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Comments: 151 +-   The Secret Origins of TiVo on Saturday September 02 2006, @09:05AM

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday September 02 2006, @09:05AM
from the trust-no-one dept.
humor
media
tv
Davis Freeberg writes "TiVo is probably better known for their ad zapping technology than their television advertisements. In fact, other then a few lousy infomercials and a commercial that was rumored to be banned by the networks, TiVo has never really had much in the way of TV advertisements. Apparently though, one of TiVo's more rabid fans did some sleuthing and discovered a hidden easter egg video buried deep within TiVo's own website. The video itself exposes the true origins of TiVo's technology and how they got their hands on that ad zapping photon remote to begin with."
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The Secret Origins of TiVo 50 Comments More /

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  • Were .mp4 files around back in 1997?

    • Ask Dan Rather (Score:5, Funny)

      by krell (896769) on Saturday September 02 2006, @09:35AM (#16029543) Journal
      "Were .mp4 files around back in 1997?"

      He has some MP4 files that Bush actually recorded with his Powerbook in 1972.
    • No. MPEG-4 was ratified as a standard by the Moving Picture Experts Group in 1999.

      Now if only Tivo boxes would be able to play back MPEG-4, then we'd have some news here.

      ~jeff

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gwiner (685297)
      The unit in the video demonstrates features that were not available until the Series II units w/ LAN capability were introduced (photos, music), so I'm thinking this was meant to promote the series II, or perhaps the forthcoming Cable Card models.

  • Don't like TiVo, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sdo1 (213835) on Saturday September 02 2006, @09:09AM (#16029470) Journal
    Linking to a 40 meg file hosted on TiVo's servers on the front page of Slashdot? Not nice.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Hassman (320786)
      Uhhh... Wha? This isn't a real ftp link. Something tells me this is a bit planned for.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Gonzotek (206051)
      What about YouTube? TiVo Bluemoon Video [youtube.com] posted by (Dave Zatz [zatznotfunny.com]

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Not nice, like taking open source code and then locking it in hardware that prevents people from modifying it?

      Not nice, like sueing companies for having the gall to implement playback and recording at the same time? Or sueing companies for making it so that pressing "play" after fast forwarding/rewinding causes playback to resume slightly before the button was pressed?

      Not nice, like removing the commercial skip feature due to pressure from TV studios?

      I wonder what TiVo could possibly have done to make peop
      • I noticed in the video that the box included a menu to select music by category and artist. Isn't this the patented tech that Apple just got sued for using in ipods? Another victim for the patent holder?
    • Looks like 400 to me.. Ya, so im a sucker, but i was curious. Ill never own a tivo so its not like they are going to gain a customer out of this 'news scam' anyway.

    • BitTorrent download (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheSHAD0W (258774) on Saturday September 02 2006, @10:20AM (#16029669) Homepage
      http://bittornado.com/torrents/bluemoon.mp4.torren t [bittornado.com]
    • What? TiVo is a commercial enterprise, and bandwidth is a cost of doing business. It's not as if they linked to a 40 MB file on the Dalai Lama's website-in-exile or something.
    • This is hardly an "easter egg" someone randomly found... this is an advertising campaign.

      When it's been on /. for 12 hours and I'm pulling 5.1Mb/s from their site...it ain't no accident.

  • "TiVo is probably better known for their ad zapping technology then their televison advertisements"

    And then their television advertisements what? Did they do something after that? Oh, hehe, no, you're trying to make a comparison! For that we use "than". I know they've devolved to homophones in certain english dialects but that's still no excuse. This is such a commonly made and silly mistake that it bears pointing out when it appears on the front page of Slashdot, for heaven's sake.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      bears pointing out when it appears on the front page of Slashdot,


      Well, better on Slashdot front page then New York Times.

    • You could use 'then' to do it list format, although a comma's probably required for that...

      "is probably better known for their ad zapping technology, then their televison advertisements, then their funny little SOS signals they send out"... ...maybe...

  • Zap Ads? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by russ1337 (938915) on Saturday September 02 2006, @09:15AM (#16029483)
    Does TiVo 'Zap' Ads? Does it actually skip the whole section of ads with one click and no further interaction? I dont have a tivo, but I thought it ony fast fowarded them. I have a mythtv and that can skip the entire ads and detects the end of the advertising segment where the show starts again, but didnt think TiVo did this. - Anyone?

    • Re:Zap Ads? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Aadain2001 (684036) on Saturday September 02 2006, @09:19AM (#16029497) Journal
      In order to prevent a massive lawsuite storm from all the major networks, TiVo officially only allows you to fast-forward through commercials, not skip them (similar to using a VCR). Unofficially there is a feature you can enable through the remote (hitting a combo of buttons) that allows you to change the 'skip-to-the-end' button into a 30 second skip ahead button. Most of the time you only have to hit it 3-4 times to get through commercial breaks. But that's unofficial ;)

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by zCyl (14362)
        In order to prevent a massive lawsuite storm from all the major networks, TiVo officially only allows you to fast-forward through commercials, not skip them

        Or you can just use MythTV [mythtv.org], where you can automatically skip them without pressing anything.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Aadain2001 (684036)
          MythTV can do that because they are not an entity that can be sued by TV networks (or at least not view as enough of a threat). I love OSS and Linux, but MythTV is not easy to setup. And don't forget the hardware cost. You don't want to do a sub-par MythTV box. Usually you'd want a very large hardrive (or four), a good TV tuner (or two), and enough processing power to encode a show or two and still watch TV. TiVo is a good option when you don't want to fork over $1k+ and want it to just work. Of cours

            • Re:Zap Ads? (Score:4, Informative)

              by Aadain2001 (684036) on Sunday September 03 2006, @08:07AM (#16032317) Journal
              Now that really depends what you mean by 'beat' TiVo. Will it have larger storage? Probably. Will it be able to convert to multiple video codecs? Probably not (not enough CPU power). Record multiple shows at once? Definately not (won't get two good TV cards in a $500 price cap). In the end, if you built a $500 MythTV box you'll get something more on par with TiVo, but with a significantly harder setup, less useful interface, and not many extra features. However, dump $1k+ into a MythTV box, and you get a laundry list of neat features that TiVo just can't touch. But I'll stick with TiVo until then.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Bastian (66383)
              Well, for one, I said years, as in plural. Computer hardware up to the task cost more in 2003.

              Second, I didn't havethe luxury of being able to just upgrade an existing 'puter, I tend to use outdated laptops.

              I didn't realize that Tivo no longer does the lifetime sub. I was just pointing out that for a lot of folks out there MythTV is not the lower-cost option. I'd say if it weren't for that this would still be the case - most folks I know use laptops that they cart around fairly often, and I'd assume that

    • Re:Zap Ads? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TheGratefulNet (143330) on Saturday September 02 2006, @09:24AM (#16029510)
      you can hack it to skip at 30sec increments, but it will NEVER zap commercials.

      tivo's "bosses" (the entity higher up the food chain, that trickles down 'stuff') wouldn't dare allow that, of course. I'm very surprised they even 'allowed' any skipping at all! I consider that a fluke, actually; in the age of 'do not FF' (the icon that appears when you first insert a dvd and are FORCED to watch stuff that you don't want or need).

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by dthree (458263)
        My ReplayTV box has a "commercial detection" feature that is pretty good at skipping commercials without any user intervention. They took it out of later models under pressure from the "entertainment" industry but at least they don't use software update to take features away from existing units the way Tivo does. Don't you love having features you bought and paid for disabled?

  • Wonder what this is promoting? (Score:5, Informative)

    by gwiner (685297) on Saturday September 02 2006, @09:18AM (#16029493)
    Great spoof - The file timestamp is actually a GIF =). Makes me wonder what this was meant to promote, or perhaps just a good piece of viral marketing. According to some of those rabid Tivo fans, "Bluemoon" was the codename for the original Tivo iteration.

    • Re:Wonder what this is promoting? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 1u3hr (530656) on Saturday September 02 2006, @09:31AM (#16029531)
      Of course it's viral marketiong -- it costs money and takes talent to make a movie like that, not to mention hosting a 40 MB file. Rather (deliberately) reminsicent of the Dharma Initiative training film found in the show Lost, as well as many other influences.

  • Mirror to MP4 file (Score:5, Informative)

    by qcs-rf.com (952717) on Saturday September 02 2006, @09:21AM (#16029502) Homepage
    Enjoy!

    http://www.qcs-rf.com/slashdot/bluemoon.mp4 [qcs-rf.com]

  • Viral Ad (Score:3, Informative)

    by DrKyle (818035) on Saturday September 02 2006, @09:27AM (#16029515)
    Don't bother discussing any implications or great ramifications, it's just another viral ad.

  • I love the smell... (Score:5, Funny)

    by alienmole (15522) on Saturday September 02 2006, @09:27AM (#16029519)
    You smell that? Do you smell that? Viral marketing, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of viral marketing in the morning. Smells like - market share.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by MustardMan (52102)
      Aren't viral marketing ads supposed to be, you know, entertaining? I watched it on youtube and it wasn't funny at all. If it wasn't for the slashvertisement posting of this video, I would never have seen it - people only send viral videos around to their friends if they are actually enjoyable to watch. This was just stupid, long, drawn-out, and boring.
  • There is a one frame at 3 minutes 58 seconds that flashes the link www.tivo.com/bluemoon. I think the reel is more of an entertainment than marketing project, that was meant to self-redistribute.

  • Youtube.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kunta Kinte (323399) on Saturday September 02 2006, @09:36AM (#16029547) Homepage Journal
    It's on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsXUPmWAfhY [youtube.com]
  • Are Nixon, as it should be, and what looks like GWB.


    • *Sigh* Kids.

      On the right is Gerald R. Ford, Nixon's VP after Agnew resigned, who became President when Nixon resigned.

      • The trouble with that, of course, is that the device shows the date of July 17, and the calendar on the wall is for 1973, while Ford didn't become Vice President until December 6, 1973.
    • The 2000/2004 elections were rigged back in 1973 when George HW Bush [wikipedia.org] was head of the Republican National Committee.

      If you need more proof than the picture (which was probably obtained by fast-forwarding the nightly news all the way to the present), Diebold [diebold.com] had just opened their electronic research, testing and development facility in Ohio...

      Ohio! Think about it, people!
  • At no point in the movie is there any mention of either advertising or what can be done with it. Considering the way you now have to jury-rig the system to enable some sort of 30 s skip, I'm guessing the submitter has yet to come to terms with the fac that TiVo sold out to advertisers a long time ago.

  • MirrorDot (Score:3, Informative)

    by mapinguari (110030) on Saturday September 02 2006, @10:16AM (#16029662)
    http://www.mirrordot.com/media/ccbff8e5d33f5022937 f6bdafcc7ae89/bluemoon.mp4 [mirrordot.com]
  • Did anyone else notice the "My home movies" feature it discussed and showed? I do not think that's a current feature to stream movies-- only music and photos. I wonder if an update is coming soon?
  • so, does that mean that tivo just invalidated their patents? looks like alien prior art to me. good news for dish dvr customers! ;)

  • fake timestamp (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As another poser pointed out, the timestamp for that file is a gif which is located at: http://a423.g.akamai.net/7/423/1788/00909b5e4f1ead /www.tivo.com/i/timestamp.gif [akamai.net]

    WTF?
  • Did anyone here skip this particular commerical? I feel used. violated.. etc.
  • So TiVo has a great story to tell, obviously intends for it to be seen since it's on their web-site to start with, then hides it as best they can? If this is TiVo Marketing at work, than it's no surprise to me why they can't gain traction in the marketplace except through lawsuits.

    My personal rule is to avoid whenever possible companies who compete via lawsuit, rather than by price and/or quality.

  • about 3 minutes too long (Score:3)

    by Temsi (452609) on Saturday September 02 2006, @12:10PM (#16030014) Journal
    cool idea, but it stopped being funny very quickly... after that it was just more of the same.
    got pretty banal pretty quick.

  • Rabid fan? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by deblau (68023) <slashdot.25.flickboy@spamgourmet.com> on Saturday September 02 2006, @05:58PM (#16030998) Journal
    Is that why he only has 6 posts on the TiVo forums? And joined in September 2006 (i.e., yesterday)?
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