TiVo in Taiwan (TGC), and other stuff…

Posted on Friday, January 6, 2006 by MegaZone

One thing I forgot to mention earlier is the TGC box TiVo has on display. That’s the unit recently launched in Taiwan. From checking out the box and in talking to TiVoPony, TiVoJerry, and all the TiVo folks who were so cool today (I apologize for sucking with names, no slight meant), TGC licenses the reference platform and the software, but they are free to make changes to it. They licensed the Series2 reference platform, and made the obvious change of adding a 10/100baseT port to it. So I asked the obvious question of a few people – any hope of seeing that in the US? It is a possibility, but there are no firm plans at this time. TGC also did all of the localization and customization for the software – and in the photo I took of the info screen you can see the version is 1.0 – a new tree. But the menus are so familiar that even though I can’t read Chinese, I was able to navigate the box – which is how I got to the info screen. :-) The remote, as is obvious from the pictures, is a bog standard Series2 remote, except it is labeled ‘TGC’.

Also, the TGC units currently do not support any of the networking features – no MRV, TTG, HME, etc. The network port is only used for calls home at this time, though TGC may introduce the other features over time.

I also took more photos of the Series3 unit, including macro close ups of the ports on the back, and the OLED display and controls on the front, as well as photos of many of the new TiVo Central Online screens, and I uploaded those this evening.

I was utterly shocked by the response my post has received. Unbelievably, it seems like I may be the only person who posted info about the Series3 unit and the only one who posted photos. And now those photos are *all over* the net. If I’d realized that I wouldn’t have just casually dumped the raw 5 mega pixel photos on the server. :-)

So, some changes to the photos:
http://www.gizmolovers.com/Photos/CES2006/Small/ – this now contains photos resized to 10% original. Better for the web anyway, and much smaller byte-wise. Thanks to usagijer for the quick resize script.
http://www.gizmolovers.com/Photos/CES2006/Large/ – this contains the original 5 mega pixel images for anyone looking for images for print, resizing, cropping, etc. Please don’t grab these unless you really need them, my server will appreciate it.

krellis pointed me at this mirror – which I don’t quite understand how it works yet ;-) – which may help get to things when the load is bad on my server:
http://www.gizmolovers.com.nyud.net/Photos/CES2006/Small/ – it looks like it is still caching the pre-resized RAW images. That should update at some point I guess.
http://www.gizmolovers.com.nyud.net/Photos/CES2006/Large/ – the RAW images.

Alex at tivoblog has been kind enough to setup a mirror here: http://www.tivoblog.com/archives/2006/01/05/tivo-pictures-from-ces-taken-by-megazone/ It looks like it is still partial (33 of 42 right now), but he’s working on it. :-)

I’m also uploading the photos to Dave Zatz at ZatzNotFunny and he plans to mirror them – he has a few now that he managed to grab from my server when it would respond. :-)

If anyone else wants to mirror them, feel free to grab them from my server – or I can SFTP/FTP the originals to you if you give me a login. If you use my photos or host them, etc, all I ask is that you give credit to ‘MegaZone’ and/or ‘TiVoLovers.com’. I’m not going to bother watermarking them or anything, I don’t care that much, it is just a nice thing. :-) If you do setup a mirror, please drop a comment here with the URL. Thanks!

I wish I could tell you about what I overheard being discussed around me while I was sitting in the TiVo room blogging my two entries earlier today, but it didn’t sound like something I should blab – and I asked and confirmed that they’d rather I not. So I’ll just have to bite my tongue (fingers?) for now, which is going to drive me nuts. But I’m not going to ruin my relationship with TiVo just to scoop something. :-)

EDIT: Some more mirrors! Thanks folks!

http://www.something-fishy.com/photography/TiVoS3

http://spidertrace.com/Gallery/Tivo3

http://starjewel.org/pics/tivo/

For the record, there are 42 photos total – at this point. I may take more tomorrow. :-)

EDIT 2: Dave Zatz has his mirror up now too: http://www.zatznotfunny.com/PSN/tivoces.htm

EDIT 3: More mirrors!

http://64.247.19.118/

http://theomelet.com/index.php?itemid=62

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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  • warewolf
  • starjewel

    zone: thanks for going to CES for all of us and thanks for the pics :)

  • dbldbl

    sweet, sweet details on all things TiVo CES06. Thank you for your work there… I’m sitting on pins and needles waiting for more news!

    I wish you were able to watermark those raw pix. Kinda sucks that folks took off and running with your work; I guess that’s a side-effect of the ether-net.

  • starjewel

    mines not an official mirror, but your site was so slow, i put a few on mine just so they’d load faster when i showed my friends.

    http://starjewel.org/pics/tivo/

    i’ll drop a text file in there to credit you, as it’s just an index listing

  • megazone

    You’re welcome. :-)

  • megazone

    Thanks. :-)

  • megazone

    Ah, it isn’t worth it. Credit is nice, but I’m in it to promote TiVo so in the end it is all good.

  • megazone

    Thanks for the mirrors!

  • anonymous
  • anonymous
  • warewolf

    So my wget -r -l 1 of your site managed to miss all your RAW images. So I’m fetching them now … it’ll be a while, since nobody else has them, and your site is just as swamped as mine now :)

    Richard

  • anonymous

    Do you know what the pricing will be for this new unit?

  • anonymous

    Just wondering if you had any information on all those connectors on the back of the unit:
    1) Does the unit have USB 2.0 drivers for the USB jacks, unlike the series 2?
    2) Is the ethernet jack going to be 100Mbps (hey, they used USB1.1 drivers for USB 2.0 jacks on the series 2…)?
    3) Will the Series three support WPA encryption for wireless networking?

    Everybody on the ‘net really appreciates you covering the TiVo news.

    -JasonColeman.net

  • anonymous

    I haven’t gone to HDTV largely because of Tivo’s lack of support for it, plus a lack of decent programming material. This unit looks like they got it right (is that possible on a first try?). It has all the stuff I would want for SDTV and HDTV. Hope they keep the price reasonable too.

    The one thing I didn’t like was the lack of any inputs other than cable. This box wouldn’t work with a Directv set-top box, so if one decides to switch from cable to Directv, then a new DirecTivo is a must.

    Now, waht about pricing and availability?

  • megazone

    Thanks!

  • megazone

    Thanks!

  • megazone

    No problem, I appreciate the help in spreading this out.

  • megazone

    They haven’t announced official pricing.

  • megazone

    The Series2 boxes have had USB2.0 drivers since 7.x software came out. The Series3 will continue to have USB2.0

    The Ethernet jack is 10/100baseT.

    No word yet on WPA, but I know TiVo is looking to add that in general.

  • megazone

    Pricing is yet to be announced, availability is second half of this year.

  • shiftless

    Thanks for all of the pics and details! I am super hyped for the Series 3 Tivo. I didn’t know the CableCard was an FCC mandate so that’s a huge relief. Series 3 looks like a dream. I didn’t know it was going to be so nice!

  • warewolf
  • megazone

    Ouch. Thanks for sharing the pain. :-)

  • warewolf

    Not a problem. Thank you for being our Reporter On Scene :) I owe you a beer or something.

  • anonymous

    was it one of the news items announced since then?

  • megazone

    Well, one of them was the Verizon thing.