Now, I know someone is going to be a wanker and find exceptions to the following statements as if that'd invalidate them (I'll give you one already, Consumer Reports doesn't run ads) but they are overwhelmingly true. Magazines have ads, you buy them. Newspapers have ads, you buy them. Most cable and satellite TV has ads, you pay for it. (And any period when cable didn't have ads was long, long ago and very limited. Usually only specific premium channels, even back in the day.) Hell, most books have adds at the end for other books by that author or from that publisher.

Saying "If you pay anything for it them it shouldn't have ads" is idiotic. The real world is not binary. Business models use a mix of revenue streams for multiple reasons, such as keeping down subscription costs or avoiding a monoculture where a problem with one stream could collapse the company completely. TiVo doesn't make anywhere near enough on advertising to support the company without subscription fees. But without the advertising they'd have to charge *more* to subscribers to make up the difference. It isn't like they're profiteering, they're only now approaching sustained profitability and have lost money most of their existence.

*Some* of their revenue comes from advertising, some from IP licensing, some from technology licensing (Comcast, TiVo Australia, TGC, etc), and some from subscriptions. Take away any of those and the remaining items would need to compensate. That shouldn't be hard to comprehend.

The fact is TiVo can't make enough from subscriptions alone to be profitable, not without charging more - and that could be self-defeating as it would discourage sales. TiVo needs to build their other revenue streams, such as advertising, to become a profitable, sustainable business.

And if you can even consider using MythTV, etc., then you're not in TiVo's target market anyway. It doesn't really matter if the geeks switch to something else, they're not a significant market slice. Odds are if you're reading Gizmodo you're not part of TiVo's core market.

It is more than a bit silly to go off on a rant about how terrible it is when you haven't even seen the implementation. Personally I'm excited to have this, I've been saying for years that they need to do something just like this. As long as it is unobtrusive I'll be happy to have it, and I'll probably use it. There have already been times when I've gone and tracked down a CD after hearing music on a program, or a book after hearing about it. And I tend to buy from Amazon anyway, so I'd be cool to just order the CD with a few clicks without having to go through the hassle later.

AMD, or HTPC vendors, don't need to make anything. All that is needed is a driver to control the TA when it is plugged into the PC's USB port. That'd probably come from MS as part of Windows Media Center.

And even forgiving that, which is a stretch, did he not have a way to come down? Once he figured out he couldn't use the GPS, and was drifting out toward the sea, why the hell didn't he just give up and land? If he went up without a way to come down - then that's just utter stupidity. If he had a way to come down and didn't realize it would be a good idea to use it - well, that doesn't indicate a lot of intelligence either.

2. $14 - did you mean $14,000?

You opt-in when you subscribe to TiVo, it is in the agreement you should've read if you subscribed. There is a way to opt-out.

And there is no big different between the service and many websites. The TiVo data is anonymized, so TiVo having your personal information on file is irrelevant. TiVo has detailed the lengths they go to to prevent the data they gather being associated with a user. Even if they were ordered to do so by a court, they've set it up so it cannot be linked to a specific user. They'd have to put a new system in place going forward for such an order and would not be able to provide back data.

Many websites use ad services which do a hell of a lot more personal tracking than TiVo does. And you don't think such services link to a person? Many find ways to do so, tracking public records, using cross-site tracking and then tying it to you when you make a purchase at a participating ecommerce site, etc. I used to work with some of those backend systems, they can be pretty clever. You're more likely to have your online behavior linked to you as an individual than your TiVo habits.

I'd love to see a Part 2 on this covering any oddities and dead-ends, like the AOLTV remotes. (Or the AOLTV project in general, really.) What must've been interesting discussions on the development of the S2 variants for Pioneer and Toshiba/Humax, and why they ended up with two *different* TiVo/DVD combo remotes for those. (And the non-peanut Toshiba SD-H400, which was covered here.)

I just find the whole design evolution interesting.

The B2 is completely aerodynamically unstable. Without computers it can't fly. The pilot doesn't - *cannot* - have direct control of the aircraft, because humans can't make the adjustments needed fast enough. So the pilot's input tells the computer what he wants to do, and the computer figures out how to do it.

For takeoff the computer normally handles the rotation at the correct speed. And in this accident the sensors that determine the speed provided an incorrect reading, giving a speed higher than the actual. So the aircraft rotated too early and stalled - with no altitude to recover.

And for those mindlessly bashing on the B2, this kind of accident happens to 'normal' aircraft too. Blocked pitot or static ports can cause erroneous instrument readings which have lead pilots flying IFR astray, as well as causing autopilots to fly an aircraft into dangerous flight attitudes. There have been civilian airliner crashes due to ports blocked by foreign objects, ice, etc. One semi-famous crash was due to an exterior cleaning crew covering the ports with tape to prevent water infiltration while washing the plane - and then forgetting to remove the tape. No one spotted it and after takeoff the instruments all provided bad readings. And it was at night so there were no visual references - the airliner crashed.

Also don't forget the previously announced partnership with Jaman.com as yet another download provider and likely in HD.

(Disclaimer: I work for Sling Media now.)

I do have the power saving modes set to power off the display, spin down the drive when not used, etc.

But I bet my PS3 is using FAR more power - I have it running 7x24 on Folding@Home. The only time it isn't is when I'm playing a game, which is frankly not often (too busy and not much of a gamer), or watching Blu-ray (more often).

If you contact me via megazone at slingmedia dot com with the steps you follow to reproduce the issue, I'd be happy to work with you to determine if it is indeed a bug, and if so to get it into our system for the next update.

As it is MA has a $.05 deposit on drink bottles and cans. I stopped returning them years ago. I can't be arsed to haul my empties back to the store and feed them into a machine - my time is worth more than the money I'd get back. I used to do it, but as I got busier in life it just stopped being something I cared to do.

So now I collect the bottles and cans in a large trash barrel (I cut a convenient hole in the lid to just drop them in) and when full I take the big bag and leave it on the curb on recycling day - and it is always gone well before the truck comes around. Some homeless person hits the jackpot at my house periodically with a lawn & leaf bag full of virtual nickels.

I do recycle otherwise as well, but I use the plastic bags from the grocery because I tend to go shopping once every couple of months and I'll haul home 20-30 bags at a time and I'm not going to carry that many friggin' canvas tote bags. I'd happily pay some reasonable fee to offset that - as long as the money went to environmental issues and not just some slush fund. As I said, deposits would be even better - then I'd leave them on the curb as well for someone else to cash in.

I will say it again - ALL CableCARDs, those physical PCMCIA-looking things, are two-way. The only difference in the cards are Single-Stream vs. Multi-Stream aka S-Card vs. M-Card. They're ALL bidirectional.

The confusion - and I readily admit that I once had the same confusion - is that in the early days 'CableCARD 1.0' referred to a raft of specs that encompassed the cards AND UDCP products. While the bidirectional specs involving OCAP were still being hashed out, and that raft of specs was often referred to as CableCARD 2.0.

But the *CARDS* are the same. The differences are entirely in the host platform and what it supports.

The terminology was overloaded with the same terms being used to label different things, which resulted in the confusion.

That's why a UDCP TiVo with CableCARD which is one-way today can suddenly become two-way with the addition of a Tuning Resolver. The CableCARD is the same, the Tuning Resolver adds the transceiver needed for bidirectional communication and the firmware update enables it.

Actually, you wrote:
"CableCards are only one-way, so they can't make use of any SDV coming down the pipes."

That's completely inaccurate. All CableCARDs are *TWO*-way, and they're ALL capable of supporting SDV. It is the host device that determines if two-way and SDV work, not the card.

The SDV issue isn't new ([www.gizmolovers.com]) and the Tuning Resolver has been coming for a while ([www.gizmolovers.com]). The real fight has been over OCAP. To date that has been the only way to produce a bi-directional CableCARD device. But much of the CE industry finds the requirements for OCAP unacceptable and have been pushing a counter-proposal called DCR+. On the other side the cable industry has called DCR+ too limited and also dislike it because it puts most of the work load on the cable MSO's shoulders. But TiVo has shown that a compromise can be reached: [www.gizmolovers.com]

2. The SDV issue isn't new: [www.gizmolovers.com]

3. The Tuning Resolver has been coming for a while: [www.gizmolovers.com]

2. MSRPs have not been raised. And it is doubtful wholesale prices have been either. In fact, this is almost certainly stock that the retailers already had on hand. So what this is is the *retailers* doing more profit taking. They're just not discounting off the MSRP as steeply, so they've making more margin on the sale.

3. This is a table of *average* prices. So just suppose more vendors started carrying Blu-ray players after the format war ended, and the new sites didn't discount as much? Well, gee, the average price goes up! But that doesn't mean the old low prices are gone. Two sites sell a product, one for $400 and one for $200. The average price is $300. Two more sites start selling it, for $325. Now you're average price is $312.50 - it went up! But you can still buy it for $200.

In other words you can't really conclude anything from this, and you most definitely cannot blame Sony for whatever conclusion you jump to.

I also got in trouble for having a 6" Bowie knife knock-off in my locker in high school. Some other kid noticed it and ratted me out. I'd won it at a fair doing ring toss. (I used to be good at that - I won two of those knives, and several other things in one go before the guy told me to stop playing.) I actually brought it in because the top part of my locker (we had a tall, narrow bit and then a short, wide bit above it - two narrow bits side-by-side and the wide bits over-and-under in one unit) used to stick, so I kept the knife in the lower part and used it to pop the top open.

Apparently the school frowned on this. ;-) I was an honors student, so I didn't really get into trouble. I just got a 'WTF?' talk from the dean, and I told him he could keep the knife since I had another one just like it at home. (I was also a wiseass.)

Of course, this was back in the 80s - before Columbine et al. These days I probably would've been tazed and cuffed by the cops and *then* asked why I had the knife in my locker. Not that I think school over-react these days or anything... ;-)

And TiVo has repeatedly offered lifetime transfer deals - to the Series3, the Series2DT, and the TiVo HD.

I did it back in college. In one of my CS classes we were allowed *one* 8.5x11 sheet of notes, both sides. That's all. A lot of people agonized over what to include on their sheer. Others painstakingly hand-wrote tiny notes densely on their sheets.

I fired up emacs, typed in 16 pages worth of organized notes, then used the high-quality laser printer to print then 8-up on two sides. Sure, it was 2pt flyspeck, but it was still legible and perfectly readable as a reference.

When I brought it into the exam there was more than one "Damn, why didn't *I* think of that?!" reactions. The professor took it and looked it over, then smiled and gave it back and told me it was the first time he'd had someone do something like it. And he congratulated me on being clever.

When you can find an advantage while remaining in bounds - that's more of an achievement than finding a way to break the rules. And there's no risk in being caught.