The first thing to recognize is that TiVo fixed most of the major gripes with their existing units. Their biggest problem is the cable companies themselves vis-a-vis CableLabs, and while I’ll not address anything having to do with them for now (there is a long list of gripes), I had a long list of things TiVo needed to fix in a draft blog post ready to hit the “Publish” button had they messed up. Lucky for them I’m scrapping that post! (well, recycling it into this post, got to be green!)

Upgraded Hardware. While the device is still limited to two tuners (the Moxi supports three, new cable cards will support up to six), the upgraded Broadcom Chip on the inside is a dual core 400MHz MIPS processor and 512MB of RAM with clustered multi-threading (portions of the core like the execution unit are partitioned to support more than one thread per core). So once they manage to optimize their interface they should be able to take advantage of the hardware, even if the 400MHz speed look rather slow.

New HD Interface. The Series 3 TiVo uses the ancient SD interface, while the new Series 4 models use the new Adobe Flash-based UI. While the old interface is leaps and bounds above the standard cable set-top box (STB), other set top box makers (DirecTV, Dish, etc) are quickly catching up, and non-broadcast STBs like the Boxee Box already provide an experience that is better. TiVo should be the far and away leader given the head start they had, but they haven’t kept up. The new UI still needs some (a lot) of polish (“My Shows” should go back to “Now Playing” considering it can contain non-TV show content) but they seem to have got out of the rut they were in.

Better integration with internet content. Whether its the latest episode of The Big Bang Theory or a new Tekzilla I want them all in one list, organized by show name. I want one screen that shows me all the content I can watch now, whether its recorded TV shows, internet TV shows, plus TV shows, movies, pictures and music from my home network. Everything in one place. While I wont be able to get the stuff from my home network, I’m hoping the UI addresses the centralization issue.

Apps. The new TiVo is supposed to have an API available for developers. Combined with the Bluetooth Remote/Keyboard I can see cool Facebook or Twitter notifications. We’ll see if TiVo opens it up to all comers. If so, they are definitely going to need some sort of App Store. It would be really neat though, to replicate some of the iPhone App Store successes on the TiVo.

What did the get wrong?

No DLNA. I wont mince words, this is a huge mistake. TiVo’s proprietary protocols for sharing recorded content needed to be dropped a long time ago in place of the DLNA standard. Part of this might be restrictions imposed on them in terms of getting video out, but at the very least, I should be allowed to stream audio and video into the TiVo from my Windows Home Server easily, and it would be nice if they supported video formats like MKV (MP4+AC3 or DTS) since its really only a container around codecs supported by the Broadcom decoder chip.

No Built-in Bluetooth. While I can understand selling the awesome slider remote for $80, not including the $10 Bluetooth chip inside the unit seems incredibly weak. If I already have a BT keyboard I could do without one in my remote (especially for $80). Allowing BT keyboards in the first place was a great idea, but allow people who already have the hardware to use it! Also, BT would be useful for talking to a TiVo iPhone/Android application to use my phone as an advanced remote control, again, meaning that I don’t need the remote and BT dongle, rather just the BT capability.

While I still think TiVo needs to strengthen their engineering department to make their product better (DLNA, TTG Mac client, etc), the Series 4 is a step in the right direction. Hopefully they can manage to produce a new box more often than every 3 years to keep up with the rate of change in consumer electronics and can manage to squeeze more out of the Series 4 hardware they’re going to start shipping soon.

Finally, one parting thought on comparing a Tivo to an iPhone.

I think its odd that I have no problem dropping $300 every year on an new iPhone plus $30 a month for data and yet still complaining about AT&T’s poor service. But everyone is griping about the TiVo’s price ($300) and monthly costs ($13 or $400 lifetime) and yet they still love their TiVo. It is incredible to me actually. Why does everyone have such a hard time justifying to themselves a $300 TiVo once every three years and the $12.95/mo. I might get more out of an iPhone, but I would presume more people spend more time in front of the TV than a phone (except for teenagers perhaps). The only possible reason I can think of is because the only people I hate more than my cell phone provider is the cable company for its annual price increases. That and it would cost me an extra $10/mo just to them to add a Series 4 TiVo to my house – $2/mo cable card fee PLUS $8/mo for “additional digital service outlet” which is a, pardon my language, bullshit charge hoisted on us by the cable companies and the hardware vendors.

I missed on a lot of the renewable energy stuff – wind is definitely getting going with lots of agreements and more work being done on transmission infrastructure, and solar is hurting and didn’t get any sort of comeback this year. Large deals have been made but there isn’t a whole lot of upwards movement in the market.

Apple

• Apple does, along with a few other companies, releases various 7-10″ tablets. (OK, at the time of publication this is a foregone conclusion, but when I wrote this in the middle of December it wasn’t). Apple’s cost the most, but you get the most (e.g. the App Store). Other tablets don’t have the battery life or applications to match up.
• Apple continues to see growth of 20-30% year over year in computer sales (this number will vary depending on how they categorize the “iSlate” – as a computer or a iPhone-ish device, or its own category).
• The iPhone does go Verizon in July (probably announced earlier), AT&T counter by offering tiered monthly data plans – $20 for 250MB or less, $30 for 1GB or less, $45 for anything over 1GB. They do the rate structure in such a way that there aren’t really overage charges, you just get moved into the next tier (if you use 1.01GB of data, its $45).
• AT&T’s network continues to suck and iPhone users continue to complain. Verizon’s iPhone helps but AT&T doesn’t seem to care too much about network performance.
• The iPhone does not go 4G (LTE or WiMax) in 2010. Its expected to go LTE in 2011 as Verizon gets 50 markets online and AT&T still sucks with HSPA 7.2Mb/s network.
• The iPhone does get bumped to 64GB/32GB/16GB for the same prices ($299/199/99). The 3G iPhone goes away and all phones are 3GS. It doesn’t look like a processor or RAM speed bump is in the cards, but there are some new (risky?) features that get added.

Tech

• LED LCDs dominate 2010. Internet connectivity becomes prominent as TV manufacturers push streaming video on demand services like Netflix and YouTube.
• 3D TVs are introduced but don’t get adopted. Avatar gets released in September as the first true 3D Blu-Ray disk, but since BR hasn’t taken off it doesn’t go anywhere.
• 2010 still isn’t the year of Blu-Ray. Its getting close though! Players are available at $99 by Black Friday and things start to pick up for the holidays. I’m still not sure if broadband speeds will increase fast enough to take Blu-Ray out completely.

Green

• Wind continues to dominate the green generation sector. Transmission projects also start to get under construction in the second half.
• Solar recovers a little. But the problem is that the people wanting to middle-scale solar (between 1MW and 10MW and not utilities) don’t have the money and cant get loans to do it. Where available, PACE (property assessed financing) helps individual home owners defray the cost of putting solar power on their own homes by adding the price into their annual property tax assessment for a low interest rate (4-5%), so even if they move the next owner is paying for it through property tax.
• Geothermal still gets little love. 20MW here and 10MW there. No magic increase that gets geothermal to be some huge part of generation.
• Biofuels and biomass start to transition into more mainstream. You see a lot of coal plants augmenting their coal-fired boilers with wood, trying to reduce net CO2 output.
• EVs (Volt, Leaf, etc.) don’t make that big of a splash in the personal transport market because they cant get out that many units because of battery production issues (producing the number of cells and modules necessary). The tech turns out to be solid, but its the cost and production issues. Its somewhat disappointing that the cars have so much promise and they have trouble making them in volume.

Other

• I figure out some way to get a girlfriend this year. No idea how long I manage to keep her, but I do manage to get one. I had one date in 2009, but 2010 is better.
• I don’t do all that well in the stock market.
• I manage to write an iPhone app for myself. Don’t know whether I publish it – if its the one I think I’m writing it wont get published because it uses private APIs.

And thats it. See you next year!

The first piece of the puzzle is Windows 7, which has an improved Media Center. Instead of going over all the new features, I’ll point to an EngadgetHD review of Windows 7 media center. There are two major feature deficiencies compared to my current TiVo HD – one is that no matter how many tuners you have, it only buffers the channel you’re watching. My TiVo has two separate buffers for the two tuners (so I can switch between two NFL games on Sundays and scan through looking for good plays). The other issue is that you cant record the buffer – so if you start watching something and decide to record it, you’ll only be able to pick up from when you hit the record button. I could live without those features, but its less enjoyable.

Next, new features of Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 can automatically copy over recorded shows nightly into the “Recorded TV” folder on the server and can convert them down to H.264 for mobile device playback. The previous Power Pack enabled a lot of content to go from your WHS box to the Media Center PC. Combined with integration in Windows 7 Libraries, it’ll make those videos available on all your Windows 7 computers. This would allow “archiving” of TV shows to

Finally, the Pièce de résistance is the most recent revelation that CableCard adapters can be installed in home-built (non-OEM) PCs. This means I can go buy my parts of Newegg and then put the HTPC together and stick it under my TV and get full, glorious digital cable and in the form factor, with the options I want (and not paying a premium for a Dell or HP badge on it). One card has already been announced – Centon which will allow up to 2, 4 of 6 tuned channels at the same time (my TiVo HD only does 2) and the 4 tuner card is due out sometime in Q1 2010.

There are a few caveats. First is that the CableCard will still obey the copy protection rules that are sent out with the programming. There are four states – copy freely (0×00), copy no more (0×01), copy once (0×02) and copy never (0×03). Only copy freely will allow you to pull the content off the DVR and then downres it to your iPhone or Zune HD, though the OS will let you copy the other copy protected videos off the computer, you just cant play it back unless its on that computer. Most content on digital cable is copy freely, with the only exceptions being the premium digital channels like HBO and Cinemax.

The next caveat is that CableCard is a dying technology, slowly being replaced by Tru2Way. As Tru2Way displaces CableCards, you wonder about how long cable companies will continue to support them. They are currently required by the FCC to be supported, along with the Switched Digital Video (SDV) switching technology to allow the unidirectional CableCards (and their hosts – a TiVo or PC) to talk back to the cable company to request channels being broadcast using SDV.

After looking over all the features, it looks like a HTPC (with HDMI out and 5.1 audio of course) could certainly replace my TiVo HD unit. Unless TiVo starts adding meaningful features (uPnP support would be one, capable of decoding MP4/H.264+AAC or AC3), I really don’t see why I should continue to pay them $12.95/mo. Its not even the patent issue (I think TiVo is in the right for going after Echostar after the underhanded things they pulled), rather its TiVo’s lack of commitment into turning the TiVo from DVR to home entertainment hub.

(Note: I had most of this written before the most recent Apple TV/DVR/Subscription rumor)

I’ll grant you that the segment of the market that would actually want this type of thing would be small – enthusiasts. However, its one of those situations where you need some sort of end to end solution to provide for this heightened level of functionality. DLNA can handle all the uPnP/streaming technical issues, the only problem is the TV supporting all the necessary codecs though some chip (MPEG-2, AVC, WMV) and some sort of UI that allows the user to select the music and movies.

The only companies I can think of that would be interested in an end-to-end solution are MS and Apple – and I think Apple tried that route with the Apple TV and it didn’t do too well, mostly due to the higher price of the device (local storage) and the lack of a dedicated media server. However, I think you could rebuild an AppleTV device from the ground up (ARM chip and video decoder – essentially an iPod Touch without a screen, sensors, mic or speaker), and only provide enough flash for the OS (streaming only, no local storage) you could trim the costs down to about $80 (and sell it for $129). To build it into a TV, the costs would come down even further (adding $100 to the price tag). If Roku can sell their streaming media player for $99, Apple should be able to sell a streaming only device for $129 (and have a “built in” version inside TVs for $100 extra).

The issue is that, on the Apple side, there is no iTunes media server product. It would act as a central storage system for media and then stream it to the client for playback. Microsoft has their Windows Home Server that can stream media but its somewhat expensive ($400+). Apple could be better served to let their time capsule and airport extreme hardware get firmware updates to allow for the devices to stream movies and music stored on them – this would allow for fairly inexpensive device support ($180 + $100 500GB USB HDD) and serve as a central storage point for all media.

Its not a pretty situation – from almost any angle. There are high start up costs for some sort of enhanced TV/media server setup, putting more storage on the device will push the price up (as is the case now with AppleTV), and just adding DLNA support doesn’t help most non-tech savvy people who otherwise cant share video from their computer to their TV (how much video would they have in the first place?).

Volt & Gas Prices

The Volt is scheduled to be unveiled at the GM centennial this Tuesday. It wont be much of a celebration due to the huge losses they’ve been incurring as of late. But its still a very important milestone – and sets the stage for 2009 as they roll out a fleet of test vehicles for the commercial sector.

With gas prices falling somewhat, the pressure on people’s pocketbooks is easing, but I really don’t see a swing back to fuel inefficient vehicles (SUVs, trucks) unless prices fall dramatically – and by that I mean $40/bbl, which is not likely at all. I’m estimating the bottom to be around $75/bbl, though I wouldn’t mind a figure much lower (~$50/bbl or $2/gal after taxes). The interesting thing is what will diesel prices do – since those prices also have an impact on the consumer’s wallet in terms of prices for just about everything we buy. The same goes for airlines, will $75/bbl prices help, or will some airlines like Continental who hedged their future oil prices at around $115/bbl and are now stuck with even a bigger fuel bill than before (paying the loss on the $115 barrel of oil vs current cost).

When it comes to the Volt, you’ll still save money all the way down to $1/gal, its just a question of whether or not its worth it to pay the extra money for a PHEV or just buy a cheaper hybrid vehicle (the new Honda Insight will have a starting price of $18,500, however that’s subject to dealer markup based on demand – in other words, good luck getting it for that price).

If the Volt sells for $40,000, and you get a $7500 tax credit for buying one, that brings it down to $32,500, or about $15,000 more than a 31MPG Toyota Corolla. The Volt has a 10 year warranty on the powertrain and battery, so if you calculate the ROI over 10 years, excluding the cost of money, you have to save $1,500 every year. The Volt will only save about 470 gal. per year over the Corolla (40 miles per day, 365 days per year). Driving 31 miles for the Volt would cost $0.85, while it costs the Corolla whatever the going rate for gas is. At $2/gal, you’d only save $540/yr, or $5,400 over 10 years, far short of the $15,000 required. Now at $3/gal, things get better – over those 470 gallons you save $1,198 per year. Closer, and possibly in the range for those who drive over 40 miles per day and would also benefit from the cheaper price of E85 Ethanol over gasoline as well as the Volt’s better MPG rating over the Corolla. It turns out that on that 470 gallons, the price of gas has to average $4.05/gallon over the next ten years – which is not unreasonable to assume. Be sure to note that the calculations above don’t include any gasoline based driving for the Volt as well as a few assumptions about the charging efficiency and usage patterns on the Volt.

Volt Mileage Sticker

Last entry, I mocked up a Chevy Volt MPG window sticker. Since then I’ve thought about it a little more and have come up with a modification at the bottom. Rather than show just the cost, also show the amount of energy and fuel used in kWh and gallons, respectively. This way, people can start to look at the gallons per 100 miles figure, rather than just the MPG number. The MPG can be deceptive – a jump form 20 to 25 MPG is bigger than the jump from 25 to 30 MPG. This is because, over the course of 12,000 miles per year, 20 MPG is 600 gallons, 25 MPG is 480 gallons, and 30 MPG is 400 gallons. The difference between 20 and 25 MPG is 120 gallons, while the jump from 25 to 30 MPG is only 80 gallons. It gets amplified as the numbers go up – the difference between 30, 40 and 50 MPG is dramatically deceptive, at 400, 300, and 240 respectively. The first jump is 100 gallons, and the second jump is only 60 gallons. This goes to show why the gallons per 100 or per 10,000 miles is much more accurate for the consumer rather than MPG.

Algae Fuel

Solazyme has announced that they’ve produced aviation fuel that meets the standards required. While its welcome, it might be a long while before they can start producing meaningful amounts at quantities worth selling. But its something to keep an eye on – the aviation industry struggles every year under fluctuating gas prices, and even the star of the industry wouldn’t have been profitable last quarter without its fuel hedging strategy, and there is a distinct possibility it’ll miss profitability this quarter (along with every other airline) due to high fuel prices. The volatility is whats killing the industry – airlines are unique in that they raise prices based on current fuel prices. This means that today’s ticket purchasers are paying for the fuel for today’s flights, and not the fuel for their own flights down the road. Its a pay as you go system, much like Social Security is. So when fuel costs go down, prices go down. Thats good, but when prices go up, and fewer people can afford to fly, there are more open seats on an airplane. This causes airlines to cut flights and cause the price of tickets to go even higher. The payments on a 737 don’t go down just because the plane does one less flight during the day or is grounded completely.

A steady price for fuel would go a long way in helping the industry stabailze and return to profitability. Which, if this algae-based fuel can be produced in significant enough quantities, it can provide some stability to the fuel market – as it wouldn’t be affected by geopolitical instabilities, and it would be less vulnerable to weather events like a hurricane. Solazyme’s main source of materials is sugarcane. This is one area McCain is actually ahead of Obama – he plans on ending farm subsidies and dropping import restrictions on sugar cane (which is primarily produced in Brazil, it doesn’t grow all that well in the US). They do plan to switch out to non-food competitive sources eventually, but thats an indefinite period of time.

However, you probably haven’t heard much about the DTV.gov website, since just about all the advertisements you’ve seen or heard have been for DTVAnswers.com, a website not run by the government but rather by the National Association of Broadcasters. DTVAnswers is not only a much better designed and layed out website, it also much easier for the casual user to navigate and figure out what they will have to do. The options provided by the DTVAnswers are much more clear than the government’s website: buy a converter box for your analog TV, buy a new TV that has a digital tuner for over-the-air reception, or subscribe to a pay multichannel video distribution service (cable, satellite or telephone company’s TV offering).

Both of these websites provide prominent links to the official voucher website, DTV2009.gov, which is designed to take users through from finding out if they need a voucher based on whether or not they receive television over rabbit ears, whether or not their TV has a digital input, and how to apply for a voucher for a digital converter box.

I would have to say that the most informative and easy to use site is the DTV2009 website, where it will walk you through questions on whether or not you need to consider applying for a voucher.

In the next part, I’ll discuss the converter boxes, which are expected to be on the market in February or March, along with the voucher process and its limitations.

You’re probably starting to see the advertisements on Television about the digital television transition that is taking place in February 2009. And considering the massive amounts of misinformation I’ve been hearing from just my family and friends on the issue I’d though that I’d write a series of articles to educate them and you on what the digital transition is and isn’t about.

The first thing you might think is that you’ll need to buy a new TV. This is unlikely for several reasons. The first and foremost reason is that the only signals that are changing are the over-the-air signals being sent by broadcast networks (your local CBS, NBC, etc affiliates plus and local unaffiliated stations). The stations you only receive over cable or satellite are not affected whatsoever.  The next reason is that even if you do receive transmissions of your local stations over the air, you’ll be able to get a $40 coupon from the federal government towards a converter box (expected to be around $70-80), which is a lot less expensive than buying a new Television. A new 20″ Digital OTA broadcast ready TV (not to be confused with digital cable ready TVs) is about $150 at Best Buy. The same model 27″ TV is $250.

For anyone already receiving their television via cable or satellite, there will be nothing to do on this special day. Nothing will change. Cable companies wont (or at least haven’t annouced) that they’ll get rid of all their analog channels, and satellite companies already have a completely digital transmission. Your from your VCR to your Series 1 or 2 TiVo will still let you record television shows as long as you’ve hooked them up to analog cable feeds, or the appropriate A/V outputs on your cable or satellite box.

The next part of this series will cover the advertisements you’ve been seeing, as well as the website and process to go through that will allow people to obtain the vouchers.