TiVo vs Microsoft vs HDTV Cable

Thomas Hawk writes "Technology writer Ed Bott is out today with a great comparison piece where he compares the various feature sets of his TiVo, his Microsoft Media Center PC and his current HDTV cable DVR. It seems like all three have various nice features but all three also have negatives that you have to suffer through. A great read and strong comparison piece for anyone interested in DVR technology. Would love to see Ed or someone else expand on this piece and incorporate the current HDTV DirecTV TiVo, Comcast's Foundation box being rolled out in a pilot program in Washington State and MythTV."

Comments

I prefer my ReplayTV to my old Media Center PCs

[iibbmm]

I have owned two Media Center PCs, and currently use two 5504 ReplayTV's as my main PVR units.

The Media Center PCs were of course the most powerfull units, but they had problems. It was a real pain to get everything working with my Toshiba HD set, as it was finicky about resolutions, and getting everything stable was a pain. I ended up selling both of my attempts at Media Pcs, and got a replay tv.

The replay is PERFECT. Everyone in the house can use it without issue, and everything is fluid. There is no need to spend hour after hour customizing and tweaking software to get everything work with something else, no crashes, nothing out of the ordinary.

The key components I miss from the HTPCs are the music playback, web browsing, and gaming on the big screen. However, I have a wireless media streamer that I use for music, and I prefer to play games in my office anyway, so the loss of functionality is minimal. I didn't use my HTPC to play pirated films, as I can't stand the look of divx/xvid at 57".

Re:I prefer my ReplayTV to my old Media Center PCs

[nontrivial]

Hell yes, I love my ReplayTV. I have played with a Tivo, and I ended up buying a ReplayTV. The ReplayTV is not as flexible as the Tivo, but it is much easier to use. Plus, it seems all the addon software is easier to use to. I currently offload some content automatically every night to my desktop computer, sort through it on the desktop, and then view any content from any computer or ReplayTV in my house. All this with no hacking or tweaking at all, just installing one program on the computers. The picture slideshows are nice, but some sort of music playing would be nice.

"DVR technology" -1 Overrated

[GillBates0]

A great read and strong comparison piece for anyone interested in DVR technology. Would love to see Ed or someone else expand on this piece and incorporate the current HDTV DirecTV TiVo, Comcast's Foundation box being rolled out in a pilot program in Washington State and MythTV.

I think "DVR Technology" is overrated...atleast to anyone who has a TV Tuner Card in the PC and a decent set of drivers and TV Tuner software (Hauppauge's WinTV for xawtv/bttv for Linux). I got a basic one for $20.00 and it does the job satisfactorily. If I'd more dough, I could've bought a higher end one for $60.00, with it's own remote control.

I have 180Gb of diskspace at my disposal, the ability to skip, timeshift, record, picture-in-picture, channel scan etc that most TiVo users gloat about, with the performance being limited only by my CPU/Graphics/RAM, all of which I'd rather update than buy a new TiVo/DVR device. And to those who hate watching TV on their monitor...that's where an S-Video cable comes in.

Re:"DVR technology" -1 Overrated

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It's better because it's built to be a PVR, and that's all it does.

As per my previous post, I disagree. I think it is worse because that's all it does. My computer with a tuner gives me options and features a Tivo never will. MP3 storage, easy upgrades, DVD and VCD playing and burning, games, etc. etc. Also, there is no monthly fee. My girlfriend figured out how to record shows, burn DVDs of those shows, watch shows (including fast forward, rewind, skip, pause, etc.), delete shows, search listings, and permanently edit out commercials on recorded shows without ever touching a manual or asking for help. It's not like it is rocket science. There are a few things that are more slick about TiVo's interface, but it is limited to those few features. My setup can do a great deal more, simply and easily. It is running on OS X with a few useful applications in the dock, and that is it. Is it more complex than a Tivo or ReplayTV? Yes. It is also more functional, and easy enough for the average person to figure out in about 5 minutes.

That's spelled "geeks"

[Doc Ruby]

The 1% of us who are geeks, who create an app against the TiVo API, then share those apps with the other 99%. That's how software is developed, used, and makes platforms popular. Programming isn't for everyone, but programs are.

ReplayTV

[omahajim]

Does no one like ReplayTV anymore? I see only one other mention of Replay in the currently posted comments. My old Panasonic HS2000 (many many years old) is still going strong on ReplayTV.

I like MyReplayTV on the web, and I like the skip forward button.

Is Replay the Beta to Tivo's VHS? (figuratively speaking - where the alleged better technology doesn't always win). I admit that I've never owned a Tivo, but in the few times I did side-by-side them, I greatly preferred the Replay.

--
/. foreclosed on my sig.

Propaganda

[TexTex]

It seems like all three have various nice features but all three also have negatives that you have to suffer through.

Um...from reading the article (and I'd hope our submitter did, as he's the first feedback post praising the author)...you'll see how most of it defends the MS box on a point-by-point basis of what Tivo offers.

To me, it reads like 'We can do everything Tivo can do better...' It's a response to Pogue's praise of Tivo with praise of his own. A fair comparison, a blogger's thoughts on DVRs, and a waste of slashdot's frontpage.

phone line

[Dop]

When are they going to get past the phone line requirement for initial setup? I have the DirectTV TiVo and it works great getting channel info right off of the satallite once it's setup, but I had to bring a dish over to a friends house to use their phoneline at first.

My stance towards Tivo

[Isldeur]

Here's my stance towards Tivo. I'd love to support that company - I like what they did originally and understand they have pressures these days so that things may be less than ideal.

But I always knew I'd be moving towards HD, so I didn't jump the bandwagon when it first came out. Now I have two options:

1. Buy a HD Tivo for more than $1000 and then pay a monthly fee of something like $13.00, or
2. Get Adelphia's HD DVR for (get this) free for 5 months, then $4.95 per month.

O.k. So Tivo might be better. But it isn't that better. And, as I never had one of the originals, (as most people ) I don't know the difference.

Tivo, in its current form, without liscencing from Cable Companies, is dead. It's only time.

Re:comcast hd-dvr not as bad as expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably my biggest gripe is that it doesn't know what channels you don't get (which is probably Comcast's fault). It'll dispaly a bunch of channels while browsing the channels, but we don't get half of them.

I'm sure it would be simple to filter those channels from the list, but my guess is that they leave them there by design. They want you to see what you're not getting in hopes that you'll sign up for a more expensive package.

words, some people have heard of them

[motorsabbath]

Turn off your television, read a book. TV is for schmoes. ;-)

Tivo is dying

[FreedomPolice]

DVRs are now a commodity, to profit Tivo should have kept innovating. Instead cheap cableco DVRs are eating Tivos lunch on the low end and Tivo has ceded the high end by not supporting HiDef. If Tivo wants to survive they need to:

1. Get HiDef support NOW!
2. Lower the cost of subscription. Many people use the internet to download show data, Tivo should pass the savings to the consumer. Current Tivo owners won't upgrade because newer Tivos aren't noticeably better than old ones, and people new to DVRs want either a cheap one or one that supports HD.
3. Innovate dammit! Make the hard drives bigger and the box smaller, incorporate some of the best hacks out there into the base unit, come up with stuff that people don't even know they want yet, and above all get your head out of Hollywoods ass.

I shopped hard and then went with KISS

[rbrander]

I looked at TiVO, at the Interact-TV "Telly" (see interact-tv.com), at the Lite-On DVR, and very hard at MythTV.

And finally, I went and bought a "humble" Pioneer DVR-520, that's just a VCR except it burns DVDs and/or records to hard drive. No network access to TV schedules at all, you have to set it to record Channel X at Y o'clock on day Z.

TiVO might have won if they would just friggin' provide TV guide service to Canada, but they won't.

And all the solutions that are really a Linux or Windows PC in a smaller box had the same problem: they crash.

Most of them not often, but even once every few weeks is way too often. If it were just me, fine, but my wife was unequivocal: we don't NEED the thing, she's just wearily learning a new remote and whole new approach to TV just to get along with me..."But if it crashes like a PC in the middle of the Gilmore Girls, it's leaving the house through a closed window that you can pay for".

The Plain Ol' DVR is not from a computer company, but the long-experienced consumer electronics company that made the first LaserDisc machines. It just works, was working 5 minutes out of the box, and won't crash on her though it be a fairly sophisticated computer.

And frankly, I'm kind of glad to be talked into it as well. Upstairs, I geek out to my heart's content on a Linux box. Downstairs, watching TV, I'm generally beat, have a drink or so and supper inside me, and Just Want to Watch TV. Any technicalities deeper than picking my show off the playlist are unwelcome.

This box meets the 80/20 rule. Anything that can do "chasing playback", skip ads, avoids fussing with tapes, and can make a DVD of those few shows I want to save, meets at least 80% of what you want from the experience.

Setting it to catch all the shows we watch regularly took me about an hour. I guess another half hour per year will be needed to stop the recordings at the end of each season and start them again, often at new times, each fall. Avoiding that half-hour per year is not worth hundreds of dollars, and it ABSOLUTELY isn't worth managing another household computer through upgrades and patches and crashes.

DirecTiVo HD

[Snommis]

I recently went HD, and bought a DirecTv TiVo HD box (HR10-250) for $1000. I had always used ReplayTV prior, but Replay has no HD box. (I even e-mailed the company to see when they will have one. They said, in essence, "no time soon".)
Frankly, after using the ReplayTV for so long, I guess I got spoiled, because I HATE my TiVo! Extremely slow guide (actually comes up in chunks), no 30 second skip (gonna try the hack from the article tonight, though), and why can I only pause for 30 minutes? I used to pause my Replay at the beginning of a hockey game (not that I have that to worry about this year) and come back an hour later to start watching. Skip all the commercials and intermissions and still return to live with about 5 minutes left in the game. I could go on about no networking capability, ect. but you get my point.
Overall, the Tivo feels "Fisher Price" compared to the Replay. The menus look candy coated and dumbed down for the masses, and I really miss the pause countdown timer from my Replay. I hope like hell that Marantz (I think) realizes what they bought and runs with it! I'd ditch TiVo in a second.