TiVo is Great!

Now that we have used out TiVo for three months, it has become an integral part of our TV viewing experience. It is a great supplement for over the air broadcast TV. The ability to watch programs at more convenient times and to access streaming content are key features.

My wife is not comfortable with a lot of technology, and she can use the TiVo for what she needs without any problem. She even said last night that she would like a TiVo box for our TV in out bedroom.

Our six year old grandson has a TiVo at home and is a whiz with it - of course.

Vudu vs. Netflix updated

The performance of both Vudu and Netflix streaming has improved with the installation of powerline Ethernet. You make an explicit choice of quality with Vudu and pay more for higher quality. However, it is difficult (or not possible) to downgrade to a lower quality, once a higher level of quality has been selected.

Netflix tests your link at the beginning of each film and sends you the best quality that it believes that you can support. It is automatic and will back down automatically if the link degrades while streaming.

I like the Netflix approach best. However, I think that Vudu generally provides better video quality. However, Netflix is certainly good enough and I would not choose to buy a Vudu film rather than watching it on Netflix. I would watch Vudu only if content I wanted to see was not available from Netflix.

Replacement VBR231 Blue Ray Player Arrived

After three weeks, I received a replacement VBR231. It works well. The Powerline Ethernet really improves the quality of streaming compared to WiFi in my home. I was able to watch Vudu content with 720p HD. Vudu said that its 1080p service would work for me, but that did not proved to be the case in operation. 720p is a big upgrade over SD.

Vizio VBR231 Blu-ray Player Failed

Just after installing the TiVo, my Vizio VBR Blu-ray play failed. I did knock the HDMI connector out of the Vizio while installing. After reinstalling the HDMI connector, the Blu-ray would not work. It would show the Vizio logo after powering on and then the screen would go blank and the TV indicated that it had lost the HDMI signal.

After some testing to verify that the HDMI cable was working OK, Vizio agreed to send me another VBR231 as a warranty  replacement. I have sent them the broken player and am now waiting for the new one.

This will be my third VBR231. The first one was an out-of-box failure. The second one failed after less than six months of use. This does not bode well for this product.

Powerline Ethernet

I bought a pair of Western Digital Livewire Powerline Ethernet adapters to connect my TiVo to my home network. I had to plug the Livewire adapter into a power strip, which Western Digital does not recommend. The Geek Squad person at Best Buy told me that it would work fine. He was right. I get better than 180 Mbps out of a possible 200 Mbps through the power strip and the extension cord that connects it to the outlet.

All I had to do was to plug in the adapters, and they worked. Their performance as seen from the TiVo has been great! I recommend this approach.

The Livewire adapter that is connected to my broadband router is plugged directly into a wall outlet. I tried connecting it to another power strip and the perfomance dropped to 40 Mbps. It looks like it is a good idea to plug the router side adapter directly into a wall outlet.

I selected the Livewire because cnet.com's reviews showed that it had the best performance for units that have multiple ports. Having multiple ports will let me connect both my TiVo and my Blu-ray play to the Ethernet network.

TiVo Installation Problems

I ordered the TiVo with a TiVo N Wireless Adapter. I was not able to get it to work. It was apparent to me early on that the adapter was not working. It took me most part of a day on the phone with TiVo support to convince them of that fact.

TiVo sent me another TiVo N Wireless Adapter. This one worked, but its performance was not adequate to support the TiVo. I solved the problem with Powerline Ethernet adapters.

It appears that it is not possible to test the TiVo N Wireless Adapter from a PC. I thought that this would be a good way to confirm the operation of the adapter, but it just would not work for me.

I think that TiVo should provide diagnostics to confirm the Internet connection during the startup phase for the TiVo. These diagnostics are only available after the startup phase has completed. A diagnostic procedure that would identify Internet connection issues at the start of the startup phase would make it much easier to resolve these problem.

New TiVo

I now have a TiVo Premier XL, which has a 1 TB drive. I wanted the ability to record shows for watching at more convenient times. The TiVo integrates Internet TV content with the broadcast TV and makes it easier and more convenient to switch between them. So far the TiVo has provided a real step up in our TV viewing experience.

Usage Charges: The Bane of Internet TV

The Washington Post published an article describing how the FCC is supporting broadband usage charges. This means that you would have to pay on a per megabyte basis. In addition to your monthly fee to Netflix, you would have to pay a fee to  your broadband provider every time you watched a movie.

Now, it is likely that a usage based broadband plan would include some number of megabytes before the usage charges kicked in. However, these allowances will probably only cover a couple of films per month in addition to normal Internet traffic.

Usage charges will be set high enough to make Netflix streaming and other Internet TV services expensive enough to reduce their competitiveness against the broadband provider's own TV offering.

This is a great idea for the broadband providers and a bad idea for us users.

Netflix Accounts for 20% of Internet Traffic

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle said that Netflix accounts for 20% of Internet traffic during the evening hours, the prime time for TV viewing. At this rate Netflix and the other over the top Internet TV providers will dominate Internet trafic. This will have major consequences.

I expect that the broadband service providers, both cable and DSL, will implement usage caps and use other means to limit the use of their networks for over the top TV viewing. They will see Netfflix streaming and the other over the top Internet TV services as swamping their networks without bringing in new revenues. They will also see these streaming services as important competition to their own TV services as more and more people cut the cord.

This will be viewed as a major network neutrality issue and will become quite nasty. Personally, I wish the broadband providers would get over it and install fiber everywhere.

Comcast's Attack on Netflix Streaming

Light Reading has published an article describing how Comcast is forcing Level 3 to pay to deliver Netflix streaming traffic to Comcast broadband customers. This will raise Netflix's costs for delivering streaming video to Comcast customers.

Netflix streaming is a direct competitor to Comcast's own video broadcast and video on demand services. It is using its position as the broadband service supplier to improve its competitive position. Level 3 is calling this a net neutrality issue.

This will work in Comcast's interest in the short run. However, in the long run it will make "cord cutting" more attractive for its broadband customers. Making Netflix more expensive will make it more attractive for its customers to drop its services and move to over the air broadcast TV supplemented with Internet streaming. This will save most customers $100 per month.

Network Problems

In the last week or so I have had difficulty connecting my VBR231 to my WiFi network. I do not know why, but I have noticed that I also have not been able to connect my Nokia N95 phone to my WiFi network at the same time.

The other night it took several attempts before I could connect to the WiFi network. After I was able to connect, Netflix said that the speed of the connection was slow and that I would seed interruptions while viewing the video that I had selected and gave me the option to cancel. I went ahead and had only one very slight interruption.

I assume it is a problem with the network itself. Maybe weather changes are causing it. Maybe the stars and tides are not in alignment. In any case, the WiFi signal is weak in that room in the best of times. A less determined user would give up on Internet TV with this kind of performance.

U.S. TV Networks Backing Cable

The Washington Post published an article today saying that fewer TV shows will be available free over the net. The gist of the article is that the major U.S. TV networks have decided that they can make more money by backing the cable giants than offering advertising supported free content over the web.

I am sure that they are right in the short run. However, these networks no longer control the TV landscape as they did in the past. People are waking up to the fact that they do not have to pay $100 or more per month to the cable and satellite companies for their TV programming. Over the air digital has significantly improved the variety of free content, and the web is providing interesting alternatives such as Netflix streaming.

The quality and variety of these web-based alternatives will only increase in number over time. Netflix is only $10 per month. Other web-based services will emerge that will provide cost-effective alternatives.

The networks should keep this in mind and not give up on web-based delivery so early. In time they will find profitable ways to use web delivery. In fact, having a strong web distribution channel will increase their negotiating power over the cable and satellite companies.

MLB.com vs. Broadcast TV

On Saturday we watch the first Giants Phillys playoff game. We made it a big family party. We watched the HD (720p) FOX broadcast with a PIP window with the MLB Pitchtrax also on the screen.

The FOX HD broadcast had much better image quality on the TV than the MLB.com feed. There is no contest. It was also easier to follow the FOX broadcast. It was interesting to watch the Pitchtrax window to see where the pitches were going. The PIP window was small enough that it was a bit difficult to see the Pitchtrax. (Maybe it is time to upgrade from a 42" TV to a 60" unit :-)

MLB.com is great if you cannot get a broadcast feed. It is also an interesting supplement to the broadcast feed. It is not a replacement for the broadcast feed, at least for today.

VBR231 DVD Quality Problems

I played a favorite DVD the other night - Carlos Saura's Flamenco. The image quality was poor for much of time. Sauras uses a lot of panels behind the musicians and dancers that are lit with bright colors. These scenes produced a fringe around the people similar to what you seen in a 3D movie without glasses. It was pretty distracting.

Other scenes that did not used these lit, colored panels were fine. Other DVDs we have watched have been fine. I think it is a problem with the way Vizio up scales the DVD to HD. It appears to be confused by the lit panels of unusual colors.

Fourth MLB Playoff Game

We watched the fourth Giants MLB playoff game. Giants won!

Used the same approach as before with two feeds, one embedded in the other. Worked fine with a minimum of synchronization problems. We are getting used to it and found this approach was OK when listening to the live radio feed, which was about 30 seconds ahead.

The MLB streaming is a fine way to watch a game if it is the only thing available. The Championship games start on Saturday and will be broadcast on a channel that is available over the air to that. I expect we will watch that rather than the MLB streaming feed. I will let you know how I feel about the difference after I watch one of those games.

Game 3

We watched the third Giants/Braves playoff game yesterday. We are figuring out how to use MLB streaming TV. The HD download really improved the video quality - no  more smearing or pixelization. However, the HD software introduced a 45 second delay between the video stream and the live radio broadcast, which made the radio unusable.

The HD software also significantly increased the delay between the windows in the four feed display. One of the feeds was also shown with low resolution and a lot of smearing and pixelization. It was too distracting. We went to a PIP two stream display with the primary stream filling the screen and the second screen shown in a smaller window in the upper left hand corner. We used the Pitchtrax feed as the primary window and the home plate feed as the secondary window. This allowed us to follow the plays pretty well.

The two windows were reasonably well synchronized and had to be resynchronized only once. Generally the audio feed was about one second ahead of the Pitchtrax screen and the Home Plate feed was a couple of seconds behind, which made for a reasonable experience.

With this approach, the MLB TV streaming is still not as good as the broadcast but has become a reasonable way to follow the game.

Playoffs Game 2

We watched the Giants second game last night. I tried another graphics card driver on my laptop to no avail. It still crashes connected to the TV using HDMI. I did run the video for a couple hours on this machine without the HDMI connection, so it appears to be a hardware/driver problem with the HDMI interface.

We watched using four camera feeds - center field, home base, first base, and third base. This was enough to be able to see all of the action, at least most of the time. We tried the Pitchtrax view for a while, but gave up because it was distracting. Pitchtrax shows the arc of the ball and the pitch placement relative to the strike zone.

We got tired of the audio feed and turned on the local KNBR radio broadcast that we prefer. We prefer their audio feed. The problem is that the streamed video is delayed by about 10 seconds, so that the radio feed "gave us a view of the future". This lack of synchronization was rather distracting.

The four streamed windows lost synchronization. You would see the action happen in one window a bit before you would see in in another window. I could bring them back together by refreshing the window. Again, this was rather annoying.

I just found that I can get higher resolution video with a download. I have downloaded it and tested it. It seems to work  fine. I will have more to say after tomorrows game.

MLB TV Day One

Watched a great game with an amazing 1-0 win by Lincecum and the Giants. The MLB streaming experience was clearly inferior to a TV broadcast. I needed to have four windows up to follow the action because MLB does not switch cameras to where the action is. With four screens it was hard to follow and occasionally one of the screens would get out of synch with the others. The image quality was marginal. Lots of smearing and pixelization. This was quite noticeable on the TV.

My laptop gave the best presentation because it provided full screen. However, it would crash after 15 minutes or so and was really unusable. My wife's laptop never crashed but it did not have the full screen option. This meant that the windows were smaller. One advantage to this is that I could use the TV's PIP to bring up a broadcast window along with the four MLB window. A real multitasking opportunity.

After one game, I would say that I would abandon MLB TV for a commercial broadcast at first opportunity.

Streaming MLB Playoffs

Our San Francisco Giants made it to the playoffs and will be playing the Atlanta Braves today. The playoffs are being broadcast only on a cable/satellite channel, so we will not be able to see them. We subscribed to the MLB playoff screening for $9.95, which gives access to all of the playoff games with no blackouts. A pretty good deal - about the price of one beer at the ballpark. The MLB service lets me select up to four camera feeds simultaneously, which should provide an interesting experience.

I am going to connect my laptop to my TV and watch the games on the TV. It will be interesting to see how this goes. I know that my laptop freezes when streaming to the TV. I expect that this is due to a faulty driver. I am not sure how to isolate this problem and would appreciate any suggestions.

I will let you know how this works out.

Noisy Drive

One slight annoyance with the VBR231 is that you can hear the drive spinning when you are watching from a disk. Our previous DVD player was absolutely quiet. This is not a major issue, but it is a slightly bothersome.