Surf Your Favorite TiVo Blogs From The Comfort Of Your Mac
One of the things I love about TiVo is that the community is always tinkering and building applications for the rest of us to play with. Some people were upset when TiVo hackers built a program that allowed for TiVo to go on the Mac, before TiVo even offered it, but I saw it as a sign of how far TiVo owners will go, if something stands in between them and their TiVo.
Of course the TiVo hacks haven’t stopped there, so you can imagine how thrilled I was when I saw that Alex at the unofficial TiVo Blog was unveiling a widget that allows you to read your favorite TiVo related blogs, one of which happened to be mine 
from the comfort of your living room couch desk.
I love the idea of bringing TiVo closer to the Net, but like any TiVo related application, restrictions do apply (DirecTV subscribers need not apply, series 1 owners in Canada may be left out in the cold, you must have a broadband enabled TiVo to participate. Contest not valid in states where TiVo is not legal . . . )
Just so that I had all the details clear, I sent an email to Alex with a few questions and here are his responses.
1.) Does it work with the series 3? (say yes say yes say yesssss!!!)
“Does the HME api work with Series 3 TiVos? If yes, you could use Galleon to subscribe to the RSS feed that I use for this widget (http://galleon.tv/content/view/21/41/). Since I don’t have an Series 3 TiVo, I can’t remember if the HME api is supported yet. I know that the Series 3 doesn’t support TiVoToGo but I can’t remember if it supports HME. All the widget does is subscribe to an rss feed (which I created with Yahoo Pipes).”
So his answer was maybe, but he’s not sure. Truth be told, the minute anyone starts talking about all this technical stuff, I start to glaze over. My impression was that Galleon didn’t work with the TiVo series 3, but I’m sure that my readers know more about this than I do. What I really want to know is why Alex hasn’t gotten a series 3 yet? Can someone give him some TiVo referral love, so that we can get the “unofficial” TiVo blog up to speed?
2.) What is this OS X thing I keep hearing about, I know that Apple does something with these widget thingies, but how do I get this on a PC?
“A dashboard widget is simply just a little “application” that provides you with some kind of quick information. Vista has gadgets which are essentially the same thing as OS X’s widgets.”
Gadgets, widgets, they are all the same to me. Thomas Hawk keeps trying to get me join to cult of Apple, but I am afraid to even test drive his machine after seeing how powerful Steve Job’s force field can be.
3.) What files does it support? I doubt it can read flash YouTube videos, but is there a way that I could blog mpeg2 files and you could theorhetically download them? What about photos?
“Photos should work but I don’t think flash will. ”
The quality would be terrible, but being able to get YouTube onto my TiVo would be worth be the terrible resolution. Photos are definetely nice. The next step is to add a Flickr feed for any photos tagged TiVo.
4.) I know that it’s only designed to be a reader, but is there a way to somehow hijack this so that someone could build a browser instead? How hot would it be to have the option of the internet on TiVo?
“It would be cool to have a browser on your TiVo however, this widget is meant to be run from within OS X. It doesn’t depend on a Tivo. Have you seen this TiVo HME application?”
The link looks promising and is something that I will investigate, but sadly for now, my dreams of being able to surf the entire internet with my TiVo will still have to wait. At least I can console myself by knowing that if TiVo left a backdoor open somewhere, that the TiVo hackers will figure it out. In the meantime, I think that TiVo is missing an excellent opportunity to be selling wireless keyboards at an unconsiounable price level, but that is a topic for another blog post.
Even though, I don’t think that I’ll personally be able to take advantage of this latest TiVo exploit, I am glad that Alex helped add something to the community. TiVo might not be the biggest company in the world, but they have some of the best customers. For now, I don’t mind wating because I know that it’s only a matter of time before I’ll be able to program my series 3 to take me back in time.
Update – I had to amend the head line because I saw TV Squad’s coverage of the widget and I clearly misunderstood what these whole widget thingies are about. How embarassing, this will show you how extensive my Apple knowledge really is. If you actually want to get your RSS feeds on your TiVo, you can do it on the series 2 TiVo, but you need to go a different route.
Posted on April 25th, 2007 by Davis
Filed under: Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, TV, Technology, TiVo, Web 2.0
Davis,
.
Thanks for the referral mention. Maybe now I’ll be able to get a Series 3
The main thing that has prevented me from getting a Series 3 is the price. The price has come down some but I’m still not ready to drop ~$600 on a Series 3.
Call me cheap…..
I say you treat the purchase as a business expense and write the cost off of your taxes, that should save you at least a couple hundred. High def TiVo is really cool.