Discussion seed: A "portable Tivo" Media Player?

[cojonesdetoro]

Disclaimer: The following musings may or may not be feasible. I'm starting this discussion for fun and realize that some of these ideas are probably unrealistic.

I was travelling by automobile this weekend and put a series 1 in my car in order to keep my kid happy. I used a cheapo 4" LCD screen and a 300W power inverter. This is okay in a minivan when you have a lot of space under the seat but not for smaller vehicles.

It got me thinking about the prospect of a Tivo that was specifically designed to be portable for car or personal use (planes and trains, not just automobiles). I wonder if anyone at Tivo has thought of this idea. I envision something like the RCA-LYRA or Archos series media players with a docking station. You would subcribe the unit and it could act like a regular Tivo when docked. When undocked, you can take it with you to view your shows on the road. All in all, I would jump on a device like this but there are a few things to consider:

- It cannot record shows when undocked but it could be marketed as a supplement to a home that already has a regular Tivo. You can use HMO to copy shows to/from it and it can act as the second recorder when docked.

- Tivo would need to create hardware and software that was battery power friendly. Since they (sort of) based Tivo on PC technology they could (sort of) base the portable Tivo on laptop technology.

- The hardware would be much more expensive than your average Tivo.

- Using Tivo2Go (and other extraction methods) along with a portable DVD player goes a long way towards this but it requires a lot of your time to copy and author DVDs on a PC. What I propose can all be done at the Tivo interface using HMO.

- A product like this may not be so attractive with a mandatory subscription. Maybe a cheaper "Tivo lite+" service, where it can only receive shows through HMO but not act as a recorder, would be more attractive.

[mcomer]

Well, I'm not sure if you're looking specifically for a "Tivo" that does this, or if you're looking for a device in general with these features.

Check out:

Archos AV420 (http://www.archos.com/products/prw_500619.html)

I have this model and love it. Archos sells other models with varying capacities and features, and there are competing products from other companies.

BTW, I don't really use mine as a PVR, though it does record video. I extract from my Tivo and transfer to my Archos for viewing when I'm on the road. Very convenient.

-Matt

[cojonesdetoro]

Check out:

Archos AV420 (http://www.archos.com/products/prw_500619.html)

-Matt

I'm familiar with the Archos recorders but was proposing something with seamless (and geek-less) Tivo integration.


BTW, I imagine that you have to convert extracted shows to Mpeg to play on the Archos? I have found the whole extraction process to be tedious and not 100% reliable. Some recordings have corruption that does not bother the Tivo itself on playback but will cause problems with mplayer et al. It also takes time. You can't just check off the shows you want transferred and come back later and it's all done. You have to follow a step-by-step recipe. Some people have time for this stuff but, for me, it was not worth the effort and time.

I burn my stuff to DVD by copying recordings to an unsubbed Tivo connected "analog-out" to my DVD recorder. There's a quaility loss but I don't really care about that when compared to the ease of use. I use MFS_FTP and my own script to do it all from the Tivo interface. If I was to use an Archos recorder I would use it the same way as my DVD recorder.

Us techy types can make this stuff sing and dance but the average humanoid needs to be spoon fed. That being said, I am sometimes willing to pay to be spoon fed so I have more time to play with the kids.

[rc3105]

to do it seamlessly for the truly non-techies you'd need to tap into tivo's HMO system and the ability to unscramble video during transfer (ouch)


with a hacked tivo -> custom app (designed for non-techies use) all you really need is the tivo running vserver and some form of mplayer/mencoder that'll stream from the tivo and transcode/save to an mpg4 file (most players support xvid and it's an open source codec)


you could even port the utils to the tivo and run a transcode/server daemon that would cache xvid files in mfs (as hidden dummy recordings) like tyindex does with cutlist-preview files. only real drawback there is that tivo-side encode times suck ;) xbox encode times are pretty reasonable though :D


*looks like the psp would be great for this, if it just had a hd...

[mcomer]

with a hacked tivo -> custom app (designed for non-techies use) all you really need is the tivo running vserver and some form of mplayer/mencoder that'll stream from the tivo and transcode/save to an mpg4 file (most players support xvid and it's an open source codec)


I started working on just such an app, but work demands have put it on hold. Basically, I was retrieving the now showing, storing the xml in xindice (an open-source unstructured xml database), retrieving the programs and transcoding with mencoder. Basically, a Java-based mpeg4 version of ETivo. The one problem I was having was that the spawn of mencoder as an external process was somewhat lacking: the ability to control the process, to monitor progress, and to understand error conditions when the occur. I'd like to write a nice JNI interface to mencoder, but have not had time.

Yes, this still does require a rather high geek factor, both to hack and install the requisite software on the Tivo as well as to setup and run the converter. Very low WAF. :)

Matt

[mrblack51]

http://www.pogoproducts.com/pr_mediaNOW.htm

[rc3105]

Yes, this still does require a rather high geek factor, both to hack and install the requisite software on the Tivo as well as to setup and run the converter. Very low WAF. :)

deciding what capabilities & how to implement them might take some thought (so many choices) but the virgin -> modded tivo process isn't bad. just a few mins to dd in a killinitrd/killhdinitrd'd a kernel, unzip a tar or three and maybe run a few scripts via serial (takes longer to pull the drive than anything else).


writing a full blown app might take a few brain cells, using scripts to glue together what's allready available is pretty easy



here's a thought, why not compress to a digital camera compat movie format and use the camera for playback. I've got a kodak that uses cf cards, a 4 gig microdrive will hold a LOT of 320*240 video... :D

[justmike]

So how about the old removable hard drive trick? The marketing weeniees would love it you sell two pieces of hardware and one drive and its really easy to use :cool:

[cojonesdetoro]

http://www.pogoproducts.com/pr_mediaNOW.htm

Now you're talking. Somehow this news story got past me. It will probably still need a PC but maybe a networked version with a T2G client won't far off.

EDIT:

It says "mediaNOW is planned to be available by end of February and will cost $549.00" but there's no other mention of it on the site. Maybe they mean Feb 2006...

[jmagg]

Try this link:
MediaNow (http://www.pogoproducts.com/CES2005.htm)

The only thing missing is the kitchen sink. Plays Divx, Xvid and TTG transfers. Plays mp3s and OGG. FM radio and mp3 encoding. You probably will still have to hack to use with DTivo so I don't know if it would be any easier than getting this for $179 less with a bigger hard drive.
MPM-201 30GB MPEG4 Personal Video Recorder (http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=MPM-201&cat=CON&cpc=JAD)

[wayner]

Why not get a low end laptop to use in the car? It is not any more expensive then the Archos (they seem to be US$600+ and Dell's laptops start at $600) and you get a much bigger screen. If it will just be used in the car then small size of an Archos or something similar is a detracting factor. The PC can also be used as a DVD player and has more functionality when you get to your destination.

You could use something like eTiVo to automatically transfer recordings to the laptop. Conversely you could manually extract with TyTool and convert to MPEG or re-encode to DivX, XviD, etc. You mention that you haven't had much like extracting but I play extracted files on a daily basis and have no problems. I have a 3 year old daughter who watches her TV shows on our kitchen PC - these shows are extracted from the TiVo and/or streamed from TiVo using WinVo/Mplayer. (I even use a connected DVD player that allows me to stream files over my LAN to the DVD player). I have a SA-S1 TiVo - perhaps these work better than a DTiVo for such purposes.

[AVD]

Get a used X-box(or old computer) and a power converter and a 12 volt lcd screen.

You can hook up some sort of wireless bridge/wi-fi adapter and push the programs to the unit while you are warming up the car in the driveway. Or you could use a usb harddrive.

(now, if someone could figure out how to make the psp play ty or tmf files without conversion, that would be awsome)