[PLUG] PVR Sites?

Brent Rieck bsr at spek.org
Fri Oct 3 23:29:01 UTC 2003


Jon Jacob wrote:
> My big thing is what happens when TiVo goes under.  Could I get the TiVo
> but use one of the free services?  Not sure.

I don't believe TiVo is going under anytime soon, I think I read that 
there is now over a million TiVo units out there (mostly due to 
DirecTV's efforts) and at $12/mo/unit I don't expect them to roll up any 
time soon - but I have no real idea of course.

If they do fold I'm actually fairly sure an enterprising hacker will 
figure out how to hack XMLTV into it.

I do think that the only advantage to making your own PVR (and really 
making your own of almost anything) is flexibility of features.  It's 
not cost or convenience, that's for sure.  Right now you can't skip 30 
second blocks on the TiVo (you can on the ReplayTV I think), nor (out of 
the box) move the files off the TiVo and onto your computer's hard 
drive, both of these were done to keep the lawyers off their backs. 
Being a hobbyist at home nobody is going to sue you for making a 30 
second ad skip, or having the ability to click and burn an ad-removed 
SVCD of a show (now THAT would be a cool feature).

--Brent






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