Auric,
Here's the TiVo Schkoop... Kinda Like Wink it looks like to me...
tivo.com
********************
Remember when television was the nightly event in homes across America? A special time when families huddled around the set eagerly anticipating a favorite show? Today, technology has triggered an explosion of programming choices: hundreds of new networks broadcasting thousands of new shows each and every day. Yet people still struggle to find something worth watching. Surf the channels, check the grid, and surf some more…eventually, bleary eyed and exhausted, you settle for the same old stale TV. Programs that you really didn't want to watch, but then again. . .there was nothing else on.
Television is about to become an event again, a personalized event. Just what you want to see, when you want to see it. TV is about to become TiVo.
TiVo is a revolution in television entertainment - a new service that customizes television to fit your schedule and your interests. We call it "Personal Television", and it's only available on TiVo. Gone are the days of "one size fits all" television. TiVo delivers the best of television, always ready when you are - your favorite shows, movies, and entertainment - as well as new programs that match your specific interests and tastes. Automatically. No fuss. No grids. No surfing. You're in control. TiVo provides the perfect television experience - entertaining programming that fits your life. After all. . .life is too short to waste time searching a grid!
TiVo will start visiting living rooms later this year. Click this button to receive more information about when he'll be in your neighborhood!
The TiVo service is the result of amazing new personalization and media management technologies developed by TiVo's engineering team - an unequaled "Dream Team" of experts in the field of television and multi-media entertainment. With experience ranging from companies such as Silicon Graphics, Palm, Apple, Sun, Next, WebTV, Navio, Sony, OpenTV, 3DO, Macromedia, Sega, and Minerva, these industry wizards have created a robust set of technology building blocks that form the basis for the TiVo service and receiver.
TiVo literally turns broadcast television upside down - giving viewers ultimate control over what they choose to watch, and when they choose to watch it. This TV-On-Demand technology is embodied in the TiVo Center (TM), a new media component that works with the TiVo Service to scan and save the very best of the programming day. Collections of your favorite entertainment are constantly replenished and refreshed. It's like having your own television network…a network that always broadcasts the "good stuff"!
The TiVo Center also provides viewers with incredible real-time control over the television they watch. Any program - even live broadcasts in progress - can be paused, rewound, or fast-forwarded. There's even ultra slo-mo for the sports fanatic. You'll never miss a goal, touchdown, basket, or once-in-a-lifetime homerun again. Drift off at the end of the movie? Rewind it! Unexpected company? Save it for later! TiVo will make sure you don't miss a thing.
TiVo redefines interactive television. Numerous failed products have mis-led consumers to believe "interactive" means computer-ish interfaces, button-packed remotes, and clumsy navigation. TiVo doesn't try to replace television with "something else". TiVo gives viewers the entertainment they want with simple, easy-to-understand interfaces which look and feel like television. There are no static, "webby" screens to ponder, or thousand-line grids to navigate. The viewing experience is always fresh, lively, and fun. TiVo is as simple as watching TV. Everyone can do it.
The TiVo Center's custom architecture is cost effective and reliable, providing a richer, effortless television experience at a more affordable price than common grid-based digital VCR's. The flexible design of the TiVo Service allows it to run on any number of new consumer platforms, while the TiVo Center technologies have been designed for easy integration into existing consumer products, including cable set top decoders and satellite receivers.
The inner workings of TiVo's technologies are closely guarded secrets…protected by the United States Patent Office, and licensable from TiVo.
TiVo will start visiting living rooms later this year. Click this button to receive more information about when he'll be in your neighborhood!
******************
ONE TO WATCH
TiVo takes a second shot at delivering personalized television services.
By Deborah Claymon
The Red Herring magazine
August 1998
When Time Warner shut down the Full Service Network (FSN), its expensive experiment in interactive television, one year ago, the prospects for changing the state of broadcast television seemed bleak. But Jim Barton, then an executive at Silicon Graphics and one of the FSN's architects, wasn't ready to concede. That August he joined Mike Ramsay, another former SGI executive, to form Sunnyvale-based TiVo, the latest attempt to give consumers more control over the growing mass of TV content.
According to TiVo (formerly known as Teleworld), the FSN failed in part because its centralized system could never scale to accommodate the millions of simultaneous requests from users. TiVo's solution is to move the processing of interactive entertainment directly into the home: the company has developed what it calls an extensible time-shifting architecture (ETA), a combination of proprietary silicon chips, other hardware, and application software that manages real-time streaming of audio and video. Much like a VCR (but without requiring complicated programming), ETA digitally records any television broadcast for later viewing. ETA also offers other VCR-like controls, such as pause and rewind functions, even for live broadcasts. The company hopes to license ETA to makers of televisions, set-top boxes, and VCRs, but TiVo will control the service.
The result, the company hopes, will be the first truly personalized television service. "With TiVo, people will never again be controlled by the broadcaster's schedule," claims Ed MacBeth, vice president of marketing and business development. The company has also created what it calls viewer-graphic profiling technology, which tracks usage so that it can recommend future programs and record intelligently; for example, the system will download only the Seinfeld reruns you haven't recorded yet.
TiVo plans to roll out its first service by mid-1999. To date, it has raised $3 million in one round from New Enterprise Associates (tech guru Stewart Alsop represents NEA on the TiVo board), Institutional Venture Partners, and the founders. Another venture capital infusion of $4.5 million was planned for early summer. |
