TVSquad

Sure, it's great news that Comcast is finally rolling out set-top-boxes to New England customers who sign up for TiVo service. But it would be nice if these new boxes actually worked the way they were supposed to.

Blogger Steve Garfield, who we've already pointed out is one of the first non-Comcast employees to get TiVo service on a Motorola box shot a little video to show off some of the differences between a Comcast TiVo and a regular TiVo that you would buy from a store. For example, the Comcast remote has a couple of extra buttons for controlling online features like filtering programs by category. Want to see just movies? No problem. Just kids programs? Easy. How about only HD content? Umm, yeah.

It took a whopping 53 seconds for Garfield's TiVo to filter out all of the non-HD programs. He reports that he has contacted Comcast and they're aware of the problem and working on a fix. But you'd think this would be the sort of thing they would have addressed before deploying the software.

[via TiVo Blog]

Come September, MythTV, Media Portal, and GB-PVR users could be stuck staring at a blank screen. That's when Zap2it Labs will stop offering free program guide data in the easily parsed XML format used by those and other PC-based PVR applications.

The developers of CTpvr, another software-based personal video recorder are developing a product that will offer data that is nearly identical to that currently offered by Zap2it. TV listings will include data like genre, cast, crew, advisories, and original air dates.

CTpvr hasn't announced pricing yet, but the company will charge users a monthly or annual fee for access to the data. For that reason alone, I suspect that this system will be used by CTpvr customers, while free and open-source applications like MythTV will look elsewhere.

Several MythTV, XMLTV, and MacProgGuide developers have already come together to form Schedules Direct. The group, previously known as EasyTV Data, is looking at alternatives to the Zap2it Labs data that can be easily plugged into PVR software to provide you with that electronic program guide goodness you've come to rely on.

A few weeks back, Zap2it Labs announced that they would shut off their free XML TV listings in September, due to abuse of the service. This could spell big trouble for MythTV, GB-PVR, and other personal video recording software packages that rely on Zap2it for their electronic program guide data.

A group of developers from MythTV, XMLTV, and MacProgGuide have formed Easy TV Data in response to the announcement. The group is engaged in some super-secret behind the scenes development to provide reliable TV listings after Zap2it cuts the cord on September 1st.

The simplest alternative is to use screen scraping software that would visit TV listing web pages and grab the data. But this is not as reliable as the XML data Zap2it currently provides, since web services can and do frequently change their site design. Hopefully the Easy TV Data group have something a bit more exciting in mind.

[via Download Squad]

IceTV offers Australian subscribers access to electronic program guide information. Sounds simple enough, but Australian broadcasters are less than happy about that fact. The country has a law that considers program guide data to be the property of broadcasters, making Australia one of the most PVR-unfriendly countries around, because a good PVR requires access to television listings.

So what does IceTV do? It one-ups things by planning a new service that will allow IceTV subscribers to download TV shows and movies. The company is working with movie studios to secure content, but those deals won't engender any good will from the already annoyed Australian broadcast companies.

The service will initially work with PCs running Windows Vista and Windows XP Media Center Edition. Mac compatibility is being held up due to DRM issues, but should be available in the future.

The Open Source Windows PC-based Media Portal now has a web interface. That mean's you'll be able to perform a number of basic media center and PVR functions on your PC over the internet using a web browser.

• View your TV guide
• Schedule recordings
• Cancel/delete scheduled recordings
• View recorded programs
• View upcoming recordings.

No support for streaming videos over the net yet, but that could possibly be on deck for a future release.

[via Missing Remote]

I've spent a lot of time as a journalist covering City Council sessions in Philadelphia, but I've never sat in on a hearing quite as geeky as this. A Lincoln, Nebraska City Councilman will hold hearings in March on Time Warner's PVRs which as pretty much anyone in the country who uses them can tell you, kinda stink.

Councilman Jonathon Cook -- a Time Warner customer -- says subscribers "are not getting what they paid for," with Time Warner PVRs. Apparently the city's franchise agreement with the cable company allows City Council to hold such hearings. It's entirely clear what actions the city could take against Time Warner in response to the hearings, but if there's one thing I learned during my aforementioned years covering legislative sessions, it's that you don't need actual power to hold a public hearing, you just need the urge to grandstand on a topic.

Lincoln Time Warner customers have complained that a new program guide rolled out by the cable company is both ugly and buggy, and that the cable boxes are slow to react to button presses on a remote control, all of which sound par for the course for generic cable company PVRs.

The Lincoln Journal Star, which reports the story also has a page filled with customer complaints/suggestions for Time Warner.

[via digg]

Sure, those new SideShow-enabled remote controls look pretty cool. But what if you don't want to leave your computer on all the time just so you can do nifty things like check out an electronic program guide on your remote control?

The tvCompass remote control includes 802.11b/g, a 2.2-inch QVGA LCD, and a speaker for listening to audio alerts or sound files. You can control multiple devices, and can even receive equipment codes and electronic program guide data over the air. Your data can be backed up to a tvCompass network server.

You can also use the built in WiFi to access games, videos, and web content directly on the remote control.

No info on pricing or availability just yet, but I'd say it'll make the Logitech Harmony remote look cheap.

[via Mobile Magazine]