Upgrades

This Week: Gamespot fires editor over game review, Evel Knievel passed away

Took a week off last week, but let's get back to the news.

Gaming News

Gamespot fires it senior editor because he had a negative review of the game Kane & Lynch while the game publisher Eidos had an extensive ad campaign for the game on Gamespot. At the end of the day, a company has the right to kick out (or lockout an employee from his own office), but can we, the video game consumers, trust any reviews coming from Gamespot now? Here's Jeff Gerstmann (the editor in question) video review of the game before they gave him the pink slip.

Tech News

Tivo finally announced a software version of their awesome interface for the PC as part of Nero software. I have been clamoring for this since 2004, so let's just hope this software works just as good as the hardware version on their set top boxes.

Google adds locator service to their mobile maps software. I tried it earlier this week. Although it is kinda cool, it is also scary who else can access this info from your cellphone.

US News

Evel Knievel passes away at age 69. He was a bit before my time as I have never seen him perform any of his stunts live. He is a legend that will be missed.

Web Videos

Here's a video of a contestant on Fox's hit show, "Who's Smarter than a 5th Grader?". Talk about dumb blonde jokes (Sorry, but y'all still hot)!

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Tags: Gamespot, Gerstmann, Tivo, Nero, Google, locator, Knievel, blondes, Fox

Tivo hacking options

I haven't messed w/ my Tivo since I got it to work well (early 2004 or b4, don't remember now), but I want to add a couple more options to it. I notice that they have the HMO for regular Tivos but not the DirecTivos. I gotta see if they have ways to add that. I also noticed the way I hacked my Tivo w/ the Sleeper ISO is no longer good as I was trolling in the forums today. Well, info like that will always get outdated, unless you can buy a old tivo that has the older version of software, it's not worth the risk. Always go to the forums for the latest info. I don't want to contribute to the problems that all the newbies upgrading their Tivos are facing, so this is just an update for ppl that do mod their Tivos.

I always wanted to make my Tivo a video server. Now, w/ the Slingbox, I dont' have to. But it would still be nice if I was able to schedule recordings over the web, w/o having to access the Slingbox software. Although that might be a moot point soon, w/ the release of the Sprint PPC-6700. I heard that the Slingbox guys had a demo of their Slingbox software running on the PPC-6700 in the Engadget fans meetup on west coast a couple of weeks ago. I then heard on AOTS that Sprint plans to offer the phone w/ EVDO service for like $20 if the EVDO is only used on the phone ($90 if used as a modem). That would be sweet! That would truly be TV on the go. Not like the VCast or MobiTV crap that they have now. But how would Sprint know whether I was using the phone as a modem or not? The Slingbox app would be pretty bandwidth impressive, so if Sprint goes by bandwidth used, they probably would think that it was used as a modem even when it wasn't. Oh well, we all been thru it before when we were streaming music on the phone back in 2003 (on the Treo 600). Let's just hope Sprint gets it right this time and doesn't ban ppl for bandwidth abuse like last time.

A new idea for Tivo

Not sure if it's really "new", but it's new to me. Just arrived to my always curious brain like switching on a light bulb a couple of seconds ago.

Tivo has always touted their machine as "TV my Way" or just like having your own TV station. Well, if that is true, why do I end up watching other stations when I turn on my TV?

Example, whenever I turn on the TV, sometimes I catch a glimpse of something that I thought was interesting,  so I might rewind and see what it is about. 1/2 hr into it, I find out its totally boring yet I just wasted 1/2 hr watching that crap.

My idea is for Tivo to have an option to consecutively show all recorded shows (and then loop them), and display them either randomly, by earliest record date, by genre, by name, etc. That would truly create a station of my own because all the shows on are shows that I asked Tivo to record or Tivo thinks I like. So when I turn on the TV and catch a glimpse of something, it is something I intended to watch anyways.

Sometimes, even looking through all the shows and movies that I recorded on the Tivo overwhelms me. I simply don't know what to watch. I would spend minutes browsing what I want to watch and how much time I have to watch it. What a complete waste of time...

Here's to bring this idea one step further. Tivo already aggragates data about what people are watching (i.e. Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident last year). So why not broadcast it to Tivo owners? (They can also use the data to improve the Tivo Suggestion recordings, as long as Tivo owners agree to share their TV habits.) Simply add the option to pop up a small balloon or a ticker tape on the bottom of the screen telling users which channel is being watch the most at that moment, at that hour. This way, I have my own channel, yet I still know what the rest of the world is watching.

This idea can still go 1 step further, but it might break copyright laws and cause Tivo more problems than benefits. But I will throw it out there anyway. Even after the bubble or the ticker tape on the bottom pops up, I probably already missed 1 min or so of the broadcast. It would be really cool if Tivo can send the buffer of the last min over the web as well, so that I can witness exactly why everyone tuned in. The buffer can be send from other Tivos as a P2P network so that Tivo headquarters won't be overwhelmed by the bandwidth requirement. Again, there is a legality issue w/ this one last bit here, but the other 2 is absolutely achievable.

P.S. Smell got better (not as bad) at work, or my nose just got stuffier today.

Tivo having a hard time competing

If you followed my site for a while, you would know that I am a rabid fan of Tivo. They were the first ones to truly revolutionize the way I(and many others) watch TV. But in a recent letter they sent to the FCC (source: eHomeUpgrade), they directed their concerns about the cable industry and how tyrannical they can be.

Basically, the letter states, with many sources, that the cable industry want to keep the design of set top boxes to themselves and that their willingness to use the CableCard standard is a ploy to keep the FCC happy. In reality, they are going to limit the features on the CableCard.

The one feature that concerns Tivo the most is the dual tuner option. The dual tuner option lets Tivo record 2 shows on different channel at the same time. It is available on current DirecTivos and the Series 2 models. This is the feature that the cable industry opt not to support in the CableCard technology.

Tivo can workaround this by building a Tivo that can support 2 CableCard, which will more or less emulate the same dual tuner functionality of 1 CableCard. But Tivo feels that the additional cost of the hardware and the leasing of 2 tuner cards by the customer will make the unit unattractive to the customer.

Right now, Tivo's stock is tanking, near the lowest I have ever seen (yes, I am one of their stockholders). There really is nothing they can do. They don't have enough innovation since their break out debut. The TivoToGo option, from the many reviews that I read, it isn't all that Tivo hopes it would be. They really need something to fantastic to blow the grime off the muck of mediocrity that their name has fell into.

Unfortunately, no one knows what that is...

30 seconds commercial skip

Normally, my Tivo automatically performs the 30 seconds commercial skip a minute or 2 after bootup. The problem is it doesn't seem to work properly ever since I put a passcode lock (don't ask) on it.

Anyway, here's the instructions to the 30 seconds commercial skip. It's really for me just in case I forget it.

Pull up any recording.

Press:

Select, Play, Select, 3, 0 Select

Then you should here the bling chime 3x which lets you know that you did this properly.

Project Tivo

As I have listed on my gadgets, I have a DirecTivo (DirecTV receiver and Tivo in one). I had a Tivo pretty much since they first came out (a refurb philips original 14 hr model). All the features, pause live tv, watch a show while it's still recording, are really awesome. But the hacking capability is really what made me buy it.

(flashback)

The first hack I did on my 1st Tivo was backup an image and dropped that image on a 80 gig WD hd. Although it is kind of easy, and there are plenty of help from tivocommunity, a forum for tivo hackers/modders, you can easily screw up the Tivo or electrocute yourself if you are not careful.

Stay tuned if you want to find out what happened, like how I have use my Dremel on the Tivo.