TiVo passes the usability test, with cost savings.
[ Posted by Dan on April 17, 2003 | 1 Comments ]

I have had my TiVo in use for about a week now, and just last night I picked up the manual to figure out what features I might have been missing. I can happily report that I have missed only a few, and pretty much useless, features. The basics are all there when you get the thing working after a somewhat annoying registration process (the annoying part being the wallet opening).

In terms of interaction design, they pretty much have gotten it right, which really means something to me, because I know the TiVo folks have had some issues to work around. Most significantly, they have had to deal with Gemstar patents, and the desire to avoid them due to the cost of licensing.

The TiVo is already too expensive at $400 for the "80" hour model (which is actually 37 hours at an acceptable quality level due to the lossy mpeg compression). So, avoiding more cost due to Gemstar's patently evil business plan (which is to have patents, and then litigate value out of them) is a good thing. Sure, there's a $50 rebate, but I have to mail that in, and fill stuff out, and lowers the VALUE of the $50 and increases my annoyance at the TiVo product. It dirties the product, and TiVo should knock of this mail-in rebate bullshit.

But I digress, back to the usability issues and the evil of Gemstar. You see, Gemstar has a patent on the display of television scheduling in a grid format. To avoid a costly patent licence, TiVo has created a method of showing the user what is coming up next on various channels in a different way, unfortunately, I think the grid pattern is better in terms of user experience, finadability, and immediacy of understanding. The format they use is hierarchic in nature where you choose a time, then a channel, and then you see the programs for that nexus of tv-space-time. And sure, you can see a little of what's around that, but navigating is clumsy, and requires, well... navigating.

This is ok though, but keeping the cost of the box down. This is one of those decisions that we usability dorks need to make from time to time...

Is this compromise on ultimate usability worth it in terms of cost saving?

Those cost savings may be realized in MANY ways. You may be able to avoid a patent infringement, or avoid more work (which may be billable against your budgets), or reduce the amount of processing a system may need to do by making the user do a little more work. However, these desicisions are extremely difficulty to make as you get further away from obvious liscense costs to the more ambiguous realities of what your hardware can handle. So far, TiVo seems to be making the smart decisions.

 

		Congrats on joining the cult, and welcome to the 21st century, well after you get broadband :P I didn't know about the Gemstar thing, but I actually prefer the Tivo guide by far to the grid one my digital box has. I think your uncomfortablness might stem from the fact that you are still thinking like an old-school TV viewer. The grid is better for "real time" viewing because you want to see what's on right now on several channels. However with Tivo that doesn't matter. Instead I want to see all the movies HBO is playing over the next day or two so I can record any that appeal to me. Considering that most shows I watch are on a handful of channels, I just flip through those once or twice a week. Also, you are right in the fact that $400 is too much for the 80 hour model. That's why you should return it, buy the 40 hour one (or a used 20 hour one) and replace the drive(s). My Tivo currently stores about 120 hours at Best quality and I think the total cost was like $4-500. This allows me to basically set a ton of season passes and enable Tivo Recommendations, and have it recording 15+ hours a day. I consider this a primary filtering process after which I delete most of them and watch the 5-10 hours/week of actual good TV, mostly on the weekends. -Posted by Eric on April 17, 2003 07:41 PM

Comment posting has been turned off because I don't have enough time and will to deal with the constant comment spamming. I'm very sorry and will fix this sometime soon (soon = before 2004 ends).