WeaKnees Blog

Well, it finally happened – and hackers did it before TiVo. Mac users can download shows from their TiVo and play them on their Macs. It takes a little more effort, but it’s really not too bad. And, judging by the work already done to make it easier, it’ll only get easier still.

To start, you need the TiVo decode software. This links to your TiVo (you’ll need your media access key) and pulls down the files, and decodes them. It’s one-at-a-time, but in my experience, it was pretty fast.

Then, you need a way to play the file. QuickTime and iTunes won’t do it. VLC will. And it works pretty well also.

We’re definitely wondering if this will last – so if you want these apps, get them while you (easily) can.

If you’re reading the blog, you surely know that at WeaKnees, we’re all about TiVo capacity. So we keep a close eye on the amounts of space in the units that we come across.

Therefore, we were a little surprised to see what was coming through on each new delivery of TiVo Series3 units here.

We expected this, and we got it:

Then we saw some of these:

Then, looking back at the older ones we found these, with stickers:

Peel the sticker back and get this:

(OK – so I’m no Thomas Hawk with the pictures.)

Anyway, despite the crazy numbers, of course these all have the same Western Digital 250 GB drive in them. Not adequate at all, as far as we’re concerned. A Seagate 750 GB drive is a much better choice . . .

You’ve probably seen reports of TiVo’s call yesterday – they lost money again, and expect to lose more. Not too surprising at this point.

A few days before, they reported that they will begin appending commercials to the end of recorded shows, charging the advertisers. So at least they’re focused on getting more revenue in.

They did say that they have increased monthly receipts per customer, and they are increasing the numbers of standalone users (their most profitable), so there are some bright points. But how long can they sustain the losses?