Check it out

It's still worth it.

*edit*
allthough I should add that I don't have the lifetime service, just the monthly. But it's still worth the purchase.

"Worth" is subjective... Personally I think listings should be free. Of course if I was selling a similar product, I'd love the residual income. Anyway, you can configure your Tivo box to get listings elsewhere I suppose. ALso suitable for people from other countries using XMLTV (I should really do more research into this)

Bruno

A while back I did actually work out how to avoid the Tivo subscription and enter your own guide data into it. I was curious about how much protection the Tivo had and what exactly you'd need to do to upload guide data.

I've still got a Tivo subscription even though technically I could do it all myself for free. It's just not worth the amount of effort necessary to keep it all running and also I wouldn't get the software updates from Tivo anymore. There is a sort of unwritten rule about Tivo hacking where nobody wants to do anything that would annoying Tivo themselves as they've been very accomodating regarding the other modifications like expanding the disk space yourself.

- Trevor

I guess I should decide if I'm keeping or gifting my spares and buy subs or not.

If you're in another country then it can only be used as a simple VCR without making some mods for alternate guide data. I don't think I would bother with all the trouble if Tivo had other guide suppliers for other countries and offered lifetime memberships at a reasonable price for those users as well. SOmetimes it's interesting to know how the licencing agreements for these tihngs work behind the scenes (ie. Tivo's agreement with Tribune/Zap2It). titanTV (web) is being used by many PC-based products but I don't know what their agreements require (US-only).

I'm using Gemstar's on my PC with the ATI hardware (obviously), but I think it sucks very badly (guidePLus+ that is). Gemstar's program/interface leaves a lot to be desired, plus it's very slow.

Bruno

For the record, one of the techs finally told me that the fees were used to pay royalties on movies and/or TV, (albeit a very small percentage) since it was a copyable medium. Don't know if there is any truth to this, just regurgitating what I was told.

A while back I did actually work out how to avoid the Tivo subscription and enter your own guide data into it.

So you can probably answer this question... just how does TiVo obtain and distribute that data? I mean, how can they possibly know what programs local TV stations are going to run? Particularly MY local TV stations which are a long, long ways away from the mainstream of TV viewership, and are, in general, monuments to incompetence.

Alaska is in its own time zone, and even though the network programming that my stations play does come off the satellite, it is not aired live. Either the East Coast feed is used and delayed by four hours, or the West Coast feed is used and delayed by one hour, or maybe a bit of both. But the local TV program directors actually play the programs whenever they damn well feel like it, and since they don't have to maintain satellite/network synchronicity, they slip extra commercials into the breaks, so that by 10 o'clock at night, it is not at all uncommon for them to be running four, six, even ten minutes behind schedule.

Yet, with all of this, my TiVo is at least 99% accurate (other than compensating for the 4, 6, 10 minutes late business) and when my TiVo guide tells me that the Buffy re-run is going to be on at 11 pm on Channel 2, 99 times out of a hundred it actually will be. (Except it will really run from 11:07 pm til 12:10 am ).

How does the TiVo staff obtain, keep track of, and distribute all these programming inanities?

tanstaafl.

just how does TiVo obtain and distribute that data?

They buy it from Tribune Media Services. They're one of the standard suppliers of such data.

The TiVo is also capable of knowing if something will be run "offset"... if the data from Tribune is correct. I was browsing with TiVoweb last night on my unit, and I had shows which ran from 2:05 to 2:40 for instance.

It's Tribune's fault that Daily Show never has episode info.

I believe you, as I was told 5 different reasons the five times I called. He was the only one that responded with an authoritative tone.

They buy it from Tribune Media Services. They're one of the standard suppliers of such data.

And if I go to zap2it.com (a Tribune site I think with data equivalen to what Tivo gets) and plug in a Fairbanks zip code, I get to types of GCI cable service and what looks like 3 satellite lineups.

I haven't bothered to do it yet, but I gather that networked-enabled Tivos scrape lineup data from some zap2it/Tribune system. I bought a lifetime subscription, but my dialup success rate is not so hot so I may do this just for reliability's sake.

If you have a broadband internet connection in your home [or is that "boat" in your case Jim?],
you can put a Ethernet card in your Tivo [turbonet] and Tivo can use that to connect to Tivos site for upgrades and guide data - much faster/better etc than dial up.

But of course you need a Ethernet board in your Tivo and broadband [always on] internet at home, plus some sort of in-home LAN.

If you've got a series 2 Tivo, soon, you won't even need to pop the covers to put your Ethernet in - just add a supported USB Ethernet adaptor and away you go.

It doesn't scrape. It gets a feed of it in one lump from tivo. You dial a uunet dialup and connect to a tivo web site to get it.

Your TiVo dials into UUNet and then connects to TiVo's server over the web and downloads the slice files containing the guide data (and showcases, promotions, etc). Using an ethernet adapter bypasses the dialup but is otherwise exactly the same.

People who really, really don't want to pay subscriptions, or live outside the US (Canada in particular) have scripts that scrape web listings like Zap2it and generate slice files that can be fed into their TiVos. Last time I looked at it it was terribly inconvenient.

"Worth" is subjective

Sure it is! I happen to think that it's plenty worth it

Or just get a ReplayTV with built-in Ethernet.

BTW - ReplayTV is still only $250 lifetime activation. But in this case lifetime may refer to the life of the company

If you have a broadband internet connection in your home [or is that "boat" in your case Jim? you can put a Ethernet card in your Tivo

Having completed some work on the boat, I am getting rigged up to move back on board. have a new phone line, but haven't tested with Qwest to see if it is DSL-capable. Still working the divorcee-on-the-bluff-over-the-marina-angle for some point-to-point 802.11b, but no luck so far!

I have a (non-turbo) tivonet in my SVR-2000, but a software upgrade blew my configuration away and just haven'y gotten around to fixing it...

If you've got a series 2 Tivo,

With the subscription increase, I think it's time to hunt down a pair of 120GB drives for my series 1!