Replies

Because they're stuck with Linux, TiVo developers have to develop for Java right now.

Surely you don't believe that Java is the only programming language available on linux. It's the only programming language supported by Tivo, and that's a policy decision on their part, to keep third-party app developers in a "sandbox" where they can't get to the bare iron.

That was the problem with Windows 95... those VxDs that did talk to the bare iron, and were responsible for most of the crashes. I can see why Tivo would not want that. They also don't want you messing with the other stuff they have in there, like the thing that spies on you and tells them what you're watching.

This way, the developers get a few tightly-defined services they can call, and that's it. Which is just how Tivo wants it.

"Surely you don't believe that Java is the only programming language available on linux. It's the only programming language supported by Tivo, and that's a policy decision on their part, to keep third-party app developers in a "sandbox" where they can't get to the bare iron."

My point was more along the lines of a perfect world...had TiVo been given the choice of Open Source Windows 95 or Open Source Linux, the business decision would have been to have gone with Windows 95; that would have given TiVo Doom, Quake, Age of empires, and other top selling Windows 95 games at the time.

...And it would have put MicroSoft in charge of millions upon millions of giant screen home TV's. Win, win.

Yet that option wasn't available. So today, in the non-perfect world, TiVo game developers are stuck with Java (though granted, TiVo could open that up to C++ and other languages, but that still wouldn't run the old Windows 95 high-selling games).

It also locks MicroSoft out, for the moment, of millions upon millions of giant high-definition home TV screens.

That's lose, lose. TiVo lost the ability to run Windows games out of the box, and MicroSoft lost the OS platform control of home TV's.

So TiVo today hobbles along, barely generating any excitement at all...a mere comodity consumer product on millions of TV's...MicroSoft lost millions upon millions of MS games sales to potential TiVo users, as well as lost the consumer product race to Linux. TiVo lost and MicroSoft lost.

TiVo could have replaced the X-Box and destroyed PlayStation before the X-box was even dreamed up. TiVo could have had top-selling MicroSoft PC games running on millions of TV's across America. Not only would TV watchers have wanted TiVo, but hard-core gamers would have gone for it back then, too...games being a market that is *larger* than the entire global movie market.

It's myopia writ large. TiVo and MicroSoft could have been much, much bigger and much more in control of the next generation OS.