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HDTV TiVo Now Shipping

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the never-looked-better dept.

davco9200 writes "After over a year of waiting, the HDTV TiVo from Hughes (HR10-2350) is finally shipping. People have been receiving their first unit and you can read their first impressions. Suffice to say: they love it."

6 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Waiting for this Slashdot headline... by TrevorB · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm waiting for this Slashdot headline:

    TiVo available in Canada

    It's about time we had this by now, dammit...

    1. Re:Waiting for this Slashdot headline... by Quasar1999 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Tivo is available in Canada. It's just not allowed to be used. I purchased a Tivo, paid the duty, and then was told a month later that subscribing to DirecTv as a Canadian citizen was illegal. When I asked for my Duty to be refunded, they made it expressly clear that owning the tivo was legal... using it was not.

      So, go ahead and buy a tivo, you won't be allowed to use it, but it is technically available in canada...

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      Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
    2. Re:Waiting for this Slashdot headline... by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Does anyone know what Tivo's beef is with Canada?

      Simply it's a market that they haven't chosen to enter.

      The PR rep had a right to get angry, he was being ambushed with a question he didn't have a good answer to. There's really no technical or legal barrier standing in the way, but it's just a matter that TiVo hasn't seen fit to contract with Canadian dial-up network, program the IR software to work with Canadian cable and DBS companies, and create the channel lineups for Canadian cable systems.

      For that matter, there's no TiVo in Mexico either. TiVo's only non-USA market is the UK.

  2. MPEG compression by horatio · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why doesn't the MPEG video compression negate the HD advantages? Because of the MPEG compression, there is a noticable quality difference between my (non-HD) TV on the TiVo and bypassing the TiVo to watch TV directly.

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    There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
    1. Re:MPEG compression by Gilesx · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Here's how to access a "hidden" Tivo mode, which gives you a much improved picture. Perhaps this is enabled for HDTV (although the resolution would *still* be too low)

      http://www.ljay.org.uk/tivoweb/tivo_fpga.html

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      Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
  3. They love it? by ltwally · · Score: 4, Interesting
    " read their first impressions. Suffice to say: they love it."

    So I'm reading the first 3 (out of 4) pages from that link of early-impressions... seems like there are various problems -- including: cleaning out the menu signals (which are currently bleeding into the actual video feed), slow(er) menu response time, difficulties properly identifying and/or configuring which resolution to output to, and low quality when using the tivo unit to scale the video (instead of letting the TV do it).

    Now some of these problems can be fixed easily (more or less) with a firmware update... others might be a sign that the hardware isn't up to snuff. Either way, I don't seem to be reading in rave reviews of the new TiVo... certainly nothing wild enough to dare claim anyone "loves it."

    Personally, I think I'll hold on to my money for a while yet until a few of these kinks are worked out.

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