TIVO: A few of my coolest things
By today’s standards, I am getting to be a computing old-timer. After all, my first computing experience was in high school, when we got to type our programs out on thousands of “punch cards” which we then mailed to the University of Chicago (the closest computer) whose students would feed in the cards in their spare computer time, and mail us the printouts a month later.
People ask me all the time, then, what is the coolest technological innovation I have? After all, since then I have been a bit of an “early adopter” of technology.
I would unhesitatingly say Tivo, the personal video recorder. It has changed my life immeasureably for the better. And today’s it’s even better.
Simply put, a Digital Video Recorder is a large hard drive that records the television programs you like. That way, when you do have some spare time to watch TV, “what’s on?” becomes a question of the past. What is “on” is a menu of only the programs you like to watch. And, press the button, and no more commercials. So you can watch a 30-minute show in 20, a 60-minute in 40 and a basketball game in about a minute and a half.
Over the weekend I installed Tivo’s Home Media software, which was about a 2-minute upgrade that is pretty cool. It involves running a network cable to your Tivo (or a wireless card) and sharing your PC’s hard drive, where you have numerous music files and pictures stored. Then you share those folders and hit the “publish” option on the Tivo software on your PC.
And BOOM, all of your music is now available on your Tivo. You can listen to it via the TV or on your home theater speakers or on any TV in the house connected to the Tivo. This includes, I found out, the CDs you have imported to your Ipod. Setup literally was a snap considering I already had my Series II Tivo connected to the Internet. (This lets the Tivo download upcoming programming guides from the Internet and eliminates the need for a phone line connected to the Tivo. (DISH Network, are you listening?)
And your pictures can cycle through on a slide show or be called up one by one from the TV. That also was a snap once the picture folders I wanted shared were “published” via the free Tivo software I installed on my home computer (see www.tivo.com for the software if you have a Tivo-branded DVR.
The next logical step, of course, is to be able to get content from my Tivo and put it on my hard drive or share it with others. The movie studios, TV programmers and others have been freaking out over the copyright implications of that and thus far had stalled such things.
However, the FCC has just ruled that Tivo customers now can share content with friends. The technology would allow a TiVo subscriber to download broadcasts to their home computers and send copies of recorded shows over the Internet to a small circle of friends, as long as they are on the subscriber’s registered account.
There will be appeals (the NFL is afraid subscribers will “beam” games to blacked-out areas, thereby harming $200 a seat football games).
Unless the NFL and others sue, Tivo plans to offer “Tivo To Go” in a month or two that could let users put content on a laptop to watch on a plane or let users register other Tivo customers in a “circle of friends” that could share content among themselves. Seems logical to be able to share broadcast content; after all, the other user could have captured it too, if they’d only had their Tivo set to do so.
The last piece of the puzzle also has been solved by Tivo: remote scheduling. Now you can hear about a great show while you’re at work and log in to your home Tivo and tell it to grab it before you get home. It is slick and works flawlessly.
Now if I can get the thing to quit recording “Full House” and “Lilo and Stitch” I will be very happy.
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: The Tivo Community Forum (tivocommunity.com) is an unsanctioned place to discuss ways to use your device, upgrade its hard drive and more.
James Derk is co-owner of CyberDads, a computer repair firm, and computer columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail address is jim@cyberdads.com
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