Set-top box maker TiVo exploring options, could go private | Hacker News Reader

Set-top box maker TiVo exploring options, could go private

reuters.com

39 pointsuptown62 comments

It’s too bad they’re destorying themselves. I say this as a LONG time subscriber (over 15 years) who only has cable to keep my TiVo working.

The new software update they released last year that overhauled the UI completely is a total disaster. Change for the sake of change.

It takes more button presses on different/additional buttons to navigate the menus. You can’t just use the d-pad and select. The menus aren’t hierarchies anymore, they’re just a mess you have to memorize. Fitts law doesn’t work as there are things at the top of some menus you don’t want to select so you can’t wuickly get to the top without then pressing down two or three times.

Their fantastic guide has been replaced by a generic one and a new... thing... that’s confusing as hell and worse than the old and new options.

Also, the guide data has been getting noticeably worse in the last two years or so.

I can’t go back to the old interface, and even if I could I imagine I’d be shoved forward again at some point.

I’m really questioning why I’m paying so much for cable and TiVo if my TiVo keeps making me mad and they’ve shown ZERO sign they actually understand the issues.

Sunk cost fallacy. Time to give it up guys and course correct. You pissed off all the loyal fans and aren’t drawing anyone new in.

You can downgrade if you want, actually, though the price is wiping your recordings:

https://www.tivocommunity.com/community/index.php?threads/ho...

(Also you can't use the voice button on the new VOX remote)

I know this because I'm in a similar boat, but turned down the "upgrade" to the UI.

Yeah, I know, but I have a lot of stuff recorded and don’t want to lose it yet again (as often happens when upgrading between boxes).

But again, I figure that after having to basically re-do everything after a downgrade I’d just be forced back up again.

Haven't been forced yet, though if you say "give it a few months" I'll nod sadly in agreement.

> I’m really questioning why I’m paying so much for cable and TiVo

A while back I plunked down a few hundred dollars for a lifetime Tivo subscription -- I'm surprised you didn't do the same. I'm paying Verizon $10/month for cable access to local TV stations, ESPN, and the weather channel. Yes, cable is slowly being displaced, but that's what happens to all technologies eventually. Why worry? Enjoy your Tivo and stop complaining.

Well, you still have to pay for the cable subscription. If I didn't watch so many cable shows, I'd love to go TiVo lifetime+terrestrial.

I haven't tried the new UI yet. I saw the preview on their site and I wasn't impressed.

The guide data is bad now because Rovi bought them and switched to using their guide data.

They broke "push to tivo" functionality for their TiVo Desktop software and haven't fixed it for almost 2 years (if you trace the network traffic you'll see it tries to login at mind.tivo.com and gets a memcache error—sigh). This breaks my favorite usage of pyTivo, where I can ship stuff up to the TiVo that I've downloaded elsewhere.

Which leads me to…

This month I spent a solid week researching every option I could find to replace my TiVo+Cable and none of them were very attractive. Pretty much every legit streaming service has unskippable commercials (IE, every iOS network app). And they also tend to get episodes the day after they air (I could live with that but some, like DirecTVNow on-demand, get episodes weeks after they air). And the services that do get it right (Netflix, Amazon, maybe Hulu) only have a small subset of the TV shows that I watch.

I came away very frustrated that the only solution I could find that was a better experience than my TiVo+Cable was piracy. Torrents of practically every TV show exist, come out quickly, have the commercials pre-stripped, and don't have restrictive DRM.

I don't understand how people cut the cord. They must either not care about unskippable commercials, or they don't watch as much TV as I do, or they pirate (I was trying to avoid it, but man it's enticing).

Look into a SiliconDust HDHomeRun Prime. CableCARD support, and compatible with a variety of DVR software backends.

I've been pirating everything I can for as long as I've been watching TV. My wife and I still have a box of CD-R's labeled in marker with our favorite late 90s - early 00s movies on them. Back in the day we've leeched off private FTP servers. Now we run a torrent box in EC2. Weirdly enough, AWS neglected to send us warnings in almost a decade.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Does Amazon not respond to torrent notices for illegal downloads? Do you periodically rebuild the instance to get a new IP?

I’ve considered setting up a torrent box but ruled out EC2 before even looking further into it. Figured it would need to be something overseas.

Before the torrent box went up, we used to get notices from our ISP every few weeks. Amazon just... swallow them somewhere, I guess. I do rebuild the instance occasionally when it gets too crusty, but I use an elastic IP for my own convenience.

Funnily enough, I do keep another box in Moscow which I use for more serious stuff than piracy.

How much does it cost you to use an EC2 instance for torrenting? Doesn't that eat up a lot of bandwidth? Any guides you recommend following?

...I am asking for a friend.

At the minimum, you would need a t2.micro instance with enough disk to store files before you've copied them to wherever you're going to do the watching. I've tried doing this with a t2.nano, but the memory there simply isn't enough.

There are dedicated torrent box packages out there, but I have no personal experience with them, as for me tmux + rtorrent + nginx has been sufficient for years. It used to be that only certain versions of rtorrent supported magnet links, but the latest Debian stable ships with one that works just fine, so there's no longer any need to compile anything from source.

I do recommend reading through rtorrent's configuration file because the settings can make a difference in how long it takes to download something. Also, be sure to adjust your security to allow BitTorrent traffic.

As for cost, it's never been a problem: I haven't seen an AWS bill above $60, which includes a bunch of EBS volumes, the instance, the bandwidth, and my various encrypted long term backups in S3.

What's the advantage in using an EC2 instance as opposed to a box sitting in your house behind a VPN? VPN services cost about $6 / month or less.

I can (and do) use the EC2 instance for other things. It often pulls quadruple duty. The available bandwidth also allows me crank up rtorrent to aggressively seek other peers, such that a typical 45 minute episode takes about 15 minutes to download in 1080p. I then feed the https URL to VLC and watch the file. Torrenting directly here always takes longer. I've never tried a VPN, but it wouldn't make the bits travel any faster.

Additionally, in my household everything with a CPU and a network interface ends up getting cannibalized for some project or another. There must be a name for this phenomenon.

>I've never tried a VPN, but it wouldn't make the bits travel any faster.

No, definitely not; its purpose is only to hide your true IP. Fair enough, if I had other things running in EC2 I'd probably consider this as well.

I agree. There are so many times I've wanted to hand someone some cash to watch a movie or TV show and not been able to, and resorted to torrenting. Now, for TV shows, I have a wonderful little automated workflow of ShowRSS > Catch.app > Transmission.app > iFlicks.app > iTunes. I have the latest TV shows the night they air, ad free, HD quality, with metadata and artwork, and it costs me nothing.

The only thing comparable, for some shows, is either iTunes or Hulu Plus, and with iTunes, 3 bucks a pop doesn't seem competitive in the slightest.

There's gotta be a more sustainable way to do this...

> I don't understand how people cut the cord. They must either not care about unskippable commercials, or they don't watch as much TV as I do

I find a Roku or FireTV plus Netflix and Hulu gets me most of what I want (and I pay a couple bucks extra each month for no commercial Hulu). I have prime too, for the few things I watch there (they have a couple good series).

That gets me a long way, and I have TerrariumTV on the fire stick for the few things I can't easily get legitimately.

I’m a cable cutter. I use both AppleTVs and Rokus.

I subscribe to Hulu Plus with no commercials. I currently get Netflix free via T-mobile and I have DirectvNow. I also have Amazon Prime and STARZ. I hardly ever watch live TV but my wife does. I had CBS All Access with no commercials before getting DirecTVNow when I had Sling, but DirecTvNow has all of the broadcast channels in my market (NBC, ABC,CBS,Fox,and theCW).

The trick to watching commercial free TV for shows that aren’t available on Hulu is Plex. You don’t have to pirate shows that are available on the network’s websites. Just add the channel via Plex. The Plex channel scapes the content from the website in real time. For all intents and purposes, you are watching it legally from their website - without commercials.

Oh neat, I've been using Plex but hadn't explored the plugins yet. Sadly it still seems like there's not a lot of choices beyond OTA channels. I see Comedy Central, but no FX, AMC, USA, Syfy, etc. Also it appears to suffer from the same problem as PlayOn, which is that shows offered over the web are only available in stereo.

Reading experiences like this make me quite pleased I don't watch much TV, even then, especially here in Australia, it's a pain to view the couple of shows I'm interested in (GoT, Mr Robot etc).

Why are you looking to cut cable? Most people claim its cost, but if you are an avid tv watcher, cable is not a bad deal, especially with the bundles available and in certain circumstances is cheaper than the streaming alternatives.

We cut cable for a lot of reasons that may or may not make sense for most people.

1. My wife has a split shift and has a lot of down time during the day. When she isn't at the gym, she can just watch her shows on her phone.

2. We have unlimited gigabit internet for $70 from AT&T. If you have capped internet, it either costs extra to get uncapped internet or it's not available.

3. We have alot of TVs - our room and our son's room, the guest bedroom, home gym, living room, and my wife's study. That would be $50 a month by itself in set top box rental fees. Instead we have three Roku TVs, two Roku sticks, three third gen AppleTVs* and one 4K AppleTV (free for paying three months with DirectTV) the interfaces are much better and with the Rokus, I can stream the audio to my phone with headphones while watching TV.

4. We have gigabit Ethernet jacks throughout the house. We don't have to worry about flaky WiFi for streaming.

5. Very few markets have streaming alternatives where all of the broadcast TV channels are available live. I live in a market where they are available with DirecTVNow.

* I run PlexConnect on my Plex Server (https://github.com/iBaa/PlexConnect) to get a native Plex Channel on my 3rd Gen Apple TVs.

https://sonarr.tv/ + torrent clint of choice + plex. It's so good that it still shocks me now and then. I would pay for this kind of service if it was a product you could buy.

Hulu and CBS both offer ‘no commercials’. Hulu + no commercials + Live gives you more channels and real time availability, but you may have to ‘commercial skip’ on some shows if you subscribe to the DVR mode instead of the time delay back catalog mode.

Plex with PlexPass (look for a lifetime pass sale) has beta live DVR, supports external digital ‘tuners’ recording up to 4 live channels per device, and auto-stripping commercials. This can be very compelling in metro areas and if you have enough storage.

PlayStation Vue has probably the broadest coverage of channels while supporting iOS + tvOS 11 Single Sign On for channels’ own ‘apps’.

But most folks would be hard pressed to run out of TV between just Netflix and Amazon Prime, supplemented by the $11 ad free flavor of Hulu if “keeping up to date” matters.

Cheapest totally ad free with ‘up to date’ broadcast network shows is probably Netflix + Prime + PlexPass DVR. (After HTPC w/ storage paid for.)

I was also a long time TiVo user (3 units in 3 rooms for about 10 years) and gave up on them this year. Now I'm just using YouTube TV which has an unlimited DVR, and with a couple Chromecast and Roku devices under displays now, I don't miss it one bit. I get access to everything I need, anywhere I am, and don't have to clean up the disk constantly or pay extra on top of the TV service.

It is worth noting that guide data/patent company Rovi (not Roku or Rovio) bought Tivo in the summer of 2016, then took their name.

As a former employee at Rovi EMEA before the TiVo acquisition. I can't imagine any company improving from being acquired by Rovi...

Well, the guide data has only gotten worse since the acquisition.

Tivo's decision to require a large up front purchase in addition to requiring a large recurring monthly fee was always the thing that kept my friends from buying one after hearing me rave about mine.

They could have been much more successful than they were.

Can someone explain the big appeal of TiVo to me, or at least what their appeal was? The set top boxes I've gotten from different providers are always a bit hit or miss, but never so bad I felt a need to purchase external equipment. It's been "good enough" and I never heard of a good enough reason to invest in TiVo. Was it the UX? For example, I purchased an Apple Extreme to use as my interface for my routers because there was a convenience to keeping all of my devices on the same wifi credentials, and only having to switch the ISPs hardware to bridge mode.

But I could never see the value proposition with TiVo hardware, though everyone who had it seems to have adored it.

I bought the first Tivo when it came out, and bought most of them over the years - currently I use an OTA box to record local TV over the air and stream everything else.

The original Tivo was miles ahead of any other alternative, and it pioneered the ability to skip commercials, which was HUGE at the time. The notion of time-shifting was somewhat new as well, it changed how people watch TV before streaming existed by allowing you to watch it whenever you want.

Other recorders existed at the time, but programming them and setting them up was an enormous pain in the butt, while Tivo had a friendly UI.

Over time, the competition has caught up, and Tivo doesn't have that much value over anyone else. CableTV is on the decline, so there's not too much reason to innovate into a shrinking market.

ReplayTV had automatic commercial skipping back in 2000 – it's what got them sued into oblivion by the networks.

Man, how I LOVED my ReplayTV back in the day.

I’m a fairly new TiVo user and have never experienced any other DVRs. The appeal of TiVo for me is a few things:

- skip mode: while watching certain shows that were previosly recorded(mostly prime time) you can skip commercials at push of a button

- ability to stream or download shows onto mobile device. We download kid shows onto the iPad and they’ll play offline, and you can even delete the original off the TiVo

- ability to manage recordings and setup one pass from mobile device. (One pass is a feature that lets you record all episodes of a particular show)

- user interface: I never used the old interface, and have not used other DVRs, but the latest interface is really nice. I rarely use it to manage recordings but when I do it works quite well.

I’m probably an outlier in that I never had cable my entire life. I recently got cable and watch quite a few shows regularly. I never watch commercials and get to enjoy TV on own own schedule.

Long form TV, like sports, or live shows, and things like the olympics olympics are great to speed through the boring parts and watch what you want.

As a 3 year Tivo subscriber I'd also add to the above list:

- Whole Home DVR. Once you have the main Tivo unit, you simply can add Tivo Mini's to other TV's throughout the house that tie into the main unit. Having access to the same UI and same shows for all TV's is huge for us and guests. It also allows watching a show on one tv, pausing it and then continuing from same spot on another TV.

This feature was actually main reason I decided to switch off our cable provided DVR service for Tivo. The cable company was charging a lot more for this ability because had to rent each box, etc.

- Amazon/YouTube/Hulu apps and MLB.TV app built in. Can watch Amazon prime movies right through Tivo. YouTube. MLB has the best streaming tech of any sport and Tivo has the interface built in. Can watch all games on my TiVo and phone for $25/mo.

I will stick with our Tivo setup + Cable until something more convenient comes out for cutting the cord that has everything I need. Right now nothing does without using multiple devices and hacks.

This is a bit late, but re-reading your post gave me some thoughts.

> skip mode: while watching certain shows that were previosly recorded(mostly prime time) you can skip commercials at push of a button

This to me it's nice, but most DVR's now a days will do the same in 1-3 button presses, which is not the ideal experience, it's an inconvenience that does have a financial value attached to it.

> ability to stream or download shows onto mobile device. We download kid shows onto the iPad and they’ll play offline, and you can even delete the original off the TiVo

This is amazing, and if my dog needed access on his iPad (he's my only roommate, ATM), I'd subscribe just for that.

> ability to manage recordings and setup one pass from mobile device. (One pass is a feature that lets you record all episodes of a particular show)

This one is tempting me in spite of the status of this article.

> I’m probably an outlier in that I never had cable my entire life.

I would say an insanely valuable outlier. You lacked biases of DVR experience, whick is crazy hard to find. Thank you for sharing your viewpoint :)

TiVo is to DVR like Mac is to (Windows) PC. The DVR more or less works most of the time, but the TiVo provides an excellent experience while being mostly hands-off and “just works”. You can tell it to record a show, and it just knows what to do. Only gets first runs. Doesn’t fill up with duplicates of every rerun. Remote control is superb. On screen interface is intuitive and doesn’t make you want to rip your face off. Isn’t full of ads trying to get you to buy some other pay per view product. Every time I use a cable company DVR I’m floored by just how it is utter crap and that people put up with it. The only reason they do is because they don’t know any better.

Considering the general shift among TV watchers to increasingly popular VoD services which are ad-free and do not need time shifting I'm surprised TiVo is even still around.

TiVo provides access to these VoD services as well through apps, so it makes a very nice one stop shop for accessing all of your media sources.

I have a lifetime subscription and somewhat reluctantly got a Weaknees replacement drive after a failure near the end of last year. It was mostly to avoid making various decisions/changes related to cable service. I don't get OTA where I live so decisions weren't all that straightforward even though I watch very little live TV. However, I can't imagine ever buying a new TiVo and subscribing to the service.

My TiVo Roamio plus Minis is such an awesome setup though. I have cable because of Tivo at this point. Such a great system.

I disagree. The hardware is extremely underpowered for the price and the interface is clunky.

If you know of anything that even remotely compares to a TiVo, I'm all ears.

I usually roll my own solution with Kodi + tvheadend + HDHomerun. Though HDHR is working on a DVR server that integrates directly with Kodi so it's gonna get even easier. Should work on any device that supports Kodi.

Every computer I own demolishes a TiVo.

And that does what for a wife, the kids, visiting parents, etc?

They all use it. My son has been able to mostly-sorta-kinda work the wireless keyboard since he was two and my wife has no issues using her laptop or our theater PC which remains hooked up to the TV.

Visiting parents? Sure, I have to remind my Mom how to use it every time. That happens once a year, not a real concern given the thousands of dollars I have saved. Also, you may find that you watch less TV with a setup like this assuming your someone who typically has it on in the background nearly all of the time.

What software do you use? What is your source of shows?

How is the interface clunky? The One Pass setup is extremely convenient. Search across services is excellent. My parents can use it without issues.

This is the first complaint I’ve ever heard about the interface. Not saying it can’t be better...but it’s pretty great. Significantly better than all of the services that insist on showing huge cover pictures everywhere.

I’ve used TiVo’s since their Series 2 devices (started with a second-hand Sony TiVo which I replaced the HD) and have always had the lifetime subscriptions. Easily worth the cost.

However my current HD TiVo with cable card is starting to get flaky. Changeless will go black even though they should show a broadcast. Weird UI glitches. A reboot fixes it so I’m hoping it’s the cable card and not the TiVo but cable companies seem hostile to cable card users so I’m not sure how to diagnose the origin of the problem. Unless things have changed I’m not sure they’ll let me return and replace my own cable card and I’m reluctant to schedule a service call if the problem is my hardware since they’ll charge me.

Anyone with an HD TiVo experience similar behavior before and know how to resolve?

If you haven't already asked over at http://www.tivocommunity.com/ in the Help Center forum, I would.

Thanks. Had forgotten about that site.

It can take a few rounds of getting the CableCard replaced, and also making sure your signal levels are good. Stick with it and once you get it settled the issues will be gone. An advantage now with CC having been around for a long time is that cable companies usually have a pretty experienced staff on hand who know how to troubleshoot the problems (phone support, not onsite techs). I’ve had good results with both Comcast and Time Warner.

I recall the fun of hacking the cheap TiVos (the Sony branded ones especially for some reason) to get a shell, upgrading the disks and so on. This was long before they had Canadian guide support, so that was the only way to hack in guide data.

But, once HD TV became the norm, the writing was on the wall for them. Frankly I'm amazed it lasted as long as it did.

I love my TiVo HD 652160! I have five of them (stockpiled) on lifetime subscription with the 2TB hard drive upgrade.

My provider (WideOpenWest) fortunately has dodged the MPEG-4 low bitrate bullet that Comcast fired (which I was I left Comcast) on its subscribers.

I'll keep riding these TiVo's into the sunset, then I'll probably get YouTube TV.

Be aware YouYube TV plays unskippable commercials. Someone used to a TiVo will probably find it intolerable.

I really only watch live sports anymore, I torrent everything else.

I have a TiVo HD with a lifetime subscription as well and they are going to have to pry it from my cold dead hands. There is nothing better I've found out there for skipping commercials. That said TiVo really needs to evolve their business, I'd love to see them to shift to a cloud based DVR that works with FireTV, Chromecast etc.. I highly doubt I'll ever buy another TiVo DVR as they currently are. Every year we use it less as streaming becomes a better option.

Huh. TIL TiVo was still a thing. Are they just relying on past subscribers to stay alive? I don't recall seeing any advertising, news, or otherwise about TiVo in probably 10 years.

Atlantic Broadband offers them as set-top boxes to customers.

Really, their big source of money is licensing, both software and patents on DVR technology. Well, now that Rovi bought them (and took the name) it's also selling guide data.

It would be nice if they made their online (browser-based) streaming service actually work. Or at least work for more than a few days before they break it again.

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