Ben Kahn

Well, as my last two posts implied, I own a TiVo again.  In fact, I own a TiVoHD.  Pay per view on the TiVo works through Amazon, so they have the best price.  I’ve been playing with it for 2 days now and I have some thoughts, comments, and a small review.

The TiVoHD is a much different device from the Series 1 TiVo I received 7 years ago. The Series 1 was intended to be connected to your cable box as a pure DVR addition.  The TiVoHD becomes your cable box and your Internet/TV media center.  It’s hard to compare them since they are very different devices.

The Verizon FiOS cable box with DVR is a lot closer, and the TiVo is worse in some ways:

• you don’t get On Demand or Verizon’s pay per view: This is working with Comcast now if you live in the Boston area.  I shed no tears for pay per view, but On Demand had a lot of free content.
• the TiVo interface is almost unacceptably slow: When you press a button on the remote, it takes anywhere from a half second to a full second for the device to register it.  To make matters worse, with a Dolby receiver, the TiVo sometimes doesn’t make a confirmation sound.  This problem makes the device feel cheap and hard to use.  I’m amazed that they released it without solving this problem.  Other people think so too.
• entering text using the remote (for searches) is much, much harder:  Verizon had the ability to use the letter substitutions on the number keys to enter text.  So 228 matched CAT and BAT, but searching was easier and faster.
• the guide doesn’t show which shows will be recorded already: this didn’t work reliably on the Verizon DVR, but it was nice to look through the list of shows and see that The Daily Show was going to be recorded.

It’s better in a number of ways too: the channel guides are much much nicer; scheduling shows is easier and more understandable; fewer bugs; the TV picture seems better somehow (maybe a better MPEG decoder?); easier to use; expandable storage; ability to record shows to DVD or VCR; closed caption support; a better remote; swivel search; and Guru Guides which help you find interesting things to watch.

But the most interesting thing about the new TiVoHD happens when you give it a broadband connection.  TiVo seems to be trying to make their device a full media center.  You can listen to Internet radio stations, (on your stereo!) log into online photo sites and view them on your TV, purchase and play movies from Amazon, etc., etc.  It will also allow you to download recorded shows and movies to your computer, (and then to your iPod, etc) stream photos and music from your computer, and transfer videos from your computer to your TiVo.

And finally, TiVo has released an API to design new applications and do cool and interesting things. And here again things fall down.  There are some developers creating interesting things, but development seems to be slowing or stopping.  A grand community doesn’t seem to have formed.  In fact, the forum is fairly quiet.  Obvious ideas like Youtube videos, Facebook monitors, or networked games aren’t even being discussed.

So, what’s going on?  Is TiVo too hard to obtain now?  Is there not enough of an audience?  Are the hackers all using the open source equivalents?   Is it too hard to install and use third-party software?  Or is this just a community management or advertising problem?  Or am I missing a vibrant community of people? Does it cost too much for developers?  (The monthly price seems to be much cheaper than renting the Verizon box…)

So in the long trip to get a working TiVo with FiOS service, I’ve hit another snag.  Verizon insists on sending someone to my house to install the cable cards.  Why, I ask?  Because they are fragile.  (It costs $100 to replace them if they break.)  Yikes.

So after UPS (and I hate UPS) screwed up the TiVo delivery (and Amazon refunded 10% of the purchase price to ease the pain of that) I had to reschedule the technician visit.  That Friday, I reschedule for next Friday, which was the first possible day available.  *grumble*

On Monday, the technician showed up, of course.  So we sent him away, and I called Verizon again.  They showed no record of the cancellation or the reschedule.  So I scheduled Friday again, which was hard since Friday was actually full now.

Today, of course, no technician is coming.  I just called.  No record of my call.

Now, it’s scheduled for Wednesday the 6th.  But they gave me a confirmation # this time, so I guess it’s really true.

But, at least I’m not as bad off as this guy.

I ordered a TiVO on Tuesday night from Amazon with 2 day shipping.  It was too late in the day, so it counted as being ordered on Wednesday.  Estimated delivery?  Friday.  So, I called up Verizon to order cable cards for it.  They quickly scheduled a technician to come out (?!) and deliver them and install them Monday morning.  Perfect.

Then, UPS got involved.  Check out the shipping history of this package:

This is a UPS screw up.  It happens sometimes, right?  Nothing to worry about.  I’ve seen their ads where you can fix problems and they’ll help out!  So I call them and detail the problem.  I need the shipment before Monday. (the customer service rep mentions the package won’t arrive until the end of day on Monday)

“I need this before Monday, can you change it to Saturday delivery?”

“No, it’s on a truck right now with 5000 other packages.  We can’t pull just one package off, we don’t know where it is.”

“I need this before Monday.  This is your error, I paid for delivery to be on Friday, what can you do?”

“Call Amazon and have them pay for a package intercept back to them.  When it arrives (!) have them ship it again next day air with Saturday delivery.”

So, they can’t find the package unless Amazon (I can’t do it) pays them to find it.  In which case they can get it back to Amazon in time to reship it to me at GREAT expense for Saturday delivery.  Yes, that’s the case, although the original delivery charge would be refunded.

Awesome.

I hate you, UPS.

(Yes, I called Amazon to suggest this insane scheme, and they refused for some strange reason.)