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TiVo's Personal TV Gets Smarter

Updated TiVo Service 2000 picks broadcasts for you and shields shows from the kids.

By Cameron Crouch, PCWorld   

TiVo unveiled at this week's Consumer Electronics Show here the new TiVo Service 2000, which adds custom search and record functions, a kid-safe filter, overtime scheduler, and the means to learn your tastes.

Both Philips and Sony will market TiVo boxes, and a DirecTV satellite receiver with TiVo is in development. Pricing and configuration will be available upon its release in the second quarter. Also, TiVo and Blockbuster are developing digital distribution of Blockbuster content.

The Philips TiVo set-top costs $499 for the 14-hour box and $699 for the 30-hour box. A $399 30-hour box from Sony is expected to ship in April. Unlike rival Replay TV, TiVo charges a $199 lifetime fee for its service. All TiVo products, old and new, will get TiVo Service 2000 as an automatic upgrade by the second quarter of this year.

Be a Choosy Cyber-Couch Potato

A new feature of the TiVo Service 2000 is the Season Pass Prioritizer, which records every episode of a TV show.

"But when you have a lot of season passes, it's hard to know if a show is going to get recorded or not," because of space constraints and schedule changes, says Ted Malone, manager of applied engineering at TiVo. The new Season Pass Prioritizer lets you rank the shows you regularly record, so you're likely to get what you most want.

The new TiVo Wishlist lets you search by name, keyword, or theme.

"Like with the Internet, keyword searches have some power, but you get a lot of bad hits," Malone says. "The TiVo Wishlist combines [keyword search] with a genre filter."

Say you want to watch a Dallas Stars hockey game. A Dallas keyword search gets you everything from reruns starring J.R. to movies set in Texas. But pare down the keyword by category--sports--and subcategory--hockey--and you'll get the next scheduled Stars game.

Then, you set a Season Pass to record every Dallas Stars game. "It becomes an automated search," Malone says.

A new Overtime Scheduler adds a buffer to the recording to handle possible overtime periods.

TiVo offers a list of 20,000 actors and directors in its movie category. You can search for movies starring Arnold Schwarzenneger without knowing how to spell his name, Malone says.

You can also create a Season Pass to record every Schwarzenneger movie, or have the Wishlist inform you of them so you choose.

TiVo Learns Your Likes

Another new function, Teach TiVo, lets you rate programs so your TiVo box learns your preferences and suggests programs you might like.

"Over time, the list comes in tune with the types of shows you like," Malone says. "TiVo will actually use unused space and record those shows for you."

For parents, TiVo also has a new Kids Safe function so you can record an R-rated movie but block access.

Unlike Replay TV, TiVo has always offered slow motion and frame advance for live viewing, Malone says. And TiVo doesn't have to be idle when it dials out for updates. It's always working toward turning the TV into an entertainment system that knows you.