long i've promised my wife a media device in the bathroom so while she's using the jacuzzi she can watch. long have i not finished it, because getting a computer built out was taking too long.

finally, decided yesterday to wall-mount an LCD panel, install an AppleTV and be done. The panel I had tho, had no HDMI, and all HDMI to (VGA, DVI) devices are at least one of expensive, huge (converting receivers), or not reliable enough to drop money on (the monoprice $40 hdmi to vga converter... does it rescale? is there a left-shift issue? shrug)

so i found a refurb LED LCD panel on pcconnection for under $100, and they had the appletv on sale yesterday. boom. smart tv for under $200. if only there were a way to use tivo mrv on it... but otherwise, she should be happy, and our budget will be too.

For the price, I don't see how you could have done better. The alternative might be a cheap TV with built-in Internet-ish features. You can get a 40" Sony Google TV for ~$600.

FWIW, HDMI to DVI should be simple and cheap. The signalling is the same, it's just a connector-convertor.

Peter

$600 was right out. 40" (even 32") wouldn't work in that bathroom. More importantly, if the display somehow reacts badly to a humid environment? $99 refurb. oh well. not horrible. $600? ow.

That said, we have the Insignia 32" Connected (which was less) in our living room. Works well.

I'm tempted to try Seas0nPass again, see if I can downgrade it to Apple TV 4.3 so it can boot untethered, and get Plex going on it for her also, at which point the TiVoToGo plugin *might* work.

At that price I might be willing to try. Of course, the old display was only a 17" and the new one is a 22", so I don't feel horrible about the new plan (also the old one isn't LED backlit, so there should be lasting savings) but having a portable HDMI-capable display might be worthwhile.

I too wish Tivo work offer a box (or a channel on) akin to a Roku or Apple TV that would stream from a Tivo. Their Preview is close, but currently only available from some cable companies, and leases for $10/month I believe.

I've shifted my opinions on TiVo. I used to wish that TiVo would come out with newer/better equipment. Now, I just wish that somebody else would come out with a DVR.

Of course, the core TiVo patent was filed in 1998. We've got several years left until it (and the related ReplayTV patent) expire. I fear nobody will want to get into the game until those patents expire, maybe 7 years from now.

I'm just going to toss it out there that I've been using a Windows 7 box with Ceton InfiniTV PCIe cablecard tuner for about 3 months now. While it's not something I would put in my parent's house, a techie shouldn't have a problem using it as their primary DVR/media hub.

I have the main machine with the cablecard hooked directly up to my living room LCD through onboard HDMI (Intel HD graphics). My bedroom uses an Xbox360 to stream from the main computer. It has the ability to watch live tv, watch recorded TV, schedule recordings, and almost anything else you could do from the main box.

This setup replaced a Moxi 3-tuner DVR with one Mate. It's a big upgrade from that.

I see DVRs as a legacy device, something from an era when it was actually difficult to watch shows when you wanted to. Kinda like how iPods and other dedicated MP3 players feel like legacy now in an era of multiple gigabyte phones and streaming solutions. For the masses that still subscribe to the typical cable or satellite solution, most just opt for the provider DVR. The very tech savvy are moving to other solutions via the internet. That leaves very little market for a new player to combat TiVo these days.

I was quite impressed recently when I was able to just prop up my iPad at the Denver Airport, tethered to my phone in my pocket, to watch the end of the Avalanche hockey game that night. Prior to being in a convenient spot to watch, the same app used was also pushing me score and power play announcements. I imagine it's only a matter of time before handegg, err American Football is also available in such a way. At a price of course, but it will be an option. Over the past 6 years of being cable free, I've spent less, and consumed more quality content then when I had various subscription plans. I've also wasted less time, as most of my content is just commercial free as is.

Of course YMMV in any conversion from subscription TV via cable/satellite to other solutions. In general though, I see then trend accelerating now that we have more "screens" around us, and less dedicated TV/Computer display devices.

You're right Rob, but the problem is that the TiVo is actually usable. My wife and my 6-yr. old daughter have no problem operating it.

For contrast, we got a Sony/Google TV for our lab, and the remote control on that thing is intimidating. They cleverly decided to mount an optical mouse upside down in the right button, so you can use your thumb over it kinda like a track ball. After that, though, it's just a sea of buttons. His Steveness would never approve.

It's possible already... for a price. Since DirecTV somehow owns the entire out-of-market NFL experience, you can buy Sunday Ticket from DirecTV for $350. This allows streaming to mobile devices. You don't have to be a DirecTV subscriber. I set this up a friend of mine with endless pockets. He's apparently pleased with it.

I can't wait for the day cable TV companies become just a dumb pipe for data. I have a pretty minimal television plan, but it still includes a bunch of stuff I never watch.

I am sure we will just end up paying them the same as we do for now for internet and tv because they will just keep charging more for the internet part. We don't have a cap here but I know some cable companies do already.

In the mid-1990's, lots of people were talking about "video on demand" or interactive TV-like technologies. Today, particularly considering things like AT&T's Uverse, we're actually capable of doing it at reasonable prices and large scale. The question is how it will shake out. In a system like Uverse, I believe they have their own fancy CDN to get the content out to the edges. How many vendors would be willing/able to build out the necessary CDN infrastructure, never mind co-location issues?

For now, it's the people who own the wires who can do the content distribution at scale. I fear that isn't going to change much in the next few years.

...just as long as the DVI-D has HDCP support. Not all do!

I'm in the same boat as Dan, if it isn't easy and trouble free for my wife and kids to use, it is not going to be used.

Given the pricing of Roku, $50, it makes for a very cheap extender to something like Plex, and using something like kmttg one could automatically export the programs one is interested in from the Tivo.

edit:
Plex has a Tivo app that
So in theory this should be do-able, assuming everything plays nice...

The front end would be easy, the back end less so. Everything is do able, it is just a case of time and money. I'd happily send Tivo a once off payment of $100 to $200 to make it plug and play.

Yeah, I was scoping the Plex plugin earlier in this thread. If the AppleTv can be untethered jailbroke, I will put plex on it, disable updates, and poof, for now my wife gets a thin TiVo-enabled client. Done.

Doh! So you did, I didn't connect the dot.
Do update us on how it goes.

Looks like it is a no-go for me, unless I get an Apple:


Thread post.

The Roku unit looks quite nice. Netflix launching in UK soon apparently. Only problem is my crap ADSL, don't know when they'll upgrade us.

How crappy is your ADSL? A quick check says Netflix needs at minimum a steady 1.5Mbps, 3 for DVD quality, and 5 for HD. We consumer ~90gigs of data a month, most of that is Netflix streaming, so if you have bandwidth caps bear that in mind.

I'd be interested in hearing how the selection on Netflix UK is.

1.5Mbps would be a good day, even crappy videos off YouTube freeze here.

I suppose I should look to see what the Plex TiVo plugin uses in terms of binaries; maybe they can be ported to iOS.

mDNS colrm grep sort uniq tivodecode curl, and python needs HTTPServer among other things. i bet plex already needed it.

tivodecode is in all likelihood the only thing not already in cydia.