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Time Warner Cable NYC Begins DVR Distribution
MikeTRose writes "Today's NYT Circuits section has an article about the proliferation of digital television choices for cable and satellite customers. They mention that Time Warner Cable will be starting to offer DVR cable boxes to New York City subscribers in September 2003. Apparently the time-shifting features of the new Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 (flash demo) set-tops are unusually powerful, as I got mine in Brooklyn this past Tuesday. 80 GB drive, which equals an estimated 50 hours of digital cable programming (no quality controls a la TiVo or ReplayTV, everything is as-broadcast). Programming interface is integrated completely into the slightly-updated channel guide, and you hit one big ol' record button to save a show. The tuner can handle two channels at once, so you can watch one/record one, or record two programs while watching a prerecorded show (similar to the DirecTV TiVo units if I recall correctly). Works great so far, and there's no quality problem with recompressing the digital cable as there is with standalone DVRs, nor is there the annoying 2-3 second channel change lag while it caches video. At less than $10 a month -- no cost to the subscriber for the box -- that money we were saving for a TiVo is up for grabs."
Time Warner and other cable companies need to spend less time thinking of more features they can charge for and instead find ways to bring better service for lower prices. Once they figure that out, then they should move on to more features. I know in Boston cable can be 60 bucks a month for basic service.
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"The whole category has been about the customer being able to get control"
Really, who has control here? Given the fact that it's the cable companies themselves that are distributing the boxes and the software, it's pretty safe to assume that they have complete access to information regarding what shows you've watched, what you're recording, etc. This is just the next step towards the uber-specific TV commercial placement of the future. Buy, my pretties, buy!
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A year ago the TV people were crying that Tivos and other DVR devices would spell certain doom for free/commercial TV.
Then cable companies started talking seriously about pushing out there own DVR units.
Seemed pretty obvious to me that it had something to do with locking down certain features on the DVR's that the free/commercial TV people didn't like.
Has anyone found a downside yet?
The one reviewer seemed pretty pleased with the fast forward button. I thought for sure that would be one thing. I thought that they would restrict the speed so you were forced to watch commercials. Tivo's FF speed is pretty fast.
How about the ability for the cable companies to keep you from recording a program?
I am almost certain there is a programming flag that they can turn on to keep you from recording programs. It is supposed to be used for pay per view and the like, but tell me it isn't screaming for abuse.
Has anyone found any programs (or entire channels even) that they cannot record or time shift?
With my Tivo I have digital cable, and I have yet to be told I cannot time shift someone. I Tivo HBO all the time.
I'm not sure I believe there's no recompression done to the cable signal. Are you really telling me that this is taking the digital signal, leaving it digital, and simply storing an MPEG-2 stream (or whatever it is) as it comes in through the cable on the hard drive? If so, I would like to read more in-depth about this box (not just a Flash demo) - anybody got a better link?
Knowing how ass-backwards Time Warner usually is and how technology like this is often trailing-edge rather than leading-edge, I would have thought the box is recompressing the signal after converting it to analog just like every other DVR on the market. The fact that it looks so good could be for any number of reasons - a higher bit-rate or better compression algorithm (MPEG-4?) or whatever. If not, this is really a revolutionary device.
Does anyone have any more information on this? And what sort of record times do you get with it? With highest quality on TiVo you get about 20 hours on an 80GB hard drive; that's MPEG-2 decoding (you'd get more if it was MPEG-4).
The fact is, AOLTW is probably going to be a major trendsetter in this arena, simply because they own so many of the companies that could oppose their decisions. I'm staying clear of this whole mess (I use Dish Network's dishplayer, and the TCO is cheaper anyway) because I don't feel like giving this 500lb gorilla any money when there's an easily attainable alternate solution.
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I had Time Warner's PVR since a few days after they released it in Austin- and I just took it back. The problems I had:
1) The box is slow- particularly when recording- if you choose to record one channel and watch another- changing channels take a few seconds, though all the keypresses on the remote get queued. Really irritating when surfing around.
2) The box frequently 'forgot' programming, and when I told it to 'record every episode' of a show- it would record some, not others, and it was pretty unpredictable.
3) The 'pause live TV' feature takes a while to actually start up (it doesn't record by default) and for some reason, it stopped working altogether. It would just end up giving me a blank screen.
4) A bunch of the programs I recorded ended up being corrupted.
5) (and final straw) It suddenly stopped with an 'unrecoverable write error'
Considering that I was paying nearly $100/mo for cable service (Digital+HBO+PVR+regular set-top) It just wasn't worth it.
Though they advertize it as $10/mo- not really- my bill dropped by about $18/mo when I swapped the PVR for a normal digital set-top box.