tivo
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6:54PM Angus Kidman | iiNet already has a pretty generous suite of unmetered content — including iView, iTunes and a bunch of streaming video and audio channels — and it just got a little larger with the addition of TiVo to the list. More »
iiNet Makes TiVo Downloads Unmetered
6:54PM Angus Kidman | iiNet already has a pretty generous suite of unmetered content — including iView, iTunes and a bunch of streaming video and audio channels — and it just got a little larger with the addition of TiVo to the list. More » 
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10:14AM Angus Kidman | If you don’t fancy paying for movie downloads, TiVo has just expanded its service with an entirely free option: radio podcasts from the Nova and Vega networks. More »
TiVo Adds Nova, Vega Radio Streams
10:14AM Angus Kidman | If you don’t fancy paying for movie downloads, TiVo has just expanded its service with an entirely free option: radio podcasts from the Nova and Vega networks. More »
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2:26PM Angus Kidman | Downloading movies from TiVo can be a potentially ruinous exercise for your bandwidth cap, so it’s good to see iPrimus following Internode’s lead and offering uncapped downloads for TiVo users. More »
iPrimus Offering Unmetred TiVo Downloads
2:26PM Angus Kidman | Downloading movies from TiVo can be a potentially ruinous exercise for your bandwidth cap, so it’s good to see iPrimus following Internode’s lead and offering uncapped downloads for TiVo users. More »
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4:30PM Angus Kidman | Well, here’s one way to fill that new 1TB drive you just attached to your TiVo: purchase and download a movie from Blockbuster onto it. More than 100 movies are being offered at launch, with new titles at $5.95 and older fare for $3.95 a pop. More »
Blockbuster Offering Movie Downloads On TiVo
4:30PM Angus Kidman | Well, here’s one way to fill that new 1TB drive you just attached to your TiVo: purchase and download a movie from Blockbuster onto it. More than 100 movies are being offered at launch, with new titles at $5.95 and older fare for $3.95 a pop. More »
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9:00AM Angus Kidman | The first official expansion drive for the TiVo has hit the market in Australia, offering you an extra terabyte of storage if you’re prepared to pay something of a market premium. More »
Expand Your TiVo To 1TB — For A Price
9:00AM Angus Kidman | The first official expansion drive for the TiVo has hit the market in Australia, offering you an extra terabyte of storage if you’re prepared to pay something of a market premium. More »
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3:00PM Angus Kidman | One of the limitations of using a Tivo as your PVR of choice is that there’s no straightforward way of transferring recordings of shows you want to keep permanently onto an external device. The recently released Home Networking Package makes that possible, but at $199 it’s a fairly pricey solution. Some Tivo owners are arguing that the pricing is unfair, given that when the original Tivo was released Tivo executives suggested the pricing for networking mobility would be much lower (”tens of dollars”) was the phrase used. I somehow doubt that this would constitute grounds for taking Tivo to the ACCC over deceptive behaviour, but the suggestion that early adopters should get a discount on the new gear, which is being floated on mailing lists such as OzTivo, still seems like the right thing to do. More »
Tivo Home Networking Package Pricing Vexes Users
3:00PM Angus Kidman | One of the limitations of using a Tivo as your PVR of choice is that there’s no straightforward way of transferring recordings of shows you want to keep permanently onto an external device. The recently released Home Networking Package makes that possible, but at $199 it’s a fairly pricey solution. Some Tivo owners are arguing that the pricing is unfair, given that when the original Tivo was released Tivo executives suggested the pricing for networking mobility would be much lower (”tens of dollars”) was the phrase used. I somehow doubt that this would constitute grounds for taking Tivo to the ACCC over deceptive behaviour, but the suggestion that early adopters should get a discount on the new gear, which is being floated on mailing lists such as OzTivo, still seems like the right thing to do. More »
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10:00AM Angus Kidman | The biggest roadblock to legal movie and TV downloads remains the huge amounts of bandwidth they consume, which can punch a huge hole in your monthly download cap (even without taking HD into consideration). The ideal solution would be cap-free ISP accounts, but since that’s never going to happen deals between ISPs and content providers are the next best thing. Lara Sinclair at The Australian reports that Seven and Internode have done a deal which will see Tivo downloads excluded from the total for customers who sign up for a new Internode/Tivo bundle. No word yet on whether Internode’s existing customers will also get similar benefits if they purchase a Tivo, but that would seem a likely outcome. The nature of the deal (which apparently kicks off in late March) suggests other ISPs aren’t likely to get a bite at the Tivo cherry. But there are other cap-free content options. If you favour iTunes for movies, iiNet remains your best bet, while there are now plenty of cap-free choices for the ABC’s iView, and BigPond Movies for Telstra customers.
Seven leading in race to deliver movie downloads [The Australian]
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Internode To Offer Cap-Free Access To Tivo
10:00AM Angus Kidman | The biggest roadblock to legal movie and TV downloads remains the huge amounts of bandwidth they consume, which can punch a huge hole in your monthly download cap (even without taking HD into consideration). The ideal solution would be cap-free ISP accounts, but since that’s never going to happen deals between ISPs and content providers are the next best thing. Lara Sinclair at The Australian reports that Seven and Internode have done a deal which will see Tivo downloads excluded from the total for customers who sign up for a new Internode/Tivo bundle. No word yet on whether Internode’s existing customers will also get similar benefits if they purchase a Tivo, but that would seem a likely outcome. The nature of the deal (which apparently kicks off in late March) suggests other ISPs aren’t likely to get a bite at the Tivo cherry. But there are other cap-free content options. If you favour iTunes for movies, iiNet remains your best bet, while there are now plenty of cap-free choices for the ABC’s iView, and BigPond Movies for Telstra customers.
Seven leading in race to deliver movie downloads [The Australian]
More »
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10:30AM Angus Kidman | Tivo next week will begin a trial of offering a downloadable movie of the week to subscribers (first title up: The Waterhorse, pictured), but it’s not quite as generous as it seems. The service, being offered in conjunction with Blockbuster and due to hit all Australian Tivo boxes by December 1, is essentially designed to make sure that people don’t get a rude shock on their ISP bill when Tivo’s full downloads service launches in March 2009. Or as the company PR puts it: “The aim is to provide TiVo customers with the ability to road test downloading video content over the internet straight to the lounge room and understand the critical role both internet speed and download quotas play in ensuring the service is a pleasurable one.” We’ve noted before that movie downloads are always risky if you have to pay for the bandwidth, and despite Tivo’s promise to use effective compression, we suspect this is going to prove too costly for a lot of people’s download caps. More »
Tivo Offers Movies, Anticipates Broadband Shock
10:30AM Angus Kidman | Tivo next week will begin a trial of offering a downloadable movie of the week to subscribers (first title up: The Waterhorse, pictured), but it’s not quite as generous as it seems. The service, being offered in conjunction with Blockbuster and due to hit all Australian Tivo boxes by December 1, is essentially designed to make sure that people don’t get a rude shock on their ISP bill when Tivo’s full downloads service launches in March 2009. Or as the company PR puts it: “The aim is to provide TiVo customers with the ability to road test downloading video content over the internet straight to the lounge room and understand the critical role both internet speed and download quotas play in ensuring the service is a pleasurable one.” We’ve noted before that movie downloads are always risky if you have to pay for the bandwidth, and despite Tivo’s promise to use effective compression, we suspect this is going to prove too costly for a lot of people’s download caps. More »
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11:11AM Angus Kidman | The Aussie implementation of Tivo has only just gone on sale, but the developers of the PVR technology are already talking up forthcoming features. Nick Tabakoff at the Australian reports that Tivo should offer free viewing of YouTube clips from early next year, with earlier plans to charge for the feature now apparently dumped. We imagine it’ll only be a matter of time before someone comes up with a hack to allow saving YouTube downloads onto the Tivo. YouTube free on Seven’s Tivo [The Australian]
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Tivo promises free YouTube service
11:11AM Angus Kidman | The Aussie implementation of Tivo has only just gone on sale, but the developers of the PVR technology are already talking up forthcoming features. Nick Tabakoff at the Australian reports that Tivo should offer free viewing of YouTube clips from early next year, with earlier plans to charge for the feature now apparently dumped. We imagine it’ll only be a matter of time before someone comes up with a hack to allow saving YouTube downloads onto the Tivo. YouTube free on Seven’s Tivo [The Australian]
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8:24AM Angus Kidman | With the recent launch of the Foxtel IQ2, the imminent (and much-delayed) appearance of Tivo in Australia next month, and Sony promising its own PlayTV personal video recorder (PVR) option before the year is out, there are more big-name PVR choices for Aussies than ever before. Getting your favourite TV programs automatically recorded for playback at a time that suits you is an obviously appealing concept, but despite the arrival of these new entrants, you still have two basic choices: a fairly pricey system that works well but is hard to customise, or a much cheaper and more flexible option that may not deliver on the simplicity and reliability front.
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Expensive simplicity: the PVR tradeoff
8:24AM Angus Kidman | With the recent launch of the Foxtel IQ2, the imminent (and much-delayed) appearance of Tivo in Australia next month, and Sony promising its own PlayTV personal video recorder (PVR) option before the year is out, there are more big-name PVR choices for Aussies than ever before. Getting your favourite TV programs automatically recorded for playback at a time that suits you is an obviously appealing concept, but despite the arrival of these new entrants, you still have two basic choices: a fairly pricey system that works well but is hard to customise, or a much cheaper and more flexible option that may not deliver on the simplicity and reliability front.
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