Cited on HN 3 times, 2022–2025, never outright recommendedscore 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Commenters cite it as a concrete example of distributing data over TV broadcasts in discussions of unusual data channels.
A short clip of a TiVo paid-programming broadcast from the early 2000s, which TiVo used to send guide data and service updates to DVRs over cable TV before broadband was common.
“They would buy a 30 minute paid programming in the early hours on cable TV networks” (HN, 2024)
Before broadband was widely available, TiVo used to purchase overnight paid programming slots across the US and broadcast modified PDF417 video streams that provided weekly program guide data for TiVo users. There's a sample of it on YouTube [this video] but they usually wrapped a 60-second commercial before and after the 28-minute broadcast of data. There was enough error correction in the data streams to allow proper processing even with less-than-perfect analog television reception.
Sample of TiVo's guide data broadcast during paid programming.
The system I'd love to have a better understanding of is the one TiVo deployed for the transmission of data to their boxes in the early 2000s. They would buy a 30 minute paid programming in the early hours on cable TV networks under the name "Teleworld Paid Programming". The box would tune the channel, record the show, and then decode the data from the recording. I always thought there was something interesting there, as the process would need to survive the MPEG encode/decode process on the TiVo itself in addition to whatever they needed to do the broadcast. [this video]
As a more recent example of a similar concept, TiVo would distribute guide data to their DVRs using encoded video broadcast during overnight Paid Programming time slots. The practice ran from about 1999 to 2016. Around 2016, TiVo discontinued support for guide data updates for their first-generation Series1 DVRs. I couldn't find much information about these broadcasts online, though someone did post a clip of one from 2003 [1], there are a few copies of more recent introduction and conclusion animations [2], and there is some information about them on Wikipedia [3]. It could be a fun project to try to decode it. [1]: [this video] [2]: [link] [3]: [link]
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