pay Tivo to NOT display their ads. The same goes for auto commercial skip. Should Tivo license (or develop) and implement this feature, what advertiser would want to support the Tivo corporation that provides viewers the ability to NOT view the advertisers ads? It just doesn't make sense.
I think the comments from folks griping about advertising are just plain ludicrous.
You paid several hundred, if not thousands, of dollars for your TV and hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a year for Cable, Satellite or Telco video services and get advertising.
You paid several hundred, if not thousands, of dollars for your Computer and hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a year for broadband service and you get advertising, even on the television content.
You paid several hundred of dollars for your Mobile device and hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a year for service and you get advertising.
You paid several hundred, if not thousands, of dollars for your Motor vehicle, and definitely thousands in taxes, and you get advertising as you drive down the road.
This battle was lost a long time ago. To eviscerate and paint Tivo as a villain is pointless and quite frankly absurd. It's just like the platitude, to repeatedly do the same thing and expect a different result is the definition of insanity.
Listen to Nilay!
Tivo Series 4 at a minimum should have:
10/100/1000 Ethernet card Gigabit Ethernet. All computers have it, makes transferring files between Tivos and between PCs and Tivos faster
SDV- Switched Digital video hardware built in
Tru2Way support built in
1TB minimum HD space- With all channels going HD 1TB will be small.
Nice to have- Internet accessibility of all your Tivos via your phone. Fully control like you had a slingbox attached.
Ability to program and delete programs from any Tivo box in the house (full menu and settings control from any Tivo in the ouse). Have programs stream instead of transferring but keep transferring as option to manage space. Basically all the things a Replay box can do but better.
I'm still waiting for Hulu support...I'm not going to PPV shows through Amazon that are free online. Just give me a useable Hulu interface and I won't be tempted to leave TiVo for a competitor. Oh, and the ability to remap ClearQAM channels would be nice as well.