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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."

25 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. For DIY'ers by Space+cowboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Nano-ITX cpu/chipset from VIA also does HD mpeg decoding in hardware. Getting technical docs out of VIA is a blood/stone issue, but the existing community peeps have managed to get the SD HW mpeg decoder working, and you'd expect it to be substantially similar.... You'll need an HD MPEG capture card though because the chip's nowhere near fast enough to do it in software

    (The Hoojum [see above link] box also looks very very nice, at least IMHO :-)

    Simon

    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!
  2. 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...

      --

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

      I did a bit of research into this. As far as I can tell, the DirecTV/Canada issue has to do with the reception with sattelite signals, not with PVR's. I just want to hook this thing up to my local cable (preferably my digital cable, if at all possible, which many of us have up here)

      On the contrary, Tivo seems quite hostile to the idea of selling Tivos in Canada. Once a national canadian radio station called up Tivo to ask about Tivo in canada, and their PR rep got angry about setting up an interview with Tivo under false pretences.

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

    3. 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.

    4. Re:Waiting for this Slashdot headline... by topham · · Score: 4, Informative

      Whatever the over-all reason, the ones you've described aren't them.

      A tivo in Canada can generally call a local number to contact Tivo. No hacking of any required for it. There are local numbers in all major cities. I believe they contracted with UUNet, but whatever.

      The IR Software works just fine with my Digital cable box. Canada uses pretty much the same electronics as the United States. There may be the odd difference, but it is the exception, not the rule.

      I believe Tivo gets their guide data from Tribune, which, in my case is the source for Zap2It.com which is my source for tv listings.

      The only technical issue with a Tivo in Canada that I can see is that we do not have zip-codes, instead we have Postal Codes, and this does complicate things a little on configuraing a Tivo, but the changes were made to support Tivo in the UK, so even those software changes are not a big deal.

      The only real issue that could be holding Tivo out of the Canadian market is French language issues. Anything else has to be political issues.

  3. HD Porn by scifience · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now all we need are the HD porn channels to go with it! Buy it once, watch it again (and again) later!

  4. 4 Tuners! by unfortunateson · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ok, there are PC-based units, but will you find one with two DirecTV tuners and two terrestrial HD tuners? I saw this demo'd at CES in January, and it looks very nice.

    Of course there's barely 4 channels worth of HD I'd want to record at once, but it's certainly a nice package. Like the other DirecTiVos, though, it does not have an MPEG encoder, so no cable or analog antenna inputs -- you're stuck with DirecTV and broadcast digital.

    --
    Design for Use, not Construction!
    1. Re:4 Tuners! by LostCluster · · Score: 3, Informative

      Even though the unit has four tuners on board, only two can be active at any given moment. Anything more and they'd end up having too much data headed to the standard hard drive at once. Optimized-for-DVRs HDs are in the pipeline, so eventually this limitation will go away in future models.

      There's really no content loss in not having an MPEG encoder on board. Nearly every analog channel is now being repeated digitally on their sister digital channel, or in most major markets DirecTV has an MPEG-translated version you can get access to.

      This is the early adopter's model. There's going to be better ones in a few years.

  5. 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.

    --
    There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
    1. Re:MPEG compression by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is actually one of the nice features of the DirecTivo units. Since they don't do any local MPEG encoding, the picture quality is great. Actually when compared to my other Directv receiver it was much better (but this could be due to my other receiver being of poor quality).

      I have also used standalone tivo's though, and although I have noticed the pictures slightly modified, they seemed to be slightly different (the tivo had smoothing turned on), but again, neither was bad.

      But for cost and ease of use, any tivo is better than a modified linux box. Unless, of course, you want to have your main linux machine near your tv (which I don't really want at all).

    2. 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

      --
      Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
    3. Re:MPEG compression by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Because HD (even over-the-air) is *already* MPEG compressed. The TiVo just captures/buffers that stream. Quality is the same either way...

    4. Re:MPEG compression by LostCluster · · Score: 3, Informative

      HDTV broadcast signals are by definition MPEG compressed at the TV station. Therefore, all the TiVo unit has to do is just record the already digital bitstream without having to decompress/recompess.

      MPEG is designed as a processes that's computationally cheap to decode, which means that it's computationally expensive to encode. Basically, TV stations, networks, and signal providers have more expensive MPEG encoders than can ever be included in a consumer device, so they come up with more-bang-for-the-bandwidth. It'll always be better to just save that bitstream to an HD than to decompress and re-encode.

    5. Re:MPEG compression by evilviper · · Score: 3, Informative
      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.

      Yes, but your non-HD TV signal is analog. For Tivo to store it, it has to convert it to digital, then encode it in real-time (which is never good for quality).

      Besides that, Tivos encode to low-bitrate MPEG in order to save space. If you select the highest quality, it should be high enough that you won't notice any difference in quality.

      HDTV is broadcast in MPEG2, so the Tivo just has to store it, losslessly, perfectly. So with HDTV, the signal from the TV will be just as good as one that is direct.

      Interestingly enough, if you wanted a slightly lower-quality HDTV stream in order to save space, the Tivo should be able to do some MPEG2 tricks, like Requant, which will require practically no CPU power. If the company is smart, a Tivo is going to be a lot more like a TV studio, and less like a VCR.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  6. DirecTivo, HD-TiVo, and problems by PenguinOpus · · Score: 5, Informative

    All DirecTiVo (including HD), record the digital bit stream directly from the satellite onto the hard drive, so there is no degradation at all. The HD-TiVo added OTA (over-the-air) tuners for the local digital TV broadcasts and those bits are also sent directly to the hard drive. 19Mbits/sec is the maximum HD rate for OTA, while satellite/cable encodings of HD tend to be 13Mbits/sec or less.

    In reading the initial comments about the HD-TiVo, there is one complaint that could be a problem for those who are currently using a DirecTV HD receiver like the DTC-100 and a non-HD DirecTiVo.

    Apparently, when the HD-TiVo gets a non-HD signal, it doesn't automatically switch its output to 480i/480p. It also doesn't stretch/zoom the image to fill a 16x9 screen. This means you need to manually switch the output if you want your TV's de-interlacer/scaler to adjust the image. Depending on who you ask, this is a no-op, annoying, or fatal. (I'm probably in the annoying camp)

  7. An ode to my TiVo, by JRHelgeson · · Score: 4, Funny

    By: Joel Helgeson

    My TiVo box, a loyal pal,
    a friend I truly care for.
    Because it guarantees I'll see,
    the shows I wasn't there for.
    Two-thousand shows I've 'taped' so far,
    each night I 'tape' a new one.
    Who knows, perhaps there'll come a day,
    I'll find the time to view one...

    --
    Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
  8. Huh? by -tji · · Score: 5, Informative

    Dude, that's not even close to a Tivo.

    The VIA chipset supports MPEG2 acceleration (offload of iDCT and Motion Compensation) *not* full HD decoding. So, you still need a lot of CPU horsepower to display HD - more than the 1GHz VIA C3 has to offer.

    Beyond that, there is no way to hook an HDTV tuner to that board, not to mention the 2 Off The Air tuners the Tivo supports.

    Then, you've got the DirecTV input.. The Tivo has 2 DirecTV tuners, while it's impossible to use DirecTV with a PC board.

    Then, you've got the software. There are some decent PC PVR packages available. But, nothing up to the Tivo's level.

  9. 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.

    --



    /dev/random
  10. For those of us in the UK.. by Stopmotioncleaverman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...unfortunately, HDTV seems to still be a pipe dream. We receive a massive amount of digital content, but mostly due to technical inadequacy, the stations don't transmit in high definition.

    I, for one, would love to be able to get HDTV here in the UK. I suppose the good side to this is that by the time we finally DO get HDTV, I might be able to afford a Tivo to record it with. Although, having said that, based on our past success at getting new technologies rolled out, we'll be in the year 2030 with holographic tv, or intra-brain chips that just beam the information straight to our visual cortex.

    Wait a minute. That'd be pretty cool. Although, for those of us in the UK, HoloTV will be implemented by the time we're actually partaking in television. And by the time.... [iterate].

  11. I got one... by burnsy · · Score: 4, Informative

    I received my unit 2 days ago and I must say that I don't love it. It is acceptable, but not anything to fall in love with.

    TiVo really dropped the ball by not adding any new features or functionality, not even the HMO features. This is a stright port from the old version of TiVo software to support HDTV.

    TiVo had the opportunity (and more than plenty of time) to make this product a huge leap the PVR game, but they seemed to have choose the safe route.

    So for your $900 you get a TiVo that supports HDTV, but not much else.

    1. Re:I got one... by MBCook · · Score: 3, Informative
      TiVo did NOT drop the ball.

      DirecTV won't allow HMO for some reason (there is a petition out there somewhere). NO DirecTiVo has HMO. It's not TiVo's fault, DirecTV is the one you've got a beef with. DirecTV is in total controll about what version of software it runs (verison 3.1.x probably) and many other things.

      As for "adding any new features or functionality", like what? I've got a second generation DirecTiVo (Phillips DSR-7000) and other than HMO, I can't think of anything that I'd like it to have. The only thing that I wish it had was more memory and a faster processor, which I assume that the new box has.

      They added HDTV and you can still record two programs at once (even two HDTV programs at once). What big stuff could you want other than that?

      As for the $900, for that you get a TiVo that can hold 200 hours of SD ($99 dollar TiVo plus about $250 for upgrade from 9thTee), a HDTV reciever DirecTV reciever ($300 for a Samsung from BestBuy). That's $650. But you can record TWO things at once, so throw in a second HDTV reciever to make things fair (another $300) and now we're up to $1050. Of course all this stuff is in one nice little box so you don't need nearly as many cables. The box could be considered a $150 SAVINGS over the equivelent other equiptment only it's all in one and does things that the above stuff can't (like TiVo HDTV content).

      --
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  12. They love it? by boarder · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm wondering if the poster or the editor even RTFA. I'm reading the forums, and most DO NOT love it. Most people are annoyed by it. They say it looks great, sure, but they say it is annoying to use in practice.

    The big problem they are having is it doesn't switch native resolutions. Every time you change the channel or watch a new show that has been recorded, you have to change the output resolution. How many wives want to hit 10 buttons just to change the channel? Others are saying it isn't recording all of their season pass shows correctly.

    They are optimistic, though, because the chips used in the TiVo should easily be able to fix the native res problem by a software update.

    --
    IANAL, but I play one on /.
  13. Boooooo Hisssss by numbski · · Score: 3, Interesting

    DirecTV HD TiVos come with a High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) connector with High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP). A cable is included for TVs with HDCP-compliant DVI inputs. Regular DVI inputs could potentially get a downrezzed or blank picture depending on content providers.

    Get thee behind me, Satan!

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  14. So far, they do love it by Bryan+Ischo · · Score: 3, Informative
    There is now a poll in response to this Slashdot article. See:

    http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/poll.php?s=&a ction=showresults&pollid=2255