TV

Tivo To Go, Got It, Don’t Like It

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As if by weird fate I wrote my waiting for Tivo to go post a few weeks ago and never posted it. I put it up yesterday. Then I sat my lazy ass down in front of the TV and what was the first thing that Tivo showed me? It had a big message saying hey you got the latest software on me so now you can go and use that to go crap you have been bitching about. So that is what I am trying now for the first time. I am copying a 30 minute episode of the Daily Show onto my laptop.

First impressions are that this will suck and I will never use this software. I have a 100 megabit switch and it is saying it will take 50 minutes to copy a 30 minute show. What is that all about. I turned off my wireless so it should be going at 100mbit. that would mean 5-10 minutes TOPS for a show that size. But now, it is slow! More news as it develops. At this rate I will be sleeping by the time this show copies.

Big Brother Is Here

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Big brother is here. Yup, the large networks and cable companies are soon going to try and control when and for how long I can keep recordings of shows that we make. Check out this article. This will become a bigger problem when everything goes all digital. for now someone like me who uses an analog device to convert to a digital mpeg-2 file is safe since I don’t get any broadcast flags. Thanks Snapstream!

PVRblog noted that someone reported not being able to fast forward on a PVR during a show. No one knows if this was a bug or a taste of future “features” of DVR’s provided by cable companies.

A few years ago everyone I worked with had Tivo’s. Now I look around and I see people with DVR’s from their cable companies. I say screw the cheaper easier buy DVR from my cable company. The things they are looking to do scare me. But my parents, my sister, and several friends all have Time Warner DVR’s.

Sci-Fi Remakes

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I am an admitted fan of Science Fiction.  In recent weeks and months I have been happy to read about some really interesting remakes.  I read this week that they will remake the 80’s film Tron.  The movie was a bit cheezy but it was still great.  I can’t wait to see how it looks with some state of the art CGI.

Another remake I just read about is the BBC show Dr. Who.  I used to watch that in the early 80’s.  it was also cheezy but good.  I guess you gotta like the 80’s cheeze.  The last Dr. Who movie they made in the 90’s sucked big time.  I am interested to see how the new show looks.  I have liked several drama’s from the BBC in recent years.  From MI-5 (spooks), to The Vice, so I hope this one is actually good.

Other remakes that have just gotten on the air are Battlestar Galactica.  One of the first movies I ever remember watching was Battlestar Galactica.  Of course that memory includes my dad having to leave the movie with me since I was really little and didn’t want to sit around anymore:)  The mini series and the first episode on the Sci-Fi Channel were good.  I have Tivo programed to get the rest of the series so I can watch it.

Beyond TV With Cable Box

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I got my IR Blaster (product is called USB-UIRT) yesterday. it is a little device that plugs into my desktop’s USB port. I then can control my cable box from Beyond TV via my ATI Remote Wonder. After reading the newsgroups I thought I might have some issues doing this. It turns out that I got everything to work just fine on the first try.

I did have to play around a bit with Beyond TV’s program guide to get all my digital cable channels to show up, but after a few minutes I was all set. My next upgrade is to go from Coax, to RCA cables from my cable box to my USB-2 video capture device. I figured I would do that after I was sure that the IR Blaster worked.

Now I can be a bigger couch potato now that I can fill up any hard drive space that I can get my hands on with MPEG-2 video of my favorite shows, movies, or anything else I get lazy and want to record. I am living it up now, because in July the recording flag or whatever they are calling it will screw anyone wanting to record digital TV. More on that after I bask in my recording ability glory today!

Show’s Return

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I have been vegging out today (Saturday, this post will go up late). I was zombied out since I was stuck working late last night and this morning, so I decided to sit around and clean out my backlog of TV watching. By doing that I realized that a show I really like (MI-5, or Spooks in the UK) was starting new episodes tonight. I should have realized when A&E played all of last season all day Saturday. Cable networks tend to do that. Since new seasons don’t come out for so long they play all of the last seasons shows in a run up to the new one. Well I was excited (or as excited as I can get over a TV show) that I would get more BBC spy goodness. I also just pre-ordered season 2 on DVD. Should be out Tuesday.

This week also marked the return of new shows on TV. Since I don’t watch TV (i just tivo stuff and watch later) I figured this out because my new tivo actually started to get full with stuff. This fueled my TV watching binge today.

Tivo To Go, Well Almost

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So Tivo launched their Tivo To Go service Monday. Great. I downloaded the software Tuesday and installed it on my PC. Oh, wait a minute. I thought Tivo said this service was active. Well turns out the software is available, but since you need a software update on your Tivo device it may take several weeks for my (or anyone else’s) Tivo to get updated. That last piece of information I had to get from the Tivo support site.

I wait ready to try this service out. In the mean time I am getting happier with Beyond TV. It just creates MPEG-2 files so I can copy them to my laptop and watch the shows anywhere right now. Maybe by the time my Tivo can do that I might decide I don’t need to pay $12.99 a month and just use Beyond TV.

Turns out I am not the only one ticked off by how Tivo is doing this upgrade. News.com had this article. I understand why Tivo is staggering the upgrade, but if I want to get it, and know my risks why shouldn’t I be able to get the upgrade now?

Home Entertainment System

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I have been pondering updating my Home Entertainment System for some time now. What that means is getting a new TV. I have a regular Sharp 27″ CRT TV. I have been thinking about taking some money and getting a Plasma or some type of HD TV. Part of me (and Jayson coaxing me) is saying go get a big TV. The realistic side of me is saying that I don’t want to spend the amount needed to get the system I want at todays prices. I also don’t really utilize Digital TV yet so a HD TV may be a waste for me. So for now I am in wait and see mode.

What I have done is got my Tivo Series 2 up and working. I also tinkered with my new desktop computer and am now very happy with my Hauppauge WinTV USB2 Capture Device, and Snapstream’s Beyond TV. I have my ATI remote wonder working so I can sit on my couch and use my TV just like I would use Tivo. At this point I could seriously think about replacing the Tivo with this new solution, but I wont just yet. I also like the ability to capture shows on two different TV’s. The only down side is that I have to change the video resolution on my computer whenever I want to watch TV with Beyond TV. I run my monitor at 1280×1024. The TV can only properly display 1024×768. Not that big a deal, but it is a pain.

What is also good is that my TV Capture system on my computer can save a ton more stuff than my Tivo and I can burn stuff to DVD if I want to archive it. I cannot offload MPEG-2 files of my Tivoed shows now that I have an un-hacked Series 2.

DVD’s I Might Be A Bit Embarresed To Admit I Own

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Generally I am not embarrassed by my taste in DVD’s, or TV & Movies in general. Others tend to think so sometimes. I will admit that I am a fan of Science Fiction. I am addicted, but I have very picky tastes. Not just any crap will do. Wasn’t a fan of the Lord of The Rings. Just wanted to get that out there. So, my collection of DVD’s does include several SciFi movies, and an ever growing collection of TV shows on DVD.

My latest arrivals are the 7th and final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I will admit that I like that show. I started watching it just as the 7th season aired on TV. My friend Rich is a big fan. I made fun of him for years for watching Buffy. One day he was like, come on. You like Scifi, you like hot women, and you like well written comedy. Why don’t you give the show a try. So he lent me the first season on DVD. Dam Rich. I actually liked the show. So I ended up Tivoing season 2-6 and watched it. By the time I finished season 6 in rerun’s, season 7 was on TV. I now own all the seasons on DVD. There were a few episodes that I never actually got to Tivo, so it was good to get these last remaining hours of TV to watch. When I tell people I like this show I eather get asked “are you retarded?” or, “cool I love that show”. Why is Scifi so polarizing.

Other good DVD’s I have are Angel. That was another great series, by the makers of Buffy. Joss Whedon actually has great ideas. That guy also came up with Firefly. I have that also on DVD, but it didn’t last very long. I am also collecting as many Simpson’s DVD’s that they will put on DVD. Of course at the rate Fox is going by the time they are done putting all the Simpson’s seasons on DVD I will be in retirement and DVD’s will be outdated.

To set the record straight I am NOT a Star Trek fan. One of my vendors likes to make fun of me because several of us from work made the mistake to see a recent Star Trek movie. Out of all the series out there, the only one I can tolerate to sit down and watch now is Deep Space 9. That one at least had some killing, and real fighting. The other shows were people going around acting like no person I want humans to evolve into. Come on, who gets shot at and is like “lets talk this out”? Blow someone’s ass off. (Deep breath) Ok, my ranting is over.

Below are some links to other posts where I have talked about great TV shows on DVD, that most people will miss out on, but are fantastic.

Two Of The Best TV Show’s, Ever, And You Probably Didn’t Know It

What’s on TV?

Tivo & PVR Trouble

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Sunday and Monday I spent time working on my Tivo. I have (had) a 40 hour original Phillips Tivo that I had hacked to a 160 hours. Well as I said earlier it died. My online searching said that the problem I was having could be the hard drive or the unit itself. I went out and downloaded InstantCake from PTVUpgrade. I originally had PTVUpgrade do the hacking for my Tivo so I figured I would check them out. IntantCake allowed me to prepare a new hard drive for the Tivo in hopes that the original drive was dead.

After spending most of monday trying to get 3 old computers to get drives working in the exact way InstantCake wanted I was finally able to get instantcake to build a drive. I don’t really blame instantcake for my woes there. They had strict requirements that I just had trouble getting to work with some old PIII 700’s. Once the drive was built I plugged it in to the old Tivo. No dice. The same problem happened again. It looked like my old Tivo finally died. We had a little more than 3 years together. I am upset that our relationship is over early, but I will get by.

I went to Best Buy near my apartment and picked up a new Tivo Series 2 80 hour DVR. I got it home and Jayson brought over a USB nic card that he had (I bribed him with Pizzeria Uno). The Tivo for some reason keep rebooting itself. The online community didn’t say very much about this problem other than it is very bad and I should bring back the unit. So after only 3 hours with it, my Series 2 Tivo went back and I got another shinny new one. This time the setup was a snap and I have been happy (or kind of happy, I did have to blow $299 before rebate on tech I already had but it broke)

At the same time on Monday I decided that the ATI All In Wonder video capture system was not doing it for me. I did some research on a product that looked like a good Digital Video Recorder (DVR) for the PC. Beyond TV from Snapstream got my interest. the problem was the demo sucked on my ATI card since the ATI card did software MPEG-2 encoding. If I knew that I would never have bought the card. The software itself looked awesome. So I took the plunge and bought a bundle of Beyond TV 3.5 and a Hauppauge USB2 video capture device. I got it yesterday and it rocks so far. I am now just programing it up, but it looks like most of the Tivo functionality on my PC. and I have full access to the MPEG-2 files it creates. The bundle even came with its own remote that actually works. It is nice.

These new hardware investments are now funded by the sale of all that old gear I got rid of over the past 2 months. Easy come, easy go I guess. I am at least using this gear. I am addicted to video capture recently, what can I say.

Tivo May Be Dead

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I have plenty to write about today, but the only thing on my mind right this second is that my Tivo may be dead. I came home and it was crashed. So I rebooted it. it is after all linux, so I was like a reboot will make it all better. Well 30 minutes later, it is still sitting at the please wait while I startup screen. that is not good. This thing always comes back in like 5 minutes. I don’t know what to do. It is like a good friend is sick. Is life worth living if Tivo doesn’t work? Yeah, probably. But it will suck that much more:(

I just turned it off, and I will let it sit idle for a while before I try to bring it back up. Honestly I think it is toast. I have an original 40 hour unit that I have hacked to 160 hours with a network card. No way I can get “support” on it. The unit was also purchased in September of 2001. So it has got some years on it. The thing is I have thought about upgrading and realized I had no reason to. This 3 year old device still does everything I want it to. Now only if it worked…

More news as it develops…

UPDATE: Well a 2 hours have passed and the Tivo is still not coming back online. According to the message boards I have read, the drive is bad, or the unit is totally fried. Not sure what I am going to do. I can try a different hard drive that I can prepare with a $20 piece of software from the people I originally upgraded my unit from, PTVUpgrade. Or I can upgrade to a new Tivo, or a different device. Either way I am out of commission for a few days. For now I am getting my shows on my ATI capture card. it is not perfect, but I have tv…