Computer copy movie tivo

TiVo Hits The Road With Portable Players

A new mobile infrastructure sprang into being on Monday, with manufacturers introducing a new line of video players capable of playing Tivo-recorded videos, all based on a new embedded processor from Advanced Micro Devices.

The three announcements – the TiVo-to-Go service, the AMD Alchemy Au1200 embedded processor, and new personal video players like the Vassili from First International Computer – were not intrinsically tied to one another, in the sense that the TiVo video will only be played back on AMD-based video players.

However, the announcements set the stage for similar disclosures this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where chip and PC makers have discovered the lucrative new market of consumer electronics.

The TiVo service will be pushed to Series2 TiVo boxes as a software upgrade, but not all of them. With the service, users will be able to connect their PCs to the TiVo box, although the transfer of video requires special TiV Desktop software. Each user is assigned a media access number and password to access the content. However, users will not be able to copy "protected" content, such as pay-for-view movies. Future programs encoded with the so-called "broadcast flag" preventing content from being copied would not be able to copy the video, as well.

Users who sign up on the TiVo website can be placed on a priority list to get faster access to the new service.

"Yes, it could well be a few weeks," a posting on the company's message boards said. "The first people to receive the download are a random sampling of customers that we will use to measure how many support resources we need available during the release. In a few weeks, the roll out will be accelerated once we are comfortable that everything is going as planned. So, if you sign up today, you could get the update over the next few days, or in a few weeks. Please DO NOT keep forcing calls/connections since if sever loads get too high, we will have to slow down the rollout so that the servers are not impacted. When you get the software download, a message will appear so that you can start using it right away. We appreciate your patience -- people on the priority list will definitely get it sooner than the general population."

A future version of the service will allow customers to burn the stored content to a DVD, through a partnership with Sonic Solutions and its MyDVD software. The ability to burn TiVo-recorded movies has been promised since last January.

TiVo has also prevented a number of its branded boxes from accessing the TiVo-to-Go service, as well, including customers who have purchased the DirectTV DirectTiVo unit. Oddly, the service is not available to customers who own a DVD recorder with TiVo, such as those offered from Humax, Toshiba, and Pioneer.

The service will also allow recorded content to be pushed to mobile devices, such as two new personal media players from FIC and GoVideo. While the new players can connect directly to DVD recorders and other devices through their integrated USB ports to download movies, the players will apparently need to use a PC as a middleman to download TiVo content.

The new FIC Vassili player will include a 3.6-inch color display, 20-GB internal storage and is compatible with both PC and Mac computers. The 180-gram device will measure 125 × 89.5 × 19 mm, include audio-out and video-out ports, and support MPEG4, MP3, WMA, WAV, ASF, AVI and JPEG formats. A removable, rechargeable lithium-ion battery will be included.

GoVideo did not disclose its own player's specifications, but said that the device would ship in the second quarter. The company will show off its first prototypes at the CES show this week.

"TiVo-To-Go enables the secure transfer of broadcast content from a TiVo box to a personal media player and allows consumers to enjoy their TV shows anywhere, in the living room, on a plane, or in a hotel," said David Sandford, director of technology & licensing business at TiVo, in a statement. "Portability is a key desire for TiVo subscribers and key innovations in embedded processing, such as the Au1200 processor from AMD, help make it possible to transfer TiVo content directly to portable devices."

AMD said that its new Alchemy Au1200 processor did not require a DSP for movie playback. AMD integrated movie decoder logic directly into the chip, the company said, eliminating the need for a separate component. AMD also wrote its own movie playback software for its OEMs, the company said.