TiVo mobile service now on Microsoft devices

Posted on Wednesday, June 8, 2005 by MegaZone

TiVo has extended its TiVoToGo portable video service to pocket computers and mobile phones running Microsoft software, the company said Wednesday.

About MegaZone

MegaZone is the Editor of Gizmo Lovers and the chief contributor. He's been online since 1989 and active in several generations of 'social media' - mailing lists, USENet groups, web forums, and since 2003, blogging.    MegaZone has a presence on several social platforms: Google+ / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / LiveJournal / Web.    You can also follow Gizmo Lovers on other sites: Blog / Google+ / Facebook / Twitter.
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  • buran

    *eyes Mac*

    *eyes Tivo*

    *eyes Mac*

    *imagines Mac turning into chopped liver*

  • davesawyer

    Now I can finally see a decent reason to buy one of those portable media players. They seemed too expensive and unnecessary before. This is a nice added feature though.

  • unabomber13

    I was going to say something similar.. but you have put it so eloquently.

  • buran

    Mmmm. Marinated Powerbook.

    Although I think I’d get indigestion from eating it!

    Seriously, I know they’re working on it but to see them put it out for PDAs before a lot of vocal customers get satisfied is disappointing.

  • megazone

    It was easier to do the PDAs than the Mac. The transcoding is already in Windows Media Player, this was a no-brainer. All their doing is extending the DRM with WM10/Janus to allow the files to be transcoded to formats viewable on other devices that support Windows Media Video.

    And it looks like Microsoft is kicking in marketing money to help sell this, so it really isn’t hard to see why TiVo would do it. From what I’ve heard Apple hasn’t been easy to work with on getting TTG support working, and they don’t seem to be offering to help sell anything either. Everything I hear from TiVo is that they want to support Macs and they’re working on it, but it is a lot harder than it was to do Windows, which wasn’t all that hard.

  • unabomber13

    Yeah.. I understand the hold up.. I just wish I didn’t lose the music/photo sharing with the movie to Tiger.. which.. I didn’t have a choice with, since I bought a new Mac that came with it preinstalled.

    I would LOVE to have the Home Media option though.. I tried to use it with Virtual PC on Mac, but couldn’t get it working right.. no idea why..

  • buran

    You forget the fact that Tivos record as MPEG and that QuickTime is perfectly capable of recording, editing, and playing back MPEG 1 and 2. So the “it’s not compatible” stuff is a joke. I do video work with QuickTime at work, and I know what codecs it can and can’t handle.

  • megazone

    The raw video isn’t the issue, it is the requirement to have DRM.

  • buran

    *points to itunes music store and protected quicktime movies that can’t be saved etc*

  • megazone

    Yes – and what I’ve heard is that Apple isn’t being very friendly about letting anyone *else (read, TiVo) use FairPlay (their DRM). Right now Apple is pretty insular about FairPlay. As far as I know the *only* content source that uses it is – iTunes. And the only devices that can use it are Apple. (Yes, HP resells iPods.) Motorola has that iTunes phone, if it ever ships…

    Whereas Microsoft does everything they can to get people to use WM DRM and they make it trivial.

  • stile99

    I love how Apple has brainwashed people into being so mindless that they believe Apple could do no wrong. This lets them freely do as much wrong as they like, and since Apple can do no wrong, by definition it must be someone else.

    As far as I am aware, nobody has EVER said it couldn’t be done. Countless numbers have said Apple won’t allow it. However, here is where the ‘Apple can do no wrong’ circuit kicks in.

    So here we have a repeat. “You can’t tell me it can’t be done”. Well, nobody said that. Then, you point to Apple as proof that not only CAN it be done (which was not in question), that it IS being done. Again, not in question. When you’re done pointing, why don’t you point to someone other than Apple doing it (and not getting their asses sued off).

    *listens to the chirping crickets* That’s what I thought.

  • buran

    I never said they could do no wrong. I *AM* pointing out that it’s certainly possible for this feature to exist, now, and the technology can and does exist to do it. If a company was going to sue people who wrote software for its stuff, it wouldn’t provide developer kits. Every major platform has compilers available for it. That wouldn’t be the case for closed systems. There are SOME things that are closed on ANY system, but there is simply no reason why a video player cannot be created and distributed NOW, with or without outside help, and the people who want one for the Mac platform have been extremely vocal, and yet have been repeatedly ignored.

    The flaw in your logic is that you assume that Apple has to help developers who want to write stuff for their platform. Not true. Does every freeware and shareware developer get official assistance beyond developing SDKs? No. Is that the case for Windows? No. Is that the case for Linux? No.

    I am pointing to the fact that it has been done once as proof that it can be done for Macs, and that software that can do it already exists. If one team of coders can do it, so can another.

    If there were grounds to sue anyone who wrote an app for (insert major platform here), there would BE no individual/small/medium size programming houses or hobbyist developers. Those grounds don’t exist.

    The real explanation for the missing software? They just haven’t gotten around to listening to the customers who want it and are placing blame on a third party who isn’t at fault.

    Bzzt. Try again.

  • megazone

    Apple has a DRM system, FairPlay, and they’ve been unwilling to allow others to use it to date and have, in fact, done everything in their power to prevent others from using it – see the changes they made to break Real’s reverse engineering of it in Rhapsody.

    If Apple would cooperate it wouldn’t be hard for TiVo to do just what they did on Windows – output the file using the existing system. Then it’d Just Work in existing Mac applications.

    Without that TiVo needs to use some 3rd party DRM and write custom software. That’s a much bigger investment for them. They have finite resources and apparently feel they will get more ROI from other investments at this time. I understand they are working with Apple, and have been, because they want to provide a real solution that integrates into the environment. But the slow progress comes from Apple’s side of things.

    TiVo certainly does get a LOT more from supporting Windows Media than from any Mac format. Other than the larger Windows PC market, the majority of portable video devices support WMV. One of their major pushes has been to provide portable video from TiVo, and investing in Windows Media was the best way to do that (in a way that maintains DRM – and that’s a business requirement, like it or not). I mean, I have a PalmOS device and I’d like to have support too, but I recognize that it isn’t going to be a primary platform since supporting Windows Media gets them all kinds of portable media centers, PDAs, smartphones, etc. Simply the most bang for the buck – the largest ROI.

    My primary unit is also a Pioneer 810H – the DVD TiVo’s don’t even have TTG yet. It is due later this summer in the next upgrade. The vast majority of Series2 units are non-DVD, they got primary focus on getting new software. The DVD units have their own requirements, so they got it out for the base units, then started on a release that adds DVD functionality for the DVD units. It is just business.

  • stile99

    Wow. Just so much misinformation, there’s no way to even begin to correct it all. As scientists say, this “isn’t even wrong”…IE, it’s not right enough to even be considered.

    “I *AM* pointing out that it’s certainly possible for this feature to exist, now, and the technology can and does exist to do it.”

    Yes. And like I said, this wasn’t up for debate. We’ve all accepted this as established fact, why are you still harping on it?

    “If a company was going to sue people who wrote software for its stuff, it wouldn’t provide developer kits.”

    Oh, REALly? I know a company that would be REAL glad to hear that.

    “and the people who want one for the Mac platform have been extremely vocal, and yet have been repeatedly ignored.”

    I think you must mean repeatedly ignorant. I mean, the same thing can be explained to the same people only so many times before it becomes clear that some of them refuse to accept it. TiVo says they’re working on it, you say they’re not. You’ll excuse me if I choose to believe them over you.

    “If one team of coders can do it, so can another.”

    Once again (not that it will sink in the 1,654,377th time), nobody said they couldn’t…except Apple.

    “If there were grounds to sue anyone who wrote an app for (insert major platform here), there would BE no individual/small/medium size programming houses or hobbyist developers. Those grounds don’t exist.”

    Again, I know a company that is REAL glad to hear this.

    “The real explanation for the missing software? They just haven’t gotten around to listening to the customers who want it and are placing blame on a third party who isn’t at fault.”

    Whatever. Does your hat need redoing, or is the tinfoil holding up ok?

    “Bzzt. Try again.”

    Indeed.