Tivo’s are cool. However, they’re not cool enough for me to spend money on. I’d rather have something better. One of the bloggers I read has an “article posted on Tuesday on the TiVo Home SDK”:http://www.ericburke.com/blog/2005/02/tivo-hme-sdk.html that seems to assume that Tivo’s must get more expandable and customizable because that’s the only way to do things. I don’t know if he’s aware of the alternatives or not. But if he isn’t, I let him know! And I liked my post enough to repeat it here:
Ever heard of “SageTV”:http://www.sage.tv? I put together a three-tuner computer system running Sage, I don’t pay TiVo’s monthly fee and I can add computer clients anywhere in the house that control the same unit with the same shows. I can add hard drive space. I can install extensions (including commercial detection that someone wrote that works reasonably well, and others that let me read RSS feeds, check weather…). And, they just released a Linux version to go along with the Windows version. I’ve never had a TiVo, but I can’t see the benefits over what I have.
They also have a device coming soon like a media center “extender” so you can put your server in a closet and just run this box near the TV to a network jack (maybe wireless? My laptop works fine as an 802.11g SageTV client) and plug it in. Did I mention it has a free TV guide subscription for two weeks in advance?
Apparently, although I didn’t pick it for several reasons, some people also like “BeyondTV”:http://www.snapstream.com for similar functions.
Microsoft even released their Media Center edition thingy as a copycat of all this.
Why do we need TiVo again? Well, maybe for the non-techies that don’t want the power I just mentioned…but isn’t that who these new TiVo features are geared towards?
Anyway, big Friday night church event this week, I’ll be setting up lighting/media stuff all day tomorrow (Thursday) and then I get a break Friday until about 4:30 pm. But by “all day tomorrow” I mean from 9 am to about 9 pm or so. All for a good cause! I’ll be glad when it’s over though. At least I’m off Saturday…I’ll need it, since it will probably take until 2 am Friday night to strike (that means “take everything down and clean up” in roadie-speak in case you didn’t know :-)
Since the only TV I own is 4 inches tall and I’ve watched it twice in the last year and a half, I can’t speak to TV related things much. I will say, however, that I don’t think there’s enough on TV to justify doing much more than setting a VCR once or twice a week….
Comment by Ruth — Thu, 2005-02-03 (Feb 03) @ 15:20