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TiVo to support HDTV by "Year-End"
JMorgan in Seattle writes "TiVo has (finally!) announced support for HDTV. It's a ways off (end of the year), but at least we know that HD TiVo is on the horizon. In two separate press releases, we learn that TiVo will support both standalone and DirecTV hi-def PVRs. TiVo is really on a roll--first Rendezvous support, and now this. Now if only DirecTV would add more HDTV channels..." I've been waiting to get an HDTV receiver for this. Joy.
Which year is the question
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Just a heads-up, if you are currently a DirecTV subscriber, you will need to get the triple-LNB dish to receive all the HDTV signals.
More like -- is it going to support the 90 minute delay
proposal before the FCC?
I.E. Some content can only be viewed no later than 90 minutes after it was recorded, or
not at all.
Is it going to have DVI or Firewire connectors with forced-down low-res on the firewire
is another important one.
It will still depend on the resolution at which TiVo stores the video, no matter what the original quality was for the master transmission.
Using the same compression algorithm to get the same file size, the better video quality you start with, the better the compressed version will be.
If TiVo stored the HDTV stream uncompressed, then that would take a heck of a lot more storage space, even more than DVD video takes on a 4.7 gb DVD (about 3 DVD hours=4.7 gb?).
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I am interested in Tivo but I really do not like the fact the Tivo requires a subscription. Will the Tivo operate with no subscription?
If you remember, a few days ago I was talking about Dish Network's weak grasp on the market... Does this mean that DirecTV will now completely own the market? Or is Dish Network also supporting HDTV (and consequently TiVo)?
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That's 2.5MB/sec.
You'd need ~9GB per hour. So the largest harddrive available currently would give a whopping 20 hours of recording.
TODO: Something witty here...
Toshiba DVD-R + Tivo box
Remote scheduling, intra-tivo video sharing, and MP3/JPG display on Series2 Boxes
"TK-421, why aren't you at your post?"
Now I'll be able to record the first 5 minutes of my favorite HDTV program!
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Hmm.. normal compressed streams from the networks come in at about 19Mb/sec. Even taking it down to 15 hurts the image. It will take an awful lot of disk space to store movies.
That said, I'm greatly looking forward to it -- the only other solution, DVHS is buggy and expensive.
This combined with the new ESPN-HD channel will make my TV purchase worthwhile...
I'd love to get a Tivo, but I'm not about to spend money running a phone line to it. I would be very happy if I could just plug it into my network and have it update itself via my DSL connection that 3 other PC's share. Currently they only support ATT Broadband in their products.
Yeah...and... The TiVo that they have now, doesn't have an HD tuner, or any way to connect it to an external tuner. So you'd be limited to the analog out of an external tuner, which isn't HD, and doesn't require more bandwidth and storage.
So, yes, of course you'll have to buy an HD enabled TiVo if you want to record HDTV.
No you don't. I thought it would be cool having a video game channel but G4 is terrible . Hopefully, some one else will come up with a better version or G4 will get their act together...
Nosce te Ipsum
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You're not paying a subscription to record TV.
You're paying a subscription for a well-updated TV guide, and software updates.
You need never give TiVo any money other than to buy the hardware; if, however, you want the value added services, you pays for them.
Hey, it's better than just auto-bundelling the price into the cost of the unit, aye?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Here is an article in the San Jose Mercury News about it.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Besides, if you've got DirecTV and their Total Choice Premier package, the TiVo subscription fee is waived. (Or, included in the package, if you prefer to look at it that way.)
Either way, a TiVo subscription for a DirecTV DVR is all of $4.99 with their less-inclusive packages. If you can afford a TiVo, you can afford $4.99 a month.
A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
I know Slashdot is typically very Tivo friendly, and I personally think Tivo makes a great product, but nobody seems to have noticed that Dish networks won the CES best of show award for their new HDTV PVR, the Dish PVR-921.
Read about it here.
It looks like Dish will beat Tivo to the market, as they are entering beta immediately and planning for an April or May release date.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Most HD receviers are capable of receiving any of these formats. HD Monitors/HDTVs on the other hand, they are usually limited in which formats they can natively display.
My Mitsubishi, as an example, displays 480p and 1080i natively. A 720p signal is upconverted to 1080i by the recevier, prior to being tossed at the display.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
Let me throw some facts into this mix. Your analysis is right on, but you need more info.
Uncompressed HDTV requires about 1.3 Gbps of bandwidth to transmit. That's the SMPTE 292M standard for serial digital 4:2:2 YUV 1080i HD. Nobody outside of the TV studio ever sees uncompressed HD.
When a network sends its broadcasts to an affiliate, it's not unusual for that signal to come down at about 45 Mbps over an OC-3. So the signal has already been compressed one time before it ever gets to your local TV station.
The 8VSB transmission standard for broadcast HDTV calls for an effective bandwidth of about 19.3 Mbps between the TV transmitter and your house. So before the signal hits the airwaves, it gets compressed a second time.
So the most your TiVo will ever need to store for over-the-air (OTA) HD is about 19.3 Mbps. That includes the 1080i signal and the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.
For satellites and (eventually) land-based cable, the facts are a little different, but the gist is the same. I believe DirecTV is currently broadcasting at about 15 Mbps on its various HD transponders.
So all HDTV programming is compressed at least once and down to at least a ratio of about 70:1 before it ever gets to your house. This can be made to work for two reasons. First, your HDTV can't resolve all of the detail in an uncompressed HD frame. The set just isn't capable of it. Second, a good HD encoder can produce a 19 Mbps signal from a 1.3 Gbps signal that is free of visible artifacts. Note that I said a good encoder. Last week's broadcast of "Any Given Sunday" on ABC looked like hammered shit because it had been run through a poor encoder. Macroblocking everywhere. Virtually unwatchable.
So let's say your TiVo stores the incoming signal without additional compression. OTA HD (19 Mbps) requires about 2.5 MB/s of storage space, or about 8.25 GB/h. So a TiVo with an 80 GB hard drive could store nearly 10 hours of HD content, and considerably more SD content. Given that 320 GB hard drives are available, it's easy to imagine a high-end or upgraded TiVo that has room for as much as 70 or 80 hours of HD content. Not half bad.
So to sum up: "uncompressed" HD (meaning HD that is not compressed further once it gets to your house) requires slightly more than 8 GB per hour. Additional compression applied to the OTA or satellite signal is likely to result in very objectionable artifacts, unless TiVo spends a lot of money on their encoder hardware. Since people who buy HD equipment are currently on the high end of the market, it will make more sense for TiVo to spend the money on additional storage and simply omit an HD encoder from the device completely.
A 10-hour TiVo (note that these are 19 Mbps HD numbers only; SD capacities will be four to six times higher) will require one 80 GB HD or two 40 GB HD's. The upgrade path could possibly include adding 80, 160, or 320 GB hard drives to get to a final capacity of up to 80 hours (rounded up) for a few hundred dollars over the base price. Not too bad.
I write in my journal
I know plenty of people who feel the same way. I came into $500 of basically free money so I bought one with a lifetime.
I think Tivo needs to shift to being a software company, and license a base software package to hardware vendors. The guide data should be free or nearly free (eg, $2.95 a month or $25/year).
They can then make money selling new software features and updates. The market could then drive the feature sets, instead of sitting around and hoping for Tivo to implement much-sought-after features (Batch Save, Folders, etc) and having them actually deliver BS features, like watching JPGs on TV.
Their relatively high subscription cost will ultimately kill them, IMHO, especially as cable companies deliver their own PVRs. Crime-Warner is giving away a Scientific Atlanta PVR (dual tuners, etc etc) for nearly nothing to customers with higher-end packages. Same guide data as Tivo (often I've noticed the program descriptions from my SA2100 box are word-for-word identical with Tivo), and many Tivo features.
Tivo is better now, but over time the SA box will be as good for most people, and in some ways better (dual tuner, no crippled channel surfing due to IR relay delays, way cheaper than Tivo for any use less than 5 years, if it breaks they replace it, etc).
Unless Tivo re-thinks what they sell and how they sell it, a box that does what everyone thinks it should and costs well over $500 over its lifetime cannot possibly compete..
Look at it as simple ecomonics. Assuming you're employed, and you make even a modest salary - let's say $10 an hour. You watch less tv than the average adult -- maybe only one hour a day.
Having tivo gives you back 12 hours a month that you DON'T spen watching tampon and zit cream commercials.
Free TV is a very poor bargain. Unless your time is absolutely worthless - as in, you're a mindless vegerable being fed through a tube, you're giving Budweiser, Preparation H, and Bob's Used Cars the ONLY thing you can't get more of: Time. For the equivalent of less than the US federal minimum wage.
$12 a month to avoid ever having to listen to some wild-eyed freak pimping soap scum remover? Best bargain I've ever had.
I though so too at one time, especially with the $12/month that Tivo charges. But then I went with the DirectTV Tivo, and I pay $4.99 a month - same as to activate another decoder box.
Truth: If it's not one thing, it's another
Also, this confirms with the information on what people will be able to record from HDTV signals. The plan in the above article stated that there would be no restrictions on recording over-the-air broadcasts (read: your local stations), while you could only time shift PPV events by 90 minutes and not save the recording. I'd suspect that other cable stations, basic and premium, would have some restrictions between those cases.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Does anyone know if there are patent issues or something similar preventing it? I've looked all over the net with Google, trying to find a board for PCs that will receive digital cable, and turned up nothing. A few places say things like "no products available" or "we hope to have a product like this someday" but that's as close as I could find.
My brother says the same thing. Of course he's 25 and single.
/. !
Let's see if you have the same attidtude when you are married with a two year old child. In case you didn't know, The Sopranos is not appropriate fare for toddlers. And it is not a matter of needing to record the shitty shows, it a matter of the only decent shows being on at times that conflict with being a parent. You get more out of TV because you can watch something decent when you have a half hour after the kid is asleep.
Read a fucking book.
Hey my advice to you is stay single so you can keep posting your wisdom to
Truth: If it's not one thing, it's another
- reboots spontaneously, even while we're watching a program.
- mysteriously turns itself off at random times (like Wednesday afternoon), and doesn't come back up. You can't record anything if it's not powered on.
- Let's say you want to watch something that it's currently recording. Like, say, an episode of Farscape that's been running for half an hour, but hasn't finished yet. When you tell the box to start watching the show, it dumps you at the END of the recorded portion (aka LIVE TV).
- That, we can fix. Just rewind back to the beginning of the show. Slight hassle, but not horrible. Then, when the RECORDING ends (irrespective of where in the program YOU are), it dumps you back to the live feed. Not horrible for regular programs, but it sure sucks when you accidently see the final score of the basketball game you were watching.
- So you're halfway through a show, and you go run an errand. While you're gone, your SO watches something else. When you return to watch the rest of your show, the TW box starts at the BEGINNING, not where you stopped watching.
- TiVo has a function where you can record beyond the end of your show. College hoop, for instance, tends to run long, so you can tell it to record an extra half hour to make sure you get the end (and OT, if applicable). The TW has a similar function that you can program, but it doesn't work.
TiVo does all of the above admirably, with a user interface my technology stunted inlaws can use. That $500 never made so much sense, and the TW box is going back when I get a spare moment to do it.ceci n'est pas un sig.
Have a look at this thread at avsforum for more details.
New customer? If you go to buy a DirecTV system at Best Buy or the like, they'll try to take an extra $100-$150 for the triple LNB dish. But you can get one for free. Sign up for DirecTV on one of the regular packages (often free after rebate -- try Blockbuster and you also get a year's free DVD rentals), and tell them you want Para Todos, the Spanish network. That comes off one of the other sats, and you'll get a triple-LNB capable dish. Might not have all three LNBs on it, but the 3rd LNB is about $40, and just slots in with no rewiring etc. You don't actually have to by the Para Todos channels, either -- the dish install and program signup seem to be handled separately. (I went through this a couple of months back after reading about it on the Web.)