PVR desiderata.

[swestrup]

Here's a question for all my various friends out there: Would you have any desire to own a customized TIVO-like appliance and what would be the list of things that you would want it to do for you?  I've been seriously looking at building my own, and possibly starting a business to build and sell them. Consider this market research.
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Addendum: I've decided not to comment back to the comments, because I don't want to influence things unduly. So far though, I like what folks are saying.

Comments

[thothmeister.livejournal.com]

I'd most definitely like a TIVO-like device!

As far as what I'd like it to do:

- record specific shows I choose from its online guide;
- use "snart search": I could program it to record everything with an actor of my choice in it;
- be able to skip commercials. That I think will be the most popular option choice!
- pause/ff/rewind from a remote (an obvious option, but I mention it just in case...)

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

Yes!

A lot of my desires are in the process of delivering content to the box, not so much the features of the box itself.

One thing I'd like - I have a widescreen TV, and of course most TV shows are broadcast in 4:3. It turns out that most shows - and video games - look just fine when stretched to fit the screen (except when a perfect circle appears), but there's one exception. A lot of games and one notable TV show - Samurai Jack - suddenly go letterbox at times to make a scene look more dramatic (presumably because people associate letterbox with movies). That means you've got a widescreen TV with a thin strip of visual in the middle - pointless.

So what I'd like is the ability to detect letterbox in real time and crop the picture before sending it to the TV.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

Er, I was going to expand on the "content delivery" bit - I only have 5 or 6 shows that I really want to watch enough to pay for, and they're all on different channels. Not only that, but at Videotron each of the channels is in a different package, so I have to order 20 channels or so just to get my 5 shows. I'd really like to be able to order individual shows.

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

I remember, when I was 16, before my first real contact with the Internet, working on the NETDEV FidoNet echo on a new format for messages. I made a proposal for such a format (and actually wrote gatewaying software, because that was the way of the time, to bring the code along to show that it worked), and one of the things I made sure was that efficient distribution of massive files was possible (some formats used a uint32 to store the size, but I thought that was restrictive, so I had a streaming format, using only uint16 so that by definition, you'd never need more than a 64K buffer to process a message and could have a garanteed maximum amount of memory required to join the network).

What I had in mind was being able to order TV shows.

[lasher.livejournal.com]

I'd settle just to order specific channels and not have to get all of the ones that my sateillite provider decided was in my package. I'd narrow it down to: History Channel, Discovery Channel, A&E, Biography, TNT & USA to get my Law and Order fix, ESPN, ESPN2, Travel Channel, and FOXSW to get my poker fix, the Independant Film Channel, then NBC for local news and weather. I think that should only constitute the smallest package to purchase! ;)

[skjalm.livejournal.com]

I'm not familiar with how precisely the TIVO boxes work, but here's a couple of ideas I've gotten while building a PVR system:

• No fans in the cabinet! They are noisy and there's a risk the bearings get worn out so they get really noisy.


• Automagically updated list of programs/shows/channels. There are some online databases for this. You might want to take a look at XMLTV.


• Music playback. mp3, ogg/vorbis, wma etc. If the machine is big enough to handle video playback it can also play music. And if it also has a network connection of some kind it would be nice to hook it up to whatever source you use for music (possibly even ShoutCast and similar services).


• Efficient way of editing playlists for music playback (if you include it). If you want an example of something that doesn't work, try MythMusic. It looks up data (either from ID3 tags or a database, not sure) everytime you move the (key controlled) cursor over a file. This means that it takes about one or two seconds per entry to scroll through the list of files. You can page{up,down} and that helps a lot, but it still isn't nice.


• Picture-in-picture (if that's what it's called?) where you have another program than the one you're watching in a small window in a corner (or, preferably, whereever the user wants it to be).


• Handling of conflicts between recording and watching shows. This includes overlapping recordings. If it can only play or record a total of one show (as is the case with a machine with a single tv-tuner card) it needs to be taken into consideration.


• As joenotcharles said: detection of screen formats.


• Detection (and removal) of commercials. TV stations are going to hate you for that one ;-)


• Some kind of news feed. RSS or whatever it's called (another thing I've never gotten around to look at). Getting /. on your TV would be kind of nifty ;-)


• Subtitle language selection (if that's possible?) and/or subtitle removal, possibly with a bar that covers them. Seriously! I used to tape pieces of paper on my (parents') TV back in school so I could practise listening to and understanding English. When we got a TV with texttv I was really glad because texttv has precisely this option.


• Pause while watching TV. It would require some kind of buffer that gets filled while you go to the toilet and flush another buffer ;-)


• Themes. Not a really important feature, but if you want to make a really spiffy looking box with a lot of nifty features that are good for capturing customers this would be nice.

As for owning one I really have no idea. The TIVO concept, and pay-per-view for that matter, has never really been a hit here in Denmark. You normally pay for a channel and then you get all the shows for that price.

[tjernobyl.livejournal.com]

One of the main things that peeved me about satellite and led me to getting rid of it was the guide. It was slow, not searchable, and had no facility for deleting the channels I knew I'd never want to see. A good TV guide would be much appreciated.