It’s been 20 years since the DIRECTV HR10-250, the first high-definition capable TiVo, started arriving in customer’s living rooms. The Phoenix (as the HR10-250 was known within TiVo), was a project born out of the dreams and passion of two engineers. It went on to become a beacon of inspiration and excitement during an uncertain period in the company’s history. To commemorate two decades of HD TiVo here a glimpse at what brought the Phoenix to life.
“It is a very surreal scene for me. People are actually going to open up a box with the HD Tivo inside….who’d a thunk it?”
– AVS Forum, April 22, 2004
A First-Class Engineering Team
The Phoenix project came about at a challenging time. Money (and the venture capital markets) were tight and TiVo had gone through its first round of layoffs. It was also taking on a number of partner projects to provide a bit of funding for engineering (which had until then been for the most part spared from the layoffs). One engineering director noted that TiVo was “prostituting” itself in order to remain viable.
It was with this backdrop that the Phoenix was born. When the team (including yours truly) returned from CES – where the project took form and was for all practical purposes green-lit – it faced an onslaught of criticism from fellow managers: just how could TiVo take on another project when it was stretched to its limits with its existing commitments and hiring was out of the question?!
The staffing problem, as it turns out, solved itself. The Phoenix was born out of a passion that was infectious, and most of the engineers who ended up on the team volunteered (one particular engineer who happened to report into yours truly basically demanded a place on the team, despite already having a full plate and being a lead for his group. Many of Phoenix’s contributors were TiVo’s finest engineering leads). There was an air of excitement, about doing something new. Something cool. Something you wanted to do. And even though it was for DIRECTV, it was ours.
The Phoenix proved to be revolutionary to TiVo in more ways than its technological feature set. With a nod to its skunk-works roots, it became known as a “passion project” – a project initiated by passion and carried to fruition with that passion. The Phoenix opened the door to the notion that an individual or small groups of engineers could start initiatives leading to new products or features.
Were you a member of the Team Phoenix? Drop me a note and we’ll start compiling a list in this post!
Fun Facts
-
- Project naming is a non-trivial part of a project, and the Phoenix was christened by one of its lead engineers. He rose to the challenge of finding a name that fit the confluence of platforms Phoenix represented:
- DIRECTV platforms were named after cities in the Southwest, where Phoenix joined Reno (Series 1 DIRECTV combo) and Provo (the first Series 2 DIRECTV combo).
- TiVo Series 2 platforms had recently started along a bird theme (although the Series 2 standalone Gryphon took some liberties in using mythical winged creatures, which Phoenix also paid homage to).
- Prior to going to the birds, Series 2 was on a river kick, with the very first Series 2 standalone code-named Yukon. Phoenix sort of, kind of, followed along. River Phoenix anyone?
- And lastly, as started with the TiVo Standalone ATSC prototype Defiant, ATSC platforms were christened after Star Trek ships. What’s more fitting than the first warp-capable ship to take TiVo to the stars?
- Phoenix is actually the second HD TiVo platform. The first HD platform, Defiant, had been skunkworked in TiVo’s hardware lab for a year before Phoenix took flight. Two passionate engineers who believed in the future of HD and OTA ATSC retrofitted a Series 2 “Yukon” for an initial “blue wire” PX prototype. The “C” revision of Yukon’s cost-reduced sucessor, Gryphon, oddly sprouted some extra pads which were unstuffed in production. But in the skilled hands of a lab tech, and with the application of some secret software, Gryphon was transformed into Defiant P0. (Heartfelt thanks go out to TiVo’s team at Broadcom, who not only championed all-things TiVo, but also enthusiastically worked with the skunks to enable their chip’s HD features.)
- DIRECTV was launching HD channels and wanted an HD-capable DVR. Their initial direction was for TiVo to provide the software for their HD DVR. Because TiVo hands-down knew DVR software. The hardware would be done by a certain major CE manufacturer who had experience with HD receivers. TiVo, DIRECTV noted, regrettably didn’t have HD experience. Then, to the surprise of DIRECTV and most of TiVo management, Defiant was demonstrated. A couple months and some tense meetings later, the Phoenix project was christened with TiVo providing the software and hardware.
- From the beginning DIRECTV gave one overriding directive: “Schedule Is King,” with a launch date of CES 2004. While TiVo was churning out cost reduced platforms on an annual cadence, Phoenix included a number of new technologies and was fraught with uncertainties as the Series 2 platform was pushed to its performance limits. The initial plan reflected that with a cut-down feature set, most notably a single-tuner box, DVI rather than HDMI, and a rotary knob format switch rather than the sleek push button/led indicator that eventually made it to product (hats off to HNS for that bit of industrial design!). Early in the project schedules were relaxed a bit and Phoenix was promoted to its production feature set.
- With a slew of new technologies, multiple external partners, and a directive that “Schedule Is King” from DIRECTV, the project management team had its work cut out. But one of the most daunting challenges they faced came from left field. Just about all (if not all) engineers on the project went on maternity or paternity during the project. The effect was so pronounced that engineers started saying that “If you want to have a baby get on Mike’s project.” For the record neither Mike nor any of the management team had anything to do with the Phoenix Baby Boom. In fact no members of the management team had children during the project.
- While TiVo had an internal RF cable plant (the “TiVo headend”), it didn’t include ATSC channels in the early days of the Phoenix project. As a result antennas started sprouting up over engineers’ cubicles, often resembling crosses (bar antennas similar to the Terk TV55 were popular). Eventually the RF infrastructure was expanded to include OTA feeds to cubicles and conference rooms.
- Extending the TiVo software to accomodate OTA ATSC and HD reverberated throughout the software in sometimes unexpected ways. One defect uncovered had to do with the “wiener” – as the menu bar in the classic TiVo UI was internally called. The wiener normally extends from the left edge of the screen to cover the selected menu item. However when certain aspect ratio modes were used, the wiener would appear…detached…from the left edge of the screen. While a seemingly minor cosmetic issue, it spurred dicussion in bug councils about the need for emergency surgery to “reattach” the wiener..
- Part of the TiVo engineering process is “takehome” – at a point where a feature or platform is ready to leave the lab, it’s made available to TiVo employees and their families for home use. A certain individual driving Phoenix put a stake in the ground that takehome would occur before UPN started broadcasting Star Trek: Enterprise in HD. (The first time Enterprise was broadcast in HD was on October 15, 2003 with the episode Exile. The team met that goal!)
- Project naming is a non-trivial part of a project, and the Phoenix was christened by one of its lead engineers. He rose to the challenge of finding a name that fit the confluence of platforms Phoenix represented:
To commemorate its 20th birthday we carefully took one of the prototype Phoenixes out of storage and powered it on. After 20 years, it (not unexpectedly) was stuck searching for a satellite signal. We were able to play some fifteen year-old recordings made when we had last used the box. We also took its year-older sibling Defiant out for some fresh air and watched some live OTA ATSC. The duo has aged well and are still willing and able to entertain their HD audience.
Hats off to 20 years of HD TiVo, and a personal thank you to Team Phoenix. You brought a dream to life!