Twelve Black Code Monkeys

On January 3rd, just as CES 2005 was getting under way, TiVo announced TiVo ToGo, a service they’ve been talking about for around a year now. As many of you know, this service will allow you to transfer your TiVo programs or movies to a computer, a portable media player, and eventually to a DVD. At least that’s the theory. In practice, things may be a little more complex. TiVo ToGo has an inherent problem, as far as I’m concerned. The problem is speed, both figuratively and literally:

Firstly, this feature has taken forever to get to TiVo owners. Ostensibly this was because TiVo had to allay the fears of the movie industry, TV networks, etc., by creating a DRM system whereby the content could not be easily copied and distributed. To do this, TiVo employs a code or “access key” that you type in when playing the content outside of the the TiVo box. This code is specific to you and your TiVo. If you then distribute that content on the internet, it has a signature pointing right back at you. While I appreciate that TiVo is trying to work with content providers to come up with a compromise that will help both their customers and the content providers, I think in the end this is crippling them, as TiVo ToGo was in development for at least year.

Now that TiVo ToGo has been announced, it is still going to take weeks before all TiVo boxes have the service. Some types of TiVo’s (ones that record to DVD), will not see the capability for what will probably be months. And DirecTV Tivo boxes simply will not offer the service, just as they have not offered TiVo’s home networking features.

Finally, the issue of speed is inherent in the actual functionality of TiVo ToGo. Even at the lowest quality of recording, an hour of TiVo programming takes up about 1 GB of storage. How do you get your content from your TiVo to your computer? You have to go through the USB port on the TiVo. You can either hook a wireless or wired Ethernet adapter to it, or potentially even hook it directly to a laptop. The problem, though, is that no matter what it’s hooked to, it is still a USB 1.1 port, the older type which was superseded with the ten times faster USB 2.0 around three years ago. This bottleneck means that no TiVo content can travel faster than about 4Mbps (bursts go up to 12Mbps, but average transfer speed is much slower), or about 1.8GB per hour. So, with this speed you can transfer a 2-hour movie in a little over an hour AT THE WORST QUALITY. Most people will want to record at least some content at the best quality level, which is about 4GB per hour, and this will take a whopping 2+ hours to transfer per hour of show, or somewhere close to 4 hours for an average movie. Maybe I’m spoiled, but this seems like an inordinate amount of time, and during this transfer, your computer will slow down to the speed of your computer from 10 years ago - so slow you will have to set transfers before going to sleep at night. Now if you’re transferring this to a laptop that you’re bringing with you, you can just wake up the next morning, throw the laptop in its bag and head out the door. But what if you don’t have a laptop and instead want to send your programs to a portable media player or to DVD? Well, you’re now looking at more time. Maybe another 10-15 minutes per hour of video to send to a DVD, or another 3-5 minutes per hour of video if you can transfer your files to your portable media player via USB 2.0 or Firewire. In any case, this starts to become a real hassle at some point unless you’re just transferring a couple of programs at a time. For a portable media players, you will probably also want to decrease the quality of the program even further in order to fit more onto what could be only 20GB of hard drive space, which means an additional conversion factor. TiVo does have plans to upgrade their USB to the significantly faster USB 2.0, but there is no immediate timeline, which probably means we shouldn’t expect anything until at least next year.

I happen to own one of those TiVo’s with a DVD recorder - the Humax DRT-800. I can record shows directly from the TiVo to DVD-R or DVD-RW and it takes all of 15 minutes for an hour’s show at the highest quality setting. This unit costs a bit more than an similarly sized TiVo and of course the discs cost money too, but at least the DVD-RW’s can be reused and I have much more portability (due to increased speed) than TiVo ToGo. Perhaps this is why TiVo has decided to not push their updates yet to those who own DVD recorders like the Humax.

If TiVo were to upgrade their USB functionality to 2.0, then this would become much faster and easier. However, it seems that the easier you make it to copy content, the more nervous content creators get. I think there’s actually an inherent conflict of interest between the attitudes of content creators and their customers. These companies want to be able to parcel out their content in a way that generates the most revenue as possible, and they see this being done only through commercial-filled programming, or through selling recordings on DVD or CD, or via subscription-based pipelines where part of that subscription fee is funneled back to them. Likewise, they would like for you to have to buy their content multiple times. Paying your satellite or cable company, or just paying more for products which are advertised during a program’s airing is only the first payment. If you also want to hold onto that show on a DVD, you get to pay all over again! Because the DVD format was created in order to prevent copying (albeit the scheme was subsequently defeated), you have to jump through some hoops if you want to then transfer that same content onto something that doesn’t play dvds themselves, but can play the dvd video files - like portable media players.

Music companies want you to pay for the song you hear on the radio by charging the radio network, which then compensates by getting advertisers to buy ads which in turn drives up prices for their products. Even if there are no ads, like with satellite radio, you are still paying a monthly fee, which is in part going to back to these content providers. Then if you want to have that recording at your disposal to play any time at a good quality, you need to pay an additional fee to buy it on CD, or more recently on the internet. But if you pay for it on the internet, say via iTunes, you then can only play it on a limited number of devices. Finally, if you want to hear the song as a ringtone on your phone, you are charged yet again for this same content.

TiVo’s CEO, Michael Ramsy, has finally “left” TiVo, although he is still remains as Chairman of the Board. Some believe he was pushed to leave due to the poor performance of TiVo’s stock. I’m no expert in the stock market, but I can certainly understand why TiVo’s stock has diminished in value, even with the advent of TiVo ToGo and an increased TiVo subscriber base. TiVo, it seems, took the road of trying to placate content providers and potential competitors as opposed to just going it alone. Alas, in business, or in particular in the entertainment business, this seems not to work. Instead of full cooperation for its trying not to step on any toes, the only thing it’s gotten is a lack of actual litigation. On the other hand, you have companies like NBC trying to defeat TiVo’s functionality by starting and ending shows differently then their schedules indicate. Other channels, like Comedy Central in particular, refuse to code their programs as repeats or first run, making the process of recoding a series that much more difficult. Even partners like DirectTV seem to be backstabbing TiVo. TiVo partnered with DirctTV so that they could build combo TiVo/DirecTV receivers (DirecTiVo’s as they are called) that would work in an integrated way. But now it looks like DirectTV may not be a TiVo partner in the long run as they are coming out with their own DVR that will compete not only against the TiVo hadware, but the TiVo subscription service as well.

I’m worried about TiVo’s future. That’s why I’ve refused to buy their lifetime subscription. I have no idea whether TiVo will be around in two years, when such a subscription starts to pay off, but more importantly I don’t know if TiVo will have lowered their prices or morphed into something else, or whether other options will become available that make TiVo not the best choice for me. I want TiVo to succeed, I really do, but I think that there needs to be some radical shifts in TiVo’s way of doing business:

1. First thing, as I’ve noted, is to stop kissing up so much to all the content companies. TiVo tried being nice and it hasn’t gotten them very much at all. It’s time to say “screw it!” and not try to get permission for everything they do. This has slowed down their development considerably, and caused them to fall behind some other hardware and service providers so they are no longer on the cutting edge.
2. “Placeshifting” - in other words portability - is the new key. TiVo was revolutionary in letting people “timeshift” in order to watch what they wanted when they wanted. Five or so years later, though, technology has progressed to a point where video has become more and more portable. Portable Media Devices are an up and coming device category (when Apple finally releases one, they will truly be mainstream), laptops are ubiquitous, portable DVD players have gotten incredibly cheap, and PDA’s, and even smartphones have become powerful enough to handle video. Part of making a functionality “easy” for people to use it, is to make it practicle, and speed is a big part of this. The fact that a driver update could make a USB 1.1 port into a USB 2.0 port and thus provide 10 times the speed or more, should mean that this update should be getting priority over most other projects. During this entire year between TiVo ToGo’s first being mentioned and it’s finally being released, why wasn’t part of TiVo’s resources put to updating this and if they were, what on earth could be taking so long?
3. Placeshifting in reverse - just as people want to take their TiVo’d programs with them on the road, there’s a definite need expressed to take content we get elsewhere and send it back to our TiVo so that we can play it on the larger screens in our living rooms. Already third parties have come in to allow for this kind of functionality. I see more and more of these “wireless multimedia boxes” that allow for bi-directional communication between a TV and a computer over a wirless network (using the faster 802.11G) or more direct connection. What would you send back to a TiVo? How about video clips you find on the internet that you want to share with the whole family, or content licensed in Creative Commons or Public Domain? A home video that you like to watch and share with friends a bunch of times without having to risk wearing the tape out? There are tons of reasons.
   4) Work more with hackers and third-party software developers and open functionality up to all users - TiVo has been more friendly to hackers than most companies, I’ll admit. TiVo’s are built with the Linux operating system, a favorite of hackers, and with hardware that can be removed and tinkered with fairly easily. This is great for hackers and tech-savvy people, and hackers have created programs that greatly expand the functionality of your TiVo. For example, one can basically operate one’s TiVo remotely over the internet with one such program. But just installing such programs requires some computer hardware and software skills that that probably a vast majority of TiVo owners don’t have and won’t bother to learn. TiVo needs to take these great applications and make them available as real parts of the TiVo system to all users. Maybe part of the reluctance in the past was that these programs were developed in an open-source environment that would not want TiVo to charge for them. When TiVo introducted it’s Home Networking feature, it charged for it and only after some time realized that it was not going to get enough people to pay an additional fee over TiVo’s original fee (which some people object to anyway) and until last. Maybe now that TiVo realizes they aren’t going to be able to charge additional fees for added functionality, they will offer gratis something which they are getting for very low development costs (since third-parties are developing these programs) to all their customers.

Microsoft recently started providing a version of Windows called Windows XP for Media Center Edition that provides DVR functionality, and many other companies are coming out with DVR’s, multimedia boxes, or even pumped up portable hard drives that all provide functionality that TiVo doesn’t. TiVo really needs to catch up, or they will eventually be relegated to AOL status - marketed to a diminishing pool of completely non-technical people who don’t mind paying a premium for an interface that dumbs down everything for them. I don’t think AOL is doing all that well these days. Then again neither is TiVo, or at least not according to their stock price!

The latest new feature we’ve heard about from TiVo is an high definition-capable TiVo, but apparently this won’t be available until 2006. What I want to know is what the point of such an announcement is if the product won’t be release for a year or more? Take a lesson from Apple and surprise people with new products instead of telling customers how long they will have to wait as well as notifying competitors way in advance of your plans so that they can come along and trump you - which it seems is becoming increasingly easy due to how slowly TiVo introduces new products and functionality. I personally have an HDTV and at this point my only hope is that another company like Humax will come out with an HD-compatible TiVo, preferably one with DVD-writable capability. Whether TiVo creates this or a third-party partner I guess doesn’t matter that much if customers are still going to buy a TiVo subscription. Who knows, maybe TiVo’s real purpose in announcing this so long before it becomes a reality is to actually motivate current or partners to develop their own HDTiVo’s?

What is so frustrating about all of this is that TiVo was the first out there with set-top DVR technology and so basically revolutionized how we watch TV. They’ve provided at least somewhat of a lightening rod for content companies, allowing us to just sit back and record things the way we wanted to (although this may be starting to change). Whether they go all out the way I wish they would, or simply continue to play the middle-man between the end user and the content providers, they are a major force that is at least trying to provide as much content in as flexible a way as possible to as many people as possible. If they get usurped by individual cable companies and satellite companies, this flexibility will be constrained even further since these many cable and satellite providers are also owners of much of content themselves. Microsoft, on the other hand, so far is not a major owner of content. Because of its size, it could wield real influence and be able to handle whatever litigation content companies throw at it, but it is unlikely to wage those kinds of battles. With its own music stores, DRM support, and history of monopolistic practices, it would be a shame if they were to replace TiVo as the dominant player in the DVR market.

In the end, TiVo may need to really do some radical things. It seems like they may be starting to go in this direction based on some reporting from PVRBlog about a Home Media Engine that will be in a future system update. It will theoretically provide the third-party development I talk about above. Getting this kind of software functionality added as well as providing USB 2.0, enhanced wireless speeds (802.11G or even 802.11N when it is standardized), and even some new hardware features or options (Ethernet ports, firewire, more types of audio and video input and output, more USB/Firewire ports for hot-swappable external storage, etc), will be key in keeping TiVo from becoming a has-been. TiVo should also upgrade its hardware in general which is beginning to really feel its age not being as fast to get things done as it could. TiVo has become a familiar name and even a new verb in the language, but it can’t just rely solely on this reputation and rest on its laurels.