[ronbaby]

The Content Strikes Back!

News Flash (yesterday):

Google is blocking YouTube on Amazon's Echo Show and Fire TV (endadget)

I just now confirmed on my FireTV.  Going to YouTube on the FireTV now produces
an (early) warning:

    Starting on 1/1/2018, YouTube will not be available on this device.
    You can continue to enjoy your favorite creators and videos in
    many other ways.  Please visit https://goo.gl/LefFGe for a list of
    devices you can use.

My guess is that this is really all about the new YouTubeTV (paid subscription)
app, which Bezos & Co. probably quite rightly view as yet another probable
competitor (along with SlingTV, etc.) to Amazon Prime Video.

Anyway, amid all of the fuss and hoopla over Net Neutrality, which was of course
just a war between the content providers and the last mile eyeball providers,
we now obviously have a new set of eyeball providers, i.e. the box sellers,
including Amazon, which have their own walled gardens.  But in this case I think
that "content" (in this case Google) has the upper hand.  Will they win in the end?
Who knows.  Stay tuned!

I'm just rather glad that I just happen to have snagged a Tivo Roamio OTA on
sale for Black Friday.  I just now fired up the YouTube app on that, and yes,
it works beautifully.

My point in buying this box was to finally be able to tell Comcast where they
can stick it, and so far it looks like I'll be able to do that (but I had to get a
sooper deluxe TERK VHF/UHF indoor antenna to make it work well, cuz I
live in apartment 63 miles from the towers in my area).  But now, if I can
just somehow manage to get a Kodi app and a SlingTV app on this box...
neither of which seems to be available at this moment... then I will also be
able to tell Bezos & Co. where to stick it (by selling my 2nd gen FireTV box
on FleaBay).

Has anybody even looked at maybe porting Kodi (as an app) to recent vintage
TiVo boxes?

To be clear, I am not asking about a possible TiVo add-on for Kodi.  That is
something totally different.

[nickr]

Could you please tidy up the formatting?

[ronbaby]

Could you please tidy up the formatting?

 What?  Like you wanted more italics or something?
:-)

But seriously, it looks pretty tidy to me!  But I'm one of these ancient 80-column guys from the dawn of civilization, you know, back when we programmed machines with punched cards.  (No, I ain't kidding.)

Anyway, I'll remove all of the gratuitous <LF>/<CR>s for you if you'll just answer my basic question, which came at the end:  Is anybody working on, or at least just even thinking about porting Kodo to TiVo boxes?

It can't be particularly harder than porting Kodi to the FireTV box... and that has already been done.  So, you know, why not TiVo too?

[wrxtasy]

@nickr, gets a bit grumpy when you don't feed him his morning Sardine breakfast !

[nickr]

The CR/LF's make it messy on, eg, a small screen, so thanks for that, a lot more readable now.

I am not aware of anyone porting Kodi to Tivo boxes, what OS do they run? I think some older ones ran linux, albeit pretty tied down.

EDIT: PS the situation you describe with Amazon/Google is disgusting, and every reason to use Kodi.

[ronbaby]

The CR/LF's make it messy on, eg, a small screen, so thanks for that, a lot more readable now.

I am not aware of anyone porting Kodi to Tivo boxes, what OS do they run? I think some older ones ran linux, albeit pretty tied down.

EDIT: PS the situation you describe with Amazon/Google is disgusting, and every reason to use Kodi.

I didn't actually clean up my original post yet, but I shall.

I have no idea what OS is underneath the layer upon layer of user interface on the specific TiVo box I got (Roamio OTA 1TB) but I somewhat suspect it is either a straight Linux kernel or else something very Linux-ish (like in the case of the FireTV and/or anything  Android).  I wish that I could show you the reams of embedded open source copyright notices in the thing!  They go on for page after page after page.  We've got stuff that's covered under various revs of GPL/LGPL and also a boatload of stuff covered under various revs of BSD licenses, and on and on.  After seeing all this, I was inclined to wonder if people realize just how pervasively free open software is being used as underlying/fundamental building blocks by commercial concerns to build new gadgets these days.  (I myself kind-of knew, but didn't realize quite how deep this trend has become.)

Reegarding the disgustingness of the current Google/Amazon hostilities... yea, I suppose that it could be called "disgusting", but that's only because you are a fundamentally rational, peace-loving humanoid who values mutual cooperation over mutual annihilation.

Throughout human history, great empires have always come into conflict as they pursued their individual goals.  The only difference these days is that nowadays, more and more, the great empires involved are multinational corporations rather than nation states.

In short, this kind of thing is/was forseeable, inevitable, and not even all that new.  Ref: Edison v. Westinghouse/Tesla.

I love Kodi, but as all of you Kodi developers are only too quick to point out, it is not a tool to avoid paying for content.  I love content, and I pay for all of it I consume, except for the bits that come to me free over the airwaves.  So to satisfy my abundant cravings, I have no real choice but to get into bed, on occasion, with the likes of Netflix or Amazon or Google.  Fortunately, it isn't an either/or proposition.  I can love Kodi, and use it frequently, even though I still do feed my cravings/habit by mainlining content fed to me by the disgusting high-level dealers that control most of the street-level supply of the stuff I crave.