RCA PVR Will Use Free Guide+ Program Guide

Mark Leighton Fisher writes "RCA has announced (among other CES goodies) a PVR/DVD player for this year that uses the free GUIDE Plus+ program guide rather than requiring an oncoming program guide contract. Once we bring the price down (yes, I work there) I may break down and get one, as I don't like the program guide fee required on current PVRs. (This may be the first no-program guide-fee commercial PVR.)"

Comments

Guide Plus only gives you part of what TiVo gives

[SuperDuperMan]

If you use the TiVo to record your favorite show on channel X and it moves to a new time or there is a new showing this week or it's an extra long episode this week you change NOTHING on the TiVo. It's all automatic. With the Guide Plus you will have to manage and monitor these changes yourself. I pay a bit each month to have someone else worry about this. I can't believe that people complain about paying less than the price of going out to eat for a guide and features that save you so much hassle and time.

TiVo and Replay offer no-fee PVRs for same price

[SiliconEntity]

The RCA PVR is $599 according to the article, and you can already get a TiVo or a Replay box with a lifetime-of-the-unit pre-paid program guide subscription for that kind of money. The RCA box only provides 40 hours of recording time, which isn't all that great either. You can get a 60 hour TiVo with lifetime guide subscription for $550.

The new feature is that the RCA box is also a DVD recorder, which may justify the extra cost for some buyers. But making a 40 hr PVR for $600 up front with no per-month free is nothing new.

Not the first

[Eric Smith]

This may be the first no-program guide-fee commercial PVR.

The first several generations of ReplayTV boxes didn't (and still don't) require a paid subscription, though their currently offered models do. Thus RCA definitely isn't the first to do that.

(I was the third employee of Replay, which was originally Pacific Digital Media and has since been acquired by Sonic Blue.)

Re:This is great except...

[Ryu2]

RCA pretty much doesn't make their own stuff anymore... they just repackage generic stuff from OEMs in places like China and Korea. It's nothing more than just a marketing brand.

Unfortunately, not a long term solution

[nautical9]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but FreeGuide uses XMLTV to scrape its listings from various internet sites (Zap2It for North America). The problem is that Zap2It is very aware of this package, and although they've been a little forgiving of it so far, their stance is very much that it's a problem they're going to have to deal with (either legally or technically, such as constantly changing the HTML format to make scraping that much harder). I've had discussions about this with Jay Brodsky, their Director of Technology, since I was using XMLTV to redistribute my local listings on the web.

Their problem is that they spend a lot of money to consolidate the tv schedules - and they offer it free on their site using the advertising model. When people scrape it for their own use, they're subverting the ads, and zap2it loses money instead of making it (bandwidth, servers, staff, syndication). It's a much larger problem because of the way XMLTV scrapes - hundreds, if not thousands of pages must be retrieved and parsed to get the complete schedule.

Now before you all scream anti-corporate statements, realize that if enough people "steal" their content, they'll simply shut it down, as no company (and no one) wants to lose money.

For an interesting previous thread on this very topic, check here.

Re:Unfortunately, not a long term solution

[DavesError]

RCA doesn't use FreeGuide, it uses the free GuidePlus+. GuidePlus is great, it does have ads on the side, but they are not obtrusive at all, you dont automatically go to them or anything like that, they're just there. I have it on my RCA tv and my parents got an RCA tv just for that feature. Its good stuff.

And I don't think there's any reason to expect this not to be a long term solution.

Hurray for RCA!

Guide+

[Danielle Gatton]

I have an RCA television with "Guide Plus". I don't have cable,so the TV apparently downloads listings from local broadcasters at night, for a few days at a time. There are small ads on the left sides of the listings, and many times there will be gaps in the listings. The whole system is a little clunky; it takes a while to actually bring up the menu, a while to scroll ahead, and sometimes it'll "crash", causing the TV to suddenly turn off, and all the listings to be lost. The whole thing reminds a little of using Gnome a couple years ago.

This television was only bought a couple months ago, but hopefully RCA will improve the software before they bring this PVR to market. It's not such a big deal that the software's buggy in my case, because the TV itself is fine; I just don't use the Guide Plus function much. With a PVR, it'd be a much bigger problem, I think.

China yes...Korea...not any more

[djupedal]

Korea is too expensive. Taiwan, maybe...China for sure. They don't even make microwaves in Korea any longer...that has all just been moved to China. Korea's labor and infrastructure costs are simply too high. My company is keeping R & D and marketing here, but everything else has gone or will go overseas.

Re:About PVR Guide Charges

[TerryMathews]

If TiVo goes dark, your PVR will too.

Nope. A guy who goes by the name Tridge (TiVoNet, ExtractStream fame) has come up with a way to feed the TiVo program guide data in a form it likes. Hasn't released it out of respect for TiVo, but if they go under there is a plan B.

things to ask for

[caveat]

DirecTV lowered my monthly bill TWICE in 2002. What more can I ask for?
tv that stays on when it rains?
seriously - i had directv for two years, the dish was mounted on a 6x6 pine post sunk 4ft onto concrete (barn beam), with all the mounting bolts tightened till the metal was distorted, and the reciever would still lose the satellite lock if the winds were gusting more than 30kts. i live on the ocean, so that's a bigger problem than it sounds. dense cloud cover, that made for some interesting jaggies...and fugeddaboutit in the rain. this with a signal booster on ~75ft of cable no less! i'm happy with digital cable - i get almost as many channels as dTV, really everything except the sports package, the same image and sound quality, and my tv stays on 24x7! even in the rain!