Hasta La Gadget!

It’s been five years since TiVo first promised DirecTV customers an HD DVR and two years since the company reaffirmed that claim, so if you’ve been waiting patiently you probably know what we’re going to say — it’s been delayed yet again. TiVo marketing VP Joe Miller told PC Magazine that the fabled DirecTiVo will actually appear “early next year,” which should give you plenty of time to work out your rage. Before you storm off to your standard-definition video collection, however, there’s another thing you might like to know: the executive also not-so-subtly suggested that TiVo’s hardware business won’t be a focus for long. In a series of increasingly telling quotes, Miller called software the company’s “core competence,” said it was “in our blood” and “the thing we do well,” and even added that “the software is what we’re all about.” To be completely frank, TiVo has held the gold standard for DVR software for over a decade, but that’s mostly because no one successfully stepped up to the plate — not even TiVo itself, whose Premiere interface shipped the definition of half-baked. So when the company suggests that software is one of its strengths, please pardon a few chuckles from our corner of the room.

TiVo banking on the software business, delays DirecTV HD unit to 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 25 Sep 2010 22:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re living in an age of multiple connected screens, where even our media-savvy televisions demand some occasional typing to search for a videogame, TV show or Netflix rental. Problem is, typing (more like hunting and pecking) with a game controller or remote control is a pain in the butt — and that’s the world into which the TiVo Slide is being born.

The TiVo on-screen software keyboard has been semi-affectionately dubbed “the Ouija Board input” from the way users slid and hovered the remote over each letter to search for titles. As TiVo added more and more text-dependent features, Ouija-hovering got more and more obnoxious. With recent software updates, Premiere and Series 3 users can use a USB keyboard or mouse, or a wireless device with a USB Bluetooth dongle. (That’s actually how the Slide connects.) But for one-stop remote/keyboard shopping, the Slide is your guy.

It solves a few technical problems that have haunted keyboard-style remotes for years. The slide interface is one: We’ve gotten so used to handheld devices that almost nobody wants to use a keyboard for everything. The bigger deal may be Bluetooth, which, among other nice things, performs the essential task of letting you use the keyboard sideways. It also lights up in the dark — there are other TiVo remotes that do this, but typing text with your thumbs makes this feature pretty much essential.

Yes — you have to type with your thumbs. If you’ve used a smartphone hardware keyboard like most BlackBerries’ (or a slide-out like the Droid’s), this is familiar stuff. If your typing skills are optimized for a keyboard, or you’re not much of a typist to begin with, it’ll take some getting used to.

It’s surprising, actually, that we’re not seeing more innovation and experimentation in alt-keyboard devices. There’s nothing sacrosanct about the QWERTY keyboard layout other than that it’s what most typists in the English-speaking world have come to expect. Most people know that it appeared on early Remington typewriters because it kept the keys from clashing; if a rifle maker knew anything, it was precision-manufacturing a device not to jam.

But whether it’s hardware or software, we don’t have to worry about keys jamming on keyboards now. And yet, even swiping, chording and hovering software keyboards use the QWERTY layout. Why not try an alphabetic keyboard — something designed for people who don’t do much typing at all? The last time I checked, relatively few people with TVs sit in front of a computer most of the day.

Or, if you’re targeting experts and speed freaks, why not try a version of the Dvorak layout?

Dvorak is an alternative keyboard configuration patented in 1932 and named for its inventor, August Dvorak. If QWERTY is the MS Windows of keyboards, Dvorak is the Mac. What its adherents lack in numbers, they make up in devotion. In “Seven Reasons to Switch to the Dvorak Keyboard layout,” Red Tani of WorkAwesome makes a good case:

In QWERTY, only 32 percent of keystrokes are on the home row. Which means most of the time, typists’ fingers are either reaching up for the top row (52 percent) or down for the bottom row (16 percent). So not only does QWERTY do nothing for typists, it actually hinders them.

Dvorak further increases typing speed by placing all vowels on the left side of the home row, and the most commonly used consonants on the right side. This guarantees that most of your strokes alternate between a finger on your right hand (consonant) and a finger on your left (vowel). Alternating between fingers from either hand is faster — just imagine texting with one hand or drumming with one stick.

On a tiny mobile device, DVORAK could be comparatively even faster. More comfortable, too.

QWERTY beat out DVORAK because typists who’d learned the first were faster and more accurate using that layout than on the second. It’s a classic example of what economists and other social scientists call path-dependence and increasing returns: An inferior technology can beat a superior one if it’s adopted early and widely enough to lock out the competition.

So maybe somewhere out there is a new kind of phone/remote controller-sized keyboard that blows the QWERTY keyboard away. The trouble is, most of us would be better off typing with something else, if they were giving superior machines away. The new TiVo remote acknowledges that this is the world we live in.

See Also:

• The TiVo Box is Dead, Long Live TiVo
• TiVo Premiere: Blockbuster, Netflix, Amazon on Your TV
• TiVo Redesigns Search Function, Wants to be the ‘Google of TV’
• IR Dongle Turns iPhone into Ugly Universal Remote

Photos: TiVo.com, Wikipedia

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Anyone who’s tried to type on a TiVo—searching for YouTube, or viewing Netflix, or trying to find that show you want to record—knows it’s both tedious and rage-inducing. TiVo Slide fixes this problem, plus, it’s a better remote entirely. More »

TiVo users, even with boxes provided by their cable company in the case of RCN and Comcast, have so far had to make a compromise: Choose their cable company’s video on-demand offerings, or bring their own DVR and access online video from sources like Amazon and Netflix — but that’s no longer the case. Cox and TiVo have reached an agreement — sound familiar? — that will see allow retail CableCARD equipped TiVo Premiere DVRs to access Cox’s VOD, as well as all that over the top internet video we’ve come to love. The SeaChange powered VOD will work similarly to RCN’s, but we’re waiting to see if this can give the new universal search an extra source to pull from as well. The deal also means Cox will cross promote the TiVo in its own marketing, and provide free installs for units purchased at Best Buy and other outlets including the TiVo website.

The only bad news here? While TiVo plans to start testing later this year, it won’t see a wide rollout (in “all major markets”) until 2011. Check out the press release for all the details before calling your cable company, why should Cox customers get to choose between two different modernized, integrated set-top box platforms while the rest of us are stuck with interfaces and access rules that have been around since before the X-Games?

Continue reading Cox to offer retail TiVo Premiere DVRs next year, first with cable VOD & Amazon, Netflix access

Cox to offer retail TiVo Premiere DVRs next year, first with cable VOD & Amazon, Netflix access originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The FCC has been unsuccessful in spurring competition in the set-top box market since Congress passed a law requiring changes in 1996. The current situation is exactly why we don’t see some of our favorite companies making cable compatible devices — remember when just about every electronics company made a VCR? CableCARD is a failure because, among other reasons, it is expensive to implement and requires the customer give up certain aspects of their service, like video-on-demand and guide data; on top of that it is a cable only solution and some people prefer satellite TV. And so after giving the market all this time to work out a solution, the FCC issued an Notice of Inquiry (NOI) in an attempt to devise a new mandate that would make give you as many options for a DVR as you have for something like a smart phone. An NOI is just one of the first of many steps on the way to new rules, but the comments do give us a great picture of where each party stands.

Two sides are clearly forming with Sony, TiVo and the Consumer Electronics Association leading up one side and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), its members, and satellite providers on the other. To sum it up the consumer electronics companies make suggestions for an IP video gateway nick named AllVid, which they hope will bring consumers choice in both hardware and software without having to change providers or sacrifice features. And on the other side, they believe that things are just great the way they are and that innovation is happening. They go on to describe how the plans in the NOI will not only fail to spur innovation, but will actually be detrimental to providers and consumers. Then just for good measure, they explain why the FCC doesn’t even have the authority to mandate such things.

The entire thing is an interesting perspective into how the Executive Branch of our government works, and while it’ll be some time before we are impacted by the outcome, we went ahead and laid out the highlights of a number of the comments after the break so you can play FCC commissioner at home.

Continue reading Sony, TiVo, NCTA and others chime in on CableCARD’s replacement

Sony, TiVo, NCTA and others chime in on CableCARD’s replacement originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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