Codec support. The Series2 can only decode MPEG-2. How many vidcasts do you know of that are distributed as MPEG-2? The vidcasts available via TiVoCast from partners are specially encoded as MPEG-2 just for TiVo. But that's why the selection in TiVoCast is so limited - it takes special effort to support TiVo. So what they're doing here is using the PC to transcode from H.264, WMV, QuickTime, etc, into MPEG-2.
At some point the Series3 & TiVo HD will be able to support other codecs - H.264 support is STRONGLY implied by the YouTube announcement. Both of those have decoding hardware which can handle MPEG-4/H.264 & WMV/VC-1, but the software currently does not enable those decoders. Once they support the additional codecs it would make sense to enable direct downloads to the box for the supported codecs, relying on the PC only for others.
“The other one is a biggie, and it's something very noticeable in the videos: touch sensitivity is pretty bad. Using the virtual keyboard proved to be far too painful, and we're pretty sure it wasn't multitouch-friendly.”
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Codec support. The Series2 can only decode MPEG-2. How many vidcasts do you know of that are distributed as MPEG-2? The vidcasts available via TiVoCast from partners are specially encoded as MPEG-2 just for TiVo. But that's why the selection in TiVoCast is so limited - it takes special effort to support TiVo. So what they're doing here is using the PC to transcode from H.264, WMV, QuickTime, etc, into MPEG-2.
At some point the Series3 & TiVo HD will be able to support other codecs - H.264 support is STRONGLY implied by the YouTube announcement. Both of those have decoding hardware which can handle MPEG-4/H.264 & WMV/VC-1, but the software currently does not enable those decoders. Once they support the additional codecs it would make sense to enable direct downloads to the box for the supported codecs, relying on the PC only for others.