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November 04, 2004

Call your Tivo?

I am a senior at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts.  I took a course last semester in voice recognition software, and we added functionality where you could call your PVR.  Since my group was with poor college students, we went out and bought a TV Tuner card and installed mythtv on our computer.  We then went ahead and built the functionality where you could call your Tivo box from any phone and schedule a recording.  My question is, for all of the Tivo customers out there, would you want to be able to call your box if you forgot to schedule a recording?

This system really works.  It's not fake.
-- Daniel Wolchonok

November 4, 2004 in Hacks, TiVo

Answers

With a Series2 unit we already have TiVo Central Online for scheduling via the web - from a PC, PDA, etc. And there is (was?) a 3rd party vendor which allowed scheduling from a phone - I think it was WAP.WML. I forget - they announced it at CES2004 and I tried a free trial, but since I can use TCO from my Clie I dropped it.

So it depends on what value add of this system is. Is it a front end to TCO? Do you have to know exactly what to say or does it prompt you?

You might want to bring this up on some of the TiVo communities: http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=tivolovers

Posted by: MegaZone at Nov 7, 2004 1:59:44 PM

Hey, it's Dan again. I didn't explain myself fully in the last question, so I don't think you understood the system completely. It differs from a web interface / palm pilot interface, in that you speak to the system, using voice commands (it gives directions on what to say - you don't have to know going in). I set up a web page with actual recordings of someone speaking with the system on the phone.

It is a front end for mythtv, but could be easily modified for any brand of PVR that supports remote scheduling.

It's at:

http://www.wolchonok.com/~dan/replay/

Posted by: Dan at Nov 7, 2004 9:23:23 PM

Oh man, this sounds like when I have to call a company and get stuck in their phonetree hell, right down to the synthesized voice. The first thing I do when I get to one is start speaking gibberish in order to speak to a human. I don't want my home devices to be as annoying as those phonetrees.

Posted by: George at Nov 15, 2004 11:41:43 AM

I'm sure this is a prototype and not a finished product

Posted by: willyp at Nov 17, 2004 8:11:25 AM

I think that the product is a good idea for those who dont have the technical know-how to remotely control their PVRs from a sony clie for example. My grandmother could even use this system, which is not necessarily the case with a web-based remote control system. Also, more people have phones than PDAs or constant remote web connections anyways.

Posted by: Andy Bons at Feb 17, 2005 2:02:29 PM

I love it. That would really come in handy if the voice recognition works as it should.

I'm thinking of trying Pluto Home (www.plutohome.com). MythTV is the main media handler in Pluto Home.

Any plans to make it an open source project on sourceforge.net? Any way to get a demo?

Posted by: Junior Bodine at Nov 28, 2005 11:03:46 PM

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