SEATTLE -- Ever get an itch to buy a movie ticket, find your nearest Lexus dealer or listen to the president's weekly radio address on your television? No? Well, you're probably not alone, but TiVo Inc.
is hoping to get more customers tuned into the idea of using their digital video recorders to do a lot more than just pause live TV or hook up season passes to their favorite shows. Teaming up with Yahoo Inc. and other companies, Tivo late last year began adding online services that let viewers share photos with family and friends, check weather forecasts and real-time traffic conditions, play games, listen to live radio or recorded podcasts, compare reviews of kid-friendly programming, or track fantasy football standings.
The services are available through Series2 TiVos, which start at $69.99 after a $150 mail-in rebate and a $19.95 monthly subscription fee, as well as the new Series3 high-definition boxes that cost $800.
(TiVo offers a variety of models with varying price structures.) For the online services to work, the boxes
Still, it didn't completely dazzle me. After punching in my ZIP code, I got a choice of searching for movies by title or theater, what was opening that week or coming to theaters soon. Movie listings came with short plot descriptions -- skimpier on detail than those Fandango offers on its Web site -- plus a list of cast and credits and a photo gallery that seemed designed to make up for the lack of a trailer.
With another click of the remote, I picked a theater and showtime, got a prompt saying it would cost me $9 per ticket plus a $3 Fandango charge, then I entered my credit card number, got an 11-digit confirmation number -- which I had to jot down because there was no way to print it out -- and instructions to head to the theater with the credit card I'd used. Once there, I swiped my card in the Fandango machine and got my tickets. The rest of TiVo's online features struck me as spare, less- user-friendly imitations of tasks that seem better suited to a computer.
It was easy enough to set up a link to my Yahoo Photos account, though I soon found it pretty tedious to enter information like user names and passwords into an on-screen keyboard with the buttons on my TiVo remote. My photos looked nice on a 27-inch screen, but no nicer than when I simply plug my digital camera straight into my TV. Another feature lets people view pictures from family and friends with Yahoo Photos accounts.
Most people I know use other digital photo-sharing programs, which I've generally found much easier than Yahoo's, so it's not a service I can see myself using that much. TiVo's Yahoo Weather service seemed like a better fit for TV. It displays five-day forecasts by ZIP code and lets you save more than one city on the same screen, making it easy to compare forecasts in different areas.
It didn't surprise me to find out it's one of TiVo's most widely used online services. The company also says the Live 365 Internet radio service is popular. It lets you play live music from a fairly wide variety of stations in about two dozen categories.
Because the content is streamed, hiccups occasionally occur in the sound, but not often enough to be too annoying. I wasn't too impressed with KidZone, which lets parents browse for kid-centric programming, or Product Watch, which gives viewers the option of ordering promotional videos on various products. But don't most people get TiVo to skip over ads?
Yahoo Traffic was a disappointment, highlighting only a few construction projects and scheduled lane closures on nearby highways. I was also underwhelmed by the lineup of games, none of which seemed remotely catchy. Some TiVo customers have complained that all the add-ons have slowed down their TiVos.
The company has acknowledged the problem and said it's trying to address it. TiVo is working on other online features, but isn't saying anything specific about what they'll entail or when they'll roll out.
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