I was just poking around on TiVo.com looking for information about the TiVo Premiere when I  discovered that TiVo has gone ahead and reinstated their official TiVo blog.  Hopefully this time around,  TiVo will put a lot of effort into the blog and provide us with some great information and discussion.  Welcome BACK to the blogosphere TiVo!  I look forward to what you have to say…

Click on the “more” link for Parts 2-4.

INTRODUCING TIVO® PREMIERE, THE ONE BOX TO RULE THEM ALL
New Box Offers a Stunning New HD Experience That Blows Away Any Other Cable Set-Top Box

TiVo Opens Up the Box to Pandora Internet Radio, Maximizing the TiVo Music Experience

Alviso, Calif. March 3 -TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), a leader in advanced television services, including digital video recorders (DVRs), announced today the launch of TiVo® Premiere and TiVo® Premiere XL boxes. TiVo Premiere elegantly combines access to cable programming, movies, web videos, and music all in one box at a truly affordable price. TiVo Premiere is now the only way to unlock the real value of the HD television set, a box that is more powerful, compact, and energy efficient than previous generations. If the DVR changed your life, TiVo Premiere will change it again.

“It has never been this easy to get all your entertainment in one place, on the big screen, in HD, right at your fingertips. And the beauty of TiVo Premiere is that finding what to watch is just as fun as the watching the TV shows themselves. We accomplished it by using pictures and graphics to make the whole television guide experience come alive in a way that it never has before,” said TiVo’s President and CEO Tom Rogers. “TiVo Premiere is your new cable box, it’s your movie box, it’s your web box, and music box; it’s the one box that can give you access to almost anything you want, whenever you want it. We’ve taken millions of pieces of content and organized it for you in a way that makes so much sense you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.”

Why Premiere Is Revolutionary:

It’s the One Box: TiVo Premiere is your new cable box, movie box, web box, and music box; it’s the one box that gives you access to everything you want to get on your television and all with one remote. It’s a true one stop shop for entertainment.*

Broadband and Broadcast Integration: Premiere’s search functionality offers users the ability to find programs from many sources – whether it’s a digital premium channel from cable, a funny outtake from YouTube or a movie from broadband sources such as Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, or Blockbuster On Demand, plus options from the Web all brought together into one unified and simple experience.*

Browse Baby Browse: Premiere is at its best when you want to browse, discover and explore the almost infinite array of TV options. Every show, from every source, is organized by category or topic. With a full-screen menu that includes a rich display of movie posters & TV show logos for exploring, it’s simple to stumble upon interesting things to watch or record. Plus, consumers have never before had the option to browse by specific movie collections on their TV. For example, browse thru Oscar® Award winning movies or Emmy® Award winning television shows with one simple click of the remote.

Six-Degrees of Separation: Premiere will settle debates over “where have I seen that actor before?” far faster than a trip to the laptop ever could. Just click on a show or an actor and consumers will be able to view entire entertainment resumes and cast lists, quickly and easily. Before you know it you’ll find associations from one favorite actor to another that you never dreamed existed, fueling the discovery process even more and likely getting you hooked in the process.

Easy to Use HD Layout: We’ve kept the easy navigation, but significantly cut the number of screens you have to visit by utilizing the extra room high-definition affords. The experience was built for HD television sets and by creating a two-column and three-column layouts we reduce the number of screens, helping you to get to what you want more quickly.

Set-top box built on Adobe® Flash® Platform for the Digital Home: Premiere is built on Adobe Flash software, a pathway to future user-generated experiences and development opportunities, which have not been available before on a set-top box. Premiere is built on multi-core architecture that greatly facilitates future development of third party provided applications.

We Listened: By popular demand Premiere includes an on-screen disk space meter that shows how much room is left to record, a built in 30 second scan, and a new video window that lets you watch your favorite show while navigating the TiVo menus.

Room to Record: The TiVo Premiere box has up to 45 hours of HD storage space or up to 400 hours of standard definition programming capacity. And for those who want even more options the TiVo Premiere XL box holds up to 150 hours of high-definition or up to 1350 hours of standard definition programming.

Even More Content: A brand new relationship with Pandora means in the coming months, Premiere as well as TiVo Series3™ and HD DVR customers will be able to listen to their personalized Pandora radio stations on the best speakers in the house. A new relationship with FrameChannel brings the best of the web directly to the TV offering users access to nearly 1,000 content widgets of personal and commercial content, ranging from Tweets, photos and status updates to news, weather, sports scores and stock quotes. FrameChannel acts as a personalized channel on your television, transforming your TV into a constant stream of real-time news and information with the content that matters to you most.

Speaking about its strategic marketing alliance with TiVo that was announced last year, Mike Vitelli, President of the Americas for Best Buy, said, “This is an important step toward achieving our shared vision to transform the digital home entertainment experience and redefine customer service. Through TiVo we can continue to strengthen relationships and interact with our valued customers even after they leave our stores, which is invaluable in a rapidly evolving digital media environment. Cable companies do a great job of connecting customers to content, but TiVo takes the complete digital experience to the next level.”

“We are proud to be leading the cable industry in the adoption of this groundbreaking approach to advanced television. TiVo will bring a whole new way for our subscribers to experience television with TiVo’s DVR and broadband television offerings,” said RCN President & CEO Peter Aquino. “I’m very pleased to report that based on our field test results, we will begin to roll out TiVo as our primary advanced box in all of our markets, one by one, in the second quarter of this year.”

Coming in May, a new TiVo Wireless N adapter, that allows for faster downloads and faster streaming of content, at speeds that are especially helpful for multi-room viewing (MRV) transfers. Coming later this year, consumers will also have access to a groundbreaking, slide-out QWERTY TiVo remote. The compact peanut shaped remote gives a faster experience, especially when utilizing text entry. With Easy plug n’ play installation, extended range utilizing Bluetooth and backlit programmable buttons the remote will quickly become a must have accessory.

TiVo Premiere Box Specifications:
TiVo Series4™ architecture
Supports digital cable, high-definition digital cable, antenna (ATSC) and Verizon FiOS
Outputs: HDMI, Component video, Composite video, Optical audio, Analog audio
Video output modes include: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
Inputs: CableCARD™ support, Cable coax, Antenna coax, Ethernet
Ethernet connection, USB 2.0 ports (2), E-SATA support for external storage
TiVo Wireless N and G Network Adapter support
ENERGY STAR® certified
320 Gigabytes
Records up to 45 hours of HD programming or up to 400 hours of standard-definition

TiVo Premiere XL Box Specifications (all specs not listed are the same as above unless noted)
One Terabyte storage
Records up to 150 hours of HD programming or up to 1350 hours of standard-definition
Backlit, programmable, and learning remote
THX®certified, ensuring optimal audio and video reproduction and enables seamless integration with other THX components
TiVo Premiere XL box is the first HD product to feature THX® Optimizer™, a video calibration tool that lets users fine tune color, black levels and other settings to improve picture quality. Hailed by critics for its ease-of-use, the exclusive THX Optimizer for TiVo Premiere XL box is found in the My Shows menu of the TiVo service. A pair of THX Optimizer Blue Glasses, designed for adjusting Color and Tint settings, is included with the owner’s manual.
TiVo Premiere and TiVo Premiere XL boxes will be available in retail nationwide in early April. They are also available for pre-order today at tivo.com for $299.99 and $499.99 respectively.
*TiVo service is required and sold separately. Cable and Netflix subscriptions required for cable and Netflix programming, respectively and are not included in TiVo service subscription. Additional fees may apply for other broadband content. Broadband programming sources subject to availability and may change without notice.

Perhaps more important than the new hardware, TiVo also announced that the Premiere will include a new Flash based HD UI.  The new UI looks great (checkout the attached screenshots) and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.  Unfortunately for TiVo HD and Series 3 users, the new UI is exclusive to the Premiere.  My guess is that the TiVo HD and S3 don’t have enough hardware to run the updated UI.

Last but not least, TiVo also announced that the Premiere will work with a much needed (and expected) QWERTY slide-out bluetooth TiVo remote.  This new remote is an optional upgrade that should be  later in the year.

Make sure to leave a comment on this post letting us know what you think about TiVo’s announcement.  Also, don’t forget to checkout the following blogs for additional coverage…

• ZatzNotFunny: The TiVo Premiere is here! (That’s it?)
• Engadget: Live from TiVo’s ‘one box’ press event, TiVo Premiere and Premiere XL usher in a brand new interface, optional QWERTY remote & TiVo Premiere hands-on
• Gizmodo: TiVo Premiere Details and First Hands On: Like IMDB On TV & TiVo Premiere QWERTY Remote Requires ANOTHER Dongle
• cnet: TiVo unveils Series4 ‘Premiere’ DVRs with enhanced online integration

What would you like to see announced at TiVo’s March 2nd event?

Here’s my wishlist:

• New and improved Multi-Room Viewing (MRV): The ability to stream recordings throughout my house, thereby getting around the CCI byte issue.
• New HD UI: Hopefully all the UI rumors will come true. I’d love to see a FAST HD UI.
• Complete control via TiVo.com: I’d love to be able to completely manage my TiVo directly from TiVo.com. Wouldn’t it be great if you could manage your Season Passes from TiVo’s website?
• QWERTY Keyboard Remote:  I’d love to see a remote with a QWERTY keyboard built-in (checkout these rumors).
• Distributed Scheduling: The ability to schedule a recording on any of my DVRs using TiVo’s multi-room capabilities.
• TA Built-in:  Built-in Tuning Adapter so that I don’t have to have a separate box on top of my DVR just for SDV channels.

What events are you recording this Olympic season?

There’s not a lot of info on what the event will cover. My guess is that the event will include information about a new UI along with new hardware.

Stay tuned to this blog and ZatzNotFunny (Dave is going to try and attend the event) for more info…

Several sites have reported that TiVo.com has the TiVo HD listed as out of stock.  Could this mean that TiVo is about to release the TiVo Premiere that was previously leaked back in December?  Stay tuned for more news and information.  This could get interesting…

TiVo says farewell to Shanan who is leaving to pursue other opportunities. Please join us in wishing her the best by posting a @TiVo reply.

To be perfectly honest, I’m a little saddened by this news. Shanan has done a wonderful job representing TiVo on the social web and I’m disappointed that she is leaving the company.  That being said, I wish Shanan the best of luck! Feel free to leave a comment on this post letting Shanan know that she will be missed….

mfslive.org is the place to go if you want to take an off the shelf hard drive and install it in your TiVo.  mfslive provides FREE two software packages that allow you to backup and restore your DVR’s software to a new drive.  For those of you who are familiar with Linux and a command line interface, mfslive offers a Linux live cd called MFSLive Linux Boot CD.  In addition to the live cd, mfslive also offers a much more user friendly Windows application as an alternative.  The Windows application is called WinMFS and it is the application that I would recommend to most people.

Now before you go out and buy a drive, there are some things that you need to know.  Not all drives will work in your TiVo and you also need to remember that when you open your TiVo’s case you are effectively voiding your warranty.  In terms of the which drives to use, bkdtv has published a great thread on TiVoCommunity with everything you need to know about upgrading a TiVo.  As you’ll see later on, this thread helped a lot with the problems I encountered.

A couple of weeks ago I purchased a 1 TB Western Digital (WD10EVDS) hard drive for the upgrade.  I ended up going with the WD10EVDS because it seemed to be the best supported drive based on the TiVoCommunity thread mentioned above.  As soon as the drive arrived I began the process of setting it up.  The first thing I had to do was decide which machine I was going to use and which software package from mfslive I wanted to use (Linux CD or Windows GUI).  As I mentioned before, normally I would recommend that most users use the Windows GUI for performing the upgrade however, in my case the only Windows machine I have in my house is a Windows Home Server (WHS) and I wasn’t sure if WinMFS would work correctly on a WHS box.  On top of this, my WHS uses all of its SATA connections and I didn’t want to have to remove two of the drives from my WHS’s storage pool in order to perform the upgrade.  Although it wasn’t my first choice, I initially ended up going with the Linux Live CD method for performing the upgrade.  Luckily for me, mfslive.org provides a great set of tutorials for anybody who is interested in performing an upgrade.  Essentially all you have to do is connect both drives (the original TiVo drive and your new drive) to your PC and boot off the Live CD.  Once the live cd boots, you then need to execute a backup command.  mfslive.org provides a command line generation page that helps you generate the correct command to be executed.  In the case of my setup, I ended up executing the following command:

backup -qTao – /dev/sda | restore -s 128 -xzpi – /dev/sdb

If all goes well, the above command should take a while since it is copying the recordings as well as the actual TiVo software from one hard drive to another.  In the case of my setup, the above command took nearly two hours.  After waiting two hours I immediately noticed that there was an error on my screen.  Instead of worrying about it, I decided to put the new hard drive back in my TiVo.  After a couple of minutes of waiting my TiVo wouldn’t boot!  Like a good geek I decided to head over to mfslive’s forum to see if somebody could help me.  Within a day or so I received a reply from “spike” (who I think is a MFSLive developer) letting me know that the error I received during the backup was probably caused by a driver issue with my motherboard/sata controller and the live cd.

If you have another computer, try that.
It might be Linux driver problem for your motherboard.

Also, check the hard drive w/ WD diagnostic tool to make sure it is good.

At this point I was running out of options.  I decided that my next course of action was to try and perform the backup using WinMFS instead of the Linux Live CD.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any Windows machines (besides for a WHS box)  in my household so running WinMFS is a little difficult.  Luckily for me, I do have a copy of VMware Fusion on my Mac (with Windows XP running).  In addition to my VMware Fusion XP install, I also regularly use a handy device which allows me to connect a sata hard drive to my Mac via USB.  I wasn’t sure if this solution would work but at this point it was really the only option I had.

Executing WinMFS live within VMWare Fusion went without a hitch.  WinMFS is definitely a lot easier to use and I would highly recommend it over the Live CD option.  Checkout the mfslive website for instructions on how to backup and restore your TiVo’s hard drive using WinMFS.  Once WinMFS finished I went ahead and connected the new HD to my TiVo.  Once again, my TiVo would not boot!

Frustrated and confused, I decided to post on the mfslive fourm about my problem.  In addition to mfslive, I also posted on TiVoCommunity in order to see if others might be able to provide me with some help.

I can’t seem to get my WD10EVDS drive to work. I posted my drive info over at MFSLive.org forum but I’d thought I’d post it here in case somebody can help me…

Date: 29 Nov 2009
Mdl: WD10EVDS-63U8B0
dcm: HARCNV2MHB
r/n: 701640
green board rev number: 2060-701640-001 REV A

After several days of working through the problem it was determined that other people who were using a WD10EVDS drive manufactured after Nov 2009 were also having the same problem I was having!  Apparently Western Digital uses a technology know as IntelliPark on their green drives in order to save power.

According to Western Digital, IntelliPark unloads idle drive heads to reduce aerodynamic drag, in turn reducing the amount of energy required to spin the platters.

For whatever reason, drives manufactured after Nov. of 2009 seem to have a different IntelliPark setting and this is the reason why my TiVo wouldn’t boot with the new drive.  Thankfully, TiVoCommunity once again had a solution to my problem.  A post on TiVoCommunity provided me with download link for a little utility (called wdidle3) which allows your to disable the IntelliPark setting.  Thanks to the TiVoCommunity instructions I was able to disable the IntelliPark settings on my hard drive.

3. Boot from the above CD and change drive letter to R: (it can be other letter, depending on your PC configuration) and run “wdidle3 /D” to disable IntelliPark. The message should indicate that idle feature has been disabled.

With IntelliPark disabled my TiVo is now able to boot and I can now record up to 143 hours of HD content!  Thanks again to everybody on TiVoCommunity and Twitter who was able to help me through this upgrade.  I really do appreciate it!

If you follow me on Twitter you probably already know that I recently upgraded the drive in my Series 3 TiVo using WinMFS.  As the following video shows, the process is normally quite easy however, in the case of my upgrade it didn’t go so smooth.  Thanks to the folks at TiVoCommunity.com, I was able to get the drive to work.

I plan on blogging my upgrade fiasco sometime in the near future (probably after CES).  In the meantime, take a look at this video and leave a comment if you’ve used WinMFS or if you’d like to upgrade your TiVo’s internal hard drive.

It looks like somebody at TiVo may have screwed up when they packaged Patrick McCarron’s newly purchased TiVo HD.  Like any good geek, Patrick went ahead and read the instructions for his new DVR.  To his surprise, the instructions describe how to setup a TiVo Premiere or a TiVo Premiere XL not a TiVo HD!

I figured it was a simple re-branding until I looked to the picture on the bottom of the page for where to put the CableCard. I already own a TiVo Series 3, which takes the two cards in the back, and the TiVo HD takes two cards in the front. So I was surprised to see this picture to show a single slot on the back. That’s when I noticed that this didn’t match my TiVo HD at all, and is in fact a new un-released TiVo model called the TiVo Premiere!

What do you think? Could this be the Series 4 TiVo that we’ve all been waiting for? Let me know what your thoughts are and whether or not you think we will see this device at CES?

Thanks to Patrick for sending this in via Twitter.

For those of you who don’t know, Guru Guides are a great way to schedule a set of similar records on your TiVo with only a couple of mouse clicks.  In addition to the Holiday guides, TiVo has published several other Guides that are worth checking out including AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies.  If you haven’t already, head on over to TiVo.com to see a complete list of all the Guru Guides that TiVo has to offer.

In case you missed it, TiVo now allows you to search Netflix’s Instant Watch catalog directly from within TiVo’s new search capability.  As you’ll see from the screenshots below, I was able to use this new feature to watch one of my most favorite Christmas movies (A Christmas Story).  The ability to search for Watch Instant movies is a great feature and it has been something I’ve been looking for ever since Netflix became available on TiVo.

Take a look at this new feature and be sure to let TiVo know what you think (keep in mind that TiVo Search is still in BETA).

Here’s a little giveaway to help celebrate the Holiday Season.  Simply leave a comment on this post letting me know that you’d like to receive this TiVo t-shirt (Large).  I’ll pickup the cost of shipping (assuming you live in the continental USA).  Best of luck and Happy Holidays!

For a limited time you can get more high-def for your buck. Simply add a qualifying Panasonic VIERA G10 Series plasma HDTV from the list below along with the TiVo TCD652160 HD digital video recorder to your cart and you’ll receive the TiVo free. The appropriate promotional amount will be applied automatically during checkout. Promotion expires on 11:59 p.m. PST on December 5, 2009. Offer is valid only when eligible items are purchased from Amazon.com and does not apply to purchases made from other merchants on the Amazon.com website. While supplies last. Rules and restrictions apply. See details. Shop all televisions and video.

In case you haven’t noticed, the price of the TiVo HD has dropped a lot within the past month.  Just recently TiVo reduced the base price of the TiVo HD down to $249.99.  Along with this offer, TiVo has for some time offered refurbished TiVo HDs for as little as $199.99.  Some people have speculated that this could mean that new hardware is on its way while others tend to disagree with this speculation.  While I’d love to see new hardware (or a new UI), I’m still not convinced that TiVo is ready for a new hardware release (this is based on no real evidence, just my opinion).

What do you think?  Do you think we are going to see something big at CES 2010?

Spotted on TiVo’s Twitter feed and TiVoCommunity.