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TiVo Unleashes Desktop Plus 2.6
The DVR's latest update allows users to view content from the web.
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TiVo’s latest update allows viewers to subscribe to RSS feeds, as well as podcasts.
March 19, 2008 | by Rachel Cericola

Back in January, TiVo announced that it would soon allow subscribers to download video to their set-top boxes. Well, that day has come, my friends—sort of.

TiVo says that its new Desktop Plus 2.6 will allow viewers to subscribe to specific RSS video clients, including podcasts. However, Crave says you won’t be able to type “monkey videos” into your remote and get instant gratification. You’ll need to download the video to your PC first; then it can be transferred to any network-enabled TiVo box. Sounds like a middleman is afoot—and sort of lame.

Even lamer (in case you’re keeping track), Desktop Plus 2.6 isn’t giving any Internet love to Mac users. TiVo says they are working on that.

However, you have to give it up for TiVo. They’ve got Rhapsody, and recently announced pairings with YouTube and Amazon Unbox. Soon they will achieve digital domination.

Desktop Plus 2.6 seems to be the next piece of that puzzle. If you’ve got the previous version, it’s a free upgrade; new users will need to pay $25.



Rachel Cericola - Contributing Writer
Over the past 15 years, Rachel Cericola has covered entertainment, web and technology trends. Check her out at www.rachelcericola.com.



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Comments (4) Most recent displayed first.
Posted by Britinva  on  04/08/08  at  03:30 PM

Will this allow me to view video_ts files stored on my PC as well?

Posted by Rachel Cericola  on  03/20/08  at  03:04 PM

Trey: How did I misinform you? I quoted from a reliable source. I didn’t even say that it wasn’t transparent; just said that a computer was needed. For the extra money, I want one-stop shopping, that’s all. Sorry you feel so misled.

Posted by Trey  on  03/20/08  at  01:35 PM

Thanks Megazone for setting that straight, lots of DIY misinformation on this site…

Posted by MegaZone  on  03/19/08  at  04:41 PM

It isn’t that lame, it happens transparently.  And it is a necessity.  Currently all TiVos only decode MPEG-2 video - how many vidcasts are MPEG-2?  Right, near as amounts to none.  So the PC with TiVo Desktop 2.6 acts as a transcoding proxy.  It takes the video, in one of several supported formats (like H.264, WMV, QuickTime MOV, etc) and transcodes it to MPEG-2 before auto-transferring to the TiVo.  Since this is all based on RSS, it will do it automatically whenever a new video is published.  So you setup the feed, and that’s it - the videos start appearing on your TiVo automatically as they’re published.

The TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD have hardware that can decode MPEG-4/H.264 and WMV/VC-1, and it looks like that hardware will be enabled as part of the update to support YouTube (H.264) later this year.  Hopefully, once that update is out, owners of those units will be able to have the vidcasts using the supported codecs download directly to their TiVo without the need to pass through the PC first.



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