TiVo has lost its way

Saw this post on ZatzNotFunny, referring to a Times ad, and it struck a chord. The comments to the entry are even more telling.

I was thinking about this anyway on my own. The last few updates to the TiVo service have done nothing but find new ways to shove ads in my face. 

I am now shown an ad on my main menu, in the "Now Playing" section where my programs are listed, and in each grouped program, they shove "relevant" ads for other things into the GUI as if they were just another program that had been recorded. (So, I'll see three "Jeopardy" recordings and a "Want to get away to Aruba?" ad, as if there were four recordings made. That's so annoying..) 

And finally, now every time I hit pause during a show, I get shown an ugly dialogue that offers me MORE ADS, blocking an entire bottom-third of the screen.

Oh, yes, you can dismiss the "Pause" menu, but it just reappears on the next program you watch. The onus is on you to make it go away. And you can't do anything about the other ads.

TiVo seems to care more about providing metrics to networks and advertisers, and find new ways to bring advertisers to me, than what they used to say was their mission. "TV, your way".

I would have NO problem with any of this if the service were free. But I'm paying TiVo a monthly fee for this, and they keep finding new ways to put ads back in my life. The reason I got my TiVo to begin with was to AVOID ADS!

Most other online services have a "free" or "lite" version (ad-supported), and if you pay, they will switch off the ads. Why not TiVo?

TiVo, do you hear the irony?

I can no longer recommend TiVo, and as soon as there is any viable alternative, I will be dumping my TiVo box. The only thing saving them right now is that the alternatives (Comcast's DVR, among others) really suck, and the streaming services don't quite have everything I need. But they will, one day, and on that day TiVo had better watch out.

It's a shame. The service really is fantastic, but I was paying for TV *my* way. This is not my way at all.

Pod FIESTA!

If you're in the Pod Group (and you know who you are!), let's take up Rob on his offer to host a Fiesta this summer and participate in the "Let's attend the PodFiesta" poll to see when we can all make it!

The link to the poll is below.

Testing

I'm now using Flock a lot more than I thought I would be.. especially since integrating all my various social networks has become critical, now that I'm on so very many of them.

Flock 2.x is a huge leap forward... I may just keep trying this out!

That's all for now.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

TiVo Desktop 2.7 Released

I thought this announcement was pretty cool.. reposted from the TiVo Blog (original link down at the bottom):

TiVo Desktop 2.7 has hit the streets. This Windows software update packs several enhancements. On the TiVoToGo front, Desktop now functions more like TiVo itself by allowing you to specific the number of transferred shows that are kept on your PC. This long sought after feature is pretty critical if you have limited storage and a predilection for high def content. Another requested improvement has been partially implemented, by allowing you to browse previously transferred shows in folders back on the TiVo. For those who’ve paid for Plus ($25) functionality, the codec package appears to have been upgraded - additional file formats and containers (such as HD MKV) can be transcoded and transferred from PC to TiVo for playback. Although power users or those on a budget might prefer to continue using pyTiVo. (Thanks, Zeo!)

View Original Article

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Retrospect: Linux client keeps deferring

I had a troublesome Linux client being backed up by Retrospect (Windows). This client kept automatically deferring each backup request, causing a never-ending loop of "backup.. request.. defer", and the client never got backed up.

Thanks to the thread linked above, the solution was relatively simple. For the proactive backup script, set the Countdown to 0, and it won't try to pop-up a window to tell the (non-existent, since this is a headless server) user that it's about to be backed up. No pop-up, no option to defer, no auto-defer.

I think this is because the server can't pop up a window to ask for deferral, so it auto-defers.

Another mystery solved.

Vista 32-bit versus 64-bit

What is the maximum RAM that can be used by Vista 32-bit versus 64-bit?

I thought I knew the answer to this one. 4GB for 32-bit, higher for 64-bit (depending on the flavor of Vista 64-bit).

But recently I saw a screencap of a machine reporting 16GB RAM -- on 32-bit Vista. How is this possible?

Apparently, Vista Service Pack 1 changed the way Vista reports memory. It now reports the amount of RAM that is physically installed in the machine, versus how much is available to Vista.

Vista 32-bit can only address 4GB maximum, no more, even though it now reports more.

I found the answer at Microsoft's knowledgebase, here. The various limits for each version of Vista are listed elsewhere, but this article explained clearly why Vista 32-bit will report more memory is available than it can actually use.

Cleared it up for me, anyway. :-)

XServe Server Monitor crash - Fixed!

I administer an XServe for our group at work, and like to keep the Server Monitor utility open every now and then to make sure the box is up and happy.

I guess I haven't tried running it in a while (since 11/5, in fact, which is when I installed a bunch of OS and Apple Remote Desktop updates), but when I launched it this morning, it just crashed to the desktop immediately on launch, with this message in the console:


12/2/08 2:31:48 PM [0x0-0x502502].com.apple.servermonitor[15273] dyld: Library not loaded: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/PlatformHardwareManagement.framework/Versions/A/PlatformHardwareManagement
12/2/08 2:31:48 PM [0x0-0x502502].com.apple.servermonitor[15273]   Referenced from: /Applications/Server/Server Monitor.app/Contents/MacOS/Server Monitor
12/2/08 2:31:48 PM [0x0-0x502502].com.apple.servermonitor[15273]   Reason: Incompatible library version: Server Monitor requires version 1.2.0 or later, but PlatformHardwareManagement provides version 1.0.0

The last line was the key, I had a wrong version of a framework library.

Checking Time Machine, it turns out that an older version of the library was installed on my machine during the ARD update on 11/5. The link at the top of this post is a link to an Apple Discussion Forum posting that indicates this was a problem with Apple's updater for ARD, which dropped the old library in my Frameworks directory and broke Server Monitor.

Two clicks in Time Machine, and the old (newer) version of the library was back in place, and everything's happy again.

I hope this helps someone else who is having trouble getting their Server Monitor running.

MobileMe Contacts Blip

After months of having pretty good luck with MobileMe Sync, between three Macs and my iPhone, I suddenly noticed that some contacts were not getting synced from my desktops to my "database in the cloud". I'd have, say, 302 contacts on my desktop, and 301 contacts in MobileMe (and thus, 301 contacts on my iPhone). The iPhone always agreed with MobileMe, those two stayed in sync perfectly well, so it was just the desktops that were confused.

I solved this at first by simply finding the contact that was not being sync'd, making a fake edit to the entry, and then forcing a MobileMe synchronization. That worked. But I found that I would have another blip pop up just a few days later (303 on desktop, 302 on MobileMe/iPhone), so this wasn't really a fix.

After searching around the forums at Apple's support site, I found others with the same problem, and a suggestion to fix the problem that worked for me.

Quit Address Book on the desktop in question. Then, remove this file:

~/Library/Application Support/Address Book/AddressBook-v22.abcddb

Relaunch Address Book and force a MobileMe sync. All contacts should now be in sync.

I don't know how long this will last, but it was sure easier than finding the erroneous contact and making a fake edit. Hopefully this is a known issue and Apple will fix it in a MobileMe update later.

Google News is funny!

Saw this on Google News today.

Who knew?