Tivo, Internet Archive, and GlitchTV
POSTED ON 8/24/2005 | PERMALINK |0 Comments | BOOKMARK
As WTG reported last week, TiVo has a new feature that allows you to take content from your computer and view it on your TV. Tivo's ToGo tools have been around for awhile now, but have proved to be less useful than it sounded when announced. ToGo implies quick and easy, but you're going to be about 3 hours late for your flight if you decide you want to dump some TiVo content onto your laptop at the last minute.

However, the new feature--let's call it ToStay--is a different story.

ToStay is just as slow, but that's okay. You're not going anywhere, so who care if it takes a while? You just drop MPEG2 files into your "My Tivo Downloads" folder and they show up on your "Now Playing" list. You can opt to either watch the video as it's sent to your TiVo (AKA unintelligent sreaming), which works reasonably well even over wireless networking, or transfer video in the background while using your TiVo's other functions. Both methods work well and result in beautiful, high quality playback when using properly formatted files.

The one drawback, and it's a big one, is that it only plays MPEG2 video. While this may change in the future, we're currently stuck with fairly limited choices in terms of freely available downloadable content.

That's where the Internet Archive comes in. This is really the only place on the net where you can find masses of MPEG2 video available for download. You can find everything from Betty Boop to Night of the Living Dead in full MPEG2 glory. These two services were made for each other.

WTG will be programming a daily "TV Station" for your TiVo called "GlitchTV." If you use a media aggregator like FireANT or iPodderX, you'll be able to have the content automatically downloaded into your TiVo directory. Once you're set up, the only manual labor you'll endure is plopping down on the couch, hiting the TiVo button, and reading the list of what's on. We'll try to have a variety of programming and we're open to suggestions regarding what to program and how much TiVo space and download time is reasonable. Leave a comment if you have any input.

Subscribe To GlitchTV
Come back tomorrow for program guides and more. With a little help, maybe we can become a mini-ZChannel. Until then, enjoy the feed.


UPDATE: A "program guide" with a link to the feed is available at the top of the right column on this page.

UPDATE 2: Daily program guides w/ descriptions will also be posted to this blog.

UPDATE 3: GlitchTV now supports PSP/iPod as well. These devices should be synced up to the main wtg feed, while TiVo should continue to use the GlitchTV feed.


Filed In: , , , , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home