TiVo President and CEO Tom Rogers will be presenting at the Twenty-Eighth Annual Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Strategic Decisions Conference 2012 on May 31, the day after they announce their 1QFY13 financial results. A webcast of the presentation will be available on TiVo’s investor relations site.
Conference Details:
Twenty-Eighth Annual Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Strategic Decisions Conference 2012
New York, NY
Thursday, May 31, 2012
3:00 PM ET
Tom Rogers, President and CEO
See that image? That’s a NASA TV image of the SpaceX Dragon capsule successfully berthed at the International Space Station (ISS), which occurred at 12:02 EDT today. The history books may well mark this as the moment the commercial space industry became ‘real’, as this is the first commercial vehicle to arrive at the ISS and it marks the start of commercial supply flights. This is truly a massive achievement by SpaceX, and they deserve all of the kudos they receive.
Note that I said berthing and not docking – they’re different. The Space Shuttle docked with the ISS. The Soyuz, Progress, and ATV (European Automated Transfer Vehicle) dock with the ISS. The HTV (Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle) and Dragon berth. Docking is done under the craft’s own power and control. The craft flies toward a docking port on the ISS and moves into contact on its own. Berthing is handled by the station’s remote arm. The craft flies in toward the port, but stops about ten meters away and flies in formation with the ISS. The station’s arm reaches out and grapples the craft, and then draws it in to meet the docking, or berthing in this case, port.
Berthing is simpler than docking, but that’s all relative – neither is particularly simple. But berthing does require less from the approaching craft, and it is easier to get certified for berthing than for docking. The Dragon may dock on its own in the future, but it will evolve there. Certainly the plans to fly to Bigelow Aerospace’s planned private space station call for docking, as the station will not have an arm like the ISS. But docking is ‘good enough’ for the current mission, and autonomous docking is something that can be added to Dragon later.
NASA TV has a video of the approach, grapple, and berthing:
For some reason they slightly edited the version posted to YouTube and cut out the CapCom from the ISS including the “got a Dragon by the tail” like, which I thought was the best line in the video.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden called the ISS to congratulate them on the successful berthing:
There was a post-berthing briefing as well, which covers a bit of what comes next:
Yesterday, as part of the tests to gain clearance for the berthing, Dragon flew below the ISS. This video shows the fly-under:
There was also a briefing last night for the truly interested:
I couldn’t get a date earlier this week at The Cable Show, but apparently Comcast knew and just wasn’t saying – Boston gets XFINITY On Demand next week. That means TiVo owners with Series4 Premiere models in Comcast’s Boston service area will be able to access XFINITY VOD content. We don’t know yet just how widespread this is since ‘Boston’ often includes surrounding areas like Cambridge, Arlington, etc. when corporations use it in this way. We’ll probably get more details next week when it launches. You can always check your zipcode or sign up to be notified when it is in your area at www.tivo.com/comcast.
Yeah Boston! MT @ stevegarfield Breaking: Available next week for Boston area Comcast @TiVo customers, XFINITY VOD bit.ly/JEaxLz
— Steve Wymer (@stevewymer) May 24, 2012
For those who don’t know, Steve is TiVo’s Head of Corporate Communications. So this is an ‘official’ source who would know. I suspect Comcast didn’t announce this during The Cable Show because they wanted to keep the attention focused on their X1 product announcements.
Thanks to Brennok for the tip.
EDIT: I originally said ‘Monday’ since Brennok had used that in his comment and it wedged in my brain and when I read Steve’s ‘next week’ I think I mentally filled in ‘next Monday’. I replaced ‘Monday’ with ‘next week’ throughout the post to better reflect what Steve actually said.
As you know if you’ve been reading my recent posts, this week I attended The Cable Show 2012 in Boston. This was my first Cable Show, but I’m hoping it won’t be my last. Though they probably won’t make it so easy for me next time by holding it in Boston again, it moves every year – 2011 was Chicago. I just drove in from home in Worcester each day this year.
So far I’ve really only posted what I learned from TiVo, since I know that’s the leading interest for my readers, but they’re hardly the only vendor I talked to. I had some great conversations with vendors such as Pace, Arris, Humax, SiliconDust, Comcast, and others. I just need to recover from the show and find some time to do some additional research and compose some more posts. For some hints about what I’ll be covering you can check out the photos I took. Bear with me, I also need to pick up my day job in the morning.
If you want a glimpse of what the show floor was like The Cable Show posted a short video tour. Walking the floor is sped up, which makes me want to mash up the video with Yakety Sax. (Some of you get it, I’m sure.) I found that if you play it back at .25x it is more like a fast walk and you can catch more detail.
Today’s Woot! deal is a new SiliconDust HDHomeRun Prime Tuner for $129.99 + $5 S&H
. This is model number HDHD-3CC, with three digital cable (QAM) tuners and support for CableCARD. Note that this is QAM only and requires digital cable (or Verizon FiOS), and it will not work with ATSC via antenna.
The HDHomeRun Prime is a remote tuner, you connect it to your cable and your network and the tuners are then available for Windows 7 Windows Media Center PCs on the network to use for watching live TV or recording. You can get the full product details from the SiliconDust website. Today the HDHomeRun Prime officially requires a Windows 7 Windows Media Center PC, but I did just talk to SiliconDust at The Cable Show this week. They’re working on adding DLNA/DTCP-IP support which would allow any DLNA/DTCP-IP-enabled device to access the tuners over the network. I’ll get around to writing a post on that.
It is a simple device. There is a coax connection for the cable, a slot for the M-Card CableCARD, Ethernet for the network, USB to support a Tuning Adapter if required, and a power connection. The $129.99 price is lower than Amazon’s $149.99 new price, and nearly half off the full $249.99 MSRP.
